- The Euv0ia Project
- Posts
- A Journey to Augment Intelligence
You might have noticed a subtle change in the name of this newsletter from The Euv0ia Letter to The Euv0ia Project. This wasn’t an accident. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on my goals, and I came to the conclusion that the upshot of this newsletter is better thought of as an ongoing project than a series of disconnected letters. So…
Introducing The Euv0ia Project
I have three goals with The Euv0ia Project.
To curate a Library of Resources pertaining to intelligence augmentation
To develop curriculum pathways for enhancing specific heuristic skills
To build a community of lifelong polymathic learners
This is a multi-step plan, so I’ll have to approach it in stages. For the next 8 weeks, I’m focusing on that first goal. The aim is to produce a set of resources I can refer back to as I set out to augment my intelligence in various ways. Of course, my hope is that this compendium of materials is useful to you as well.
The Library of Resources should be drafted by June 15th. That’s the goal, at least.
The Library of Resources Content
As I explain in the definitions section, there’s a difference between natural and effective intelligence. I will be pursuing strategies to augment both. Natural intelligence can be increased (or at least maintained) through increasing physical fitness, improving sleep quality, supplementation, and through certain types of evidence-based brain training. Effective intelligence can be boosted by improving specific skillsets that I call heuristic skills. I’ll focus on the following heuristic skills initially, but the Library may build over time:
Mental models
Mental mathematics
Mnemonics
Reading strategy
Knowledge synthesis
Mindfulness
Reasoning & logic
For each of the topics above, my intent is to take one week each to collect sources, including:
Books
Articles
Academic Research
Videos
Podcasts
I’ll keep you updated on the progress as I collect sources, so expect to see upcoming articles about the sources I’m discovering alongside brief synopses of why I think the source is valuable or interesting.
Note that I won’t be diving into any of the materials in great depth at this stage. The point right now is to simply collect and curate information to be processed later. I’ll be doing some preliminary reading analysis in the form of inspectional reading, but I’m not writing a dissertation here. My goal is to keep things fairly high level to give you an idea of some places to start if you’re interested in following my journey.
As things progress, I’ll move to the second-stage of The Euv0ia Project goals. For this, I’ll dive deeper into the collected resources and try to formulate a series of pathway plans to follow. These will be mini curricula that anyone could use to begin mastering a specific set of heuristic skills. I’d like to develop a few different pathways so anyone with interest can pick a path and set out on a journey to mastery of the relevant skills.
This second stage will be much harder to do and will likely involve much trial and error. I would ideally like to master all pathways, but that could take some time, to say the least. Still, I think meaningful effort will result in significantly increased abilities over time, and I’m personally dedicated to going through with it. My hope is to inspire others to follow a similar approach or use the provided resources as a jumping off point to pursue their own personal achievement goals.
Ultimately, my dream is to turn this all of the above into a lively community where we can all share our insights and practices to learn from each other. That’s the stage-three goal of the Project, but as of yet, I don’t have much else to say about it.
Upcoming
Over the coming weeks, I’ll keep you updated on my progress putting together the Library of Resources. At the same time, there are some other pieces I’ve been working on separately, including one called 5 Steps to Living More Intelligently, which I’d hoped to put out into the world today. It’s not quite ready, but I’ll try to get around to posting it by Wednesday. In the meantime, here are the five steps I explore in the article. If you think about them, you might be able to piece together the article’s general contents. More to come, but I figured I might as well share a little now:
5 Steps to Living More Intelligently
Notice limitations
Reframe constraints as opportunities
Measure a baseline
Set goals or habits
Track accomplishments
That’s all for now. I’ll keep you posted.
-euv0ia