> but it's almost the case you don't need scientific evidence to know that keeping an active mind severely mitigates dementia

What makes you say that? There's plenty of medical phenomena that exist / don't exist despite being logically appealing.

I meant there's limited evidence (see robbiep's post), but it seems as intuitive as 'exercise makes you physically stronger', although I've never read scientific evidence on that.

There is almost unlimited empirical evidence for exercise making one stronger, so I don't see how that is intuitive, a better term is common knowledge. Is it intuitive that eye exercises improve age related visual decline? (It doesn't, just an example)

"you don't need scientific evidence to know"

"but it seems as intuitive"

Knowledge can come only from reasoning based upon observations. You cannot know anything by intuition. You can believe your intuitions and feel that they must be true, but you cannot know they are true.

"Exercise makes you physically stronger" isn't intuitive at all. Are you stronger after you exercise? No! You're weaker than when you started. Rest makes you stronger, short-term. The increase in strength from exercise happens over a very long period of time and is tough to correlate with the exercise unless you study it fairly deeply. Furthermore, non-living objects almost universally decrease in strength from exercise.

Without actually studying the question in some detail, I don't see how one could intuitively conclude that exercise increases physical strength.

If one phrase could sum up human (and probably all living creatures') physiology it would be, "Use it or lose it."

We are adapted to conserve resources so anything that requires resources to maintain will be reduced if we don't actively use it. Muscle tissue, brain cells, you name it if we don't use it it will atrophy.

Yes, but we know this from studying it, not because it's "intuitive".

Intuitive is just a synonym for "similar to previous experiences." Anyone who has regularly exercised or played a sport or even a musical instrument and then stopped knows about use it or lose it we even have a term for it, "being a little rusty."

And anyone who's exerted themselves physically for more than a few minutes at a time knows that the more you do it, the more tired and weak you become (short term). If "intuition" supports both, it says nothing.

I feel you are being disingenuous. We all have enough long-term memory to discern patterns beyond the short term and classify them as such.

Feel what you like, I don't care.

There are plenty of examples, both in nature and in the human body, of "use it or lose it" and "use it up and it's gone".

Because we are human bodies, with all the intuition and wisdom that entails.

It's less intuition and wisdom than many people think; gut feelings for example should be examined, though they're often telling you something important.

I think it's reasonable to infer that, as we are human bodies, we would know how to make ourselves stronger. The idea that mental exercise keeps the brain sharp comes from a similar intuition; it is not surprising to see it confirmed through study.

Why, exactly, would it be reasonable to infer that we would know how to make ourselves stronger, just because our bodies are where we live?

Sure, you could say that mental exercise keeping the brain shark comes from intuition. And I could say that it's intuitive that mental exercise depletes the brain and makes things worse. I don't see how you decide which one is right without going out and studying it.

One cannot, of course. It would be somewhat fatuous to be surprised that exercise makes one stronger, when it has been advocated for thousands of years as the (only) method for doing so. This is as true of mental exercise as it is of physical.

It is not typical of our community norms to downvote reasonable arguments you disagree with. Just FYI.

I'm not talking about "surprised" or anything. I merely object to "intuitive", both in that I don't see how intuition supports this, and I don't think intuition is worth anything here anyway.

Don't assume the person downvoting you is the person you're replying to.

Indeed, that is impossible ^_^ It was an aside for whomever did so. Intuition is not a particularly valuable or precise word, is it.

In the field, what you are referring to is described as "cognitive reserve". People with higher educations levels or who have a more active lifestyle suffer less from the earlier stages of dementia, because they are better able to develop coping strategies.

So, it is similar to exercise in the way that if you are fitter, then you can better weather adverse events. However, cognitive reserve doesn't delay the underlying progress of Alzheimer's disease.