Is Chess Really Good for Your Brain?

Is oatmeal good for the colon?

The real question is:  is your brain really good for chess?

i think my brain was not designed for chess but my brain loves to think, it is not good for me  to be idle in thinking so i play lots of chess to not remain idle. my brain loves also to learn not only chess but other learning that is something new to me and to understand. the more you learn the more you understand of the world we are living in.but the more learn you become also  ignorant as there are many things to learn and to conceptualize.

for optimizing good results for my body i teach my brain, sometimes its vice versa the way you have raise a question.

I just saw some great Pawn......moves. Brain activity, through the roof. I say yes!

Does your brain lives in a cage or a fish tank?

The point you're missing is supposedly the reason old people don't learn very well is because they spent their whole lives being fat, dumb, and happy, and not challenging their brains to learn anything new. Puzzles of all sorts, chess included, or anything that forces you to think is supposed to help your brain keep from going soft.

Sure, if you want to take the whole Taoist approach where the more you learn about some the less you understand about it's True nature.  But honestly, otherwise this statement is self contradictory.

That's not a function of how much learning they've experienced, that's due to well known physiological decline.

I mostly agree... but some subjects do help in other areas  not specifically related to that subject.  As an easy example, maths and sciences help eachother even if just a little.

You were already on shaky ground saying knowledge/learning isn't useful beyond it's face value.  Now you're building a whole theory on the only truly useful stimulus is stimulus we've evolved to specifically deal with, and I think that's absurd.  At least give some kind of basis for this incredible claim.

I very much doubt it.  Besides, in our "natural environment" we're geared for survival where it's not that useful to memorize faces.  Maybe tracking food and recognizing predators, hunting, foreging for food and the like... but memorizing faces?

When you say "don't be fooled by the lies" if you mean that chess = intelligence then I whole heatedly agree... but then you surruond this with a lot of specious stuff yourself! 

Yeah that's a good way to make conclusions, you should become a politician, they master in comparing apples with pears, lie without making it too obvious to the mass, pull some non existing statistics out of their high hats. I see faces every day and so does the cashier at the supermarket and guess what the memorising goes completely automatic, no skill required. Memorising faces happens in an other division of the brain then the part you play board games with. Trying to keep followers or all the people of entire countries stupid is also a goal of many political leaders.

I ain't one of them, therefore I can say: "The more you learn the more you know."

once you speak two languages easier you learn a third, once you speak three languages even easier you learn a fourth. The same goes for board games, computer programs, subjects at university etc etc.

Just don't wait till your 95 because the brain does age but can be kept younger by using it. If you don't believe that, hey, not my problem!

Dogs rely on their incredible sense of smell...not facial recognition.

http://www.ehow.com/how_6172873_prevent-senile-dementia.html   Staying mentally active is mentioned here.

The more you learn, the more you realize that our world increasingly defies understanding. It is no coincidence that zombie apocalypse obsessions are such a large part of popular culture in Amerika.

These views have been around for a least 2000+ years.  Very similar to the second coming of Christ, or the UFOs, who will either save us all, or destroy us all.

It's a pretty common theme in many belief systems.

Human society might "defie understanding," but the Natural World continues to be better understood all the time.

Too bad we hold the Social Sciences in such low regard, while the Natural Sciences get the big bucks.  

Chess is just like anything else. Foods activities and whatever human do,

as long as you like it then it is good.

I'm pretty sure I flunked that class.

Of course such views are old, but they waver in cultural significance. There have been notable peaks at the end of the first millenium in Europe, in the 1830s in the NE United States, and other times. The forms of these beliefs, too, vary.

Social scientists and historians investigate such things, and sometimes produce insights into the nature of irrational beliefs.

The more I observe certain trends, especially in American politics, the less concerns of an imminent zombie apocalypse seem irrational. The images, of course, are metaphors. Zombies are already among us, and even hosting the Today Show.

Whatever you've been smoking, PLEASE tell me where I can get some.  

I'm certain it will be good for both my brain and chess.

I'll tell you when I find some more. I hear that it grows in Pend Orielle County north of here.

The History Channel keeps running shows on the Emerald Triangle in Northern California. Sounds like Heaven.   

I don't watch the history channel, probably because I am a historian.

The Emerald Triangle, however, is much like NW Wash, and has been so longer. Except that NW Wash is still in its outlaw phase.