Seven Sigma

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Introduction

The purpose of this site is to host my academic and philosophical writings, and research work.

If you wish to gain an insight into how I came to be self-educating outside the official academic system, and preparing research independently of either academia or commerce, then perhaps first you should read Grady Towers' article "The Outsiders". http://www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html

By the time I found out what was "wrong" with me, my schooling had long since gone by the boards, resulting in little chance of obtaining the type of top-level career that would have befitted someone with high levels of cognition and creativity. I was lucky enough subsequently to find ways to fix many areas of my life, including learning a study method that taught me the level of discipline necessary to complete a course: a habit I had never acquired in school because everything had just come way too easily in the early years. Despite this self-repair, by the time I had regained sufficient confidence to be able to train into any field I wished, I was already approaching 40, and it just would have taken too long to complete all the officially recognised courses all the way from pre-university access programmes in basic science subjects up to post-doctorate level, studying part-time outside a day job.

Add that to the fact that most types of courses, being written for the "optimum IQ" range student, do not cover the material at the speed and depth I require. It is rarely possible to speed up the process while under the auspices of the "education" system, as I found to my frustration when taking a business management course. Although I completed my reading lists and the required written assignments in under a quarter of the time recommended in the course guide, the university obviously must have posted out their course modules to a schedule. There were these long delays while I waited for the next lot of materials to arrive in the mail. I started to tear my hair in frustration at the over-long runway, and went off into other subject areas looking for more challenge.

In this age of specialisation, there is very little opportunity or recognition for the type of person who once used to be known as Renaissance Man or Renaissance Woman. A person who likes to develop skills in multiple areas is oft disapprovingly told that he or she can't be a jack of all trades. Well, there are those of us who not only can be, but need to be, actively pursuing many spheres of endeavour to satisfy our hungry minds. I am not a dilettante, I am a polymath. This tendency to investigate into multiple fields, I believe, is essential for the type of work I am about to describe.

For some time now, I have been interested in technology and methods for enhancing the ability of the average or above-average person. Michael Hutchison (author of "Megabrain" and "Mega Brain Power") and others lament the fact that there is no academic R&D funding available in the area of the type of research that is directed towards enhancing human intelligence and consciousness. A research scientist putting together a grant proposal would have to convince the grant board that there was some medical, psychological or remedial benefit in the research if he/she was to successfully procure funding. I am not interested in becoming a doctor or psychologist; my interest is purely in personal enhancement. Hence, although I would have liked to have gotten along in academia and the professional world, I began to realise that if I was to do useful work in the field of the mind, I would have to self-educate.

It is lamentable that self-education is rarely valued or recognised by prospective employers, certain potential clients, college or university admissions tutors, or grant boards. It seems that critical thinking abilities have descended in our culture to the point where the certificate and the skill are identified in people's minds as one and the same. If you have got the certificate, it is assumed you have the skill; you cannot possibly have the skill if you don't have the certificate. It is inconceivable to those employers, admissions tutors, or grant boards that a person can have acquired a skill independently, without doing an official course and taking an exam.

Nevertheless, I can and do get results through self-education, and in fact achieve more through this method, because I understand my own needs and learning styles. I am not the dropout that I suspect these people fancy I am - rather, I am an autodidact.

I have read over 200 books on the mind and allied fields; not to mention thousands of articles, dozens of recorded lecture sets, hundreds of websites, and numerous self-help and study programs. I realised that I was going to have to start pooling the results of my findings somewhere, therefore I have started putting together this website - the Seven Sigma Project.

1. The first stage of the project is to find out what techniques and technologies exist, and what works and what doesn't. This stage of the project is well under way.

2. The second stage of the project is to write a series of short articles giving an overview of each piece of technology, technique or method out there which I have found to have any degree of workability. This stage has been started, and the first two articles are available to read under the Articles section of this site, as well as having been published in high IQ society magazines.

3. The third stage of the project is to identify areas most deserving of research, to procure necessary equipment and volunteers, and to write up research documentation to publish online. This is obviously the most lengthy and costly leg of the project. I am interested in investigating literally any mind technology based in sound science, and running studies accordingly. As long as I am forced to self-fund, this work may be rather more limited in scope than I would personally like.

4. The fourth stage of the project is to create a fully-integrated mind-enhancement technique/philosophy, including every aspect of study and teaching, and enhancing what the individual is and can achieve. I already have some fairly strong ideas of what this would consist of, and how it would all be put together.

At the moment, I am stuck between a rock and a hard place - too unusual to have benefited from regular schooling (thus depriving me of a place in an elite profession or cutting-edge academia), but not quite outstanding enough to have been able to create a reputation or any money out of it (a la Marilyn vos Savant).

Why Seven Sigma? I have been using the name Seven Sigma, Sigma Seven, Sigma 7 and variations on that theme as an Internet handle for some time, and members of various self-development communities have come to associate that term with me and my writings. "Seven Sigma" is a statistical term, meaning seven standard deviations from the median point on a normal distribution curve. In terms of IQ, that would mean a person scoring well over 200, where the standard deviation used is 15 (130 on that scale, or the 2-sigma level, would get a person into Mensa). I don't know of any person living who is in that range, and I certainly don't claim it for myself - at the moment at least.

I consider it as a postulate for future personal evolution - the desire to lift myself and all well-intentioned persons to greater heights.

I only hope that by putting my work up on this site, I can attract like-minded souls with whom to exchange ideas, and find a communication channel to put my ideas out there.