Our emergence as a species took place during an epoch of global disasters.

Alternating ice ages with epochs of virtually unbearable heat, alternating rainswamp and epochs of searing drought.—And loss not only of our original forest habitat but of a succession of the subsequent habitats to which we had started to adapt in turn....

Forming under these extreme conditions, our species had to be able to survive in both old and new and further, unanticipated environments...

To this very day, necessarily, we are born with a far wider range of capabilities than we will ever get around to using.—So we can cope with whatever environment we happen to be born into.

Some of that is probably good. I don't think I would want to forever be consciously aware of and monitoring my own liver function, for example. (Though there are conditions, like cirrhosis or hepatitis, when one really would like to become consciously aware of that so he could act to guide it into preferred directions.)

But a large part of our conscious shut-down definitely is not good. Especially amidst modern conditions which separate and insulate us from the immediate consequences of our own choices and our own behavior. —Especially while we are young and rapidly forming.

Feedback—a/k/a "reinforcement"—is how we learn what works and what does not. Not only that, it is how nerve cells, nerve circuits, and the brain itself develop, more than by any other mechanism, including nutrition, heredity, stimulus, or schooling.

Every complex system, living or non-living, has to be responsive to changes in its environment—especially to those changes which result from its own behavior and choices. Any system which is not responsive to its feedbacks, which is not susceptible to its reinforcements, in this changing world of ours, does not get to be around for very long.

Small wonder that psychology's main natural law, just as gravity is a major natural law of physics, is the Law of Effect: "You get more of what you reinforce."

With #3 below, we will show you simply how to turn on any undeveloped sector of skills and/or intelligence. Before this amazingly simple prescription, though, please let me raise one more key point—

In negative-sum or zero-sum game branches of strategy theory—those sectors where one necessarily has an opponent and someone has to lose— the form of that rule is to work to maximize your own desirable choices while limiting those of your enemy. Make your actions less predictable thereby, so they are harder to counter.—And, correspondingly, make your enemy's choices more limited and predictable. This is why, in chess, for example, the emphasis in the early moves is almost always on "developing your position."

In real life, most situations are mainly win-win games. Our outcomes are still affected by the moves of the other player(s), but most or all can win at the same time, often cooperatively. There, the form of the cardinal rule becomes to maximize desirable choices for everyone, including yourself.....

—Remember the biological definition of intelligence?—the range of factors, internal and external, which you can take into account [your available choices, in other words!] in pursuit of your wants and goals...

Strategy analysis or game theory writ large, therefore, tells you that its cardinal rule is to increase your intelligence!—Aside from all the pleasure and rich reward of really informed awareness and experience....