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Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

newscientist.com

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Re: Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

#141

Post by InvertedRhodium »

tssge wrote: post #90
ImHereToVote wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet coffee consumption is correlated with longer life. Probably the Quercetin and Trigonelline in coffee offsets the supposed damage.

And ice cream consumption is correlated with drowning. Many times correlation just doesn't mean that much by itself.

That’s just implies that there is a common causality - in the case of ice cream and drowning, I suspect that is nice weather.

It also correlates with serial killers, because turns out no one likes to do their hobby in poor weather.

Re: Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

#142

Post by IshKebab »

hollerith wrote: post #136
IshKebab wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MDMA is much better for that according to many comment here on HN over the years. Maybe but it's also much harder to obtain due to being illegal. > the risk of their becoming violent is quite high. Jesus who are you going drinking with??? That's not normal.

>On average, roughly 40% of inmates who are incarcerated for violent offenses were under the influence of alcohol during the time of their crime. https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/crimes/

You need to do a basic statistics course.

> On average, roughly 100% of inmates who are incarcerated for violent offences have two arms.

Arghhh! Quick, cut one of everyone's arms off!

Re: Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

#143

Post by IshKebab »

deafpolygon wrote: post #139
IshKebab wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the risk with cigarettes is addiction, whereas that is less of an issue with alcohol because alcohol is significantly less addictive than nicotine.

Alcohol is more addictive than nicotine. The "advantage" of nicotine is that it creates a physical dependence more readily at smaller doses, but alcohol is psychologically pervasive. To the point where entire cultures have gone to war over it throughout history.

Ugh I knew there would be someone who tried to push this ludicrous claim.

Obviously we are talking about physical addiction, not some cultural nonsense.

Re: Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

#144

Post by [deleted] »

pfdietz wrote: post #104
jakupovic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell it how it is. No cigarettes either. But it's OK to go camping and live in a cloud of smoke for days. I wonder how many cigarettes a day equals being in a big campground with fires everywhere for 2 days is?

"Daddy, what is 'whataboutism'?"

[deleted]

Re: Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

#145

Post by hollerith »

IshKebab wrote: post #142
hollerith wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On average, roughly 40% of inmates who are incarcerated for violent offenses were under the influence of alcohol during the time of their crime. https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/crimes/

You need to do a basic statistics course. > On average, roughly 100% of inmates who are incarcerated for violent offences have two arms. Arghhh! Quick, cut one of everyone's arms off!

Pick a random person at a random moment in time. What is the probability that the person is under the influence of alcohol? No more than 3% is my guess, but some of my debate opponents might disagree, so let's appease them and say 6%. Keeping on randomly choosing (person, time) pairs, taking note of whether the person you pick is engaging in any violence. Ignore any violence done by anyone other then the person you randomly picked. 40% of the violence you note occurs during the 6% of the time the person you picked is under the influence of alcohol.

Like someone here writes, correlation does not imply causation, but correlation is evidence of causation, and that is a strong correlation. Specifically, if the person you picked is under the influence, he or she is 10.4 times more likely to be engaging in an act of violence than if he or she is not.

Re: Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

#146

Post by tssge »

InvertedRhodium wrote: post #141
tssge wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ice cream consumption is correlated with drowning. Many times correlation just doesn't mean that much by itself.

That’s just implies that there is a common causality - in the case of ice cream and drowning, I suspect that is nice weather. It also correlates with serial killers, because turns out no one likes to do their hobby in poor weather.

Yes, that was my point exactly. Due to nice weather, ice cream consumption and drowning begin to correlate and it's hard to draw conclusions from this correlation alone.

As an example for coffee consumption it could just be that coffee is consumed more in countries with higher living standards and higher living standards lead to longer life. Coffee might not necessarily be healthy by itself, though of course it could very well be.

Re: Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

#147

Post by pfdietz »

ryandrake wrote: post #130
anal_reactor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Risks are about trade-offs. If the American Cancer Society wants to be helpful and actually listened to they need to provide practical actionable advice, not this cop-out. I feel like the medical community is slowly starting to finally realize that they can't force patients to minmax their lives. Why would I live a long life that isn't enjoyable?

I think we learned in 2020-2021 that if the medical community doesn't put out an extremely strong statement about something, the general public won't take it seriously at all. When the ACS recommends avoiding alcohol consumption at any level , they don't think people are actually going to suddenly quit drinking. They're just trying to convince that guy who drinks two six-packs a night to cut down to one six-pack a ni…

Or, they've run the numbers, looked at the biology, and concluded the cost/benefit of drinking at any level doesn't favor drinking.

Re: Why many studies wrongly claim it's healthy to drink a little alcohol

#148

Post by psd1 »

Unbefleckt wrote: post #120
psd1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People - and animals - just want to get fucked up. You can see this when animals get into fermented fruit. So there's been plenty of time for alcohol to get very entrenched in human culture.

Do as yet unfucked animals exist in some kind of sober ennui not knowing what it is they yearn for?

That's how I'd characterise my early teenage years, yes
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