I go back and forth on what makes you really stupid, but a prime candidate is being an intellectual couch potato.
For comparison, like any world-class athlete, I will spend whole days training mentally. I enjoy it. I spent all yesterday training, and most of the day before. Why? Okay, habit, primarily, but also because atrophy sends "train me" signals and training relieves those signals. Once you get up it's easy to stay up.
I keep being told "cognitive decline sets in when you're 18," this is a fucking lie. Atrophy due to laziness sets in. Maybe I'm close to peak now (and I will remain peak for decades) but even a couple years ago I was still getting noticeably smarter. E.g. boss fights suddenly took no work, came naturally. Increments noticeable even when I'm not looking for them.
I have levels of not-having-brain-fog you probably can't even imagine. (And the point of this is if I can do it, you probably can too. Though of course Revenge is Sour...if you were going to, you already would have, and wouldn't need anything in this parenthetical.)
If you turn your brain off whenever you can, you're maximizing atrophy. Certainly we can suggest a middle ground between total sloth and world-class sasslete (me) but enough atrophy will damage your brain, same way getting scrawny enough damages your skeleton.
Much the same way enough lack of exercise saps your energy so you don't have the energy to exercise, enough lack of mental exercise puts you in a hole where any thinking seems like a colossal ask.
The other thing that helps tremendous is not lying. I probably mention this once or twice. Getting rid of all your cope means you don't have to keep track of your cope or defend it, freeing up startlingly huge amounts of RAM. Remembering things relevant to my current task has become trivial...the way I always felt it should have been.
Again this is testable in videogames. Do I continually forget rare mechanics, or am I on point? Do I stutter? Lose focus? Not anymore, no.
Yes if you overwork yourself you should rest. If you're not currently overworked, don't turn your brain off. Apply yourself solely for the sake of applying yourself more in the future. Having more brain means having more life. If you see more things happen, more things are happening with you. You functionally have more time. And yes, in the end, maintenance is easy. (I would in fact be hard-pressed to stop.)
6 comments:
my thinking is definitely slower than before so maybe age thing is real. but also i'm thinking more effectively than before, and nets to clearly positive in most cases.
i am convinced driving makes people stupid.
or idiots like driving
coincidentally today was the dumbest day in a long time. saw a lot of really dumb things.
asked laxeris how to deal with dumbs. he said "Just turn your brain off", "Put a red hot hat on and cook your brain".
Many deal with it by getting so drunk you're too blitzed to notice how stupid it is.
All suffering comes from delusion.
At some level, you were expecting them not to be dumb. Say to yourself: "When I go do [x], will I see something dumb? Will those around me react in a dumb way?" The answer, of course, is yes. And now you're expecting it.
Humanism brainworm. You think they're embarrassing you in front of the aliens. "I'm not with that species." Except they are the aliens. It has nothing to do with you. Anyone who thinks it reflects on you is, themselves, an alien. An alien of stupid.
It has to do with you insofar as you need your anti-stupid hazmat suit and some fitting fences to keep the walkers out.
apparently i need to develop better defenses.
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