[theaussiestew]

The main way is increasing your general level of health. Physically, emotionally and mentally. Reading more doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes you more knowledgeable. Imagine if you had the level of acuity and liveliness you did when you were a child, but the maturity and experience you have now. People say that humans have an intellectual peak in their twenties, well that’s only because most people’s health starts going downhill at that point. Excessive stress, mental overstimulation, emotional problems, etc. You remove these, there’s no doubt you’ll have a clearer and faster mind.

[b212]

I’m in early 30s and I do think health is crucial but you’re kinda missing the big picture. I feel like I know 100x more than I knew 10 years ago. I am also much more experienced in many fields, not only work/programming but cooking, driving, swimming, talking to people and so forth. The point is I’m good at many things I wasn’t good in my 20s. But I haven’t improved in my 20s only, I’ve been upgrading myself or so to say every day since day one. As cliche as it sounds. Therefore I just know my weak spots much better than ever before and I realize I forget about this and that but not due to my aging brain but mostly to my vast knowledge and experience. Also my self awareness is on another level and I’m sure I was dumber even 5 years ago but I couldn’t see it back then. It’s like going back to 1999, looking at Windows 98SE and thinking interfaces couldn’t get any better.

Also I think kids change everything. Got none of my own but it’s so hard to focus when you have to think for them as they do stupid stuff all the time. Once went to play squash with my 10 year old cousin and he literally lost his shoe, then a towel then a key to his locker. All within an hour. And many people will tell you they were smarter as kids.

[BigHatLogan]

Well said! I was thinking something along these lines--that there must be some sort of correlation between physical health and mental sharpness. Maybe that's why professors are typically fairly lean.

[p1esk]

Reading more doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes you more knowledgeable

There are signs from GPT family progress indicating otherwise.

[quickthrower2]

GPT, so far, is evidence for the knowledgable but not smart assertion.

[p1esk]

After spending many hours with GPT-4 I disagree.