Alcohol and Its Effects on Learning

http://www.deltaself.com/2011/04/alcohol-and-its-effects-on-learning/

by clay • 15 years ago

38 25 15 years ago

bennesvig• 15 years ago

Just what every college student needs to read...Pretty interesting though.

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

Every college student should read this. Maybe if they had read it when I went to school, I would have gotten less harsh looks for showing up to class completely trashed every day...

jpr• 15 years ago

A fitting username you have.

bluedanieru• 15 years ago

Is there any reason this is specific to alcohol? From the article that doesn't appear to be the case. There are heaps of drugs that activate the same parts of the brain mentioned here, without (as many of) the deleterious side effects.

Curious that alcohol was singled out.

quinndupont2• 15 years ago

John Markoff's book "What the Dormouse Said" tells the tale of 1960s "acid tests" for the explicit purpose of mind augmentation or enhancement. It's a terribly fascinating read.

icegreentea• 15 years ago

Well... alcohol was clearly singled out cause of its legality, and social acceptance. In other words, they worked with the easiest substance to work with.

On my note, I've found alcohol is great for letting you tackle problems once you have a good enough toolbox (that you know how to use). In other words, its kinda trash to learn a new programming language while drunk, but once you know one, it's great for dealing with random/novel situations. I get this especially while going through my school work (particularly physics). Once I have my toolbox of equations and laws to work with, getting buzzed just makes it feel 'easier' to see the solution, and how to put those pieces together.

Somewhat different from the learning a new language example (they are clearly still putting together their toolboxes), but it's also a question of tolerance. Equations and compilers are a lot less tolerant of syntactic (and just in general) mistakes than another human... especially another one at the bar.

silentbicycle• 15 years ago

Alcohol is an unusual drug because it's ubiquitous (socially and economically acceptable), and it has a very different effect in low doses than in high ones.

bostonvaulter2• 15 years ago

What drugs would you recommend?

quinndupont2• 15 years ago

My Deleuze reading group imbibes heavily, and it seems (in a totally non-scientific way) to have no ill effects. Then again, it's Deleuze, so it's almost impenetrable anyway. The 1960s in California were full of AI and comp. sci. people doing brain enhancement/augmentation experiments with LSD and other drugs. I see no reason why alcohol can't perform a similar function.

brg2• 15 years ago

A pet theory of mine is that those with low self-awareness and lowered inhibitions are the fastest learners.

The positive way of saying this is that those who are not afraid of making mistakes will learn the most. By their willingness or indifference to being wrong in a conversation they overcome the problems of accumulating unknown unknowns. Meanwhile others who fear embarrassment accept a higher level of ignorance.

The negative way of saying this is that the loudmouth in class is actually doing everyone a favor.

It ties well into this article, as in the study alcohol is being used as a medium to decrease self-awareness. There could be more to this theory. For instance it possible that alcohol is accelerating the formation of new neural connections. But it wouldn't be needed to show a benefit towards learning.

mayukh• 15 years ago

A similar concept probably applies to the amazing ability of kids to pick up different languages and learn so many new concepts in the early years. Their low self-awareness and disregard for most social norms (including looking stupid ) allows them to be more persistent towards their goal (eg learning a new language or a new skill).

SpookyAction• 15 years ago

The reason kids pick up languages and concepts early in life is a result of evolution. It has nothing to do with self-awareness and disregard with social norms. It's the complete opposite. Survival of early humans depended on learning and communication. When we were hunter/gatherers cooperation and socialization meant survival. The faster you learned language and social skills (i.e. hunting or gathering) meant an increased chance of survival. The faster you learned, the more likely you were to survive. Language and socialization were key to early human survival and the more you excelled at it, the more you thrived. If you didn't, your more likely to be a victim of natural selection. Humans have an intrinsic nature to conform to what they perceive as "social norms". It's a genetic response.

Argorak• 15 years ago

Its fun how you see your own strategies somewhat validated :). I started to improve my french by watching french movies and drinking one beer before and one while watching the movie. My experience is that I tend not to care about understanding one word while focusing more on whole dialogues. So I attribute that more to a healthy focus shift than a self-awareness issue.

Also, it makes the process more enjoyable, for me. I might want to add that I do not drink at all for long stretches (weeks) while still enjoying a good wine or beer, so this is also a real reward. This, in my opinion, is also key. It kind of lured me into actually doing what I intended.

Rickasaurus• 15 years ago

Well, there's some evidence that one's general level of anxiety correlates strongly to their success at mathematics. I can't seem to find the paper though, as it's been drowned out by tons of "Math Anxiety" material.

salemh• 15 years ago

I hate google noise (blogs, content farms) as I can't find a study from years ago which showed:

Study drunk, test better when drunk (lets say buzzed, most people "drunk" cannot function, its subjective in terminology).

Study sober, test better when sober.

You cannot mix it (in the study), IE: study drunk, test sober, study sober, test drunk.

Its a "duh" or common sense thing to me, brain functions being formulative to your current state of function.

I BELIEVE it was the University of Utah (which has a myriad of awesome drunk studies (cell phones vs >.08 alcohol levels, etc).

clay• 15 years ago

I have 2 references for you: 1. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ucbpl/docs/3-Alcohol-Induced74...

2. Topic of discussion at every college party ever

mech4bg• 15 years ago

My german definitely becomes much, much better after a few beers. Too many though and it starts getting worse.

No one's mentioned the Ballmer Peak yet?

JoeCortopassi• 15 years ago

Sorry, this subject can't be mentioned on the internet without this link being posted. Don't care if I'm downvoted to oblivion...

http://xkcd.com/323/

driekken• 15 years ago

I'm reminded of an interesting way babylonian merchants used to do business. They would bargain for a deal while intoxicated on alcohol, thus proving to each other that they are being honest.

Perhaps we should force all politicians to do the same thing? :)

masterzora• 15 years ago

Given how often I hear it said that politicians would be better replaced by drunk monkeys, you might be onto something.

Alcohol and Its Effects on Learning

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