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This study almost has Illness as Metaphor vibes. Fight dementia by diligently training your mind, keeping disease at bay! Vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia

This study almost has Illness as Metaphor vibes. Fight dementia by diligently training your mind, keeping disease at bay! Vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, and Alzheimers all seem to involve damage to brain structures. It strikes me as unlikely that you can chess your way out of this. The causality is likely reversed.

99_00 3y ago
>This study almost has Illness as Metaphor vibes. Fight dementia by diligently training your mind, keeping disease at bay! >Vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, and Alzheimers all seem to involve damage to brain structures. It strikes me as unlikely that you can chess your way out of this. The causality is likely reversed. Do you have a problem with exercising your mind because it won't work or because of some other reason related to Illness as Metaphor? Exercising your body to keep diseases at by is standard medical advice. Do you have an issue with that also?
WalterBright 3y ago
Exercising your body seems to have all sorts of disease-delaying benefits. Why would exercising the mind be necessarily different? After all, when you're thinking hard you're burning extra calories.
- racl101 3y ago
  > After all, when you're thinking hard you're burning extra calories. When I think really hard, I get depressed that can't solve the problem and binge eat junk food for comfort.
- jackmott42 3y ago
  Because we have a lot off history of researching this topic, wherein the benefits of mental practice usually appears to be very specific and not general.
  - taeric 3y ago
    I am curious if this is as much a reflection on not knowing how to practice, versus only playing at it. If I weight lift but never progress above a 1kg weight, I would not be shocked that I don't get any of the advanced muscle benefits of weight lifting. Same for pretty much any physical exercise. If I don't push past my current limits, I am not surprised at lack of growth. To that end, playing sudoku, but only staying at the "1 star" difficulty puzzles, I don't know why I would expect brain growth, as it were. Learning the strategies and modeling that is needed to solve the advanced ones, though, is a very different thing.
    - jackmott42 3y ago
      I've noticed its a common thing wherein: 1. People imagine without any evidence, but only a plausible story, that X is good for Y (say for instance, vitamin C for colds, because vitamin C is involved in the immune system) 2. Study after study is done finding no benefit, but each study you quote, someone finds some nit pick about it "well maybe the dosage wasn't high enough" or "maybe they did/didn't take it with calcium" and then continue to believe there must be some way to derive benefit
      - taeric 3y ago
        I mean, this isn't wrong. At the same time, it took a long time for studies to show that ulcers are not just reactions to stress. Study after study for many years showed the opposite. This isn't even getting into the problems of studies with nutrition, in general. That said, I should be clear that I'm not pushing for learning some of these "brain games" for their own sake. I am more throwing out that equivalent of the Tyler Durden quote regarding chickens. :D
- taeric 3y ago
  One of the neatest claims in the book Peak, to me, was that this idea is directly observable. Trained and practicing cab drivers had measurably larger "spatial areas" of the brain over others.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  Causality is never so obvious: When you are thinking hard you use more electrolytes. Deplete too many electrolytes in your brain too quickly and risk causing a stroke. Strokes may cause and are at least known to exacerbate dementia. (Calories are a bad metric. There's so much chemical complexity they intentionally avoid. Not all "calories" are spent the same way, especially when you are talking about brain chemistry. Optimizing for how much heat a brain generates is directly optimizing for the wrong thing because when the brain is literally smoking, that is a stroke and it is dying.)
  - hattmall 3y ago
    Except that causality is frequently very obvious.
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      I don't know what you are trying to say here at all. If causality was "frequently" obvious most of science wouldn't need to exist and the scientific process might just be a few steps shorter. Determining the difference between correlation and causality is hard. Always has been. That's just scientific reality.

99_00 3y ago

>This study almost has Illness as Metaphor vibes. Fight dementia by diligently training your mind, keeping disease at bay! >Vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, and Alzheimers all seem to involve damage to brain structures. It strikes me as unlikely that you can chess your way out of this. The causality is likely reversed. Do you have a problem with exercising your mind because it won't work or because of some other reason related to Illness as Metaphor? Exercising your body to keep diseases at by is standard medical advice. Do you have an issue with that also?

WalterBright 3y ago

Exercising your body seems to have all sorts of disease-delaying benefits. Why would exercising the mind be necessarily different? After all, when you're thinking hard you're burning extra calories.

racl101 3y ago
> After all, when you're thinking hard you're burning extra calories. When I think really hard, I get depressed that can't solve the problem and binge eat junk food for comfort.
jackmott42 3y ago
Because we have a lot off history of researching this topic, wherein the benefits of mental practice usually appears to be very specific and not general.
- taeric 3y ago
  I am curious if this is as much a reflection on not knowing how to practice, versus only playing at it. If I weight lift but never progress above a 1kg weight, I would not be shocked that I don't get any of the advanced muscle benefits of weight lifting. Same for pretty much any physical exercise. If I don't push past my current limits, I am not surprised at lack of growth. To that end, playing sudoku, but only staying at the "1 star" difficulty puzzles, I don't know why I would expect brain growth, as it were. Learning the strategies and modeling that is needed to solve the advanced ones, though, is a very different thing.
  - jackmott42 3y ago
    I've noticed its a common thing wherein: 1. People imagine without any evidence, but only a plausible story, that X is good for Y (say for instance, vitamin C for colds, because vitamin C is involved in the immune system) 2. Study after study is done finding no benefit, but each study you quote, someone finds some nit pick about it "well maybe the dosage wasn't high enough" or "maybe they did/didn't take it with calcium" and then continue to believe there must be some way to derive benefit
    - taeric 3y ago
      I mean, this isn't wrong. At the same time, it took a long time for studies to show that ulcers are not just reactions to stress. Study after study for many years showed the opposite. This isn't even getting into the problems of studies with nutrition, in general. That said, I should be clear that I'm not pushing for learning some of these "brain games" for their own sake. I am more throwing out that equivalent of the Tyler Durden quote regarding chickens. :D
taeric 3y ago
One of the neatest claims in the book Peak, to me, was that this idea is directly observable. Trained and practicing cab drivers had measurably larger "spatial areas" of the brain over others.
WorldMaker 3y ago
Causality is never so obvious: When you are thinking hard you use more electrolytes. Deplete too many electrolytes in your brain too quickly and risk causing a stroke. Strokes may cause and are at least known to exacerbate dementia. (Calories are a bad metric. There's so much chemical complexity they intentionally avoid. Not all "calories" are spent the same way, especially when you are talking about brain chemistry. Optimizing for how much heat a brain generates is directly optimizing for the wrong thing because when the brain is literally smoking, that is a stroke and it is dying.)
- hattmall 3y ago
  Except that causality is frequently very obvious.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    I don't know what you are trying to say here at all. If causality was "frequently" obvious most of science wouldn't need to exist and the scientific process might just be a few steps shorter. Determining the difference between correlation and causality is hard. Always has been. That's just scientific reality.