Overclocking the Human CPU

[JBeukema]

Overclocking the Human CPU | h+ Magazine

Unfortunately, our mental toolkit is comically weak, allowing us to only hold five to seven variables for comparing and contrasting at any one time, and constantly needing to “dump” whatever is in working memory when distracted by new tasks. Lame! Not only is our working bandwidth low, our long-term memory is lossy, leaving us to rely on external storage methods (ideas encoded in symbols or bits) to communicate rational output to other people and keep track of all the new “information” we create over time. For creatures that have short unpredictable lives, this limited setup might be okay, but for modern humans it leaves us wanting more, better, faster.

At one point in time it seemed that drugs were the answer to this question: Dexedrine and piracetam, cognitive enhancers, ginko, ephedra, nootropics, and the like. While these supplements are indeed nifty for achieving short-term focus and mental clarity, they seem to only milk the limited capacity of our current wetware without providing the instantaneous multi-point IQ boost we would expect from our “smart drugs.” Drugs can increase human intelligence temporarily by increasing the speed and conductivity along the intelligence circuit. However, most of the evidence to date suggests that the brain will eventually begin to power-down or tip into psychotic states if this method is used or abused for too long. To build long-term conductivity you need to train your mental reflexes just as you would train your hand-eye reflexes, and like any training this takes long periods of discipline to see even limited results. Books, video games, and websites that focus on multistage puzzle solving in strict time limits (yes, I’m talking about Tetris) are probably the best way to get the logic circuit wires crackling and ready for more complex problem-solving, but what about improving the robust capacity we crave?

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/neuro/overclocking-human-cpu