rch is correct and their interpretation of it is correct, would be the reason they're so smart. Yeah, the reason they're so smart is because they were philosophy majors. But they looked at the data and sure enough the people who were majoring in philosophy were indeed smarter on other standardized tests than the average of other people.

Now here's why I can't tell if this is a prank. Because isn't it kind of stupid to assume that the causation here is that the classes made you smarter as opposed to the more obvious explanation? The people who thought they were already good at reasoning thought, you know what, I'm good at reasoning. Maybe I should be a philosophy major. And then two people who should have been good at reasoning somehow wrote an article without even mentioning that the far more likely or realistic way to interpret the data is that people who are already good at reasoning and know it are the only ones who sign up to be philosophy majors. And last, there might be some who are just wrong. They think that they might be good at it or they think that they're going to learn how to be good at it, and then they drop out after the first semester. So they don't get measured so much, do they?

So I can't tell if this is some kind of a public prank where they're trying to see if you notice that they've done really bad thinking and that it's an article about the people who, including the authors, have been trained to be extra good at thinking. Are they serious? I don't think they even have a way to figure out if the training made them smart or if they were smart and that's why they got into that field. I don't even think they could measure that. They probably don't have that kind of data anyway. I mean, how would you do a control? The only way you could do a control test is you take a bunch of people who had declared that their major would be philosophy and then you'd have to take half of them and say, or some proportion of them, we're not going to allow you to be philosophy majors. Wait, what? Yeah, we're doing a study and the only way we'll have a control group of people who on their own had decided to become philosophy majors but didn't, so we can compare them to the people who did. We're going to have to prevent you from following the major that you would like to get into. Wait, what? You can't do that. It's for science.

No, there is no way to measure that ethically.

Did you know according to Fox New Zealand that if you don't drink enough water, or I think they just mean if you're not hydrated, your body will not be able to handle cortisol and that your stress reaction will be much bigger. Do you believe that? Well, if it's the basis of a study, that would mean that the odds are against it. Just try to hold this wild thought in your mind. If I ever tell you there's a study and it decided that proposition A is true, it means that the odds are against it being true because the majority of studies are not real. The majority are not real. So anytime I tell you something's been discovered, it probably means the odds are against it. That's the weird world we're living in.

But the study says that if you stay hydrated, it's probably good for your stress levels. And I say, well, maybe they should have just asked me because I would have said, hm, let's see. Your brain is part of your body. Check. I knew that part. If you don't take care of your body, you won't be taking care of your brain. Check. It's true with nutrition. It's true with sleep. It's true with everything we've ever measured that has an impact on your body. What do we think would happen if you don't have proper hydration? Let's see. It'd be bad for your body. Your brain is part of your body. Yea