The human brain reaches peak performance at a very young age.

>>9159875
I myself assume that staying fit both mentally and physically as well as having a good diet are essential basics.

Furthermore, nootropics could help.

Specifically, SSRIs increase neuro and synaptogenesis and by undoing damage to the brain they could potentially help you maintain your intelligence to a higher age.

Of course there are many other factors. What do you people think?

>>9159875
I don't think you can. its a natural developmental process.

>>9159881
The problem in this area of science is that there is evidence that drugs have a positive neurobiological effect but this is rarely if ever demonstrated on neuropsychological tests. Theres little or no evidence that SSRIs or other nootropics have a significant and substantial long term effect on cognition. When they do have an effect, they tend to be on people who are on the lower end scale or have significant disability in that area.

>>9159875
>As intelligence is by far the strongest predictor of overall success in life, slowing down the decay of your intelligence is very important.

This actually wrong. The biggest predictor of success is how much money your parents have. Some smart kids get full ride to university but the become 6 figures nobodies, meanwhile all rich kids end as at least millionaires, sometimes billionaires is they are able to inherit all the wealth from their dad.

I think it's because until their early/mid 20's, people usually stay in one place so they do not have to spend so much mental capacity to adapt to changes in lifestyle. Once they have to move for jobs, change relationships, etc, things just shift from an academic point. Even if you have to move places for your uni education, that is still 3-5 years of dorm stability. I might be completely wrong though.

>>9159875
>As intelligence is by far the strongest predictor of overall success in life, slowing down the decay of your intelligence is very important.
If you let your brain decay enough though then "success" will stop having any meaning to you so the problem solves itself.

>>9159891
Wrong. Intelligence is hereditary. Rich parents tend to have high intelligence and thus their children have high intelligence too.

>inheritance
You usually don't inherit anything till you are at least in your 50s. If anything, rich parents can give you opportunities that others lack, such as working in a very high position in the family company.

Also, success is not how much money you have. When someone has a lot of money but still fails at everything they do they are still unsuccessful.

>>9159888
>neuropsychological
The much larger uncertainty and difficulty to measure changes may play a role.

>When they do have an effect, they tend to be on people who are on the lower end scale or have significant disability in that area
Could this not be attributed to the damage reversing effect? After all I am not asking for a way to actually increase your genetically given intelligence, since nothing so far has proven to achieve this in a significant manner, but instead slow down decay of intelligence due to aging, ergo damage reversal.

>>9159904
Please tell me how you can tell the difference between rich intelligent parents having intelligent children due to environmental or genetic factors.

>The much larger uncertainty and difficulty to measure changes may play a role.

elaborate.

>Could this not be attributed to the damage reversing effect

yes thats my point.

> since nothing so far has proven to achieve this

I think the reason for this is that people think that you can train intelligence using specific tasks when, i think that if we come from a dynamic perspective, youll see that there is no inherent latent intelligence factor. Intelligence is an emergence of your whole developmental history across a diversity of interactions with the environment. The key is diversity. Keeping mentally active doing many different things and not just say keeping a time slot of 10 minutes to meditate or taking a drug everyday. It means having an active overall lifestyle. Meditation or something may help but you can't expect 10 minutes per day to generalize to the whole over 15 hours and 50 minutes of other things that you're awake doing during the day. Obviously health and diet are important too.

One thing also is i think the loss of intelligence or grey matter is natural developmentally and not completely reversible. It might even be adaptive, who knows. The people who come out of it worse might also have a genetic predisposition. The whole area is underdetermined scientifically desu.

>>9159966
>Intelligence is an emergence of your whole developmental history across a diversity of interactions with the environment
Then how come separated twin studies prove intelligence does not depend on the environment at all? There is zero empiric evidence of any beneficial environmental effects on intelligence, only the opposite for example due to malnutrition or injury.

>>9159971
Do twin studies show 100% heritability?

Even so, what twin studies say about environmental/genetic contributions to intelligence variability in a population is not the same as the causal nature of what causes intelligence. They are two distinct things. Saying intelligence is 100% heritable in no way conflicts with me saying that intelligence depends on a developmental history of interactions with the environment. Executive function (which is in someways related to intelligence) shows a 98% heritability on the only major heritability study of its kind. But executive function is also well known to be manipulable through interventions ranging from drugs to other forms of changing. There is no conflict between what i said and what you said. Heritability doesn't measure causality.

>>9159904
I'd also say that people should think practically? Why do you want to increase intelligence? Presumably to help you in your life by improving a skillset or help you function. Rather than trying to improve an abstract quantity like IQ, people should focus on the specific skills they want to improve and actively do that. IQ may correlate with certain skills but we don't necesarily know the mechanics of it or why. Improving the score on an IQ test may not improve anything.

>>9160112
Did I ever use the term IQ in any of my posts? Did I ever say I want to increase intelligence? The answer to both questions is no.

>>9160133
How else are you going to measure intelligence. I thought it was appropriate since intelligence is mentioned many times in this thread inc. the OP. I think what i said still applies to slowing the decay of intelligence too.

>>9159875
These things.
>Spend your time alone reading and studying.
>Have 0 in house friends.
>Have 0 social media account.
>Learn to efficiently context switch. At office you are an employer, at home you are learning machine.
>Become independent of your job. This is very important since 8 hours of doing something irrelevant to you is waste.
>Avoid girls except for breeding and sex
>If you want friend, have only one which support the above points and respect your time and space.

>>9160142
Because when your intelligence has decreased so will your intelligence based skills weaken.

It's like an athlete who has his peak physical performance around age 25 and then enters slowly accelerating decline, who wants to stay on his age 25 peak performance or at least slow down the decline and you are all like "wtf lol dude u gotta think puracitical lol xdd just keep doing what ure doing xdd". Yeah no shit. Clearly practice alone is not enough.

>>9159875
i'm starting to smoke.

>>9160224
If he stops doing activity he'll be alot worse though.

>>9160235
Yeah of course but it is a given that you keep up activity.