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"Study [..] found that the drug can reduce brain function"

Causal language in news on correlational (case-control) studies should be a crime.

This is a brazen misrepresentation of the results. The direction of the causal arrow (cannabis -> dumb vs dumb -> cannabis)--or if there even is a causal arrow (other factor(s) -> cannabis+dumb)--is purely editorialization and born of a severe lack of journalistic integrity.

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I would be also careful on mixing the word dumb -> lower brain activity. The study focuses on brain activity. We cannot say for sure either if the lower brain activity results into dumber life choices. Brain activity in those areas == intelligence???

Maybe cannabis users become efficient like MoE models, and they don't have to activate as many neurons at each inference step :)

Even worse: proponents of the Neural Efficiency Hypothesis[1] might interpret the "mean brain activation" values reported in the study[2] in the exact opposite manner. :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_efficiency_hypothesis

[2]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Glad someone said it. Unfortunately we are swimming against the tide...

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