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Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

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Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#101

Post by dlkf »

Most of the studies in the linked APA article have all the hallmarks of the replication crisis:

- Small sample sizes (O(100))

- Low correlation coefficients

- Everybody is predisposed to believe the conclusion (what kind of monster doesn't like nature?)

- There is zero incentive to report a negative finding

And even if some of the studies do replicate, the response variable is often either self-reported, or performance on some written test or survey: so it's not really clear what we are even measuring. What is the unit of "general connectedness" ? How about "eudaimonic well-being" ? These are not legitimate scientific concepts.

Nature is great. I find that a long walk in the woods is a good way to clear my head. But I'm not convinced that these studies add anything to my common sense intuitions about the matter. And by using weak methods to justify something we all already believe (or want to believe), we risk degrading trust in science that will be greatly needed when scientists reach a conclusion that isn't politically convenient.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#102

Post by Helmut10001 »

dlkf wrote: post #101

Most of the studies in the linked APA article have all the hallmarks of the replication crisis: - Small sample sizes (O(100)) - Low correlation coefficients - Everybody is predisposed to believe the conclusion (what kind of monster doesn't like nature?) - There is zero incentive to report a negative finding And even if some of the studies do replicate, the response variable is often either self-reported, or performan…

Beyond that, to me "Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people" is the same as putting a warning sign on car batteries saying "Don't drink the battery acid": This should be entirely common sense. Why would there be no cognitive benefit, when nature is the environment humans evolved in and that sustained life for millions of years?

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#103

Post by otikik »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #58
ehnto wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-car is pro-nature not pro concrete jungle. Cars are a big part of why we have a concrete jungle and not nature intersected with density. Think of cities with substantial nature passages, botanic gardens and reserves throughout. Not just one big one but many. Suburbia isn't nature either, at least not standard suburbia. It's carbon intense lawn, concrete and asphalt. A front lawn and a big tree isn't nature. The…

Why do people keep framing this as a dichotomy between urban areas and suburbs? I agree that suburbs aren’t “nature”, obviously. There’s a lot more to the US than urban cores and suburbs.

I can’t claim to have visited all major cities in the US, but they do seem to match the “urban core and suburbs” pattern, compared with my experiences visiting European cities.

Not Just Bikes has a video about that: https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#104

Post by gmac »

dlkf wrote: post #101

Most of the studies in the linked APA article have all the hallmarks of the replication crisis: - Small sample sizes (O(100)) - Low correlation coefficients - Everybody is predisposed to believe the conclusion (what kind of monster doesn't like nature?) - There is zero incentive to report a negative finding And even if some of the studies do replicate, the response variable is often either self-reported, or performan…

Two points on this:

(1) If you want to know how people feel, I’m afraid self-reports are the gold standard

(2) Some other studies have large sample sizes (e.g. this one, which is based on my PhD: https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/49376/1/Mourato_Happiness_greater_...)

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#105

Post by jjav »

standardUser wrote: post #76
throwaway894345 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few hundred acres of forest is very different than a few hundred acres of soccer pitches, tennis courts, playgrounds, lawns, gardens, etc with a few acres of bird sanctuary, wetland, or prairie strewn about. It’s better than concrete, but it’s not nature.

Most towns and suburbs don't have acres of wild forest in them. That's not exactly a unique "flaw" of cities.

> Most towns and suburbs don't have acres of wild forest in them. That's not exactly a unique "flaw" of cities.

Not "in" them obviously, but suburbs can often have expanses of nature right next to them unlike dense cities.

Living in a suburb, I can walk to all the necessities of day to day life but in just a 5 minute bike ride I can be into the forest where I can ride for hours on end without seeing any sign of civilization. It is a wonderful escape from the stress of 24x7 slack and jira.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#106

Post by radlad »

vishnugupta wrote: post #84
radu_floricica wrote: post #52

Funny thing is, making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. I see above conversations on living closer to nature, or mountains vs parks - but the vast majority of time spent is walking and driving in the cities. So it seems a no-brainer that before everything else, before thinking about taking a 2 hour drive to hike, or making the time for a weekly visit to the park, we should first make sure the places peo…

> making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. On the contrary it takes quite a bit of effort to keep the nature at bay. Neglect a corner of your house and next thing you notices small ecosystem developing full with small grass, mold, insects and what not. When Indian cities were locked down for a few months all sorts of birds and animals started appearing in the neighborhood.

> Neglect a corner of your house and next thing you notices small ecosystem developing full with small grass, mold, insects and what not. When Indian cities were locked down for a few months all sorts of birds and animals started appearing in the neighborhood.

Is this a downside or a positive?

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#107

Post by jjav »

vkou wrote: post #21
throwaway894345 wrote: post #6

This is the sort of thing I think about when the pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people talk about their vision for the world. I live in a city now, and the lack of substantial nature is suffocating to the extent that I plan to move. The idea that we should all live this way to conserve space—a resource which is only scarce in these urban places—seems excessive to put it mildly. EDIT: A lot of urban folks are rebuttin…

The suburbs don't actually present a solution to this. There is no more nature in them than there is in any other urban environment. It's all manicured lawns and endless pavement, and you can't even walk to a park, because getting anywhere requires hopping into a car. If you want to see nature, you have to live way out in the boonies, on at a minimum, two-acre lots. If everyone lived like that, we'd all have two-hour…

> The suburbs don't actually present a solution to this. There is no more nature in them than there is in any other urban environment. It's all manicured lawns and endless pavement, and you can't even walk to a park, because getting anywhere requires hopping into a car.

That's not a suburb, at least not many of them.

In past topics I've asked for concrete examples of these suburbs where you can't walk anywhere and have not received many answer. Can you name a handful?

There is a ton of nature near my suburb, to an extent that is impossible in a city. A 5 minute bike ride gets me into the forest (not a manicured city park, actual forest) which extends for a long distance. I can ride my mountain bike all day without getting into built areas.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#109

Post by stephen_g »

cancelkooks wrote: post #18
throwaway894345 wrote: post #6

This is the sort of thing I think about when the pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people talk about their vision for the world. I live in a city now, and the lack of substantial nature is suffocating to the extent that I plan to move. The idea that we should all live this way to conserve space—a resource which is only scarce in these urban places—seems excessive to put it mildly. EDIT: A lot of urban folks are rebuttin…

I am very pro-pedestrian / anti-car, but that’s in the context of how to actually get around town most of the time… obviously (to me) you use the car to leave town and see the wonders of our world. If people that live in cities are to be relegated to never leave, I for one am not interested.

Yeah, cities that have good enough transit, you often don't need to own a car, and can use an on-demand rental service for this kind of thing. (You locate a nearby car in the app and then unlock it through the app when you get to it). It's usually way, way cheaper than owning a car, and handy because for example, if you need to move stuff, you can get a van, and otherwise you can get a smaller car. You don't fall into the trap of driving a big SUV empty all of the time just in case you want to move gear, and then when you have to move stuff to realise that a lot of SUVs don't actually have that much more space than a decent sized hatchback!

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#110

Post by nicbou »

radu_floricica wrote: post #52

Funny thing is, making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. I see above conversations on living closer to nature, or mountains vs parks - but the vast majority of time spent is walking and driving in the cities. So it seems a no-brainer that before everything else, before thinking about taking a 2 hour drive to hike, or making the time for a weekly visit to the park, we should first make sure the places peo…

Europe does this much better. It's not so difficult to find yourself on a quieter, greener path just on your way to work. The countryside has a network of footpaths that connect everything. Wherever I am in Europe, I can count on a quiet evening walk.

Berlin is outstanding for this. Wherever you are, it's easy to escape loud traffic and sit in a green, public space. Some have cafés and Biergarten in them.

I find returning to Canada difficult because there is no way to escape loud roads. There's no path along the fields, forests or rivers. If you want to walk in nature, you have to drive to it.

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