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Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

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Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#131

Post by sushid »

akvadrako wrote: post #64
another-cuppa wrote: post #47

Obviously I can't say anything about my own longevity, but over the past few years my alcohol consumption has decreased to virtually zero and I've never felt better. I was never a big drinker, but I would semi-regularly go out and drink a few pints of beer or have wine with dinner. I never intended to cut down on alcohol, but my lifestyle changed, I stopped going out so much, and the drinking went with it. I would st…

Unless you were getting wasted it's quite unusual for a few drinks to make you feel bad. Also, there is more and more a decent selection of But then again, maybe the point of drinking together is it provides some kind of bonding effect, being a shared vice. It makes it harder to lie and shows you value others more than your own health (relatively).

Have you ever abstained for a while from alcohol? I used to drink like a degenerate in college (easily 10+ drinks on a night out).

I cut out drinking altogether for about a year right after college. Since then, I drink maybe 6 times a year. If I drink anything more than two drinks I feel pretty horrible and can feel it the next day.

The places I've been to in the Bay Area has never served anything like <0.5% beer. I'd much rather drink something like ginger beer or kombucha anyway, which is what I do given the occasion.

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#132

Post by sushid »

another-cuppa wrote: post #115
airstrike wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't ask for this suggestion, but I'll say it anyway: evidence suggests that making a similar switch in your regular diet would have a material impact on your well-being beyond what you've experienced with alcohol. If you think back to your drinking days and think you would have gained more from quitting alcohol much earlier, just imagine how you would feel by improving your diet.

My diet is very well-controlled. I fast for 20 hours every day and have a perfectly balanced intake. But if I drink alcohol I will sleep badly and I will have a bad day tomorrow. Why do people refuse to believe this?

This comment thread just reinforces your argument (my belief as well) that people will go out of their way to try and normalize drinking, just like smoking used to be in the 60s.

I get constant questions as well unless I'm babying a random non-alcoholic beverage. I've found that the best non-follow up to "why don't you drink?" is "I used to drink a lot but my doctor told me to try and abstain for my health."

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#133

Post by quotemstr »

tptacek wrote: post #118
quotemstr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't accept the legitimacy of IRB rulings; I hope to see a day when these bodies stop blocking research. Researchers are competent to be ethical on their own. My reading (not just [1], although [1] is a lucid examination) suggests to me that IRBs are net detrimental to research. There's an incentive misalignment that pushes them too far in the "harm" prevention camp and that makes it too difficult to answer scient…

If I am following your logic here, you're saying that because you read a blog post in which a practitioner was surprised at how much more ethically complex it is to conduct scientific research than it is to simply deliver the current state of the art to a patient, you've come to believe that biomedical research should be freed from institutional oversight?

Yes, I think IRBs today do more harm than good. Is that yet another opinion I'm not allowed to express in polite company?

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#134

Post by tptacek »

quotemstr wrote: post #133
tptacek wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am following your logic here, you're saying that because you read a blog post in which a practitioner was surprised at how much more ethically complex it is to conduct scientific research than it is to simply deliver the current state of the art to a patient, you've come to believe that biomedical research should be freed from institutional oversight?

Yes, I think IRBs today do more harm than good. Is that yet another opinion I'm not allowed to express in polite company?

You can express that opinion, but it sounds awfully like you don't understand what your source ("Scott Alexander") was saying, or perhaps that both you and your source don't understand (a) the distinction between practice and research and (b) the relative cultural fixity of institutional reviews in biomedical research versus talk therapy.

So I guess what I'd say is that it looks like the one thing you know about IRBs is that Scott from SlateStarCodex once had a run-in with them and generalized wildly from it.

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#135

Post by quotemstr »

tptacek wrote: post #134
quotemstr wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think IRBs today do more harm than good. Is that yet another opinion I'm not allowed to express in polite company?

You can express that opinion, but it sounds awfully like you don't understand what your source ("Scott Alexander") was saying, or perhaps that both you and your source don't understand (a) the distinction between practice and research and (b) the relative cultural fixity of institutional reviews in biomedical research versus talk therapy. So I guess what I'd say is that it looks like the one thing you know about IRBs…

If I've said something incorrect, refute it. Otherwise, stop it with the vague insinuations. You have no idea what I've read about IRBs and you haven't engaged with any specific arguments in anything I've linked. "It sounds like" is not an argument. It's putting words in someone's mouth.

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#136

Post by tptacek »

quotemstr wrote: post #135
tptacek wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can express that opinion, but it sounds awfully like you don't understand what your source ("Scott Alexander") was saying, or perhaps that both you and your source don't understand (a) the distinction between practice and research and (b) the relative cultural fixity of institutional reviews in biomedical research versus talk therapy. So I guess what I'd say is that it looks like the one thing you know about IRBs…

If I've said something incorrect, refute it. Otherwise, stop it with the vague insinuations. You have no idea what I've read about IRBs and you haven't engaged with any specific arguments in anything I've linked. "It sounds like" is not an argument. It's putting words in someone's mouth.

I'm responding to the argument you actually made, not the variety of arguments you hypothetically could have made. My response has been substantive; I've clearly read the same article you did, as well as your citation. If you're unhappy with your own argument, don't blame me for it.

I think neither of will profit from continuing this discussion, though. You can safely sum up my point as "the problems people in psychology, and the social sciences in general, have with IRBs do not necessarily generalize to biomedical research". One of the basic complaints scientists have about IRBs is the "mission creep" from human medical research to the rest of the sciences. The premise of that argument doesn't line up with your argument here on this thread.

Also, SlateStarCodex is bad.

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#137

Post by quotemstr »

tptacek wrote: post #136
quotemstr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I've said something incorrect, refute it. Otherwise, stop it with the vague insinuations. You have no idea what I've read about IRBs and you haven't engaged with any specific arguments in anything I've linked. "It sounds like" is not an argument. It's putting words in someone's mouth.

I'm responding to the argument you actually made, not the variety of arguments you hypothetically could have made. My response has been substantive; I've clearly read the same article you did, as well as your citation. If you're unhappy with your own argument, don't blame me for it. I think neither of will profit from continuing this discussion, though. You can safely sum up my point as "the problems people in psycho…

You are not in fact responding to any argument I've made.

My point is that IRBs have an incentive structure that encourages excessive risk aversion. My citation is an instance of this phenomenon in action. It has nothing to do with the particulars of psychology. You have not attempted to address this incentive alignment argument in any way. Blocking an attempt to replicate an alcohol study due to weak evidence for a very small negative effect is another example, albeit hypothetical, of this same excessive risk aversion. You have not made a similarly substantial argument. Instead, you've just asserted that institutional review is embedded in biomedical research. It is, but I think it shouldn't be.

> Also, SlateStarCodex is bad.

It's amazing that immediately after a paragraph in which you claim to be making a substantive argument, you make a bald and unsupported assertion that an influential and widely-read blog, one that Pinker has called "wonderful", is in fact "bad".

This is not the kind of intellectual conversation that HN was meant to host.

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#138

Post by KozmoNau7 »

sushid wrote: post #132
another-cuppa wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My diet is very well-controlled. I fast for 20 hours every day and have a perfectly balanced intake. But if I drink alcohol I will sleep badly and I will have a bad day tomorrow. Why do people refuse to believe this?

This comment thread just reinforces your argument (my belief as well) that people will go out of their way to try and normalize drinking, just like smoking used to be in the 60s. I get constant questions as well unless I'm babying a random non-alcoholic beverage. I've found that the best non-follow up to "why don't you drink?" is "I used to drink a lot but my doctor told me to try and abstain for my health."

No, the issue is simply that the alcohol intake he describes should not have that big of an impact.

A few pints of beer or some wine with dinner should not completely wreck the day after, unless there is some medical condition that is worsening the effect.

Personally, I don't care of people drink or not, that's their choice. What I'm saying is that his intake was probably heavier than he claims, which would certainly account for his marked improvement in health when he cut out alcohol completely.

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#139

Post by KozmoNau7 »

notyourday wrote: post #123
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, if it truly wrecked the day after, you were drinking a lot more than just a couple of pints or some wine with dinner, and were probably in denial about it. I can tell the difference, trust me. I've been there myself, and I still go there on occasion, in good company at a concert/festival, when I know I can waste a Saturday/Sunday after. A couple of pints will not do it.

That's not true. The more you drink the more you can drink. If you either gradually or cold turkey quit for a few months to reset, you would be amazed how less alcohol you would need to feel smashed. From my understanding it is basically training your liver and kidneys. It is also quite funny: anesthesiologists always know who lies on the intake forms based on the answer to alcohol consumption question. The more the…

Sure, you can build a tolerance, but "a few pints" or "wine with dinner" occasionally will not do it to any noticable degree.

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#140

Post by archagon »

If anyone's interested, I recently built a free and open source¹ drink tracking app for iOS called Good Spirits: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/good-spirits/id1434237439?mt...

You set a weekly limit and the app tells you when you're getting too close. Features Untappd integration, HealthKit calorie syncing, and various charts and stats of your drinking over the past year. Figured I'd build it after reading numerous articles like this and deciding that 100g/week was the optimal risk/reward point for my health.

¹ https://github.com/archagon/good-spirits

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