Listening to Mozart does not make you smart | Hacker News Reader

Listening to Mozart does not make you smart

dienekes.blogspot.com

31 pointsfogus27 comments

We've been had! It's a shame that we will have to tell this to all the kids today who are constantly listening to Mozart.

All jokes aside, when I was a little bit younger and took my first philosophy course, I remember the professor saying something like "Garbage in, Garbage out." So let's say that listening to Mozart doesn't make you smarter. This, however, has no bearing on if other forms of music make you less smart (which I believe is very possibly true). Besides that, I find the most amazing thing happen when I listen to great classical music: I can actually think without the music interrupting my thoughts 95% of the time. The 5% of the time it does happen is only if I accidentally chose something to listen to that has vocals (Opera, which is amazing how great it sounds even though I have no idea what they are saying), or if it is something particularly raucous by Stravinsky.

I have the same experience but I don't do it anymore. Doesn't it just mean that with certain types of music we can ignore it enough to do other tasks? Why do we want to have inputs that we then ignore? If the music is worthwhile doesn't it deserve our attention?

Well my experience with it is that I believe that it actually influences my thought patterns and helps my train of thought progress. Of course this is anecdotal evidence and it would seem that the article contradicts my belief, which is why I failed to allude to it in my original posting. Besides that, if my train of thought does come to a conclusion, I get to enjoy some great music until my next thought begins.

For me, music helps to affect my mood. I use music+work to help me get into 'the zone' in a way that doesn't happen when just trying to work in complete silence (or the noise of a typical office).

"garbage in, garbage out" explains why recycling is impossible! :-)

You've also debunked GC! Pure genius!

If you want to switch things up, consider downloading the instrumental-only 4 CD "Ghosts" album released under a CC license by Trent Reznor/NIN.

Well this ruins my strategy to become smart. Time to move onto plan B, "reading War and Peace and telling everybody about it".

Don't forget "Atlas Shrugged". I hear that one mentioned at least twice a day by patrons of my local Starbuck's, so I know it must be deep. (-:

If that doesn't work I'm just going to learn some French words and randomly sprinkle them throughout my conversations. Merci. Baguette. Champagne. [1]

[1] See? I sound erudite already.

using words like 'erudite' is a perfectly cromulent way of displaying your intelligence.

How uncouth!

You wouldn't believe how some French words get bastardized by common usage by speakers of other languages :)

The current word being destroyed in Argentina and Uruguay: "chapeau"

(but you wouldn't recognize it when spoken by one of my countrymen)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapeau

"Chapeau! is often used as a generic expression of approval and appreciation in France and other parts of Europe : as a sign of admiration or respect, one shall indeed remove his hat"

It's a quick read. You can gloss over 75% of the book as it's extremely redundant.

“Classic - A book which people praise and don't read.” - M. Twain

Sure, listening to one piece before taking a standardized test doesn't help, but I would wager that truly appreciating Mozart, and certainly playing an instrument of any sort, does.

Being involved in music, especially classical music, stereotypically gives a you cultured air. It has been proven that we generally think attractive people are more intelligent, and I'd wager the same goes for being cultured.

It's probably not enough to play an instrument. Being passionate about and engaged in music to the extent that one analyses the experience and actively experiments -- that level of engagement might help. I know plenty of musicians whose approach to playing an actual instrument isn't much deeper than playing Guitar Hero.

I do recall at least one study that said that high school students who take music do better academically. Could have been some serious selection bias in that study though.

Mozart may not make you smart, but maybe it's that smart people listen to Mozart.

And truly smart people are too busy taking over the world to find time to listen to music anyway.

I believe that the effort to understand something you or the general population does not, does make you smarter.

I guess this explains all http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_effect I myself likes Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel. It help me think calm and clear (it's the peaceful and fun feeling).

Listening to Baroque music might: http://brainbasedbiz.blogspot.com/2007/04/baroque-music-help...

And I thought it was all about the theta waves that tap our superlearning abilities. Baroque had that form.

uuhh, really. oh. this explains a lot

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