And here I'm the weirdo thinking that music has intrinsic value.
"Practice kissing! It exercises your mouth muscles so that you can eat soup better!"
You win the internet today! Too bad you'll be down voted by the type of people who think the value of a college degree is primarily based on its impact on future earnings.
tl;dr
Learn to play a musical instrument
I think a TL;dr tooltip should be included in every HN title. Saves us a click!
I met a few people who studied music (different instruments or theory) and later switched to a career in programming. They said the whole theory stuff felt a bit like a different approach (notation etc) to math.
Click bait.
Hey, as long as we're sharing click bait, I have to share one of the funniest spam email titles I've seen in a long time, which happens to be on the topic of IQ: "Harvard Study shows 'Smart Drug' proven to double IQ".
Yes. Double. Let us not accuse this spammer of dreaming small!
The only mention of IQ in the original article by Lutz Jäncke ("Music drives brain plasticity") is a reference to another study " Glenn Schellenberg [37] uncovered a greater IQ increase in children enrolled in music classes compared with well-matched children who received no musical lessons". However it's hardly news that popular articles exaggerate findings in journals.