/sci/ - Science and Mathematics

I play a lot of video games at a high level.

nofap and regular exercise helps

>>3164

>nofap

guaranteed butthurt from masturbators incoming

Improving cognitive function is very very difficult, especially for adults. In fact, there's little you can do to boost IQ at all. That said, here are a few tips.

Make sure you dont have any nutrient deficiencies. Take a multivitamin (though probably quarter the dosage, multivitamins are notorious for recommending unnecessary doses). Don't get in the habit of being dehydrated.

Stimulants improve cognition temporarily. Try caffeine in moderate doses twice daily, and consider a blood thinner to accompany it depending on your age.

As for learning, just pick something you're interested in. Go on Wikipedia and read the article about it. Follow the links in that page to other pages that spark your curiosity, repeat the process, and quit abruptly when your interest runs out.

In general, try to ignore or minimize your opinions, regardless of what they are about. Opinions merely represent places where facts are missing. I could write quite a bit about this, but I decided not to.

Find smart friends. Usually a person is or trends toward the average of his or her friends. It is unbelievably hard to improve yourself in any area unless you can compare yourself to or compete with others.

A significant portion of cognitive function is genetic. Furthermore, it is much simpler and irreversible to reduce intelligence than it is the increase it. Don't expect miracles, but you can be sure that you're approaching your ideal intellect by following these tips.

>>3165

For some people that shit works.

For me it just makes things worse.

I fap a lot, likely more than anyone else here. But it depends on the individual and what works for them. For instance, I hate doing it, but smoking helps me focus. Back when my dad was in the Navy he took meth because it calmed him down. It would make more sense if you saw how he reacts to a cat nearly getting out the door when they shouldn't. He's very… Energetic? Just an example of what I mean by different things work for different people.

>>3156

TMS looks promising

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677578/

Also if you are depressed seek treatment. Depression can lower IQ scores.

>>3164

>>3165

theres no real evidence that nofap does anything

>Hey smart faggots, how do I make myself smarter?

Give up on this ridiculous pipe dream and learn to make the most of what you have. Increase your knowledge, identify your strengths, focus on learning to leverage them.

I am actually interested in a more limited version of this question: How do you reduce absent mindedness? For instance, I am setting up 6 restriction digest reactions, and the enzyme is EcoRI for the first 5 and XhoI for the last one. Then when I pipette, I get carried away and accidentally add EcoRI to all 6, and go "oh shit I forgot the last one was different".

inb4 cognitive defect, malnutrition, coffee, sleep, etc.

Don't really have a major effect for a normal person. I've even done experiments after skipping 2 nights of sleep in a row, no noticeable increase in frequency of mistakes. I'm looking more for mental tricks and especially training methods to improve myself, not an e-diagnosis.

You can actually improve cognitive function. Perform most of these tasks at least a few days out of every week, make a schedule.

>Learn a language (from French>Spanish>then Japanese, or start with Spanish; /r/languagelearning, /r/learnspanish, /r/learnjapanese, /r/french)

>Exercise (bodyweight fitness or weightlifting, swimming, bicycling, running; /fit/, /r/bodyweightfitness, /r/swimming, /r/bicycling, /r/running)

>Read (from the Oxford World's Classics list, not Harry Potter; /lit/)

>Write (can be a fictional story or a personal account; /r/writing)

>Learn a musical instrument (start piano or drum set, not guitar; /r/learnmusic, /r/drums, /r/piano)

>Meditate (also be stress free)

>Create (drawings and/or DIY projects; /diy/, /ic/, /r/learnart)

>Get 8 and a half hours of sleep (every day)

>Learn the Trivium and the Quadrivium (/sci/, /r/grammar, /r/rhetoric, /r/logic, /christian/, /r/philosophy, Khan Academy)

>Make friends (go to a game shop near you and find a group to play a tabletop or card game with; try to meet up at least once a week; /tg/, /r/rpg)

>Learn a skill (first aid, personal financing, house and car maintenance, cooking; /ck/, /r/personalfinance, /r/cookingforbeginners; /r/homeimprovement)

/freedu/, /edu/

It's going to be hard till you make them into habits but I guarantee you will become smart. Check out community colleges, they are great resources for these tasks but will cost money.

>no mention of chess

getting good at chess will literally raise your iq

>>3241

>Get 8 and a half hours of sleep (every day)

Nah that's bullshit. There's been growing evidence that six hours or even less is perfectly natural and not deleterious.

>>3254

The reason I said 8 and a half was because that's the scheduled amount astronauts are given when on ISS. According to a report, astronauts only get 6 hours of sleep on average, and the report suggests that 6 hours was not enough sleep time, and NASA is attempting to fix that.

>>3156

Start playing Dual N Back. It will improve your IQ by a few points.

Start meditating. Meditation will increase your IQ by a few points.

Eat a healthy diet, and do high intensity cardio exercise. This will have a noticeable affect, and will boost your IQ by by a few points.

Start taking nootropic drugs such as noopept and modafinil. Modafinil will give you a tremendous boost in cognitive performance, and noopept is pretty good too.

Learn formal logic, and practice your logic skills by solving logic puzzles. Mensa has published a few puzzle books, as has Martin Gardner. Just search for the PDF's. Amazon can be a good place to find new titles, but DL the PDF from Google.

IF you do all this, then you will find yourself performing at a much higher level.

>>3242

Proof needed for that statement.

>>3282

I imagine there are studies that have been done, I don't have any 'proof' for you. To me this is kind of asking like does jogging improve cardiovascular performance. But I can tell you this, getting good at something that requires you to think logically and hold many actions in your head at once, as well as what the consequences of those actions may have on the outcome of the game, will certainly improve cognition.

>>3284

I've looked before, and I've never seen any studies showing that chess raises IQ.

>>3285

Probably because, as with the jogging analogy, no one would assume otherwise. And after a few seconds of searching I found this link which cites many studies done on the effects of playing chess:

http://www.quadcitychess.com/benefits_of_chess.html

>>3286

Cool.