1: it’s not last, and 2: it’s not sad, because 3: people aren’t reading the source material. I love xkcd, too, but that doesn’t apply here.
Just because results don’t match expectations doesn’t mean we should throw pies of satire in their face. That’s like the response in the OP of ‘no’. This is actually interesting.
The data does not support the conclusion. A simple “no” is okay. Take a look at these examples of regression. See how any one of the conclusions is absurd? Mind you the data in that example is far less random!
How do you think a case of “this explains some of the differences in the population, but not a lot” should look?
And that looks potentially fine for an error bar. For a mean estimate, SE=SD/√N , so depending on what error band they used this looks quite plausible.
I recommend finding a different statistics teacher, preferably one who isn’t a comic and one who knows what the difference between a standard deviation, a standard error, and a 95% interval is. Those should not be too hard to find, it’s relatively basic stuff, but many people actually kinda struggle with the concepts (made harder by various factors, don’t get me started on the misuse of bar charts).
I post the picture because it gets the point across, not because that is “my teacher”. The point is that you can choose smart any random regression function and they all fit just as “good”.
That’s stupid, though. If you can explain 11% of the variance of some noisy phenomenon like cognitive and behavioral flexibility, that’s noteworthy. They tested both linear and quadratic terms, and the quadratic one worked better in terms of prediction, and is also an expression of a meaningful theoretical model, rather than just throwing higher polynomials at it for the fun of it. Quadratic here also would coincide with some homogenizing mechanism at the two ends of the age distribution.
onslaught545@lemmy.zip
on 21 Sep 00:43
nextcollapse
But I have eyes and the curve they picked as best fit is really poorly fitting. It’s such a poor fit that is almost in a dead zone of the random points.
It’s a 95% CI, presumably for the expected value of the conditional (on age) population mean. It looks correct, given the sample size and variance, what issue do you see with it?
To expand a little: you get a 95% ci by taking the expected value ±SE*1.96 . The SE you get for a normal distribution by taking the sample SD and dividing that by the sqrt of the sample size. So if you take a standard normal distribution, the SE for a sample size of 9 would be 1/3 and for a sample size of 100 it would be 1/10, etc. This is much tighter than the population distribution, but that’s because youre estimating just the population mean, not anything else.
Capturing structured variance in the data then should increase the precision of your estimate of the expected value, because you’re removing variance from the error term and add it into the other parts of your model (cf. the term analysis of variance).
Maybe, yeah, but I kinda get annoyed at this kinda dismissiveness - it’s a type of vague anti-science or something like that. Like… Sure, overfitting is a potential issue, but the answer to that isn’t to never fit any curve when data is noisy, it is (among other things) to build solid theories and good tests thereof. A lot of interesting stuff, especially behavioral things, is noisy and you can’t expect to always have relationships that are simple enough to see.
You’re probably right. But also, I was annoyed, not trying to convince. Maybe not the best place to post from. :)
To be honest, I doubt Munroe wants to say “if the effect is smaller than you, personally, can spot in the scatterplot, disbelieve any and all conclusions drawn from the dataset”. He seems to be a bit more evenhanded than that, even though I wouldn’t be surprised if a sizable portion of his fans weren’t.
It’s kinda weird, scatterplot inspection is an extremely useful tool in principled data analysis, but spotting stuff is neither sufficient nor necessary for something to be meaningful.
But also… an R^2 of .1 corresponds to a Cohen’s d of 0.67. if this were a comparison of groups, roughly three quarters of the control group would be below the average person in the experimental group. I suspect people (including me) are just bad at intuitions about this kinda thing and like to try to feel superior or something and let loose some half-baked ideas about statistics. Which is a shame, because some of those ideas can become pretty, once fully baked.
TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
on 21 Sep 15:38
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Yet it’s one single sample, and possibly not a great one. Few things could cause the shape seen like sample selection of healthy people ignores a lot more of the 65+ community than the younger, and also stuff like those born around the 50’s have higher lead levels could cause more of a dip, or like… plenty of stuff. After some repetitions sure but even then… that’s 11% hell I could probably put in an exponential with a negative exponent and be as accurate or better.
Sure, you could do some wild overfitting. But why? What substantive theoretical model would such a data model correspond to?
A more straightforward conclusion to draw would be that age is far from the only predictor of flexibility etc., but on the list nevertheless, and if you wanna rule out alternative explanations (or support them), you might have to go and do more observations that allow such arguments to be constructed.
TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
on 22 Sep 00:14
collapse
I mean, that shape is mostly a cone (oop realize I said negative exponent not negative with an exponent but, yeah that plus some other stuff to actually shape it a bit better), just showing… as you get older it could either get worse (if you essentially stop using it) or better (if you continue to use it). But I mean that idea is certainly less provocative than what they’ve got.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 21 Sep 12:53
collapse
Wait so… his own brain isn’t antifragile (neuroplastic) enough to consider the idea that some other people his age have brains that actually are antifragile (neuroplastic)?
You could probably make a 5 or 10 minute sketch, for econ nerds, out of how absolutely absurd this is.
I read a couple Teleb books about 15 years ago, they’re very funny. You go in thinking they’re these books about systematic collapse, but mostly its just about how he’s so smart he gets to be friends with Benoit Mandelbrot.
The theme of Anti-Fragile is “don’t be a sucker” which is really good advice tbh, but if you’re not a sucker you wouldnt have fallen for the apocalyptic framing of a book about how he’s so smart because he read some entry-level philosophy at some point, while Paul Krugman is a fucking moron and the nobel prize for economics is a joke
But we know for a fact that plasticity does drop with age, that’s why it’s so difficult to learn foreign language after childhood.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
on 21 Sep 11:35
nextcollapse
this is like saying you can’t run after 30, yeah sure it generally becomes less trivial but if you actually try to do it and don’t do it in the worst way possible it’s absolutely doable without much struggle.
kids absorb language like a sponge, adults are like silica gel, just expose yourself to the target language often and you’ll learn it. The problem is that many people are horrendously impatient and try to brute force language learning in like 2 months by memorizing individual sentences and shit, which isn’t how our brains work…
I’m not sure that analogy holds since running is an almost entirely physical task, and the brain’s plasticity is relatively unique and different than how the muscles in your legs degrade.
Neuroplasticity does drop with age, but the drop is smaller than it was previously assumed to be, especially outside of early childhood (you may note that eg. this graph starts at 20 years old)
For a fact, until it isn’t for a fact. Unfortunately things may change like how majority of physics was disproven in the early 1900
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 21 Sep 19:13
nextcollapse
It helps a lot that they’re completely immersed in the language, by people who want to help them learn, and they desperately need to tell us things with no alternative.
Children absorb language like a spknge because they are forced to by necessity. Moved to a Spanish speaking country and in three years I could run linguistic circles around any three year old. (half joke but you get the point hopefully)
Matriks404@lemmy.world
on 21 Sep 12:17
nextcollapse
I am 29, and so far I didn’t really see any mental decline, sometimes even the reverse - I become better at learning certain stuff. Although I am also more aware that I will never be on the level some very talented people are, but it’s fine.
Played a reflex-based video game against a teenager lately?
working_bee@sh.itjust.works
on 21 Sep 13:42
nextcollapse
I feel like reflexes are different than learning. Motor control definitely gets worse over time.
Matriks404@lemmy.world
on 21 Sep 14:01
nextcollapse
I don’t really play competitive video games, because I have always seen them as waste of time, and I easily get angry,but recently I nearly did get all retroachievements for NES Terris (just one remaining), so I guess my reflexes are not horrible yet.
I don’t think this is neuroplasticity, as much as it is having a broader experience to bring to bear. I have so much knowledge and experience with a variety of things that I can apply and relate to new skills to learn things fairly quickly.
I also find there’s a ceiling on my abilities, like you mentioned. I’m never going to learn something to the same depth as someone who learns it as a kid and carries it forwards, things just don’t seem to sink deep into intuition and instinct like that, but I can certainly pick up something well enough to enjoy it and enjoy the process of improving at it. I love learning new skills and pushing myself, and I don’t mind the idea that that’s the way to age gracefully and stay sharp.
martinb@lemmy.sdf.org
on 21 Sep 19:39
nextcollapse
I’m never going to learn something to the same depth as someone who learns it as a kid
Not sure about this. People told me I would not be able to learn piano as an adult, but after 5 years of playing 15 - 30 minutes per night I feel like I am about as good as a child or teenager who put in the same amount of time. I am starting to see how people can sight read at full speed (vs me for an intermediate piece I might be able to get 20% speed, with probably poor accuracy).
I think you might be comparing someone else’s 20 - 25+ years of experience (eg, someone who has consistently played piano their whole life) to your ability to pick up a new skill from scratch. There is just a huge time sink for a brand new topic and it takes anyone a ton of time. So if you really wanted to pick up some theoretical physics or something, but are currently bad at math, it might take 15 years just to get to the beginning to really be one someone’s level who… Started 15 years ago.
Unless I guess if there is unlearning time. Like the smarter every day video where they made a reverse turning bicycle that was impossible for people to use unless they spent forever relearning, vs his son who picked it up relatively easy. I think they had to unlearn what they knew so well.
Mhm, that’s fair. I feel like there is some degree of intuition and utter top level mastery that may be unattainable as an adult. But I’m talking about something like a second language feeling completely natural, or Olympic level mastery of a skill. And that requires a lot more than just being young as well.
It feels crazy to assert that you can’t learn any skill as an adult though. It’s absolutely hard to make the time like you could as a kid, but if you make it a priority, I feel like pretty much anything is possible. I certainly think you can learn more than enough to be satisfied and have a great time and impress others and all that good stuff. I don’t need to be a prodigy or an Olympian at something to take joy in learning and doing it.
ulterno@programming.dev
on 21 Sep 23:35
nextcollapse
A lot of things are easier to learn when you have a base foundation.
Also, a lot of skills have interrelated mental pathways, so once you have enough exp with one, learning the other means, you are actually plasticising your brain, less than what you would have, had you learnt the other skill without knowing the first.
That’s how a standard error with normal-ish data works. The more data points for the estimation of a conditional mean you have, the fewer of the data point will be within it. For a normal distribution, the SE=SD/√N . Heck, you can even just calculate which proportion of the distribution you can expect to be within the 95% CI as a function of sample size. (Its a bit more complicated because of how probabilities factor into this, but for a large enough N it’s fine)
For N=9, you’d expect 26% of data points within the 95% CI of the mean
For N=16, 19%
For 25, 16%
For 100, 8%
For 400, 4%
Etc
Out of curiosity: What issue did you take with the error margin not including most data points?
Oops, should have multiplied those intervals with 1.96, ao here again:
9 - 49%
16 - 38%
25 - 30%
100 -16%
400 - 8%
greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 21 Sep 23:47
nextcollapse
Currently 29. Noticed mental decline after concussions in my youth and a few years of heavy drinking. I don’t fall on my head as much and I don’t really drink anymore, but I’m not sure how much of what I’ve lost I’m going to get back.
missfrizzle@discuss.tchncs.de
on 22 Sep 00:08
nextcollapse
I have no scientific basis for this, but my suspicion is that what you do with your brain is more important to cognition than whatever raw intelligence you start with. the more languages you study, the more music you play, the more subjects you study and skills you develop and hobbies you tinker with and deep conversations you have… you learn to learn, you learn to think, it all gets wired up and cross-connected and you become more than the sum of your parts.
how much decline is truly biological vs. being stuck in a rut?
also there’s nootropics that could be helpful for concussion recovery/etc. but they haven’t been too well-studied, there’s many different ones with different sketchiness and sources aren’t always trustworthy… but piracetam (iirc) is actually prescribed in the EU for recovery from brain injury, and it’s fairly safe and well-studied. I’m not recommending it either way though.
greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 22 Sep 12:57
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My friend is going through concussion rehabilitation right now and is working with one of the best doctors in the field. She has not been prescribed any medication at all. It’s been 9 months maybe? Right now she’s onto the stage where she need to get her heart rate up with exercise. Though it took a long time for doctors to actually start taking her symptoms seriously and she bounced around between a lot of them before she got where she is now.
We’ve had lots of talks about the recovery process, how you can train your brain to get better at certain things. And I’ve been doing lots of stuff to train my brain. But still friends will bring up symptoms they have and I’ll be like, oh shit I didn’t know that was concussion related!
But I think some of my symptoms are just going to be there for life. Language processing, memory (some memory has improved with training but sometimes I just get stuck and can’t think of a word or name or whatever), visual artifacts, sound sensitivity, and I don’t know if it’s related but I definitely get depressed.
I think with training you can improve your life experience, but I’m not sure you’ll ever get back to what it would be like without a concussion. Also I’m sure the 4-7 years of binge drinking didn’t help either.
I’ve been there and all I can say is that the brain is a miraculous organ and can heal really well from a lot of trauma. You just have to stop damaging it, learn how to work with your brain rather than having your brain work for you, and exercise it. Challenge yourself to learn an easy skill, then another, then another.
greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 22 Sep 15:05
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What do you mean stop damaging it? What makes it sound like I’m not working with my brain? What makes it sound like I’m not exercising my brain?
No I’m not going to stop doing sports. I’m doing a lot to work with my brain, and I’m always learning something new.
I’m learning sumi-e painting to go with my calligraphy, I’m taking the time to get back into programming. This is my second year mountain biking and I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the summer. I journal every day and reflect, I’ve been making a lot of progress being less critical of myself. In doing all those things I’ve felt my social skills slip, so now I’m putting in the effort to be around people more and be vulnerable around them.
And yet I can feel places where my brain isn’t as strong as it used to be. I’m accepting of that and trying to love myself in spite of my shortcomings. I don’t need to optimize for everything, I can just focus on what’s important to me.
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 22 Sep 07:48
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Absolute scattershot of datapoints
Nooo he’s so cute, I can interpolate him
Bestie, stop
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works
on 22 Sep 15:20
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threaded - newest
guess the correlation, looks about like a solid 0.1. Whoever put that regression line in there is crazy, the confidence interval is insulting.
Was about to say that. It’s sad that your comment is the very last in this thread.
1: it’s not last, and 2: it’s not sad, because 3: people aren’t reading the source material. I love xkcd, too, but that doesn’t apply here.
Just because results don’t match expectations doesn’t mean we should throw pies of satire in their face. That’s like the response in the OP of ‘no’. This is actually interesting.
The data does not support the conclusion. A simple “no” is okay. Take a look at these examples of regression. See how any one of the conclusions is absurd? Mind you the data in that example is far less random!
How do you think a case of “this explains some of the differences in the population, but not a lot” should look?
And that looks potentially fine for an error bar. For a mean estimate, SE=SD/√N , so depending on what error band they used this looks quite plausible.
Also, the R^2 is even in the picture: .11
Take a look at these examples of regression. See how any one of the conclusions is absurd? Mind you the data in that example is far less random!
I recommend finding a different statistics teacher, preferably one who isn’t a comic and one who knows what the difference between a standard deviation, a standard error, and a 95% interval is. Those should not be too hard to find, it’s relatively basic stuff, but many people actually kinda struggle with the concepts (made harder by various factors, don’t get me started on the misuse of bar charts).
I post the picture because it gets the point across, not because that is “my teacher”. The point is that you can choose smart any random regression function and they all fit just as “good”.
Why does that fucking Thing require my Google account?
No idea, sorry.
Relevant XKCD
That’s stupid, though. If you can explain 11% of the variance of some noisy phenomenon like cognitive and behavioral flexibility, that’s noteworthy. They tested both linear and quadratic terms, and the quadratic one worked better in terms of prediction, and is also an expression of a meaningful theoretical model, rather than just throwing higher polynomials at it for the fun of it. Quadratic here also would coincide with some homogenizing mechanism at the two ends of the age distribution.
But I have eyes and the curve they picked as best fit is really poorly fitting. It’s such a poor fit that is almost in a dead zone of the random points.
I dunno, the point cloud looks to me like some kinda symmetric upward curve. I’d’ve guessed maybe more like R^2=.2 or something in that range, though.
But also: This is noisy, it’s cool to see anything.
wtf is up with that confidence interval(?) though
It’s a 95% CI, presumably for the expected value of the conditional (on age) population mean. It looks correct, given the sample size and variance, what issue do you see with it?
To expand a little: you get a 95% ci by taking the expected value ±SE*1.96 . The SE you get for a normal distribution by taking the sample SD and dividing that by the sqrt of the sample size. So if you take a standard normal distribution, the SE for a sample size of 9 would be 1/3 and for a sample size of 100 it would be 1/10, etc. This is much tighter than the population distribution, but that’s because youre estimating just the population mean, not anything else.
Capturing structured variance in the data then should increase the precision of your estimate of the expected value, because you’re removing variance from the error term and add it into the other parts of your model (cf. the term analysis of variance).
It’s a line fitted to a shotgun blast. R2 = 0.11, LOL.
Whether you’re right or wrong, starting your argument with “that’s stupid, though” is unlikely to convince many.
well it convinced me, but I’m stupid and already made up my mind that I wanted to see a reply like that
Maybe, yeah, but I kinda get annoyed at this kinda dismissiveness - it’s a type of vague anti-science or something like that. Like… Sure, overfitting is a potential issue, but the answer to that isn’t to never fit any curve when data is noisy, it is (among other things) to build solid theories and good tests thereof. A lot of interesting stuff, especially behavioral things, is noisy and you can’t expect to always have relationships that are simple enough to see.
You’re probably right. But also, I was annoyed, not trying to convince. Maybe not the best place to post from. :)
Your frustration is understandable, but yeah, I agree with the last sentence of your post.
I will acknowledge, in this case, that your post certainly drew engagement.
That’s stupid though. People should change their minds when better information is presented regardless of tone!
Now this should be an xkcd
To be honest, I doubt Munroe wants to say “if the effect is smaller than you, personally, can spot in the scatterplot, disbelieve any and all conclusions drawn from the dataset”. He seems to be a bit more evenhanded than that, even though I wouldn’t be surprised if a sizable portion of his fans weren’t.
It’s kinda weird, scatterplot inspection is an extremely useful tool in principled data analysis, but spotting stuff is neither sufficient nor necessary for something to be meaningful.
But also… an R^2 of .1 corresponds to a Cohen’s d of 0.67. if this were a comparison of groups, roughly three quarters of the control group would be below the average person in the experimental group. I suspect people (including me) are just bad at intuitions about this kinda thing and like to try to feel superior or something and let loose some half-baked ideas about statistics. Which is a shame, because some of those ideas can become pretty, once fully baked.
Yet it’s one single sample, and possibly not a great one. Few things could cause the shape seen like sample selection of healthy people ignores a lot more of the 65+ community than the younger, and also stuff like those born around the 50’s have higher lead levels could cause more of a dip, or like… plenty of stuff. After some repetitions sure but even then… that’s 11% hell I could probably put in an exponential with a negative exponent and be as accurate or better.
Sure, you could do some wild overfitting. But why? What substantive theoretical model would such a data model correspond to?
A more straightforward conclusion to draw would be that age is far from the only predictor of flexibility etc., but on the list nevertheless, and if you wanna rule out alternative explanations (or support them), you might have to go and do more observations that allow such arguments to be constructed.
I mean, that shape is mostly a cone (oop realize I said negative exponent not negative with an exponent but, yeah that plus some other stuff to actually shape it a bit better), just showing… as you get older it could either get worse (if you essentially stop using it) or better (if you continue to use it). But I mean that idea is certainly less provocative than what they’ve got.
.
This. I could have produced a more insightful scatter plot with a barn door and a twelve gauge.
doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12505 the paper
Nuh-uh.
Lol
Goddamnit Taleb.
What is this, a black swan event you could not have predicted as being within the realm of possibility, and thus have no idea how to react?
God Damnit, Taleb.
Some beliefs are more antifragile than others
Wait so… his own brain isn’t antifragile (neuroplastic) enough to consider the idea that some other people his age have brains that actually are antifragile (neuroplastic)?
You could probably make a 5 or 10 minute sketch, for econ nerds, out of how absolutely absurd this is.
Taleb’s mind just isn’t antifragile enough. Or maybe too antifragile. Idk I didn’t read his book
I read a couple Teleb books about 15 years ago, they’re very funny. You go in thinking they’re these books about systematic collapse, but mostly its just about how he’s so smart he gets to be friends with Benoit Mandelbrot.
The theme of Anti-Fragile is “don’t be a sucker” which is really good advice tbh, but if you’re not a sucker you wouldnt have fallen for the apocalyptic framing of a book about how he’s so smart because he read some entry-level philosophy at some point, while Paul Krugman is a fucking moron and the nobel prize for economics is a joke
Is this the guy who calls everyone imbeciles?
But we know for a fact that plasticity does drop with age, that’s why it’s so difficult to learn foreign language after childhood.
this is like saying you can’t run after 30, yeah sure it generally becomes less trivial but if you actually try to do it and don’t do it in the worst way possible it’s absolutely doable without much struggle.
kids absorb language like a sponge, adults are like silica gel, just expose yourself to the target language often and you’ll learn it. The problem is that many people are horrendously impatient and try to brute force language learning in like 2 months by memorizing individual sentences and shit, which isn’t how our brains work…
I’m not sure that analogy holds since running is an almost entirely physical task, and the brain’s plasticity is relatively unique and different than how the muscles in your legs degrade.
Neuroplasticity does drop with age, but the drop is smaller than it was previously assumed to be, especially outside of early childhood (you may note that eg. this graph starts at 20 years old)
As far as I can tell. They have just drawn a line on a random distribution.
If it’s a random distribution, then we can’t say that neuroplasticity drops, either.
For a fact, until it isn’t for a fact. Unfortunately things may change like how majority of physics was disproven in the early 1900
It helps a lot that they’re completely immersed in the language, by people who want to help them learn, and they desperately need to tell us things with no alternative.
Children absorb language like a spknge because they are forced to by necessity. Moved to a Spanish speaking country and in three years I could run linguistic circles around any three year old. (half joke but you get the point hopefully)
As a subject I cam confirm. No
I am 29, and so far I didn’t really see any mental decline, sometimes even the reverse - I become better at learning certain stuff. Although I am also more aware that I will never be on the level some very talented people are, but it’s fine.
Played a reflex-based video game against a teenager lately?
I feel like reflexes are different than learning. Motor control definitely gets worse over time.
I don’t really play competitive video games, because I have always seen them as waste of time, and I easily get angry,but recently I nearly did get all retroachievements for NES Terris (just one remaining), so I guess my reflexes are not horrible yet.
Played a fiddle vs the Devil?
Im in my thirties and still average reflex speeds around 150-175ms ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t think this is neuroplasticity, as much as it is having a broader experience to bring to bear. I have so much knowledge and experience with a variety of things that I can apply and relate to new skills to learn things fairly quickly.
I also find there’s a ceiling on my abilities, like you mentioned. I’m never going to learn something to the same depth as someone who learns it as a kid and carries it forwards, things just don’t seem to sink deep into intuition and instinct like that, but I can certainly pick up something well enough to enjoy it and enjoy the process of improving at it. I love learning new skills and pushing myself, and I don’t mind the idea that that’s the way to age gracefully and stay sharp.
Lack of time to study or research in my opinion
same for rebuilding muscle memory in games.
Not sure about this. People told me I would not be able to learn piano as an adult, but after 5 years of playing 15 - 30 minutes per night I feel like I am about as good as a child or teenager who put in the same amount of time. I am starting to see how people can sight read at full speed (vs me for an intermediate piece I might be able to get 20% speed, with probably poor accuracy).
I think you might be comparing someone else’s 20 - 25+ years of experience (eg, someone who has consistently played piano their whole life) to your ability to pick up a new skill from scratch. There is just a huge time sink for a brand new topic and it takes anyone a ton of time. So if you really wanted to pick up some theoretical physics or something, but are currently bad at math, it might take 15 years just to get to the beginning to really be one someone’s level who… Started 15 years ago.
Unless I guess if there is unlearning time. Like the smarter every day video where they made a reverse turning bicycle that was impossible for people to use unless they spent forever relearning, vs his son who picked it up relatively easy. I think they had to unlearn what they knew so well.
Mhm, that’s fair. I feel like there is some degree of intuition and utter top level mastery that may be unattainable as an adult. But I’m talking about something like a second language feeling completely natural, or Olympic level mastery of a skill. And that requires a lot more than just being young as well.
It feels crazy to assert that you can’t learn any skill as an adult though. It’s absolutely hard to make the time like you could as a kid, but if you make it a priority, I feel like pretty much anything is possible. I certainly think you can learn more than enough to be satisfied and have a great time and impress others and all that good stuff. I don’t need to be a prodigy or an Olympian at something to take joy in learning and doing it.
A lot of things are easier to learn when you have a base foundation.
Also, a lot of skills have interrelated mental pathways, so once you have enough exp with one, learning the other means, you are actually plasticising your brain, less than what you would have, had you learnt the other skill without knowing the first.
I feel like the first time you notice that you have lost some mental capacity is a middle age right of passage.
R^2^ = 0.11
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/bdec525b-0f9b-4f28-afb9-51286b6b7094.jpeg">
Edit: tried with R<sup>2</sup> but it didn’t work. :(
Edit 02: thanks to @jaennaet for educating me on proper syntax.
You have to surround the 2 with
^s:R^2^ = 0.11R^2^ = 0.11
Note that this’ll bork if you put spaces between the carets:
^2 2^gives you ^2 2^I know I’m late, but you can also use:
R² = 0.11
Someone said it messes with screen-readers, but when I tried, everything messed with screen-readers, so I don’t see much of a difference.
I’d assume it’s easier for people to get their keyboards to cough up a couple of carets compared to Unicode superscript characters, though
Yeah.
I use
KCharSelectfor it and have been considering making a plasmoid for it for a while now.I love that they put an error margin, which doesn’t include 90 % of all the datapoints.
That’s how a standard error with normal-ish data works. The more data points for the estimation of a conditional mean you have, the fewer of the data point will be within it. For a normal distribution, the SE=SD/√N . Heck, you can even just calculate which proportion of the distribution you can expect to be within the 95% CI as a function of sample size. (Its a bit more complicated because of how probabilities factor into this, but for a large enough N it’s fine)
For N=9, you’d expect 26% of data points within the 95% CI of the mean For N=16, 19% For 25, 16% For 100, 8% For 400, 4% Etc
Out of curiosity: What issue did you take with the error margin not including most data points?
Oops, should have multiplied those intervals with 1.96, ao here again:
9 - 49%
16 - 38%
25 - 30%
100 -16%
400 - 8%
Currently 29. Noticed mental decline after concussions in my youth and a few years of heavy drinking. I don’t fall on my head as much and I don’t really drink anymore, but I’m not sure how much of what I’ve lost I’m going to get back.
I have no scientific basis for this, but my suspicion is that what you do with your brain is more important to cognition than whatever raw intelligence you start with. the more languages you study, the more music you play, the more subjects you study and skills you develop and hobbies you tinker with and deep conversations you have… you learn to learn, you learn to think, it all gets wired up and cross-connected and you become more than the sum of your parts.
how much decline is truly biological vs. being stuck in a rut?
also there’s nootropics that could be helpful for concussion recovery/etc. but they haven’t been too well-studied, there’s many different ones with different sketchiness and sources aren’t always trustworthy… but piracetam (iirc) is actually prescribed in the EU for recovery from brain injury, and it’s fairly safe and well-studied. I’m not recommending it either way though.
My friend is going through concussion rehabilitation right now and is working with one of the best doctors in the field. She has not been prescribed any medication at all. It’s been 9 months maybe? Right now she’s onto the stage where she need to get her heart rate up with exercise. Though it took a long time for doctors to actually start taking her symptoms seriously and she bounced around between a lot of them before she got where she is now.
We’ve had lots of talks about the recovery process, how you can train your brain to get better at certain things. And I’ve been doing lots of stuff to train my brain. But still friends will bring up symptoms they have and I’ll be like, oh shit I didn’t know that was concussion related!
But I think some of my symptoms are just going to be there for life. Language processing, memory (some memory has improved with training but sometimes I just get stuck and can’t think of a word or name or whatever), visual artifacts, sound sensitivity, and I don’t know if it’s related but I definitely get depressed.
I think with training you can improve your life experience, but I’m not sure you’ll ever get back to what it would be like without a concussion. Also I’m sure the 4-7 years of binge drinking didn’t help either.
I’ve been there and all I can say is that the brain is a miraculous organ and can heal really well from a lot of trauma. You just have to stop damaging it, learn how to work with your brain rather than having your brain work for you, and exercise it. Challenge yourself to learn an easy skill, then another, then another.
What do you mean stop damaging it? What makes it sound like I’m not working with my brain? What makes it sound like I’m not exercising my brain?
No I’m not going to stop doing sports. I’m doing a lot to work with my brain, and I’m always learning something new.
I’m learning sumi-e painting to go with my calligraphy, I’m taking the time to get back into programming. This is my second year mountain biking and I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the summer. I journal every day and reflect, I’ve been making a lot of progress being less critical of myself. In doing all those things I’ve felt my social skills slip, so now I’m putting in the effort to be around people more and be vulnerable around them.
And yet I can feel places where my brain isn’t as strong as it used to be. I’m accepting of that and trying to love myself in spite of my shortcomings. I don’t need to optimize for everything, I can just focus on what’s important to me.
Bestie, stop
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