Carl-Richard

You could argue it's nothing but memory: memory and associations.

I just thought of an interesting analogy: if your mind is the act of walking, your working memory is the soles of your feet (I have no idea how accurate this is lol; my mind is very tired, it's walking slowly).

Well, fortunately for academics, the paper above mentions a little bit less scary solutions than that ? One proposal is mandatory replication before publishing (and a lack of successful replication would mean no publishing of the original study). One problem with this (out of several) is that it can negatively impact innovation. For example, a researcher who likes to pursue wild ideas could eventually strike gold and produce a lot of scientific progress, but it's generally high-risk with respect to replicability, as most wild ideas fail. So if he is forced to replicate before publishing, he will be incentivized to pursue safer and less innovative ideas that are more likely to replicate (because publishing is how you survive as a scientist). So there is a constant struggle between innovation, replication and publishability; scientific progress, truth and survival of the scientist. Also, some studies are not possible to replicate in principle (e.g. studies on the election).

I'm reading probably the most comprehensive paper on the topic right now, and it presents some alarming statistics regarding the lack of replicability in fields like medicine: Scientific Utopia: II. Restructuring Incentives and Practices to Promote Truth Over Publishability - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1745691612459058

I agree that you generally shouldn't speak about God to random people, because it's most likely a waste of time and they will think you're weird. I think this is actually your rational mind trying to speak to you (in a bit of a roundabout way). You can call it a lesson from God, but in any case, the lesson is clear.

Did the soul choose what it wants to choose?

@Optimized Life You could have a point. On a second thought, meditation doesn't seem comparable at all. N-Back feels like it actually requires a lot of effort. Meditation is the complete opposite for me. I'm just sitting and doing nothing, relaxing, untightening knots, doing an internal message. N-Back is staring intensely into a screen while running a marathon in my working memory. Meditation leaves me energized, N-Back leaves me a bit drained.

You can't debate most people on it. They won't even know what you're talking about.

I felt that Quad 3-Back was too much, so now I'm doing Triple-3-Back (Audio, Position, Color). I usually get between 25-40%, but the first trial of the day tends to be considerably higher for some reason (today I got 57%). I try to do at least 10 trials a day (15 minutes). I think if I wanted to take it more seriously, I should do at least 1 hour a day (that's what I did with meditation).

?

@Epikur In order to not be a hypocrite about being scientifically accurate, let me clarify that while I implied earlier that the musicians having higher IQ disproves the claim you made in your title, that is not necessarily the case. While an average musician probably listens to more music than an average non-musician, the IQ difference could come from the act of creating music rather than listening to it. So the IQ difference could theoretically be consistent with the suggestion that people who listen to a lot of music lower their IQ. But in reality, I think that is unlikely.

I like this cover because you can feel the groove through the bopping of the Go-Pro (and because the drummer is tight).

Well, again, if you had read the study, you would know that they studied both musicians and non-musicians.

You're gaslighting yourself.

I read the thing. It seems to feed into the points in my other thread (the replication crisis, etc.).

Your title is misleading. The musicians in the study actually had higher IQs on average than the non-musicians (119.49 IQ ± 7.84 vs. 116.69 IQ ± 7.85). The study specifically looks at "sensation seeking" in relationship to music. This is how they define it: So, assuming that their questionnaire accurately reflects how they define sensation seeking above, it would be more accurate to say that extroverted people who like to go to loud concerts while probably getting drunk and meeting a lot of people is what has been shown to correlate with lower IQ. It's not "high music consumption" that correlates with lower IQ. Based on my personal experience, I do feel that if I've played guitar intensely for a while, sometimes I'll be unable to think clearly for 5-10 minutes afterwards. But the way I generally engage with music is still vastly different from what has been described above, as well as in the questionnaire itself. I wouldn't describe my relationship to music as "music has offered me magnificent experiences; I want to feel the music in my whole body; I want to listen to music that evokes feelings in me". I would describe it as connecting deeply with something beautiful or interesting. And according to the study, this would make sense, as I'm an extreme introvert. So yeah, next time, maybe actually read the study you're referencing and you'll maybe end up not looking like somebody with a low IQ

I would modify your hypothesis to "women might be more sensitive to subtle things". I'll admit, "absolute black" does sound kinda weird. "Isn't that brand the same as your purse?" does sound like it could be funny when said in a certain context. But these are small things. Unless the vibe you're picking up from them is actually evil, just laugh with them: "yeah, that was kind of weird". Don't take yourself too seriously.

@newbee Religion comes in many shapes and sizes.

Either say you're guessing, or say that it's for the sake of the argument (the argument that you made later which actually seems reasonable if you grant the premises). Don't just say "it's 50%".

Bro you're like so confident in your own bullshit

No, that still implies intent Well, then you should be hypercritical of the fact that you haven't read the study and found out which hormones they used

Consider how in school, you'll be assigned to learn multiple subjects "at the same time", yet you should be able to learn all the subjects. Another example: English is my second language. My mother tongue didn't really suffer when I started learning English. However, the thing about languages is that if you don't use it actively, it will not develop very far. So if the time you spend on one language takes up the time you spend on another, then that has an impact.

Nope. You could do a dive on Google Scholar (no pun intended).

That's not lying ? That would be misinformation. Lying implies intent to deceive. But you haven't read the study so you don't know.

Well, addressing the crisis in the field does start with questioning one's methodologies and then making them more rigorous and maybe changing them. We've been given many examples of all of those things. For example, should we move from the Null Hypothesis Significance Testing paradigm to a Bayesian paradigm for our inferential statistics? Should we mostly focus on how we construct our hypotheses (theory-focused) or how we test them (empirically focused)? Should we focus on doing direct replications or conceptual replications? Are there better alternatives to preregistration? The list goes on. I would say there is a mix of all that in this course, maybe not so much politics of science. The beginning parts were mostly philosophy of science and scientific methodology. Again, very Kuhnian of you. Remember, we also had some heavy hitters after Kuhn, e.g. Lakatos, who had a more mixed view on that (Popper was mostly a "good science = progress" guy; Kuhn was again more sociological; Lakatos was in-between). I've had a soft spot for Feyerabend and his anarchism since I first read about him years ago, but we didn't get to read much about him now (he is a bit fringe I guess). I'll think about that.