Dementia Rate Drops Sharply, as Forecast

Re:Dementia Rate Drops Sharply, as Forecast by mikeash on Tuesday July 16, 2013 @03:13PM (#6054095)

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.

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Re:Dementia Rate Drops Sharply, as Forecast by samatman on Tuesday July 16, 2013 @04:51PM (#6054665)

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.

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Re:Dementia Rate Drops Sharply, as Forecast by mikeash on Tuesday July 16, 2013 @06:53PM (#6055262)

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.

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Re:Dementia Rate Drops Sharply, as Forecast by samatman on Friday July 19, 2013 @12:58PM (#6071359)

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

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