I started playing go partly in order to exercise my mind (and offset the first signs of senility). Now, 2 1/2 years later, I still forget where I parked my car, and aside from getting steadily better at go, I don't really notice that my brain has gotten any stronger. Do you think go makes you smarter? Do tell!

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Patience, grasshopper.

I am not sure, but when i passed 1d i realized that there is no spoon

i think almost everything you do in life makes you a bit more "experienced"
Go too.
Maybe you develop logical abilities. Maybe Go doesn't to much at all but you develop social abilities while playing/chatting/laughing with other.
i cannot really tell

The answer is surely at least somewhat dependent on how you define "smart". To me it is my intellectual capacity, which I believe peaked when I was around 20 yeards old (I don't remember exact details, but I believe there are several studies on the subject). Since then it has been a downhill slope, and go is one way of preventing it getting steeper, but go doesn't make me any smarter.

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Hey, a brain has to choose - spend thinking time on the latest advances in joseki or on such trivialities...

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My name is Gijs, from Utrecht, NL.

When in doubt, play the most aggressive move

Yeah, same here. It's just an entertaining way of exercising my brain, keep the neurons working and so on.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I voted "No: I just spend less time doing something else that would make me smarter"

this is spot on for me.

I could (and probably should) have spend more time studying and less time playing Go.

As a result, I could have been smarter if I had not played too much Go.
Therefore, in a way Go made me end up more stupid than I would have been if I had mot played the game.

That does not mean that I think I made a bad choice. I did make a lot of new friends, have a lot of fun playing in tournaments and greatly improved my english skils due to the audio lessons I give and all the forum posts I wrote

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Laurens
Go school: freegame's Teaching School
Author of: The Next Move a book for 15-3kyu players.

I'm curious: what could I be doing that would make me smarter? (so far I have believed that no such thing can exist)

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You could be playing dual-n-back.

http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/

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FusekiLibrary, an opening library.
SGF converter tools: Wbaduk NGF to SGF | 440 go problems | Fuseki made easy | Tesuji made easy | Elementary training & Dan level testing | Dan Tutor Shortcut To Dan

Based strictly on my GPA trend, I'd say it makes me dumber.

The extension of this, however, is that bribing your professor makes you smarter.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

It's made me more patient. Whether that qualifies as "smarter" is hard to say.

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KGS 4 kyu - Game Archive - Keyboard Otaku

I have definitely noticed an increased aptitude in other areas of my life, as well as a stronger ability to focus. Correlation for the former, but almost certainly causation as go study has effected a lot more patience and attention to detail in me.

Go destroyed my GPA. I'm lucky to have a job now!

This part.

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be immersed

I concur with the thoughts on "what is smart?"

I think being smart helps with Go, and maybe it helps teach you various things (like patience, confidence in play, or others), but does it make you smarter?

Personally, I think it is some thing that helps me to enhance my life and broaden my experiences. If that coincides with me getting "smarter", then I guess I would have to answer "Yes".

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KGS: schultz [?].

It made me even more tired

It's funny because the more I learn about Go, the more I realize I don't know. It's an interesting concept, eh?

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Slava Ukraini!

I would say that playing go has made me think outside the box a little more often. My memory has seen little improvement but improvement all the same. I do seem to play chess a lot better(Less branches to read). Shogi...not so much.

I don't think anything makes you smarter, although you can become more knowledgeable, more experienced in solving certain kinds of problems, or simply more intellectually active.