[king_magic]

  The single most impactful thing you can do to boost your intelligence is learn how to effectively self-soothe

This sounds like absolutely unscientific, completely unfounded, feel-good-blogspam bullshit. And hey, maybe it isn't - maybe it's legit. But I see no sources, no studies that indicate that "self soothing" does anything for boosting general intelligence.

Absent sources that confirm the author's position, this feels like a pretty intellectually dishonest piece.

[dang]

"Please don't fulminate."

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If we control for those guidelines, your comment reduces to a verbose, and frankly rather nasty "citation needed," which is a shallow dismissal in its own right (not to mention an internet cliché), so in fact it reduces to nothing. Please don't post like that in HN threads.

There's nothing at all wrong with someone writing a speculative blog post based on their personal experience. There's lots of curious conversation to be had about such things.

If it doesn't gratify your personal curiosity, that's ok—there are lots of other links to look at—but please don't post like this. It ends up poisoning the conversation for others, especially once it attracts the swarm of upvotes that angry rants usually do. I'm sure that wasn't your intent, but it happens all too easily anyway.

[king_magic]

Fair enough, feedback taken.

[dang]

Appreciated!

[nostrademons]

The author's sensory processing disorder is showing through in the writing, but there's an important insight there. People see through their emotions. Not just ones with sensory processing disorders or ADHD, but everyone. Emotional states influence what sensory information is able to enter our consciousness, and hence our decision-making process. Change how people feel and you can influence what they believe.

If you want the scientific background for this, you can Google something like [effect of emotional states on cognitive processing], and it'll take you to articles in neuroscience journals like [1][2].

This is also the principal by which therapy leads to better life outcomes. Learn to manage your emotions, so that your baseline emotional arousal goes down, and you'll have a clearer picture of the world around you and will be better equipped to make rational decisions. It's also spawned a whole multi-trillion-dollar industry (advertising & media), which is all about increasing your emotional arousal so you're more receptive to certain messages. Sex sells and if it bleeds it leads, because that's what generates heightened arousal states that make you more receptive to product messaging.

[1] https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article-abstract/28/3/446/28496/...

[2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0145...

[king_magic]

And that's cool and all, but - again:

  The single most impactful thing you can do to boost your intelligence is learn how to effectively self-soothe

That's a pretty big statement to make. The single, most impactful thing, eh? Reaaaaallly?

I don't doubt that there might be some scientific background, particularly for folks with sensory processing disorders - but to phrase this like the author did - as though it applies to general intelligence for pretty much anyone - just feels very intellectually dishonest.

[kqr]

Well, maybe not exactly the same as what this person is talking about, but in general a calm and secure brain is wildly more capable of rational thought than a stressed or anxious brain. This link between stress and cognition is well established, famously in our circles by that Google study that revealed psychological safety as one of the best indicators of performance in their teams.

Of course, it's more complicated than that, but for a first-order approximation, calming yourself down will allow you to use more of your brain for rational thought.

[sergioisidoro]

I tend to agree with your statement, but I have to acknowledge that emotional intelligence is massively important for what we consider "intelligence"

Recognising when you are in "defensive" mode in an argument, when you're just defending your pride instead of reason, is one of the most valued skill you can learn.

So I can get behind the statement that self-soothing, and being able to put your ego in the passenger seat is indeed something that can boost your "intelligence" (as in, capacity of acting on reasoning and logic).

[frumper]

I read this as learn to reign in your extremes so you don't stop yourself from learning. Extreme distractions, emotions, actions all will pull you away from what you'd like to accomplish or learn. Soothing the anxiety that prevents you from doing something, or calming the anger that blinds you to reason are effective ways of getting through challenging times to help you do what you originally set out to do.

[toomanyducks]

This may be true, but it's important to recognize that science isn't exhaustive, and it's frequently conflicting. It's also not definitive, and when there's a complex issue, science, a form of inductive reasoning, can only answer narrow questions. Broad questions require personal experience, and that's what this is. Unsourced means unscientific, not worthless.

[Xenograph]

The first step in conducting scientific inquiry is formulating hypotheses, which are typically based on intuition and anecdote.

This blog post is clearly telling an anecdote from the author's own personal life experience. From these experiences they have formed their hypotheses about behaviors that may affect intelligence. This blog post presents their experiences and conclusions.

There's nothing unscientific about this. Perhaps you think that it is important for the author to attach a disclaimer that this blog post is not asserting definite scientifically proven truths about reality. But it's fairly obvious to me that the author was speaking from their own experience and opinions rather than attempting to share scientifically proven facts (why even write a long blog post to do that? The research would speak for itself).

[jhap]

I wonder what the actual single most impactful thing you can do to boost your intelligence is?

Besides going to school for 20 years, being well-fed and rested, presumably it's taking modafinil?

[astrange]

Live in an area without noise and air pollution. Stay in shape. Don't eat lead paint chips. Have smarter children and train them to inherit your legacy[1].

Modafinil probably doesn't boost intelligence, but you'd have to define intelligence first. It increases "executive function" and decreases some other things like creativity and reaction times.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09249...

[1] This is a better strategy than relying on your own intelligence, because you're only ever one blow to the head away from losing it.

[Theizestooke]

Twenty years ago I heard stories about people taking Piracetam, but afaik it's for Alzheimer patients and not healthy individuals looking to boost their intelligence.

[Consultant32452]

Importantly, we don't know about anything that can "boost" intelligence. We only know some things that can help not harm your intelligence. Eating a healthy diet is the biggest, others have named things like avoiding pollution.

[hpoe]

The wonderful quote that appears halfway through supports your conclusion

"There are many theories about the connection between sensory processing and intelligence but my personal belief having lived it is"

[Consultant32452]

People are willing to believe all sorts of unscientific nonsense about general intelligence because the science gives us inconvenient conclusions.