Starcraft improves your mind & memory improvement

Another one of those coincidental things happened.  Although I stopped playing Starcraft 2, I kept on watching it, and, having caught up on all the matches in the Korean leagues I follow, I searched for some other Starcraft 2 stuff and just so happened to find this article, titled: playing Starcraft can increase your cognitive abilities.

"Importantly, the results of the study suggest that cognitive flexibility can be improved through training, which Glass admits is a controversial theory.  He says that more research will be needed to replicate the results."

I saw that and said, "What?  Isn't that like some bold point I made recently about what I've always believed?"  And... controversial??  I just can't see it as controversial.  I just can't.  Name any area, any subject, any skill, and you can find people who have made significant improvements in that area or subject or skill.  I see no reason why it should be impossible to improve in cognitive flexibility, or in memory, mental agility, logical thinking, creativity, and so on, for that matter.  Now, I'd love to hear any argument for fixed mental ability, because as much as I try to argue the opposite viewpoint against myself, I see neither benefits nor significant evidence for it in this case.  At least in memory, I've seen my own mind make significant improvements.  While there are many things that make me think my memory has improved greatly, I found one old memory game which shows the improvement to be more than just something I'm imagining.

The limits of science

What if I told you that everything you learned in science might not be true?  Well, it might not be, and that is true.  By now you surely know how much I hate setting limits, but here a limit exists.  The laws of science cannot be proven true.

The problem lies in how logic works.  Here are two notable things.  One: statements that have never been proven false are not therefore true, otherwise it would be a true statement that I'm the smartest person in the world (just kidding).  Two: the fact that one explanation works and all other known explanations do not does not make the one that works true.  That would be similar to saying that problems that cannot be answered today will never be answered.  The fact that no one can provide an alternate explanation does not mean that the only supported explanation is true, just as the fact that no one can solve a problem does not mean that the problem cannot be solved.  Now, how does this apply to science in general?

The Talent Code

    I actually read a book about talent.  It's kind of a surprising thing; although it's stuff that I would read, I rarely ever actually do read it.  Usually it's something I only do when I think about something that I'm sure I've heard of before and want to find something talking about it so I can post it here, something like that.  Anyway, this post will be about The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.  If you couldn't have guessed, I don't intend to talk about the quality of the writing or how worthwhile of a read it is, or anything like that.  Who would be interested in knowing that?

Talent exists, so why ask that question??

Maybe you've heard people saying that geniuses are made and not born.  Or something like, it's not that people are talented or that people are prodigies, they just work harder or train more efficiently than others.  Well I have to say that in everything I have seen, effort and methods have never been enough to account for the differences in results.  There's always been something else there.  Something that some people just seem to have and some people just seem to be lacking.  I suppose you could call it... talent.

Think about school.  In a PE class with students learning a new sport, all being taught in the same way and all learning by the same methods, even among the students that never knew anything about the sport before, you'll see a wide variation in rates of improvement.  Sure, you could say that some people care more, try harder, but that doesn't account for everything.  Take any class.  Simply during the class, before anyone has time to go home and study, some people will understand the material easily and some people will struggle with it.  Now, that's not proof that talent exists, but any explanation of the world that attempts to rule out talent or frame it as insignificant just seems so unlikely.  It's almost like saying, "Well I don't think gravity exists, I think everything moves in random directions and it's just a coincidence that everything happens to move down all the time."  You can't prove either theory, but I know which one I believe to be more likely.

Basically, talent exists, so why ask that question?  Why?  Does it make you feel better to think that the world is fair, that everyone who is better than you at anything must have put more effort into it, or learned from a better teacher, or something like that?  I mean, I can answer that question for you anyway.  Talent exists, and in everything you do, there will be people more talented than you, and there will be people less talented than you as well (unless of course you happen to be... -the one-).  So why ask that question?  Instead, why not ask this question:

What can I overcome.

A Story of a Code Wars

It was on one day after my class had ended that I saw a couple of my friends sitting and talking, and I had decided to hang out with them.  Eventually their conversation moved onto the subject of some "Windward code wars" event, and they were trying to decide on members for a team.  Code wars?  "What is this?" I asked.  They answered something like, "Oh yeah, Daniel, you should be on the team.  I mean you're not too bad at this coding stuff right?"  Well it seemed to me to be some kind of team coding competition.  Competitive.  Coding.  With friends.  How could I not do it?  Competitive.  Competitive...

Maybe the idea of a coding competition doesn't sound that exciting to you, but I could already see the story lines going.  Clock ticking down, thirty minutes left.  You've got one last problem to solve, one last error to correct, and you've got to do it now.  You've got to put everything into that one shot, achieve your highest level of problem solving in that moment of pressure, and put it all together to type the code that will lead you to glory, to fame, to the title!..  And I laughed at myself as I always did.  How often does real life turn out like that?  Oh all the time you know.  All - the - time, haha.

I could already feel the nervous excitement building in me waiting for the event to start.  Although, I wouldn't be surprised if I was the only one who could say that.  We would be competing against 7 (I think it was 7 but maybe it was more) other teams from our school, with the top 2 going on to the grand finals.  Some of the people, you could tell, weren't that into the event.  Some (like one of my teammates, cough cough) were there just for the food.  Most of the others were probably there willing to put in a reasonable effort, you know, do what they could.  And then there was me.  "We're gonna win this, right?" I said, half joking, half serious.  Because I wanted to shoot for first.  Not first in our school.  First internationally.  First in the grand finals.  Why aim for less?  The way I saw it, if there was even the slightest glimmer of hope that we could reach the top, then why not go for it?  Why not give it our all?  If in the end you find out you couldn't do it, well then, you couldn't do it, but as long as you believe there's a chance, why not give it everything you've got?  And I could see that chance, that glimmer of hope.  So I let my anticipation grow as we waited to receive the message that would tell us our mission.  Still, I couldn't help but feel that I might have been the only one in the room that was seriously considering the possibility of getting 1st in the grand finals.

From the problem to an answer; The power of logic; Rule-based knowledge is insufficient

For the final project in my machine learning class, one of my classmates asked if I would help them out.  It was one of the few times I got to see how other students approached solving problems, as I usually did all my work by myself.  And, while I did expect it, it still bugged me.  It seemed the only questions they asked were, "How did other people do it?" and "How can we take the ideas or the code that other people have produced and use them here?" and so on.  I wanted to ask, "Why can't we solve the problem ourselves?"  Maybe if these people were undergrads who didn't care much about the subject I could understand better, but these people were Masters and Ph. D. students.  I can't help but feel that at that level, shouldn't your focus be on understanding the problem well enough to solve it yourself?

Now, I don't mean to say that I think that that way of thinking should only be expected of graduate students.  I've heard enough to know that many people approach their class problems the same way: look at related things in notes or the book, ask classmates or the professor for help, and/or look on the internet for similar problems.  Now, none of that is bad in general, but there seems to be such a significant focus on building off others' work or others' knowledge and applying the methods of others, so much so that I have to wonder if people forget how to solve problems from the problem itself.  They'll say, "Movement in a network?  Oh that's a network flow problem and there's all these methods to handle network flows," or "That problem is one of classifying, so I'm going to test out a bunch of different machine learning classifiers."  That kind of approach will work, but if you go from the problem to an answer, rather than searching various answers to find one that applies to your problem, you can take more advantage of the things that make your problem unique.

A Broad, Long Discussion about Genius

First, I would have to consider the easy ways to get things wrong.  One way would be attempting to draw conclusions from the outside looking in.  It is not that appropriate conclusions cannot be drawn in this case; it is just that it's harder to have a sense that your conclusions are correct.  The same goes for considering different cultures and different personality types.  While I can't say that I believe I'm on the outside on the topic of genius, I am aware of the fact that I don't know for sure.  For all I know, maybe I am not a genius, and maybe I have no understanding of what it means to be a genius.  Next, even if I am a genius, I would have to be able to distinguish between things that are due to being intelligent, and things that are due to external factors.  For example, it would be very easy to say that a smart person would develop the same world view that I have.  It was developed through logical thought and well considered concepts, so anyone who thinks logically should come to the same conclusions, right?  I don't think so, because feelings and emotions have a significant impact.  For example, someone who doesn't enjoy being in a crowd is arguably making a logical decision when they decide not to go to a crowded place, while someone who enjoys crowds is making a logical decision when they decide to go.  In the same way, my individual sense of right and wrong and my own balance between conflicting ideas such as order and freedom and individuality and fitting in, all of the things like these play a part in my view of the world.  So, if individual emotions and feelings are not the same for everyone who is a genius, then then their world views will most likely not be the same either.
Anyway, with all that said, here are a bunch of thoughts on various topics related to the concept of genius.