r/slatestarcodex • u/AutoModerator • 6d ago

Monthly Discussion Thread

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u/GerryAdamsSFOfficial 6d ago edited 6d ago

I am a numbers guy.

For my fitness, I track my weight, body composition, skeletal muscle mass, my workouts, the weights, the rest times, the RPE. My sleep is quantified, every last calorie is documented to a degree that would be a Stasi wet dream. I have learned a great deal and made amazing progress.

However, my mental faculties and performance are completely undocumented. I have no idea how my focus, attention span, task switching, impulse control, etc are doing. There's lots of IQ tests, but I'm not looking for IQ.

What little there is available is graphs of self-reported "vibes" data like Daylio which is worse than nothing.

I want to benchmark my brain's functional capacities. How can I do this from home as a layperson?

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u/Winter_Essay3971 6d ago edited 6d ago

There are various reaction time tests on the internet.

Maybe digit span tests? You don't even need anything fancy, just find a random number generator and generate (say) 12 digits and see how many you get correct. Quick 1-minute test.

Anything relating explicitly to executive function-type skills and not to "IQ" will probably be lifestyle-dependent. I'm a programmer so I use a Google timer to see how many hours I'm actually working each day (not counting breaks or scrolling Reddit, but including meetings -- whatever I'm getting paid for). Obviously tons of things besides raw executive function will affect that number on a given day, so it's noisy. I just use it to get a sense, day-to-day, of how productive I'm being, I haven't tried logging the numbers over time and comparing them to my lifestyle, sleep, etc.

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u/callmejay 4d ago

I used to do the Burns Depression Inventory fairly regularly. There are similar scales for anxiety.

I'm sure you could find or even create metrics for most of the other traits you listed. An ADHD questionnaire would cover some of them.

There are companies that purport to measure these things, but if I were personally going to get serious about it, I'd probably look to see what scales scientists use to study them and see if you could use those.

Obviously you'd have to find ones that are still valid when taken repeatedly!