I agree with this wholeheartedly. The mental effort required to keep
up so called "contrived strategies" will eventually become so big,
that the mind will end up using the intuitive approach anyway.
It might even be beneficial to use such strategies, we just don't know.
The fact is though that our personal level of N is a personal score.
It cannot be compared to other n-back users, since our strategies
differ.
As I understand it, the theory is that n-back works by forcing you to
"re-write" bits in your short-term memory, and constantly update
larger and larger portions of your memory.
Using ANY kind of "contrived strategy", You will end up doing just
this, provided youve reached an N high enough.