improving your intelligence?

Post Reply New Topic

In years of 1-4 of primary school I did ok. I was good at math and english, I was a good speller because I read more books than anyone (apart from another kid who I later found out has aspergers, and he reads like 5-10 books a week).

But in years 5-6 I had no real friends and I guess I started getting bullied by this other kid, pretty much all psychological/emotional rather than physical. He acted like he wanted me to sit next to him in class and talked to me, but was mean to me around other friends.

In high school i did terrible. I had no real friends and was depressed a lot and my parents never pushed me at all, I wish they did. I failed most things and had no interest in anything. I'm not going to uni, going to TAFE and doing IT, and I cant even seem to push myself to study and do well at that. That might be similar to "community college" in America. I wish I could go back and do better.

Now I'm thinking, if I bought a bunch of math/english/whatever textbooks and finished lots of exercises that I would have done through school, would that help me at all in life?
What's the difference between being intelligent and having knowledge?
Is it too late for me to get intelligent? I mean is it something that you have to get when you're young by learning as early as possible and becoming dedicated to learning & working hard, pushed on you by your parents?

Knowledge is information that you've acquired, and can acquire, throughout life. Intelligence is something that you're born with. That's what I believe.

You ask whether buying a bunch of textbooks now would help you in life. It depends what you mean. If you just want to acquire knowledge and improve your mind, I would say yes.

And yes, I do think it is possible for adults to improve their brainpower through 'brain training' (although I think a person's physiology places limits on how far they can take it).

I like to think that this is the case anyway, because I feel quite similar to you: I often wish I could go back to school and do better as well. I am kind of different to you though in that my parents did push me. But back then I just wasn't interested.

I've bought a few academic textbooks in recent years myself. It's sometimes difficult to find the motivation to plough through them given that I get so much less free time now than when I was at school, and given that I know I'm not going to be examined on any of the information in them, but still - it's good to keep the brain active!

The brain is like anything else on your body, if you don't use it you lose it. So if you exercise and push your brain a bit you will improve your intelligence.

I agree that you can lose it if you don't use it. And, I agree that excercising your brain is important, but I also believe that it will only maximize what you already have. Each person has their own limits.

^I heard that we like only use 17% of our brains.

I'm interested in ways to try and unlock our full potential.

I don't like when people throw out percentages for this stuff because the truth is no one really knows.

^The new theory is that it's not true. I believe it, but I also believe there is potential to be unlocked in other ways. We just haven't found them yet.

Your problem here seems to have more to do with your psychological state then your intellectual capacity.

perhaps you need to spend some time by yourself thinking about what you really desire in life.. or something? *shrugs*

if you could muster the "native interest" you must have to find textbooks fun to read, then it would be beneficial i think. i agree with the people who say exercising the brain is beneficial.
if you are just trying to cram facts into your head for the sake of keeping up appearances, then i do not know.


having knowledge is an indication of "understanding of facts" that one finds, and more, an indication of a good memory.

intelligence is the "ability to solve problems", and is different.

an example may be a team of harvard graduate historians and sociologists who discover a person in the wild who was raised by wolves from a baby. the person they discover may be a fundamental genius (native iq 190 say (i know IQ scores are faddish but i will use it for example)), but he would seem severely ret*d by all that see him.

imagine they discover him in the deep jungle (yeah i know wolves do not inhabit jungles but whatever. it is not important) where there are no hills , and they persuade him to come with them back to society, and as they trek far from the homeland of the person they discover, they enter a mountainous area, and they are trekking along the valley floor. the wild person they discovered has never seen mountains.

suddenly, there is an explosive sound of a rock ledge far up a mountain that cracks and starts to fall, smashing into other boulders and dislodging them and starting a rock slide.

all the professors and the wild man witness these rocks tumbling and gathering more rocks to tumble with them as they are pummeling down the slope toward them.

the professors all decide to run to hide behind a rock wall that seems not to be in the direction of the slide, but the wild person calculates (in his own primal manner) the expected trajectories based upon the path that the rocks will follow, and he sees that there is an immovable monolithic rock in the way that will ricochet many boulders and rocks to where the professors ran to.

he may grunt in an equivalent way of saying "this way you idiots!! !", and he would run to where he sees a rarefaction of possibility of peripheral impacts from stones deflected by immovable obstacles in the slide path.

the 135 IQ professors may be rained on by rocks as they are thinking that the stupid jungle person ran in a panic to an area that they can not imagine is safe, and is bound to be destroyed.


you have what you are born with, and that is all.
it is never too late to discover how much you have.
you may be surprised.



it does not require effort from you, or "pushing" by others to be naturally inquisitive.
it takes no effort at all to inquire into an idea that is pleasing to think about.
fertile minds are naturally irrepressible, and require no push from others to get going.
in fact, fertile minds like to be left alone to do what they need to do.

i can not imagine being stale in the head like so many people i see.