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Comment by damnesian | Hacker News Reader

Like any tool, it depends on how you use it. As a teenager, I used it to paint and write. It opened many doors. I found inner expression that was not possible otherwise.

The measures used in the study are not absolutes and only a fragment of what constitutes human intelligence.

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IQ as measured correlates positively with all talents.

There is moderate correlation with arts, sports and athletic talents (weak for basic athleticism, moderate to strong for elite levels.) With music and writing the correlation is even better, from moderate to strong. High IQ increases the ability for inner expression, or expression of any kind.

People seem to forget that IQ is a factor as in factor analysis. It does not measure a "thing". It measures variability among observed, correlated variables.

That's why all of your favorite, and history's greatest, visual artists, writers, athletes, musicians and aesthetes stay far away from any mind altering substances!

Erdos famously stayed far away from amphetamines to preserve those precious 2 IQ points.

This is a false equivalence. There is no known correlation between amphetamines and a decline in IQ. If anything, they are nootropics (they don't make you smarter but improve your short-term memory, focus, etc.). Psilocybin stimulates neuroplasticity and adult neurogenesis. Cannabis, as far as we know, does no such thing.

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