COWEN: There is a manliness movement which stresses the importance of a certain kind of physical activity. PETERSON: Well, it is unbelievably important. One of the things I was interested in for the longest period of time was in the processes whereby you might maintain your cognitive function because — I don’t know if you knew this — but your fluid intelligence declines linearly from the age of 20 onward. It’s a pretty vicious curve, and it hits zero, by the way, when you die. [laughter] But your crystallized intelligence, which is a measure of how much wisdom you’ve accumulated, how much knowledge, rises. But it doesn’t rise as much as your fluid intelligence declines. That’s a rather unhappy proposition, so I was interested for a long time in technologies that would enable people to maintain their cognitive function. There were those companies, like Lumosity, that promised that if you did their exercises, that you would maintain your cognitive function. That’s wrong, by the way; that doesn’t work at all. One of the things that we found in the literature on cognitive function is that if you practice cognitive exercises, and you get very good at them, there’s no cros
Source: Jordan Peterson on Mythology, Fame, and Reading People (Ep. 60 — Live)
Shawn Eng's Random Stuff 
COWEN: There is a manliness movement which stresses the importance of a certain kind of physical activity.
PETERSON: Well, it is unbelievably important. One of the things I was interested in for the longest period of time was in the processes whereby you might maintain your cognitive function because — I don’t know if you knew this — but your fluid intelligence declines linearly from the age of 20 onward. It’s a pretty vicious curve, and it hits zero, by the way, when you die.
[laughter]
But your crystallized intelligence, which is a measure of how much wisdom you’ve accumulated, how much knowledge, rises. But it doesn’t rise as much as your fluid intelligence declines. That’s a rather unhappy proposition, so I was interested for a long time in technologies that would enable people to maintain their cognitive function.
There were those companies, like Lumosity, that promised that if you did their exercises, that you would maintain your cognitive function. That’s wrong, by the way; that doesn’t work at all.
One of the things that we found in the literature on cognitive function is that if you practice cognitive exercises, and you get very good at them, there’s no crossover effect to other cognitive exercises. We don’t know a set of cognitive exercises that you can do that make your cognitive function better generally. No one’s been able to find that. It’s like the holy grail for intelligence researchers, and no one’s had any success with it.
But one thing we do know is that if you exercise — and weightlifting and aerobic exercise both work — that you can restore your cognitive abilities at age 50 to approximately what they were at age 30. That’s almost all a consequence of increased physical fitness. It’s because your brain is an incredibly demanding organ, so if your cardiovascular system is in good shape, then it works better.
It’s so cool that the best way to keep yourself smart is to keep yourself strong and fit. That’s really worth knowing because you don’t want that cognitive decline if you can stave it off.
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