Does prog make you smart?

Reed Lover wrote: Mark how like you to think you could be as facetious as moi!

Oh to be as full of faeces as Reed...

well, based on my experiences I'd say yes, prog does make you smarter. Before prog, my friends and I would do all kinds of idiotic things. For example, we TPed a house at 1:00 PM with one of my friends dressed in a rainbow dinosaur blanket and my other friend dressed in a makeshift turban.  I didn't dress in anything or make an attempt to disguise myself which was a mistake because my teacher drove by and saw us. Man, how times have changed

 < Me, yesterday (not actually me but you get the point)

That rather confirms the answer which is seeping out from between the lines of many of the posts in this thread;

Since I listen to prog, and have now been declared "Thicker than a whale butty", it now seems conclusive that listening to prog does not make you (in the sense of one generally) smart.

However, the flipside of the same coin suggests that, since whales have enormous brains and are noted for their intelligence, that the description of "Thicker than a whale butty" may actually suggest "slightly less intelligent than two whales combined" - an odd sentiment, but one which could be interpreted as a back-handed compliment.

An interesting dichotomy, then - but an additional thought that crossed my mind was that every proghole I've ever met has a penchant not for Saville Row suits, or even Designer threads, but for something, altogether, shall we say, more "comfortable". Clothes that would get most people turned away from a Hospice or YMCA centre.

Yet more evidence, I feel, that prog does not make you smart...

 

However, if I took a YES CD and shoved it where the sun never shines, I bet I could make you smart, Reed...

 

(Oh, that joke's been done already in this thread... never mind - it was funnier this time )

Are you calling me thick?

Reed Lover wrote: I find the use of "esoteric" and "aleatory" in the same sentence wonderfully ironic given the thread's title.

Not ironic!

Irony is a form of speech in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the words used.

What you have observed is the opposite of irony, where the meaning of the words is very much what it seems. Hyberbolic, perhaps, but not ironic.

Reed Lover wrote: I find the use of "esoteric" and "aleatory" in the same sentence wonderfully ironic given the thread's title.

I think there are a few layers of irony in there - not least the fact that you chose to comment on that sentence...

Not mine either I'm a gasstation attendent, but still.

A shame he couldn't get the money for his project. But maybe that money is now better spend on studies that would actually improve Peruvian live standard. I'm sure he does have good studie material around him anyway.

Thanks for your indulgence and answering the few questions I had.

Don't ask that much, remember I'm a lawyer and science is not my strogest point.

All I know is that he started this work with the idea that soft music, independant of the genre would cause an increase in plants growing and mice intelligence but frantic music would cause damage, his results denied his starting hypothesis. He included Progressive Rock only because it was half way between Classical and Mainstream and because he is a proghead.

He only tried to prove the influence of music in inferior forms of life as a basis for a study in humans he planned to do after a few years, but being a third world country he never got the money for thatproject that would take many years.

Iván

Please Tuxon we're talking about a University Thesis done in 1985 in Perú (Internet was not common here until the very late 90's) you're asking too much if you want it on Internet.

In those years the Thesis (including mine) were done in typewritters because almost nobody had a PC, i had the luck to use word star even when I did it in the 1986)

I believe that the studies in silence and with ambiental noise were done before him and served as the starting point for his project (he measured the rooms taking the silence room results as the base and even compared his results with ambiental noise), he was trying to prove the influence of music in the behaviour.

By the way, he is not my brother, only a good friend.

Iván

Edited by ivan_2068

tuxon wrote: Quote Ivan On the first one he played Classical music, in the second one Progressive Rock and in the third one only mainstream radio. In the classical room, the plants grew faster and the mice increased their speed in the tests, despite the fact that the volume was very high. In the Progressive Rock room, neither the mice or plants showed any change. In the mainstream room, the mice became aggressive and most of the plants died. Did the scientist bother to enter the third room where mainstream was played for watering the plants and feeding the mice?

  Now seriously, this guy was an A+ student, he has two careers including Psychology, plus several masters, and got a 19 (Our system is over 20) average in the whole career; his work was absolutely serious because his degree depended in this research.

This work took several months and because I was a friend of him and his brother , I saw the how seriously he took it.

Iván