Alcohol and Its Effects on Learning
deltaself.com
deltaself.com
The positive way of saying this is that those who are not afraid of making mistakes will learn the most. By their willingness or indifference to being wrong in a conversation they overcome the problems of accumulating unknown unknowns. Meanwhile others who fear embarrassment accept a higher level of ignorance.
The negative way of saying this is that the loudmouth in class is actually doing everyone a favor.
It ties well into this article, as in the study alcohol is being used as a medium to decrease self-awareness. There could be more to this theory. For instance it possible that alcohol is accelerating the formation of new neural connections. But it wouldn't be needed to show a benefit towards learning.
Also, it makes the process more enjoyable, for me. I might want to add that I do not drink at all for long stretches (weeks) while still enjoying a good wine or beer, so this is also a real reward. This, in my opinion, is also key. It kind of lured me into actually doing what I intended.
Study drunk, test better when drunk (lets say buzzed, most people "drunk" cannot function, its subjective in terminology).
Study sober, test better when sober.
You cannot mix it (in the study), IE: study drunk, test sober, study sober, test drunk.
Its a "duh" or common sense thing to me, brain functions being formulative to your current state of function.
I BELIEVE it was the University of Utah (which has a myriad of awesome drunk studies (cell phones vs >.08 alcohol levels, etc).
2. Topic of discussion at every college party ever
Perhaps we should force all politicians to do the same thing? :)
No one's mentioned the Ballmer Peak yet?
People who look down on others for drinking are really no different than anybody who looks down on anybody else who has a lifestyle different from their own.
Don't get me wrong, I like to drink a lot. And I don't look down on others who drink a lot. I certainly don't think they're dumb. But I do think promoting/encouraging/bragging about it is generally kind of silly, especially when alcoholism is a serious problem that destroys lives.
Don't get me wrong, I think alcoholism is a problem, but I know that drinking is not. In fact, with all the recent neoprohibitionist MADD crap, I think drinking needs some public advocacy of its own.
Curious that alcohol was singled out.
On my note, I've found alcohol is great for letting you tackle problems once you have a good enough toolbox (that you know how to use). In other words, its kinda trash to learn a new programming language while drunk, but once you know one, it's great for dealing with random/novel situations. I get this especially while going through my school work (particularly physics). Once I have my toolbox of equations and laws to work with, getting buzzed just makes it feel 'easier' to see the solution, and how to put those pieces together.
Somewhat different from the learning a new language example (they are clearly still putting together their toolboxes), but it's also a question of tolerance. Equations and compilers are a lot less tolerant of syntactic (and just in general) mistakes than another human... especially another one at the bar.