"Video Games Improve Intelligence!" 🤔️ SCIENCE CAN LIE.

28 July 2020 [link youtube]


Some people say video games improve your memory, some people say they improve rapid decision making, some say they improve your intelligence. Science can lie, and in the format of a youtube video, it's very easy for doctors to appear to be giving a reasonable summary of a research paper whereas, in fact, they're misrepresenting it, cherry-picking, or simply lying.

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Link to Ali Abdaal's youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/aliabdaal/videos

Link to the particular video, titled, "Why Video Games Are Good for You", by Ali Abdaal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg2cmsnvWx8

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Youtube Automatic Transcription

we look at the science behind some of
the most important questions in life and today we're talking about can video games be good for you this guy is not a scam okay i mean if one of you in the audience were to write in saying to me that this guy was a scam i'd be really offended because i made a list of like 10 different things that raise a red flag for someone being a scam artist and he's only got like eight of them going on and another thing i mean like not to be homophobic and like not to say that i'm not homophobic because i mean if i am that has nothing to do with it but it kind of it kind of rankles me that this guy is a so-called gynecologist like i kind of feel like he's treading on my territory here because like in offering this commentary on video game addiction i mean i may not know video games but i know vagina okay and i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean i mean yeah i'm out of adjectives i want to look at the evidence to see whether there are actually any benefits of playing video games firstly we've got evidence that video games improve our memory and our visual navigational skills this 2015 study from the university of california compared gamers vs non-gamers the first group played super mario 64 a 3d game the second group played angry birds 2d game and the third group didn't play any games at all and they found that in those who practiced the 3d game for half an hour a day they had improved performance on certain memory tasks dude this is like the single most legitimate use of scientific method like you find something you know is bad and filthy and evil and wrong in your life and then you google search to try to find excuses to justify it like i can be smart like a gynecologist too look at me i googled around for um articles proving that alcohol consumption is associated with higher intelligence check this out people with high iq drink more alcohol don't don't read the rest of the article that's it just the first sentence yeah you see how it says although you don't want to know what it says after that okay hey i found this great excuse for my own [ __ ] bad habits i'm ashamed of myself i feel bad i know how to use google to shore up excuses for my ego science baby science very dull people engage in binge drinking less than once a year in sharp contrast to quote very bright people so so so so so so so yeah binge drinking binge drinking positively associated with higher levels of intelligence don't read the rest of the article oh and guess what it turns out he didn't read the article himself either he claims that video games improve memory and they don't even the article he was quoting himself does not prove that they say on the contrary that the null hypothesis was confirmed with their two main tests of memory improvement read the details if you want to guess what this is the internet this is youtube this is where people come to lie and to make money by telling you things that are maybe half true at most that you want to hear doctors do it doctors do it all the time doctors tell you that drinking alcohol is good for you they tell you that eating red meat is good for you they tell you not to worry about cholesterol they tell you not to worry about cheating on your wife they'll tell you whatever the [ __ ] it is they think you want to hear so they can get famous on instagram not gonna lie oh you're gonna lie you managed to kick off the video with the bold statement i'm not gonna lie and surprise surprise the video is full of lies as a doctor who saves lives on the regular dude you're a gynecologist as a doctor who saves lives on the regular unless there's something really wrong with the hospital in cambridge england you work at like maybe you're a battlefield gynecologist in a war zone this can't remotely be true but even if you were working in a war zone like dude as a doctor who saves lives on the regular i'll get back to the science behind video games and cognitive function in just a moment but like i've known so many people who worked in emergency medicine i knew doctors who were volunteering to work in myanmar and cambodia and laos and none of them talk like this neither earnestly nor ironically and i know that some of you think that i'm using this sound clip out of context like as if he was just making a joke as if he was setting up a punch line there is no punchline next i moisturize my face with the natio daily moisturizer including sun protection factor 15 of course and spray a few sprays of allure hom by channel channel channel it's one of the pleasures of being a woman the fact that he can't pronounce the brand name chanel normally wouldn't bother me but the context here is that the whole video just consists of bragging in the guise of humble bragging about the expensive brand name items he owns and uses as part of his like faux ghetto fabulous existence as a cambridge uk doc it it just makes no sense if a guy like me didn't know how to pronounce chanel that would be a different thing because i would never spend my money on that crap but for a guy like him who spends his money on it and then tries to attract instagram followers by bragging about it like i you know i i just felt it was worth pointing out here a drive away from cambridge at around 7am and arrive at the hospital around 7 50 ready for a full day of saving lives and stamping out disease the main point of this video that we'll get back to in just a moment here is that this guy is mentally incapable of reading a peer-reviewed research paper or ethically incapable reporting it to you in the audience honestly but yeah somehow knowing this other side of his character that sort of does change it for me somehow if i felt i were in the act of criticizing a humble doctor who was actually saving lives rather than a megalomaniacal gynecologist who recklessly boasts about daily waking up to save lives who just flat out lies to you about you know how his day-to-day existence is just saving lives dude not not even battlefront doctors not even the guys i knew a guy who went out in a helicopter to a minus site in myanmar on the regular to do emergency medicine in a place where there are no hospitals like i've known people practicing medicine in extreme third world conditions none of them boast like this none of them talk about themselves in their lives this way people who worked in refugee camps people like you have got to be kidding me and this guy this guy is not kidding as dawn breaks and the clock chimes 6 30 a.m my iphone alarm wakes me out of my dreams of a better future for the world when you see those commercials claiming change your whole life with just one simple trick you probably assume that that kind of messaging comes from someone who's on the brink of poverty or employed by a heartless corporation no no it's guys like this this dude has either evolved or devolved to the point where he can with a straight face and total sincerity tell you that he saves lives every day tell you that he has one simple habit that will change your life that he can tell you the secret to success this dude doesn't sell snake oil he is snake oil he has himself become the snake oil that he's selling secondly we've got decent evidence that video games help improve our problem solving ability i mentioned this briefly before i'm going to mention it really briefly now if you were going to quote this particular scientific study to prove the point that playing video games improves your memory improves your recall ability you would have to admit that this same study states that their own hypothesis was disproven was proven to be false again and again you can't engage in cherry picking within one in the same study i'm not quoting separate research from a separate study to disprove what he's saying in the bottom right corner of the screen here i'm quoting the same study so point one the study admits that video game players did not improve their memory as measured by two different tests however it did find that after two weeks of training playing the video game super mario world 3d the video gamers improved their performance at a certain virtual water maze task do you think do you think this is this is going to overturn what i already quoted what i already showed you on screen do you think that the negative findings proved to be trivial compared to the significance of this water maze task or do you think when you look into the details it's going to turn out that virtual water maze is really nothing other than a video game and all they've proven is playing 3d video games makes you more skilled and more adept at playing other 3d video games yeah that's right it's just a video game those are screenshots of the so-called 3d water maze memory task it may be the least entertaining video game ever made but it is a 3d video game so absolutely nobody should be surprised that having weeks of training playing 3d video games would make you more skilled at playing a 3d video game the first group played super mario 64 a 3d game the second group played angry birds 2d game and the third group didn't play any games at all and they found that in those who practiced the 3d game for half an hour a day they had improved performance on certain memory tasks and i think he's aware that he's lying because he's very careful about his wording just to say that people were better at certain memory tasks now i'm gonna say to you here i want this video to be 20 minutes long i don't want this video to be 20 minutes longer than it already is i'm not summarizing for you each and every finding within this study but i'm being much more honest and balanced than he was in saying that this study comes to more than one conclusion about more than one type of test and in my opinion all that it proves is that playing video games makes you better at playing video games or tasks that very closely resemble playing video games they had the hypothesis that playing video games would result in more rapid visual processing ability and instead as you see in bold text we did not find any significant differences between the three groups in either error rate this same pattern plays out in a different study that he also cited that he also linked to from the same video and where i also wonder if he actually read it at all like if he is lying knowingly or unknowingly because again all that this study proved is that people who play video games become more adept at playing video games or performing tasks at a computer that very closely resemble videos again jump to the bold text at the bottom they were judging in the least amount of time possible whether the dots were moving to the right or moving to the left again this may be the least entertaining video game in the history of video games but that is all it is this doesn't show more advanced cognition greater intelligence greater memory or anything else not gonna lie this man isn't selling you snake oil he himself is the snake oil in this case the process is the product and if you trust him you have been sold