3 ms·

Chess, memory training and music only improve chess, memory training and music

4 points by AndrewDucker 9y ago

grawprog 9y ago
I disagree. Learning chess gave me a better understanding of spacial analysis and helped me learn to pay attention to little details in everything I do. I still think back to the moment I realized I needed to pay attention to all the pieces on the board when I miss little things I do. Having a good working memory helps me with literally everything I do all the time. Learning music helped me with math and I find writing songs to be similar to writing a computer program. I think about them both the same way. They're both large complete things built from different abstract parts. Building a program, using classes and structs built from basic primitives is not much different that building a song by layering different notes and chords into tracks and tweaking them until they work together as a song. In both cases there's certain patterns that do and don't work together, you have to pay attention to tiny details. One misplaced keyword or drumbeat can fuck up a whole program or song. I work on both the same way, I start with a base loop for my program or song, I focus on one small piece at a time, then tie it together with the rest, I frequently go back and change old parts because they don't work well as a whole or I figured out a better way to do it. Personally I feel like learning those things helped me be better at life in general. Music and chess are both extremely useful for learning about abstraction which is pretty much the most important skill a person can learn. Abstraction makes our society possible. Both of these teach you how to focus on small parts and tie them to a bigger whole. Everything we do is based on these concepts. They both teach you to think and plan ahead. If you're playing a song you have to know ahead of time what's coming next or at least be able to read music on the fly. If you play music with other people it helps with learning to read people and work with others cohesively. You have to be able to tell what the others are doing, make sure you stay on time with everybody as well as keeping track of the song and just about everything else going on. Honestly everything I learn I find ways to apply to other things I do in life. Things are a lot more similar than they may seem. Humans only have so mamy skills but we have countless ways to apply them to do amazing things.
- brudgers 9y ago
  The finding of the study mentioned in the article was that the far effect was inversely proportional to the quality of the study design. Everything in one anecdotal experience may in fact be the case but in many situations will not constitute a high quality experiment.

4 points by AndrewDucker 9y ago

I disagree. Learning chess gave me a better understanding of spacial analysis and helped me learn to pay attention to little details in everything I do. I still think back to the moment I realized I needed to pay attention to all the pieces on the board when I miss little things I do. Having a good working memory helps me with literally everything I do all the time. Learning music helped me with math and I find writing songs to be similar to writing a computer program. I think about them both the same way. They're both large complete things built from different abstract parts. Building a program, using classes and structs built from basic primitives is not much different that building a song by layering different notes and chords into tracks and tweaking them until they work together as a song. In both cases there's certain patterns that do and don't work together, you have to pay attention to tiny details. One misplaced keyword or drumbeat can fuck up a whole program or song. I work on both the same way, I start with a base loop for my program or song, I focus on one small piece at a time, then tie it together with the rest, I frequently go back and change old parts because they don't work well as a whole or I figured out a better way to do it. Personally I feel like learning those things helped me be better at life in general. Music and chess are both extremely useful for learning about abstraction which is pretty much the most important skill a person can learn. Abstraction makes our society possible. Both of these teach you how to focus on small parts and tie them to a bigger whole. Everything we do is based on these concepts. They both teach you to think and plan ahead. If you're playing a song you have to know ahead of time what's coming next or at least be able to read music on the fly. If you play music with other people it helps with learning to read people and work with others cohesively. You have to be able to tell what the others are doing, make sure you stay on time with everybody as well as keeping track of the song and just about everything else going on. Honestly everything I learn I find ways to apply to other things I do in life. Things are a lot more similar than they may seem. Humans only have so mamy skills but we have countless ways to apply them to do amazing things.

brudgers 9y ago
The finding of the study mentioned in the article was that the far effect was inversely proportional to the quality of the study design. Everything in one anecdotal experience may in fact be the case but in many situations will not constitute a high quality experiment.