Live data from Hacker News

Getting your hands dirty is good for you

bbc.com

71–80 of 214 posts

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#71
post #52

I heard the most ridiculous thing the other day: That GenZ and Gen Alpha have started doing this thing they call “private podcasting”. Where they invite a friend over and discuss topics like one of those podcasts where dudes just talk about stuff…but they don’t record it or post it anywhere. I was stunned. Is this generation really so socially starved by the attention parasites that human beings are starting to reinv…

It's a joke poking fun at podcast bros.

Yeah I definitely hope so lol

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#72
post #57

The mechanism is somewhat dubious imho - why would dirt selectively have beneficial bacteria that other environments don’t? I could come up with some just-so stories about how more “virulent” (haha) bacteria are the only ones to conquer our more sterile world but it’s just a plausible tale. I do subscribe to it myself but not out of evidence. It’s just vibes. Built my daughter a little dirt box with grass and edible…

It’s not dirt, it’s soil. Soil is a living ecosystem.

[deleted]

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#73
post #57

The mechanism is somewhat dubious imho - why would dirt selectively have beneficial bacteria that other environments don’t? I could come up with some just-so stories about how more “virulent” (haha) bacteria are the only ones to conquer our more sterile world but it’s just a plausible tale. I do subscribe to it myself but not out of evidence. It’s just vibes. Built my daughter a little dirt box with grass and edible…

It’s not dirt, it’s soil. Soil is a living ecosystem.

So is my gut but if I smeared my insides on my body I would likely fall ill. Even pathogens form a living ecosystem.

Or, to put it a different way,

> Cars have windows and can go. Houses have windows and can’t go. So it’s not the windows that make the car go

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#74
post #57

The mechanism is somewhat dubious imho - why would dirt selectively have beneficial bacteria that other environments don’t? I could come up with some just-so stories about how more “virulent” (haha) bacteria are the only ones to conquer our more sterile world but it’s just a plausible tale. I do subscribe to it myself but not out of evidence. It’s just vibes. Built my daughter a little dirt box with grass and edible…

The Simpsons explained this one a while back, funnily enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#75
post #57

The mechanism is somewhat dubious imho - why would dirt selectively have beneficial bacteria that other environments don’t? I could come up with some just-so stories about how more “virulent” (haha) bacteria are the only ones to conquer our more sterile world but it’s just a plausible tale. I do subscribe to it myself but not out of evidence. It’s just vibes. Built my daughter a little dirt box with grass and edible…

Ecosystems have niches for aggressive behavior against participants that reduce diversity. It's why you find higher concentrations of Lyme disease in new housing developments than you do in the deep woods: it's the activation of a defense mechanism (in the Lyme disease case it has to do with there being a higher proportion of competent hosts for the pathogen: mice, but in general evolution has myriad ways if implementing this pattern).

If it's just you and one species of bacteria, you're closer to a circumstance that would call for the activation of such behavior than if diversity is high.

So it's not that the bacteria are intrinsically good or bad, but that the different circumstances call for calm or aggressive behavior, and all your friends going missing cues aggressiveness in species who have evolved by filling that niche in the past.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#76
post #58

I have gotten weird rashes on my hands after working in the garden, so maybe it's not all good all the time.

My partner is an estate gardener; early on in our relationship she came home with a green thumb. Apparently, the adage is about getting fungus under your nail beds and not keeping plants alive

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it has nothing to do with regular germs! You're severely misunderstanding how germs and infections work. But germphobes have the phobia as a response to stress, its never a logical position they take. You're feelings rule your intellect on this one I'm afraid, that's a textbook definition of irrationally

Simlle question: i see dozens animals shitting on the same spot every day. Next day I see a child playing at that spot, should a say something? Is that an overreaction?

Yes

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#78
post #57

The mechanism is somewhat dubious imho - why would dirt selectively have beneficial bacteria that other environments don’t? I could come up with some just-so stories about how more “virulent” (haha) bacteria are the only ones to conquer our more sterile world but it’s just a plausible tale. I do subscribe to it myself but not out of evidence. It’s just vibes. Built my daughter a little dirt box with grass and edible…

To keep it simple:

For one it's just competition. If you have regular contact to a diverse set of microorganisms chances are higher that they will keep each other populations in check. The dose makes the poison applies here too in some narrow sense.

Additionally (or even mainly) our immune system always on guard (me/not me) gets to play around with the obvious stuff and not be overwhelmed or be "bored" but constantly trained/tamed. We have evolved to have constant contact to a diverse set of microorganisms which modulate our immune system e.g. through toll-like receptors.

As an extreme case some people develop some natural immunity to the tetanus toxin through regular exposure to a extreme variety of microorganisms, obviously this isn't reliable nor a gamble remotely worth the risk.

[0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3980089/

[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6827147/

Edit: don't know why OP gets downvoted it's a perfectly fine entrance question/bafflement to motivate some deeper digging into microbiology/immunology.

Re: Getting your hands dirty is good for you

#79
post #35

... Wasn't there papers and articles showing getting in contact with soil was causing Parkinson's? Feeling some pâro, again: https://youtu.be/w7l2hUp0CkQ

I thought that was related to the insecticides/herbicides, not soil itself.

It's unclear.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/sep/23/medicalscience.wo...

My point was more that articles like the one on the BBC (or the Guardian for that matter) just contradict themselves every year. I completely stopped reading those "pop science" takes that are only there for clicks.

(To its credit, the Guardian makes place for long form articles that go more in-depth on known knowns and known unknowns.)

Post reply on HN