To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe | Hacker News Reader

To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe

bellmar.medium.com

156 pointsmbellotti89 comments

I've met some pieces of work in my time. One class that stands out is the people who, on purpose or subconsciously, will hammer on someone, manipulating there sense of rightness (and often lack of self-soothing skills) to extract... I don't know what. Overtime? Self-esteem/aggrandization? Something else?

I have a vivid recollection of a moment where I was explaining how we were actually going to fix a deep problem while in the corner of my vision I watched the face of the person who brought it up fall like a rock. He was clearly expecting a dodge, and I pulled some sort of 5 Why's judo move on him with a, "yes, and...".

Incidentally, one of the superpowers of being someone that people can have a frank and potentially confidential conversation with is that people will bring you 'maybe problems' that sometimes turn out to be nothing (teach them how to do it themselves next time) or a potentially very bad situation. Having even a half hour head start on people to start thinking about a big problem makes you look a hell of a lot smarter in the OMGWTF meeting that follows. If you save people from looking or feeling stupid in front of others, they will pay you huge dividends, including Right of First Refusal on all sorts of things.

> The single most impactful thing people can do to improve their intelligence is to learn how to soothe the shame and anxiety that comes from confronting the possibility that the world is not how you see it and experience it.

This includes learning from criticism even when it doesn't come in a neatly packaged easy to digest form. Dismissing feedback just because it wasn't what you wanted to hear is the best way to never learn uncomfortable truths, and the more you do it the harder going back and fixing it gets.

This implies the baseline intelligence to learn to distinguish valuable criticism you didn't want to hear from useless criticism you shouldn't heed.

One strategy is to listen/comprehend the criticism, but then immediately file it away as information. Do not take it to heart, do not implement immediate change.

If you start to see corroborating evidence through introspection or similar feedback from multiple sources, then start really paying attention. Change if appropriate.

In the workplace, I’ve received criticism for purely political reasons - and these are criticisms I’ll happily rebuff. But as long as it was delivered in good faith, establish a simple system to collect, observe, prioritize.

Bringing a more structured/scientific approach also helps reduce some of the sting that comes with that criticism.

Acknowledge problem.

Accept problem.

Attempt to solve problem.

Accept outcome.

Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems.

(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)

My initial reaction to the idea that emotions can distract one from making progress is that there may be unaddressed issues present. Emotions are bodily signals. You could say they are the result of information processing. They don’t come from nowhere. Emotions need to be processed and responded to.

Maybe we can find common ground with the idea that some emotional issues take a long time to resolve, and, in the meantime, one needs healthy coping tools which may include different ways of soothing / calming down the emotional response when one needs to be functional.

Not OP, but I would hope the original comment was intended to imply that emotions should be _responded_ to (as you noted) and not _reacted_ to. Responding involves understanding, "naming your enemy," and contextual consideration. Reacting is thoughtless, immediate, animalistic.

Great answer! I'll post some notes I have on responding vs reacting:

Reactions limit choices. Responses give choices.

Reactions are unconscious, automatic, and based on negative emotions which stem from unmet needs. Responses are conscious, considered, and based upon the actual needs underlying the negative emotions.

Reactions often move us further away from getting our needs met. Responses usually move us towards getting our needs met.

You say thoughtless, immediate, and animalistic as if it’s a bad thing;)

Sometimes it’s exactly the right strategy for decision making and almost always for creativity and play.

Look into “somatic psychotherapy”: healing the mind through the body

Maybe this example is helpful.

I had a rock hit my car’s bumper on the highway. I could have allowed myself to feel pity or sadness. Instead i skipped the emotion of the event and said what can i do now?

Accept that my car does not look the way I want it to.

Find solution, which in this case was filling an insurance claim. As problems develop i hope to accept them as fact and not dwell on what I hope the world would be. ie., never getting hit in the first place or having my claim denied, having poor repair etc., whatever comes i want to accept as the true state without emotion and move onto productive measures that are within my means.

I have improved so much since I started thinking this way. Once I started realising that I made a mistake and that it was really my mistake, other things, a lot of things started coming into perspective.

>Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. > >(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)

You got it, but then you missed it.

Every single one of those great, useful, true steps is hindered by emotions. There are well-known cognitive biases and behavioral patterns (Dunning-Kreuger, Motivated Reasoning, Confirmation Bias, Learned Helplessness) that will affect your outcome while trying to conquer each of these steps. These aren't bad per-say, but a result of our biology and millions of years of evolution. If I were wagering on my own arrogantly assumed competence vs. my evolved biology.... man, I'm putting it all on Red.

It is such great advice that, as you correctly state, "[Emotions] often times distract one from making progress" but this is not easy to achieve, an obvious course of action, and it feels wrong when you're in it. Even if someone told you and you believe them.

Take a contrived example--PTSD. In WWI this was called "Shell Shock", and a lot of people up until yesterday and beyond are still smacking people on the back, giving the misguided, but sincere pep talk: "Walk it off, kid! Power through it! Get ahold of yourself! What's wrong with you? Why can't you take the win?"

The truth of the matter is that the solution is obvious, but even if something is obvious, easy, and effective, people often simply require someone to tell them the answer and more than that, be trusted enough to let them coach them through it. Once you know, maybe it really is easy, maybe it still takes a lot of work, luck, perhaps counseling or therapy (EMDR therapy sounds like bullshit but it sure is real)

To add a note to that, caricatured for demonstration: Why would you ever execute on an answer which no one with the right kind of status has told you is okay to execute on?

In the harder domains of STEM? Okay, sure, maybe the answer is self-proving and once your weird innovation works great your detractors will have to eat their words. But subjective things like emotions? You know what happens to people who have some wrong emotion, don't you? Even if your conscious mind doesn't, what's underneath sure might. Highly not recommended to put it that way to yourself raw! And yet.

Emotional processing infrastructure is an important part of society, and its blueprints an important part of culture. I suspect that the more densely packed our sociopsychological world is, the more the equivalent of mental building codes and city utilities are something that has to be negotiated to make life workable. Hindbrain Owners Association, anyone?

Great point about of the value of mentorship, legacy, chain of knowledge. The emotional landscape can be complicated, scary, and full of conflicting information. Having a trusted example of something working is a huge advantage.

Take Donald Trump as a (not entirely positive) case study. Without the example of his father, he would never have had the confidence to be so scummy and provocative, or to desecrate the role of president.

I'm sure there are plenty of nice examples out there too. That's just where my head jumped to off the bat.

This is really funny, I think I agree? I'm honestly not sure, but I am sensing a giggle.

Just a tiny one :^|

Seems a bit weird to conflate emotion with cognitive biases.

Sure emotions aren't particularly intelligent, in particular they almost entirely ignore consequence, but that doesn't mean you should ignore them, it just means you should not use your current emotion to plan the future. You should however use your future emotions to plan your current course of action, because otherwise what's the point?

I am not intending to conflate emotions with cognitive bias, although since both are product of the brain they are of course related. I see why you thought that, my apologies, I may have skipped something important there.

It's just that your emotions about a particular attribute or situation will possibly be subject to and definitely interact with various cognitive bias.

Someone who is bad at reciting book reports might infer they are just not good at public speaking. Because they believe it is so, they may attribute their failures to this quality that they believe they possess.

But what if the failure isn't an attribute like being bad at speaking, but a side effect of normal anxiousness and inexperience? Will he or she recognize this, or are they likely to harbor a bias or explanation that confirms their belief? Would they be motivated to reason about why they are no good at it, and therefor shouldn't join the debate team in order to avoid experiencing speaking anxiety?

When the English teacher later asks them to read a passage, might they feel shame and resentment towards the teacher and themselves? If they feel the shame and resentment, I think they might experience cognitive dissonance, and reason that they are bad at speaking, they have stage fright. That would explain the fear and anger.

Finally, how likely are they to simply trust their mom who suggests they stick it out, and try to get a passing grade in their public speaking course?

If you view life as a series of problems to be solved, then life will become a bleak series of problems needing to be solved. The approach outlined in the parent comment here would fail to solve any essential human needs beyond a few of the most basic ones. Finding purpose, not burning out, nurturing family, communicating with others- even in professional settings- and so many other parts of being human require us to engage emotionally.

>If you view life as a series of problems to be solved, then life will become a bleak series of problems needing to be solved.

I disagree with this, conditionally.

It depends on how you perceive "Problems" and "Solve", as pedantic and Clinton-esque as that comes across.

Perceiving your "problems" not as barriers that hinder your progress, but identifying winnable opportunities in your own capabilities is a hallmark of the Growth Mindset[0] This is such a good quality, one that everyone can cultivate given the motivation and effort.

[0] - https://fs.blog/2015/03/carol-dweck-mindset/

Any choice we make that is grounded in subjective decision making suffers from this reframing. And, i'd posit that the vast majority of choices are fundamentally subjective. Just take a moment when engaged in "problem solving" and ask yourself "why?", then question that answer again. You get to motivation, identity , "needs" (and not just the basic food and shelter needs) or some other emotion very quickly this way.

Is choosing a life partner a "problem"? What about something as simple as choosing what to wear in the morning or what beer you want from the bar? Even within traditional engineering problems so much of our decision making process can only be evaluated subjectively. Some examples are: naming variables (your compiler doesn't care what you name them), making choices around encapsulation (there are very often many possible ways to do this. we frequently chose the "simplest"- a subjective assessment), choosing a framework or language (a decision which is one part right tool for the job one part joining a likeminded community), etc.

At the root of it, we're emotional beings, not logical ones. Outsource the logical problems to computers, machines, institutions and focus on what makes you human. Otherwise somebody else will make the important choices for you in ways you certainly wouldn't chose for yourself.

The growth mindset can be summed up in one sentence: "I can become good at anything."

Yes, and emotions help you choose good “anything”s. There’s always an emotional superstructure- yours, or somebody else can choose for you, based on their own motivations.

Ok that is a valid truth, however the growth mindset embedded in the sentence "I can become good at anything." is not that.

Its that maybe you can't become the fastest man on earth. That guy exists, his name is Usain Bolt. However, you can for sure get good at sprinting, even if you are missing parts of your legs. That guy is Oscar Pistorious. Maybe you have COPD and you can't? Well, you might need to adjust "good" to be a winnable opportunity in your capabilities. Maybe this is walking to the mailbox. If you couldn't walk to the mailbox last week, I'd call that "good".

Here is the opportunity for the emotional part you mentioned to arise, so yeah, I agree.

Emotions, sure. You can become good at managing your emotions. You can become good at navigating and integrating the superstructure of society into positive outcomes in your own life. You can become good at public speaking and swimming and programming.

You likely will not be able to become the best in the world at anything at all, but you can become good at anything.

What is the rational behind your first sentence? Solving problems is progress, and that is anything but bleak.

> Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems.

I don't think you're reading what the parent comment is actually saying. Finding purpose, not burning out, etc are all categorically problems and the common goal is to solve them. Don't get buried in emotion due to _having_ the problems.

How much satisfaction do you really get from checking something off the list? There was some motivation that put the item on the list in the first place, and 9 time out of 10, that motivation goes back to an emotional drive of some sort. Ignoring that motivation during the process of satisfying it is fundamentally missing the point.

A lot. I love seeing that check and looking back on other ones along with the work that I did.

I don't think anybody is arguing against querying your emotions as part of choosing how to solve a problem. What OP specifically advised against was "wast[ing] cycles on the emotions of having problems". You will always have problems. Some worse, some nicer. Sometimes more, sometimes fewer. But your feelings about that fact won't help you move forward.

That's why approaching problems with an unemotional mindset is very effective. I can be mad that the bus was too early, or that my shipment wasn't delivered, or that I received a rejection. It's fine and healthy to feel those emotions. But they just tell you that something is wrong, without putting you any closer to fixing what's wrong.

> Finding purpose

Finding purpose comes from choosing which series of problems you are going to solve. Happiness isn't some final resting state you reach, it's more or less directly tied to solving problems. So framing is really important for making sure you actually face problems that can be solved.

In a post scarcity world, framing everything as a problem puts you in a needless optimization loop. Emotions tell you why, logic can only answer how, which won’t get you out of the loop.

I’m not making a point for or against employing emotions in problem solving, I’m advocating for an awareness that all “logical” thought fits into a larger emotional context- just the opposite of op who structures their process as a pure logical process. Ironically, I’d call the notion of a purely logical process devoid of emotions a fantasy.

She is saying more than that.

She is saying learn to confront discomfort/pain with self-soothing. Once you know how to address the pain associated with being seen as an inexperienced/disabled person, you can confront it in many situations.

Be it in learning from another or from a book.

Distracting emotions are part of you and have to be addressed eventually. Soothing yourself reinforces the motivation for progress and acknowledges obstacles.

"Pursuing X causes pain. It is alright. It is worthwhile. It is unavoidable and I will make due."

So the way to self-soothe is with self-talk? Are there any other ways?

Meditation? My therapist is always encouraging me in uncomfortable moments to feel my body, and widen my awareness beyond narrative, into my senses.

Not sure if that counts as “self soothing”? But it helps achieve the ends OP is seeking.

1)Yes, with a caveat. 2)There are no other ways.

There are no other ways because we humans are story machines. Among the many things we do, we consume stories and produce stories and that makes up our inner world. Story require words. Talking. Assisted self-talk would be therapy. There are no sustainable ways to soothing but words. Unsustainable are the use of supplements such as magnesium glycinate (to calm the mind), etc. All roads lead to self-talk. Therapy and Mg could be used as crutches to better self-talk. That written, self-talk should not be talked about without caveat.

The caveat is this: Self-talk can only change within your mind if you can conceptualize another kind of self-talk. Like a fellow answered your question, expanded awareness is key to make space in your mind, space for another self-talk. There is this technique called the Alexander technique whose purpose is expand your awareness. By expanding your awareness, by being able to think and feel those negative feelings and thoughts and think positive ones at the same time and gently steering your mind towards the positive you can achieve a new status quo in your mind. This require words and there also is non-verbal aspect to it. Words can come in the way of feelings if they are not embodied. For example, when you tell yourself "I want to..." or "I should not..." yet behave not as the words suggest, then that means you are not embodying your words. Also, self-talk ideally as a time component attached to it. Which is where it gets a lot of strength.

"I don't like this. (awareness of the current experience) But, it is necessary to get what I want (expansion of awareness, to include a desirable future). Therefore, this pain is a sign I am making desirable progress! (new self-talk)"

Whichever road you take at the beginning, therapy, supplements, meditation, etc, know the destination you seek is better self-talk. Embodied self-talk with a time component. Also please remember, the brain takes time to create new pathways. You might be able to achieve perfect embodied self-talk with a time component, but only consistency will make it easier and eventually automatic.

This is a link towards a teacher of the Alexander Technique, he talks about awareness in greater length: https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft

Thanks. I like his motto, 'Clear intentions, lightly held'

Mind sharing where that process is from? I like it.

i’m not sure where i stole this from.

my best guess is a combo of the following books / leaders.

1. High output management (andy grove of intel fame)

2. Charlie Munger’s Psychology of Human Misjudgment

3. Ben Franklin autobiography

This oversimplifies but there is some truth to it too.

I am mentoring two junior devs at the moment, one at work and one friend. In some ways I really miss & envy the happiness they feel when we get something to work. One of them finally got a D3 chart to render correctly and got up from his chair and started whooping and throwing his fists in the air - I was grinning from ear to ear.

But then I realized the flip side of this - every time we run new code and it produces an error, I hear “AUGh what the FUCK?!! D:”

I have been at this for ~15 years. I see a new error, I feel nothing. Better that way. But I still take a minute to crack a smile when I get something working for the first time :)

when you banish the negative emotions the positive disappear as well.

the oppressive tranquility is nice…but we long for the joy of success we no longer can feel just know

This reads a lot like my life too, I just play up the stupid side really, people relax and like you more. I remember teachers being absolutely flummoxed by my grades and then would treat me completely differently, suddenly like an adult, as opposed to a retarded 10 year old. I also need to ask endless basic questions to understand anything and it seems to me like other people somehow have already received and read the rules to life. My understanding seems maybe to be able to reach a deeper level but takes longer to get to an intermediate level.

Honest question: does "sensory perception disorder" come out of evidence-based science? Is it diagnosed just based on symptoms, or can they actually tell something's going on with the brain specifically? I ask because isn't it possible that this could be a sort of "vanity disorder"? Not saying it's good to have it, but people might be tempted to think they do.

Showed this to my partner, who I find pretty intelligent but struggles with a lot of the symptoms the author presents in this piece due to dealing with a variety of medical trauma in her youth. The relation to anxiety rings especially true, in that she's perceiving herself to be failing at a simple task but in reality she's working with a model she can't trust - inherently very difficult! To her it just adds fuel to the anxiety and the problem gets worse and her performance suffers more, etc.

I agree with the author that tackling the cycle at the anxiety - being able to self soothe - seems to be the ticket to not only finding a card in her purse or whatever minor task a sensory processing disorder makes tougher but also to success in general. Being able to name our demons is helpful for contextualizing our experience. This is not a country that keeps people sane, so having alternative explanations beyond "I guess it's ADHD, try some speed" is great.

It's complex, can be multiple differing sources/causes individually or compounding, and what most of the world does is to follow a protocol of experimentation and practices for people to go through on their own to see what alleviates different dis-ease states - or where at least there is a net benefit found/experienced. The "solution" of psychiatry to deal with mental health IMHO is pure regulatory capture, a cheap, lazy solution requiring little to no skill or deeper understanding or experience by the administrator - and providing a recurring revenue model that seems to most often cause dependance.

The article describes my actual life precisely. Yet it's kinda clickbait. I forced myself to read it carefully from top to bottom (which is hard when you have ADHD) in hope of finding advises on how to actually do that but didn't find any.

>"...in hope of finding advises on how to actually do that but didn't find any."

because it's difficult and for everyone different.

For the sake of the argument, I'm going to take the authors appraisal of her own impressive intellect at face value, however I'd like to add that I have met a few 150IQish individuals who had a far more modest view of their mental abilities.

My interpretation is that she was a genuine genius who, for whatever reason, had some learning disabilities/behavioural problems that prevented her from taking advantage of her own gifts. While I congratulate her for overcoming these challenges, I can't help but feel that an intellectually more average person, who also doesn't share her difficulties, would get far less out of the methods she describes in the article, or someone else who also has the same learning difficulties as her wouldn't get to join the intellectual elite just by following in her footsteps.

I can't say I know that you can improve your own intelligence. But it does seem to help better understand the world when you try to be open to the idea that you might be wrong in your opinions, if just for the fact that you haven't (yet) experienced what others have. And I think the personality trait openness (which to me seems to be connected) has a relatively strong correlation with intelligence.

I have to say I strongly disagree that there's no genetic cap on intelligence. I have met people that I would consider to be geniuses. The level of intelligence they displayed just absolutely blew me away. There was no comparison between them and myself. Not to say I don't think I'm smart, but I'm not a genius, and no amount of self soothing will unlock that in me.

> One school board member remarked to my mother that my high IQ and learning disability would just cancel each other out over time

Yikes

Is everyone an ‘eccentric genius’ with some magical disorder these days? Or just bloggers?

And where’s the source for the white matter structural deformity “delaying” signal processing by “a fraction of a second”, I’m very interested in how that works since it makes no sense that a signaling channel in the brain would suffer a large delay like that.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221315821...

“Microstructural abnormalities of fibers in primary sensory tracts and/or in tracts connecting multimodal association areas may result in loss of the precise timing of action potential propagation needed to accomplish accurate sensory processing and MSI.”

They’re measuring properties of this microstructure, not the delay it supposedly is responsible for.

But I’d point out that calling “a fraction of a second” “large” is making a big assumption about the fraction.

There are by definition many millions of people in the top 2% of intelligence and that is enough to be called a genius at school.

I too am tired of reading about self-proclaimed geniuses on Substack/Medium, calling out to their (oftentimes paying) followers, and throwing up another invisible goalpost that represents intellegence.

It's all so tiring.

The medium post author posts this to HN and doesn't participate in the thread, and the post itself is membership walled. Annoying. I'll look at the archive.is link I guess, but I feel spammed.

In case anyone is wondering, there is no way to boost IQ. Whatsoever. You can obviously remove things harming cognitive ability, but that's the extent of it.

Evidence?

It's generally acknowledged that IQ measured by well known IQ tests like the WAIS are fairly consistent over time. You may score a few points lower or higher, but it won't change much. Training can help a bit, but only so much. Health issues, mental problems, stress, tiredness, drugs or alcohol can all influence your score, mostly in a negative way. So I suppose that influences like these are filtered out of this research. They are interesting to research, to see what their influence is, but to study the consistency in test results over time, they should be left out.

> It's generally acknowledged that IQ measured by well known IQ tests like the WAIS are fairly consistent over time.

This is partially because they're designed to behave that way. There is not a direct causation between your score on a test and your quality of life.

Also, how many people are actually taking IQ tests multiple times in their life? Who even takes them once unless they're being studied for a mental health issue?

> Health issues, mental problems, stress, tiredness, drugs or alcohol can all influence your score, mostly in a negative way.

… and this is a counterpoint to the one above, because removing negative contributions is the same thing as improving your test score.

Plenty of people, particularly people employed by large institutional bodies like the the worlds mililitaries, many participating in long term studies, people being assessed for schools and colleges for learning difficulties, people joining a variety of institutions like mensa or applying to a range of jobs

I think only "participating in long term studies" counts here, the rest don't actually get results that can be compared over time. And if you're taking the rest because you have learning difficulties, why would the results apply to humanity in general?

Maximizing or optimizing your potential would be a big win. This is what education for the poor is about. In an unstimulating environment, children don't grow up to their potential. There is so much to win here, not only for these children and their families, but for the society in general, not only financially but also mentally and socially. People feel better, have better health and have the money to pay for healthcare. Not in the least, it's a win against crime when you have a better alternative.

True, but almost a tautology: IQ tests are designed to be a metric of intelligence that is stable over time. They indeed have that property. Other correlates of intelligence are less stable. The everyday things by which one's intelligence is judged, like ability in tasks, can clearly be increased.

  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.

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

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"

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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).

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).

"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.

Fair enough, feedback taken.

Appreciated!

what is this author's experience and reputation to make such a claim on intelligence? Does she work in this field as a neuroscientist?

This describes me well. As a kid, I scored off the charts in math but was decidedly average in verbal. I can read technical literature all day long, but most works of fiction, historical writings, etc, are lost on me completely.

I was in G&T throughout grade school, anyway, since I was among the top students in math. My learning disability was unidentified until adulthood, unfortunately.

Now, as a middle aged adult, I'm broken, homeless, and destitute, socially and reputationally ruined, and a bit beyond the level of youthful neuroplasticity needed to engage in meaningful continued education, contemplating suicide day in and day out for years and decades on end. It's a miracle I'm still here.

The takeaway here is to take to heart the idea that such early disparities are indicative of a learning disability. Please address the child's disability concurrent to nurturing the child's talent.

Wow, it sounds like you've been through a lot. I hope things get better for you somehow.

Heartbreaking to hear. I hope you can find peace, shelter and safety. Hang in there, please.

I hope things get better for you. And while everyone is different, a lot of studies these days are leaning towards neuroplasticity actually continuing pretty strongly even into old age. So don't give up. You may need to find good treatment for any learning disabilities, but you can always learn more.

There’s also data to indicate that SSRI’s working mechanism is actually by stimulating neuro-regeneration meaning they can help restore some neuroplasticity. They can be worth considering.

Or more extreme treatments like ketamine research that appears to promote neuroplasticity.

Both of those require some changes in cognitive behaviors. CBT appears the best technique. The best thing about universities is that they normally offer excellent mental health services for free (or part of tuition).

To the OP: hang in there!

Thanks! I'm probably a lost cause. There's a much better ROI focusing on children.

> Things have deteriorated ...

I'm sorry about that

Can't reply to your recent post, (it is disabled), so replying here

I also have a learning disability

> Now, as a middle aged adult, I'm broken, homeless, and destitute, socially and reputationally ruined, and a bit beyond the level of youthful neuroplasticity needed to engage in meaningful continued education, contemplating suicide day in and day out for years and decades on end. It's a miracle I'm still here

What things give you hope? What are the miracles that still causes you to be here?

You mentioned praying for forgiveness. Did you receive an answer? What would you like forgiveness for?

Looking forward to hearing from you

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