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/mentat/ - Mentat's Guild

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

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Join us on Rizon at #mentat

File: 1457106429940.jpg (142.05 KB, 882x432, 49:24, mentat.jpg)

 No.1[Reply]

Welcome to /mentat/, a board for those who seek to enhance the capability of their mind to its limit. A mentat is a human computer capable of great feats of memory, analytics, mathematics and logic. You can find a good overview of what a mentat is here-

>http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1643

This board was created for the purpose of creating a place on ∞chan for those who wish to train themselves to be a mentat and enhance their cognitive capacity. This started as my own personal goal with >>>/improve/4113 , but I've decided that anyone training to be a mentat could benefit from a learning community to be part of.

My goals for this board is to create a place for the exchange of information and resources relating to mentat training, as well as a learning community of mentats that studies together and intellectually challenges other members of the community by means of discussion and debate.

I also believe a mentat should be more than analytics, logic, math and memory. A mentat, being a human computer, a hybrid of the two (so to say), should not neglect history, arts and humanities and culture for purely scientific/mathematic studies. To this end, a community of mentats should also be a place for the discussion and exchange significant cultural works- movies, art, music, literature.

So let this board be a place for not just the discussion of enhancing our cognitive abilities to their limits, but also a place for the discussion and expansion upon our worldly and cultural knowledge.

Resources *copied from my /improve/ thread for now, will create a more comprehensive list later

>Mentat Wiki

>http://www.ludism.org/mentat/HomePage

Stage one: HePost too long. Click here to view the full text.



File: 1457118109228.jpg (158.01 KB, 1131x707, 1131:707, mentats_box____fallout_3_b….jpg)

 No.2[Reply]

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

I'd like to go into length and detail about my current mentat training. I'm looking specifically for feedback, commentary, constructive criticism and to spark conversation. I'd also like to declare my mentat intentions, goals and aspirations to hopefully inspire my fellow mentats, and I'm hoping to be equally inspired by you.

I'm most interested in what works. What is effective? I like to live as frugally as possible, so I will often measure the efficacy of a technique by its cost/benefit ratio.

I do not differentiate between my body and my mind, they are one and the same. If I drink, I get drunk. My physiology affects my psychology. But the converse is also true: if I tell myself that healthy living doesn't matter I get fat and out of shape. I know this from experience. Nothing mystical here, my psychology also affects my physiology. This shapes how I see my mentat training: train the body to train the mind. Train the mind to train the body. A well trained body-mind will be at the peak of its mental performance capabilities. I also like to use language in unconventional ways to break myself of typical nuero-patterns of thought (if I speak like average people, I think like average people).

A short aside: I do not look down at average people, normies, mundanes, etc. I think to do so is counter-productive to mentat training but I'll go into that in depth later. We want to avoid becoming twisted mentats.

I have zero interest in trivia or useless talents. Memorizing a deck of cards is as equally impressive as it is useless. Same with memorizing pi to the Nth decimal place. No thank you. I am only interested in these tasks if it can be shown that they have some benefit and cannot be done with other more useful data sets (memorizing the military phonetic alphabet is more useful than coming up with your own, simply because of the benefit of a shared reference. To make a programming analogy: If we use the same pointers, we should be at the same memory address more frequently than if used different pointers. I have no interest in re-inventing the wheel)Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

22 posts and 5 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.28

YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.

TEDxOrlando - Wendy Suzuki - Exercise and the Brain

An award-winning neuroscientist with a deep appreciation for the rewards and benefits of teaching, Wendy Suzuki discusses her research, and the teachers who inspired her.

Wendy Suzuki holds a faculty position in the Center for Neural Science at New York University, where she also runs an active research lab. Her research focuses on understanding the patterns of brain activity underlying long-term memory as well as the role of aerobic exercise in improving learning, memory and cognition.


 No.29

YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.

Improving working memory capacity | Torkel Klingberg | TEDxNorrköping

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. The two live talks at this TEDxNorrköping event have "plasticity" in common. Capabilities for problem solving and for learning (or progress) have often been regarded as (inherited) components of the personality. Both Carol S Dweck and Torkel Klingberg have made clear, that improvements of such capabilities are supported by systematic use of appropriate training and feedback. Very essential knowledge for any parent, teacher, leader and human being in general.

''Torkel Klingberg's research is focused on the development and plasticity of working memory and the research focus of his group is summarized on the group research page. Recent articles can be down-loaded from the list of publications from the group.

Torkel Klingberg was one of the founders the company Cogmed, but has currently no financial relationships with Cogmed, no stocks, no royalty and no consultancy agreements. He has published popular science books about working memory called “The overflowing brain” and recently completed a second book called "The learning brain".''


 No.30

File: 1458924608581.jpg (24.74 KB, 256x230, 128:115, 256px-NDS_BrainTrainingFor….jpg)

>>29

So he developed a "game" which was a working-memory trainer. Would be nice to get a hold of that software, I wonder how actually effective things like Brain Age actually are? I wonder what tasks specifically increase cognitive power, and which cognitive powers can be trained/improved?


 No.31

YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.

A simple way to break a bad habit | Judson Brewer

Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Psychiatrist Judson Brewer studies the relationship between mindfulness and addiction — from smoking to overeating to all those other things we do even though we know they're bad for us. Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound tactic that might help you beat your next urge to smoke, snack or check a text while driving.


 No.32

File: 1459186756160.jpg (405.46 KB, 720x540, 4:3, MokshaWEB.jpg)

>>31

This was a really good one and one I'm going to have to watch again for sure.

He advocates awareness meditation to overcome our typical "autopilot" brain functioning. If we can be curious about what makes up these negative sensations in the mind, then we can be mindful of them, and through curiosity and mindfulness, we can explore these desires and really disenchant ourselves of them.

He doesn't finish the train of Buddhist thought in this video though: if we can disenchant ourselves, or in other words free ourselves, from all of our desires, then we would be liberated from all the suffering our desires cause.




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