Search:

Well, working memory is certainly very valuable in the rapidly evolving environment of spoken conversation. But if you are working in solitude, a pen and paper can to a great degree compensate for a limited working memory (obviously) but not entirely (perhaps less obviously).

Anecdotally, I do think working memory can be improved. I've definitely felt that over the years. Maybe it's not my working memory but my understanding of how it actually functions that's improved. If you organise your thoughts in your head and work on things piece by piece rather than running back and forth between things like a scatterbrain you're much less likely to drop things. If you can give key ideas and thoughts associations or links to other information you greatly increase your ability to remember them. You can put more trust in your brain than ppl realize and just completely drop an idea. If you have made decent associations you will probably be able to pick it back up later.

On another note, I think one thing that people can easily overlook in conversations about intelligence is how our idea of what intelligence even is on a practical level shifts with the changing needs and capabilities of human society. Paper is a good one, because paper is a huge game changer, yet we totally take it for granted. It's so taken for granted that people fucking give the IQ test on paper lmao. But people wouldn't have always thought that way. When truly trying to measure "natural intelligence" people would have sought to avoid paper when it was still a fresh technology, and all the questions would be oral. And letting people scribble on paper would have been viewed like letting people use google midway through a test, though I understand the questions in these tests don't reward scribbling things down much anyway.

p;edit they don't allow you to scribble, fair enough.

Well, working memory is certainly very valuable in the rapidly evolving environment of spoken conversation. But if you are working in solitude, a pen and paper can to a great degree compensate for a limited working memory (obviously) but not entirely (perhaps less obviously).

Anecdotally, I do think working memory can be improved. I've definitely felt that over the years. Maybe it's not my working memory but my understanding of how it actually functions that's improved. If you organise your thoughts in your head and work on things piece by piece rather than running back and forth between things like a scatterbrain you're much less likely to drop things. If you can give key ideas and thoughts associations or links to other information you greatly increase your ability to remember them. You can put more trust in your brain than ppl realize and just completely drop an idea. If you have made decent associations you will probably be able to pick it back up later.

On another note, I think one thing that people can easily overlook in conversations about intelligence is how our idea of what intelligence even is on a practical level shifts with the changing needs and capabilities of human society. Paper is a good one, because paper is a huge game changer, yet we totally take it for granted. It's so taken for granted that people fucking give the IQ test on paper lmao. But people wouldn't have always thought that way. When truly trying to measure "natural intelligence" people would have sought to avoid paper when it was still a fresh technology, and all the questions would be oral. And letting people scribble on paper would have been viewed like letting people use google midway through a test, though I understand the questions in these tests don't reward scribbling things down much anyway.

p;edit they don't allow you to scribble, fair enough.

[QUOTE=aamirus;941887]i think everyone adopts a definition of intelligence that puts themselves highest

Some people will say that knowing the most things makes you the most intelligent
Some people will say that being able to learn new things the most quickly makes you the most intelligent
Some people will say that doing the best thing all the time makes you the most intelligent (IE an intelligent person would never drink alcohol or turn in an assignment late, would get all As)

and then there are further qualifications for each, for example a "knowing the most things" person could say "oh but knowing a lot about some video game characters is stupid. Knowing about history makes you smart"[/QUOTE]

With how the term gets applied in practice, I understood it to simply mean "good brain" and mean whatever the speaker happens to define as good... so basically this.

Originally Posted by aamirus

i think everyone adopts a definition of intelligence that puts themselves highest

Some people will say that knowing the most things makes you the most intelligent
Some people will say that being able to learn new things the most quickly makes you the most intelligent
Some people will say that doing the best thing all the time makes you the most intelligent (IE an intelligent person would never drink alcohol or turn in an assignment late, would get all As)

and then there are further qualifications for each, for example a "knowing the most things" person could say "oh but knowing a lot about some video game characters is stupid. Knowing about history makes you smart"

With how the term gets applied in practice, I understood it to simply mean "good brain" and mean whatever the speaker happens to define as good... so basically this.