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The Compound Effect and Nootropics/Supplements

nootropics supplements brain health general health body and mind safety world domination

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#1 TheOpimizer

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Posted 24 November 2015 - 05:27 AM


Hey Everyone,

 

This is my first new topic post and the main reason why I joined the forum.

 

I don't know if any of you have read the book "The Compound Effect" by Darren Hardy but its a great read for anyone into self improvement. It's based upon the same compound effect that applies to money over time based on the interest rate, but rather than specifically money, it talks about life in general and getting the most out of it. 

 

It would like to know how you guys think nootropics and supplements can increase each one of our personal interest rates. I think of it this way - the greater potential my mind has to learn now, the greater amount of knowledge I can accumulate in the future. In addition, given the science of neuroplasticity, the greater potential my mind has to learn now (and given that you use that potential), the greater potential my my mind will have to learn in the future. 

 

Therefore not only does a greater amount of knowledge accumulate, but also, a greater amount of the potential to learn new knowledge (fluid intelligence) accumulates. 

 

As a result, any stack that I put together right now that increases my potential to learn can have exponential effect on not only my cumulative knowledge in the future but also my fluid intelligence in the future. 

 

Is it reasonable to apply this type of theory to the brain and intelligence? And if you think so, what nootropics/ supplements do you think are best for long-term 10+ years (cycled or not) use in order to apply this theory. 

 

This is my attempt at it.

 

My current everyday stack:

Morning: 

Source Naturals Life Force Multi

Fish oil (EPA 450, DHA 340)

Curcumin 500mg

Probiotic 50bil

Astaxanthin 12mg

Bacopa 375mg

Creatine 5g

Vitamin D 5000iu

 

Night:

Fish oil

Magnesium Glycinate 200mg

Opti Zinc 30mg

NAC 600mg

Milk Thistle 500mg

 

Sporadic Use (If needed/wanted):

Morning:

Rhodiola 500mg

L-theanine 200mg

Beta Alanine 5g

 

Night:

Ashwagandha 500mg

L-theanine 200mg

Huperzine 200mcg

 

I have also used noopept, and piracetam in the past with no noticeable positive effects. 

 

Do you guys believe that certain nootropics are suitable for lifetime use, and if so, which would you suggest?

 

 

 

 

Edit:

 

P.S - Yes, Neal Caffrey is my idol  :cool:

 


Edited by TheOpimizer, 24 November 2015 - 05:30 AM.


#2 Turnbuckle

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Posted 26 November 2015 - 01:30 PM

Therefore not only does a greater amount of knowledge accumulate, but also, a greater amount of the potential to learn new knowledge (fluid intelligence) accumulates. 

 

 

 

The statement is correct except for the parenthetical comment. That's a definition of fluid intelligence I haven't seen before. I would have thought it to be the ability to think in novel and creative ways. And in my experience, those who accumulate a great deal of knowledge tend to be be restricted in their thinking and less creative. 



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#3 TheOpimizer

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Posted 27 November 2015 - 03:42 AM

I'm interested to hear what your opinion is regarding the difference between the ability to learn and the ability to think?

 

When I say learn I'm talking about gaining an understanding, not memorizing.

 

Generally people reference fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence, if the ability to learn isn't a part of fluid intelligence than what is it? 



#4 Turnbuckle

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Posted 27 November 2015 - 11:06 AM

 

 

Generally people reference fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence, if the ability to learn isn't a part of fluid intelligence than what is it? 

 

Adding more to a crystallized knowledge framework isn't fluidity, it's just the growth of crystallinity. It reflects a high degree of order, while fluidity reflects the opposite. There is the breakdown of crystallinity that occurs in mental illness, which may pass for creativity at times, and then there is true creativity, which comes from fluidity. It represents mental functioning that lies at least partially outside the knowledge framework.


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#5 TheOpimizer

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Posted 28 November 2015 - 05:20 AM

 

 

 

Generally people reference fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence, if the ability to learn isn't a part of fluid intelligence than what is it? 

 

Adding more to a crystallized knowledge framework isn't fluidity, it's just the growth of crystallinity. It reflects a high degree of order, while fluidity reflects the opposite. There is the breakdown of crystallinity that occurs in mental illness, which may pass for creativity at times, and then there is true creativity, which comes from fluidity. It represents mental functioning that lies at least partially outside the knowledge framework.

 

 

Where does the ability to learn fall then? There are different degrees of ability when it come to learning and gaining and understanding of a concept. Having more knowledge doesn't make you learn faster. People who have more knowledge might have it as a result of being able to learn faster, or they may have increased their ability to learn through more attempts at learning to accumulate the knowledge the have.


I'm also not really even sure what were talking about anymore....



#6 Turnbuckle

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Posted 28 November 2015 - 05:32 AM

 


 

Having more knowledge doesn't make you learn faster.

 

Oh it does, absolutely. Imagine reading a paper and you don't know what the terms mean and you have to look them up, as compared to an expert reading it and grasping it immediately because he already understands the vocabulary and the basic concepts.



#7 TheOpimizer

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Posted 28 November 2015 - 03:40 PM

 

 


 

Having more knowledge doesn't make you learn faster.

 

Oh it does, absolutely. Imagine reading a paper and you don't know what the terms mean and you have to look them up, as compared to an expert reading it and grasping it immediately because he already understands the vocabulary and the basic concepts.

 

 

Ok that definitely makes sense, but in terms of learning completely new concepts that are totally unrelated to anything you already know, do you still think it helps?

 

And just wanted to clarify, you're arguing that someone's ability to learn is directly correlated with their cumulative base of knowledge? 



#8 Turnbuckle

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Posted 28 November 2015 - 07:08 PM

 

 

 


 

Having more knowledge doesn't make you learn faster.

 

Oh it does, absolutely. Imagine reading a paper and you don't know what the terms mean and you have to look them up, as compared to an expert reading it and grasping it immediately because he already understands the vocabulary and the basic concepts.

 

 

Ok that definitely makes sense, but in terms of learning completely new concepts that are totally unrelated to anything you already know, do you still think it helps?

 

And just wanted to clarify, you're arguing that someone's ability to learn is directly correlated with their cumulative base of knowledge? 

 

 

Yes. In the process of learning one develops strategies that help one learn faster even if the material is completely unrelated to anything they already know. But of course you will eventually want to do something with all that crystallized knowledge, otherwise, what's the point? And that's where the concept of fluid intelligence comes in. Picasso once noted that all children are artists, and the challenge is not to lose that as one grows up. But how when the mind is relentlessly crystallizing? Einstein wrote about his thought process, and it seems that he avoided words until he was done and had to communicate it to others--

 

The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought--before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others. 

 

 

 
Tesla used a similar process. He would build entire machines in his head and run experiments on them. I used to do that too when I worked in industry, though I always put the details on paper. I would get about one hundred parts and that would be the limit for me, and so no machine could be more complicated unless I designed it in a modular fashion--which I quite often did. Before I detailed it, I would imagine how people would use it and misuse it, and how they might hurt themselves, and how they would manufacture it and assemble it and clean it--and whatever else was necessary--and I would cycle through those visions over and over to achieve an optimum. And even before that, there was the fuzzy front end--the point of invention--and that generally came about by a sudden (sometimes random) connection of two unrelated ideas, or by an experiment that went wrong in an interesting way. So there was generally a stochastic element in the beginning.

Edited by Turnbuckle, 28 November 2015 - 07:11 PM.


#9 TheOpimizer

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Posted 28 November 2015 - 07:39 PM

Interesting, thanks for sharing this. Do you think learning about many different topics would help to keep fluidity, compared to learning a lot about one thing (aka generalist vs specialist)?

 

For example if person 1 learns the same amount of material as person 2, but person one learns that amount of material in five different subject matters would they maintain more fluidity?



#10 Turnbuckle

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Posted 28 November 2015 - 08:38 PM

Interesting, thanks for sharing this. Do you think learning about many different topics would help to keep fluidity, compared to learning a lot about one thing (aka generalist vs specialist)?

 

For example if person 1 learns the same amount of material as person 2, but person one learns that amount of material in five different subject matters would they maintain more fluidity?

 

I think fluidity is in how you think rather than what you've learned. As in the Einstein and Tesla examples, thinking nonverbally. Certainly switching fields can produce some new ideas, as can a non-standard education. Feynman said that part of his advantage in physics was reading books others hadn't read. He got a reputation as a whiz because his mathematical toolbox was different from everyone else.

 

The result was, when the guys at MIT or Princeton had trouble doing a certain integral, it was because they couldn’t do it with the standard methods they had learned in school. If it was a contour integration, they would have found it; if it was a simple series expansion, they would have found it. Then I come along and try differentiating under the integral sign, and often it worked. So I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else’s, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.

 

 

And when he came up with QED, it wasn't from working on the problem directly, but from working out the physics of an ad hoc Frisbee he saw in the lunchroom--

 

I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling. I had nothing to do, so I start figuring out the motion of the rotating plate. I discovered that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate—two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! I went on to work out equations for wobbles. Then I thought about how the electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it… the whole business that I got the Nobel prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

 

 

But to get back to fluidity, it is typically a non-verbal process and is typically tested non-verbally-- 

 

There are various measures that assess fluid intelligence. The Cattell Culture Fair IQ test, the Raven Progressive Matrices (RPM), and the performance subscale of the WAIS are measures of Gf. The RPM is one of the most commonly used measures of fluid abilities. It is a non-verbal multiple choice test.

 

Fluid and crystallized intelligence

 

 

 

Some have tried methods of improving fluid intelligence--

 

General fluid intelligence (Gf) is a human ability to reason and solve new problems independently of previously acquired knowledge and experience. It is considered one of the most important factors in learning. One of the issues which academic people concentrates on is whether Gf of adults can be improved. According to the Dual N-back working memory theory and the characteristics of visual perceptual learning, this paper put forward cognitive training pattern based on Gabor stimuli. A total of 20 undergraduate students at 24 years old participated in the experiment, with ten training sessions for ten days. Through using Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices as the evaluation method to get and analyze the experimental results, it was proved that training pattern can improve fluid intelligence of adults. This will promote a wide range of applications in the field of adult intellectual education.

 

http://dl.acm.org/ci....cfm?id=1727465

 

 

But this dual n-back business looks rather tedious.



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#11 TheOpimizer

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Posted 29 November 2015 - 07:53 PM

Dual-n-back is tough to get into. I've tried it before, but I definitely believe that if you stuck with it, it would work. 

 

On another note, what does your stack look like?







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