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Comment by notheguyouthink | Hacker News Reader

Are there any that aren't bullshit?

I'm debating just setting up a spaced repetition app with my own custom knowledge base. At least that way I may not be getting higher brain function, but higher retention on memory items I care about.

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Or...one, or all of these:

1.Learn a Second Language 2. https://projecteuler.net/archives 3. http://rosalind.info/problems/list-view/

If you are going to exercise your brain, you might as well get smarter and learn useful skills in the process.

>If you are going to exercise your brain, you might as well get smarter and learn useful skills in the process.

One might argue that that's the only way to actually exercise your brain.

If there are, they would be as difficult to recognize as germ theory to a 16th century doctor. We simply don't know enough yet about the mechanism.

Yeah, it's interesting. We have decades of research into standardized tests in the academic setting, and yet most people generally feel that these metrics have very limited utility.

The notion that a startup has A: deep insights into the nature of cognitive function that others do not; and B: devised and tested a paradigm that sustainably improves it, was always a little shocking to see claimed.

You don't need germ theory to notice that washing your hands before performing surgery improves outcomes.

Yes, but you do need to start moving towards germ theory to understand why washing your hands with charcoal instead of soap results in dead patients again. Of course scientific theory and scientific observation are bootstrapped off of each other in the course of a dialectic, but raw statistics only get you so far until deductive work is required for the next steps, and the cycle repeats. It's easy to spot and distill in hindsight what is less obvious in the act; and when you've got as many variables as the human experience does, and as many ethical questions when you experiment with them, the process becomes all the more vague.

can you explain a bit about the charcoal/soap thing?

It helps. It's much easier to notice something and take it seriously when it fits a theory you already have. Kind of like if your house is haunted, you might not notice that the sounds you hear at night fit that theory unless you already have it in mind. If you try to understand the noises in terms of your house settling, a fugitive living in your attic, or an animal breaking in at night to steal food, you won't notice, or won't take seriously, the patterns that would be obvious to someone who believes in ghosts.

This is, if you will, a very germ-theoretic perspective. Why would you notice, by eye, this correlation and not that one? More importantly, why would you collect these data rather than those? Scientific paradigms are "nefarious" because they control experimental design, so unparadigmatic data only come about by accident. And accidental results are often as not a flaw in the design or instrumentation, or else "noise."

Of course it's easier if you have a viable theory to deduce efficient treatments. But the correlation between hand washing and medical outcome was noticed before germ theory, this is why I mentioned it. It didn't become popular until later though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

Fair enough, and that guy's work was pretty close (in time) to the "germ revolution." The accounting of scientific revolutions is that anomalous results start getting common enough that people get uncomfortable calling them noise or faulty methodology. I'm not an expert in the history of paradigms of disease, but these results coming out were almost certainly part of what chipped away faith in miasma theory and, if you will, created the unease required for revolution.

Importantly, Semmelweis couldn't offer an explanation for why washing hands helped, which seems to have greatly hindered his credibility. I said you were offering a germ-theoretic perspective, because we do (and must do) the same thing: How else should we separate the spurious correlations from the important ones? How do we separate superstition from good practice? How do we tell the crackpots from the creative? If we suspend the germ theory, what if there was something else going on at the hospital, and hand-washing was just something this guy noticed and latched on to? Then you'd be giving people the wrong advice---which is, after all, one of many reasons that correlation is not causation.

Why not just build stuff and solve real life problems with all your effort? That in itself is brain training AND productive at the same time.

I mean, I do that. I build stuff (programs) in my off-time to solve problems I have. Eg, home automation, storage solutions, lots of cli utilities, etc.

As strange as it sounds though, I think this has been making me more... dumb. Sure, I'm improving a subset of skills, especially computer science related with some of the more challenging projects, but I don't feel more intelligent. I forget things constantly, and frankly my knowledge of the world seems to just.. fade. I'm becoming so hyper focused that it's hurting me.

That's why I mentioned spaced repetition. Not only do I want to improve my general brain functions, but I especially want to improve my recall of specific things. So I'm using a distributed database of mine as a way to keep a life journal. Anything I forget, I want to add to this knowledge journal, and try to ensure that I keep things in my mind.

...basically no.

Dual n-back was thought to be the only thing that worked, but even that now looks non-transferrable. (Gwern is great on this topic.) For young, healthy adults, I do not know of any brain exercise capable of directly raising IQ or its analogues.

You might, maybe, be able to boost neurogenesis. Exercise is a decent candidate for that, and I don't know the situation with drugs there. But I don't know of games that do it.

Realistically, you've got a few options. Your idea, spaced repetition of useful stuff, is great. Practicing memory tricks like mind palaces can improve your long-term memory on arbitrary facts. Picking up new topics dissimilar to the ones you know probably helps synthesis. Lots of things can maybe delay dementia. Meditation can improve focus and alertness.

All of those are worthwhile. The top-line, raise basic IQ stuff? To my knowledge doesn't exist.

I'm conversational in Swedish. Started with duolingo.

Congrats!

Spaced repetition absolutely works. I can literally see it in the statistics as clear as day. This is in addition to all the scientific evidences.

It absolutely works to improve your recall of the test items, but who knows if it improves your short or long term memory in general.

That is, does it make it easier to recall things that are not part of the spaced repetition training?

I haven't seen any studies examining a broader transfer effect from spaced repetition. It seems unlikely - spaced repetition is just a hack of a normal memory mechanism for prioritizing factual knowledge, so why would explicit use of it have any generalized benefits? You are always being exposed to and remembering things, after all.

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