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Can 'brain games' really help you improve the way your brain functions?
You've probably seen ads for apps promising to make you smarter in just a few minutes a day. Hundreds of so-called "brain training" programs can be purchased for download. These simple games are designed to challenge mental abilities, with the ultimate goal of improving the performance of important everyday tasks.
But can just clicking away at animations of swimming fish or flashed streets signs on your phone really help you improve the way your brain functions?
Two large groups of scientists and mental health practitioners published consensus statements, months apart in 2014, on the effectiveness of these kinds of brain games. Both included people with years of research experience and expertise in cognition, learning, skill acquisition, neuroscience and dementia. Both groups carefully considered the same body of evidence available at the time.
Yet, they issued exactly opposite statements.
One concluded that "there is little evidence that playing brain games improves underlying broad cognitive abilities, or that it enables one to better navigate a complex realm of everyday life."
The other argued that "a substantial and growing body of evidence shows that certain cognitive training regimens can significantly improve cognitive function, including in ways that generalize to everyday life."
[...]The most important lesson from the literature on training is this: If you want to improve your performance on a task that's important to you, practice that task. Playing brain games may only make you better at playing brain games.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday June 13 2019, @01:19PM (7 children)
Or, you know, we could just understand GP's statement about "The experiments *prove*..." as the standard, normal use of the word "prove" in English used in >99% of all cases. To "prove" in normal standard English has never meant some sort of formal deductive "proof" as in Euclid. To "prove" is to offer supporting evidence for a claim, sometimes to a particular standard. For example, the phrase "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" makes no sense if "proof" is only an absolute yes or no for all times and places.
Also, historically "proof" had to do with testing the quality of something -- an argument or a substance/thing. It still survives a bit in things like "proofing yeast," where "proof" was basically testing to see whether the yeast was still alive and working and could be used to raise bread.
So, an experiment "proving" something is well in line with the history of the word "prove" (as in testing something, in this case the quality of a theory/model) as well as in modern standard English usage of "prove" to mean to provide evidence in support of.
I haven't researched this in detail, but my sense is that the bizarre attempt to restrict the word "proof" to the mathematical sense when talking about philosophy of science is an artifact of debates in the philosophy of science only in the past century or so. I'm not sure why the heck we'd ever want to use the mathematical sense in relationship to science, since, as you implicitly are arguing, science can't use deductive logic generally to "prove" things in such a way.
Instead, we seem stuck with this totally weird set of arguments that only happen among those who know something about math and science where somebody says, "Science proves..." and then some other guy says, "Well, you know science can't REALLY 'prove'..."
Why the hell do we have this conversation all the time? Why not just accept that "prove" only means "deductive reasoning asserted to be valid for all times and places" when we're talking about formal logic or mathematical "proofs" and in all other places, "prove" just means what it means in English >99% of the time??
Sidenote: I find it exceptionally ironic that these bizarre conversations about "proof" in science seem to have really become common after Gödel basically showed even "proof" in mathematics is always going to have limitations too. So "proof" in the sense that you are assuming NEVER EXISTS -- not in math, not in science... NEVER. Why can't we quit this absurd argument, which most people on this site know very well. The word "prove" in common parlance means to produce a significant piece or amount of supporting evidence. That's ALL it means in normal English.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 13 2019, @05:15PM (2 children)
Alternatively, you could note that my point was directed towards the hard requirement of experimentation for something to qualify as science.
Would have been less effort than mixing that wall of text of etymological dough which will not prove given the context of a non-native English speaker (not that I don't appreciate your considerations, thanks for them)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday June 13 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)
Point taken, though my comment was directed less at you alone than at the thread overall and OP's hedging at invoking the word "prove."
I've seen too many comment threads taking the form, "This study proves..." followed by several comments on how "science can never 'prove' anything..." I just get tired of seeing such discussions, which seem rather pointless and more about semantics rather than substance. I assumed you were also invoking that idea, along with the more specific point. Apologies if this was misdirected.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 13 2019, @06:13PM
No harm caused and otherwise an interesting point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 13 2019, @06:21PM (1 child)
It's a rhetorical technique used to ignore the vast amount of evidence behind certain, very specific, scientific domains.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 14 2019, @07:59AM
It's the group that constantly changes their predictions every time their previous one is demonstrated to be false that you ought to be more critical of.
I trust the Mayans more when it comes to predicting the end of the world.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 14 2019, @07:55AM
As a mathematician, I always get wound up by people who can't tell the difference between mathematics and science, and consequently between mathematical proof (absolute, even if dependent on something unproven, such as GRH), and scientific proof (relative to what else we know at the time, up for changing any time we know differently).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 14 2019, @08:04AM
(Same etymological root as "probe", so hardly surprising.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves