Spend time around a lot of different people from different fields and always ask questions. They have alot to teach you, but you wont learn anything from them if you dont give them a chance to talk.

You'll be surprised how much stuff "ordinary people" know if you give them a chance to talk.

Do a lot of Math and calculus and try to solve complex coding problems.

Build things, release, get feedback and repeat. The experience will surely increase your intelligence understanding, awareness and your ability to recognise patterns.

Good Luck.

I don't think it's improved my raw ability to think, but it definitely helps me step outside situations, think about thinking, and do meta-reasoning. Sometimes the best way to get more done is to think of a way to do less work :)

I mention this because I believe it'd be helpful for you to consider which of the two you want to improve in more. Knowledge can come from books and courses, like many people are recommending. I wish I knew how to become smart (perhaps if I was smart, I'd find a hack for it...), but I suspect it might help to get into the habit of questioning everything, and practicing lateral thinking. Perhaps it would also help to try and find abstract similarities between situations from very different contexts - often new insights can come from combining knowledge from different fields, and this will probably help you get used to seeing things in different contexts.

Considering the (no doubt intentional) vagueness of the question, I'm guessing you'd be interested in both. I think a good way to improve both at the same time is to often read, and then try and find something to read that says the opposite. That way you get a lot of knowledge, often from various sides, and it invites you to think about it more and question the assumptions.

I hope that helps.

In general, these books are quick to read and act as a good launching point for a deep dive into any topics you find interesting.

[1]http://www.introducingbooks.com

I'd also recommend reading up on behavioral economics, marketing, and design. This is more along the "toolset" line, but understanding why people make the decisions they do and how other people try to exploit those decision-making processes helps to understand a significant amount of otherwise relatively impenetrable behavior.

Oh, and read How to Win Friends and Influence People if you haven't already. As someone else suggested, talking to people can yield a great deal of knowledge, but trying to think from the other person's perspective (a major theme in the book) can yield a great deal more understanding of people in general.

It is, quite literally, life-altering stuff when internalised. At least it was for me.

I'm an LSAT instructor. I'm convinced that for a couple of the sections the only way to become better is to improve how you think. No shortcuts.

Send me an email if you want some guidance on how to use the materials.

The types of books I'm looking for would include the Feynman Lectures, SICP, Art of Computer Programming, etc. What would be a good book series (preferably a classic one that's stood the test of time) on math (Algebra, various Calculus topics, Statistics, etc)? Principia Mathematica should go in here, but it would be nice to have something that includes modern notation. For general on-your-own in a cabin in the woods setting, I've been impressed with the topics covered in the Foxfire books. So what else? I'd like a good world history book, that ties in how everything is related to everything else (i.e, not just cover each civilization in isolation). Also, something covering Western and Eastern philosophy.

I'd like to edit this some more during the edit window for this comment. To start, the books by Israel M. Gelfand, originally written for correspondence study.

http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-author=Israel%20M.%20G...

An acclaimed calculus book is Calculus by Michael Spivak.

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-4th-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098...

Also very good is the two-volume set by Tom Apostol.

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable-Introduction...

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-Multi-Variable-Applicatio...

Those are all lovely, interesting books. A good bridge to mathematics beyond those is Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Differential Forms: A Unified Approach by Hubbard and Hubbard.

http://matrixeditions.com/UnifiedApproach4th.html

A very good book series on more advanced mathematics is the Princeton University Press series by Elias Stein.

http://www.amazon.com/Fourier-Analysis-Introduction-Princeto...

Is this the kind of thing you are looking for? Maybe I can think of some more titles, and especially series, while I am still able to edit this comment.

If you want to seem smart at cocktail parties, the best way to do that is to know just slightly more than your friends at all the things they care about. Some resources for that: Wikipedia, pop science magazines like Discover or Popular Science, Mythbusters, Science Reddit, and all the stuff linked from there. Also stay up to date on your celebrity gossip, pop culture, and sports scores.

If you want to make money, the way to do that is to pick an area that is currently in demand in the economy, specialize in that, and go deep, enough that you have more knowledge than anyone else. Computers are hot right now, as is SEO and online marketing. Biotech may be hot in the near future, as is clean tech. You basically want to deepen your knowledge as opposed to broadening it. Whenever there's something you don't understand - and I mean don't fully understand, it's easy to have a superficial understanding of things - go seek it out and learn as much as possible about it.

Learning about something for achieving an objective is similar, but the objective is chosen by you instead of by the economy.

I know someone who is very skilled at retaining large amounts of detailed information and he works as a high profile lawyer. However, he wasn't capable of figuring out how to change the battery in his remote control, let alone set up the TV channels on his newly bought TV. He reminds me of a lot of politicians I see on television; perceived as smart but actually quite dumb.

Then I know plenty of people who aren't highly educated at all but they are some of the most creative thinkers I have come across in my life.

I'm sure that reading a lot of books will broaden your horizon and awareness of one's "lack" of knowledge will put you into a good position since you're willing to learn and you're not assuming you know it all. That's good.

Remember that you are not your ideas or beliefs. At most those things are you at a specific point in time.

Being shown to be wrong about something does not make you a lesser or bad person. Merely wrong, and you can change that.

the first thing is to look at how you think and act. you said, "I hate it". that's a very strong emotion, and a very strong idea. and it indicates you've already become negative. try turning it around ... realize that you've already identified a problem, and now have an opportunity to work on changing it.

once i started doing this, my next reaction was that this is positive thinking bullshit. which it seems like. but i'm using it to change myself, which works ... not effect change in the external world through positive thinking, which doesn't necesarily work all that well.

etc, etc.

if you start softening your words, your thoughts follow (and vice versa). you can regain an objective and thoughtful outlook on life and experiences, instead of short-circuiting your through process by relying on pre-disgested, ready-made thought patterns.

Traveling is very useful due to the all the same reasons. You learn a lot of new things and getting a new perspective.

Being physically fit plays a huge role in your mental abilities and it's proven by many researchers.

To sum it up, the more diverse is your experience and the more things you try the better. 

-> It could mean "more working memory", in which case games of various kinds are helpful. Anything that requires maintaining a set of values or decisions in your head for a while: bridge & hearts (count cards) or poker, go (weiqi / baduk).

-> It could mean "more mindful", i.e., being more observant and aware of yourself and your surroundings. A lot of people today claim that meditation is good for this. I find that not owning a smartphone is helpful. Reading a hefty dead-tree book can be a good antidote for "Goldfish Attention Span Syndrome".

-> It could mean "better at reasoning", in which case some courses on philosophy would help (logic, epistemology).

-> It could mean "more domain expertise", in which case you should spend some time taking courses or experimenting in some area of expertise.

-> It could mean "broadening your experiences", in which case you should go out and start something completely new, preferably something which is a little bit intimidating.

-> It could mean "being more healthy", because poor sleep habits, poor nutrition, and poverty all effectively lower IQ and general intelligence. Fix some things in your life, get more exercise, learn to cook / eat better.

edit: get in touch with HN user tokenadult (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tokenadult); he studies and works in the field of intelligence and education (and frequently writes very informative posts on the subject); I'm just a dabbler.

Consume good media -- FoxNews is bad, MSNBC is bad. PBS Newshour is good, BBC is generally pretty good.

Don't spend your time on inconsequential things (this can be difficult to do -- e.g., news media is all about pandering and sensationalizing things, you'll see everyone partake in it and you'll find it difficult to stay out of it). I think a good way to keep yourself from getting sucked into that trap -- of keeping up with latest Miley Cyrus scandal or whatever, is to just stay away from the crowd that spends too much time on it. So no more Reddit frontpage (at least the default one), instead go to nytimes.com (or HN! :-) my favorite commenters are rayiner, tptacek, potatolicious, and some others -- reading their thoughts will probably do you good).

Keep on taking those coursera courses, do projects in areas that interest you. Along the way you'll start picking up more specific interests and feel compelled to explore specific directions. Hopefully then you can even become a community leader in some area... and then you can start showing the light to other guys newcomers in that area.

Have fun while you're doing all of this!

Social skills:

- Learn to really listen other people. - Learn to ask correct questions - Body language, gestures - Meeting new people from different cultures, especially people don't believe in prophets and hell and heaven stories

Improving brain:

- Playing a musical instrument - Learning another spoken language - No TV, no football, soccer bullshit, not too much porn, talking about girls & boys or cars& houses, celebrity etc.

Gaining Knowledge: - Mathematics, Physics, Programming, Astronomy, Biology, Paleontology, Evolution, any science branch you are interested.

- On the other hand, i personally think, the best way to learn about a different culture is to travel whether it is local or not.

Some good resources:

- Here of course - wikipedia - documentaries - coursera - youtube, if you can avoid stupid girl podcasts, otw you will end up with bad recommendations. - Follow inspiring people on twitter

I will stop know, i also want to learn what other sugesstions are :)

1) How rewarding and enjoyful you find learning new things. I don't mean learning pi to one 1000 digits, but higher level concepts like learning macroeconomics.

2) Generally enjoying thinking.

3) Being a perfectionist. For example, when I see some corner case problem in one of my "theories" of something (usually related to computers, economics or philosophy), it really bothers me (i.e. it has nothing to do with being smart, it's personality trait).

So perhaps if you try to nurture these traits, it could make you smarter, but that's just a speculation :)

More practical advice: read quora.com. There is a lot of really high-quality, interesting and thought-provoking content there, written by some incredibly smart people.

1. Have awareness - smartness is nothing but being aware of yourself, your knowledge and surroundings. Way too many of us are living a routine life and we have trained our minds to keep working at certain optimum level. People who are aware often looks smart and more importantly make smarter decisions.

2. Read and Learn - your smartness and decision making skills is directly proportional on how much you know, people who knows more will always look and make smarter decisions.

Btw, one thing I can assure you, smartness can not be taught through books and classes, be your own teacher, make your own lessons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_intelligence

and check : http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

"A recent study published in PNAS, an important scientific journal, shows that a memory task called dual n-back improves working memory (short term memory) and fluid intelligence. These findings are important because fluid intelligence was previously thought to be unchangeable"

If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to stop reading so many programming books. I'd make myself write the code everyday. Rather than read about it. Figure out what it is that you want to learn. Then start practicing and learning the theory.

"All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work." - 2 Timothy 3:16-17

here's a great introduction: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ

http://beginningofinfinity.com/