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raisin comments on Open Thread, May 12 - 18, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: eggman 12 May 2014 08:16AM

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Comment author: raisin 12 May 2014 11:01:56AM *  2 points [-]

Corretational or causational e.g. how it affects intelligence or how much intelligent people usually drink?

Comment author: SolveIt 12 May 2014 11:37:58AM 2 points [-]

I'm interested in the causal aspects to help me decide how much I should be drinking.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 12 May 2014 04:51:30PM 3 points [-]

Smart people are less likely to abstain from drinking (search for the word "floored"). I suspect that the quantitative trend is driven by the choice to drink or not and thus the correlation, even if were causal, is not relevant to the question of how much to drink.

Comment author: Lumifer 12 May 2014 02:33:50PM 2 points [-]

Are you just asking how much drinking will make you stupider, long-term?

Comment author: SolveIt 12 May 2014 03:41:07PM 0 points [-]

Yes. I presume it does make you stupider?

Comment author: Lumifer 12 May 2014 03:48:53PM 5 points [-]

Not that I know of, at least in reasonable amounts (where "reasonable" is defined as not causing clinical-grade medical symptoms, like a failing liver).

I haven't seen any evidence that moderate drinking lowers IQ. And if your drinking is immoderate, cognitive effects are probably not what you should be worried about.

Comment author: SolveIt 12 May 2014 03:56:55PM 2 points [-]

I see. Google tells me that smarter people tend to drink more. Would I be right in assuming that this doesn't mean I should drink to get smarter?

Comment author: Lumifer 12 May 2014 04:05:14PM *  11 points [-]

Yes, you would be right. I don't think drinking helps with IQ -- it's mostly used as a stress reliever and a social lubricant, in which roles it functions well.