Scott Alexander conducts an experiment playing a word game 800 times under varying CO2 levels, finding no correlation between indoor carbon dioxide and cognitive performance.
Longer summary
Scott Alexander describes his experiment to test the effect of indoor carbon dioxide levels on cognitive performance. He played a word game called WordTwist 800 times over three months, recording his scores and the CO2 levels in his room. The CO2 levels ranged from 445 ppm to 3208 ppm. Scott found no correlation between CO2 levels and his game performance (r = 0.001, p = 0.97). He discusses potential confounding factors but argues that his results strongly suggest that CO2 levels don't affect his cognitive performance on this specific task. Scott encourages others to conduct similar experiments with different cognitive tasks and offers to provide CO2 monitors to interested researchers.
Shorter summary