Video games like Brain Age and Big Brain Academy are selling millions because they invite you, the consumer, to embrace a flawed line of thinking -- in effect, the technology will make you smarter.
The technology itself may be smarter, but nothing can make you smarter. Learning is never easy. A more flexible mind, a more potent imagination and a healthy skepticism must all be actively pursued, and too often, technology just gets in your way.
Recall that technology facilitates function, purporting to make life easier. As a result, it does to your brain’s wider potential what McDonald’s did to the hamburger: it standardizes it to death. Consider:
Warm up right now with a small change: Until you click out of or close AskMen.com, use your weaker hand to navigate the site. That hesitation and awkwardness is not you “sucking at” something; it’s your brain firing on unfamiliar paths, trying to learn what it does not yet know. The more often you encounter this, the more beneficial the neural exercise. You should strive for this sensation.
Recall that technology facilitates function, purporting to make life easier. As a result, it does to your brain’s wider potential what McDonald’s did to the hamburger: it standardizes it to death. Consider:
- Camera phones: They mean you’ll never have to describe anything again. A picture is worth a thousand words, but those are your words; don’t give them up so easily.
- Text messages: You sacrifice spelling, word choice and description on the altar of convenience. What’s sacrificed today becomes habitual tomorrow.
- Emoticons: Those moronic faces have no business in a world in which true emotions are far more complex; they belong on grade school lunch pails. Are you really “happy,” “sad” or “winking?”
- Shorthand: The likes of “LOL” should embarrass all of us. How many times are you really laughing out loud when you type that?
Warm up right now with a small change: Until you click out of or close AskMen.com, use your weaker hand to navigate the site. That hesitation and awkwardness is not you “sucking at” something; it’s your brain firing on unfamiliar paths, trying to learn what it does not yet know. The more often you encounter this, the more beneficial the neural exercise. You should strive for this sensation.
brain exercises
The following 5-day workout routine features three elements: A small change to encourage mental flexibility, a focus on a perceptive sense to foster the imagination, and a critical thinking tool to apply throughout the day to nourish a healthy skepticism. On the weekends, feel free to be as stupid as you want.
Monday
Small change: Brush your teeth with your weaker hand.
Sense: Vision
On your break at work, step outside and find an object to focus on. Take a tree, for example; how many shades of color do you see? How many of these colors can you put a name to? Consider the kinds of associations or metaphors you can make out of it, such as a “family tree” or the “tree of life” found in many religions.
Critical thinking tool: Hume’s Razor
Defined: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
David Hume wrote, "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless that testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish." In other words, don’t accept amazing claims from anyone unless the evidence they offer up is unimpeachable.
Turn your world upside down and test the limits of your senses… {mospagebreak}
Sense: Vision
On your break at work, step outside and find an object to focus on. Take a tree, for example; how many shades of color do you see? How many of these colors can you put a name to? Consider the kinds of associations or metaphors you can make out of it, such as a “family tree” or the “tree of life” found in many religions.
Critical thinking tool: Hume’s Razor
Defined: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
David Hume wrote, "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless that testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish." In other words, don’t accept amazing claims from anyone unless the evidence they offer up is unimpeachable.
Turn your world upside down and test the limits of your senses… {mospagebreak}
Tuesday
Small change: Spell long words backwards.Sense: Hearing
As different people speak to you throughout the day, cue in to the inflections they use to accent certain words or points. Listen to the words they’re stressing and ask yourself why these inflections are being used.
Critical thinking tool: The Principled Juror
Defined: Subject what you hear or read to intellectual due process.
According to Professor Howard Gabennesch, this is perhaps the most difficult method of critical thinking because it requires “more integrity, humility, tolerance of uncertainty, and courage than most of us find easy to summon.” Thus, be prepared to admit that you don’t know something, that your experience and intelligence have limits or that a potentially offensive or repulsive notion might have merit.
Wednesday
Small change: Ditch the calculator and do any and all computations in your head.Sense: Touch
When getting out of bed or coming home from work, shut your eyes and feel your way around, relying only on the communication between your mind and your hands.
Critical thinking tool: The Devil’s Advocate
Defined: Defend an opposing viewpoint as a means of testing its legitimacy.
Playing the devil’s advocate can help you to overcome some long-held but potentially groundless bias or prejudice. It can also improve your intellectual empathy.
Thursday
Small change: Shower/bathe in the dark.Sense: Taste
Pick a recipe composed of mostly foreign ingredients and prepare it. Try choosing something that you’ve never tried but have always been curious about. Maybe you’ve never tried a curry dish, but the aroma has appealed to you.
Critical thinking tool: The Pragmatic Maxim
Defined: To get the meaning of any proposed concept, consider the consequences and results if the concept were true; the grand total of these consequences gives you the full meaning of the concept. This is especially good in putting statistics to the test. For example, the promoters of the Live Earth concerts claimed they had 2 billion viewers or nearly 1/3 of the world’s population. Do the math and ask yourself just how plausible this is.
Friday
Small change: Take a different route to work.Sense: Smell
Pick any hour of the day and for that hour, keep a running count in your head of how many different odors and aromas you come across. Pay attention to the primary element in each, and your response to it.
Critical thinking tool: Occam’s Razor
Defined: The simplest explanation for most things is usually the wisest one.
Also sometimes referred to as the rule of simplicity, the idea is not to make things any harder or more complicated to understand than is necessary. In other words, try to trim the fat from what you hear in an effort to reach conclusions. Albert Einstein is alleged to have said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
stretch your brain muscle
Aspects of the preceding workout were inspired by the fantastic and original system of Neurobics, created by Dr. Lawrence Katz of Duke University. For a far wider view of the science behind these exercises, check out his site at Neurobics.com.Skeptics get a bad rap, but skepticism isn’t about believing nothing at all. Stephen Jay Gould called skepticism “the agent of reason against organized irrationalism.” For further insight into critical thinking, check out the book by Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, as well as the many resources listed at austhink.org/critical.
Resources
www.neurobics.com
www.amazon.com
www.techsoc.com
www.csicop.org
www.physics.adelaide.edu.au
www.austhink.org
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