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The cognitive costs of air pollution

patrickcollison.com

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Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution

#121

Post by mc3 »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #113
mc3 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? Who ever said correlation => not causation.

Pretty much every internet comment section for the last 2 decades.

I don't think so. `Correlation => Causation` is used all the time - this is the bread and butter of clickbait headlines and articles "new study shows that...", but `Correlation => ^Causation` requires some sophistication to state ... while being wrong at the same time. Maybe a tactic used to mislead? I haven't seen it ever used.

To be clear `Correlation => ^Causation` is different to `Correlation => TRUE`. (In other words, there is nothing you can deduce from correlation alone).

Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution

#123

Post by dheelus »

digitalsushi wrote: post #118

short of plants, i want to find a device i can put in my area that reduces the co2 in the air. (my space doesn't support plants, it's too cold).

There's a decent amount of research that indicates that indoor air quality doesn't significantly improve with indoor plants. https://time.com/5105027/indoor-plants-air-quality/

Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution

#125

Post by yagurastation »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #8

How do you all monitor air quality? I personally have a couple of devices (an Awair and a Flow). They seem to under-report PM2.5 compared to purpleair, airnow, and waqi.

The inexpensive SDS011 holds up very well and works for this global citizen science project very well: https://luftdaten.info/evaluation/

Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution

#126

Post by svara »

cookiecaper wrote: post #22
kingkawn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems hilarious to assume they can be standardized within a culture too, whatever a culture may be.

Yeah, the reality is that you'll never be able to get reliable/unadulterated data on something that is both as personally impactful and as loosely defined as "intelligence". Everyone is going to bias toward interpreting the mode of thought that is most similar to their own as the definition of "intelligent". Very few adults are comfortable with the idea that any substantial group of people are objectively more intell…

> European history throughout the 20th century shows the horrifying, depraved danger in capitulating to a ruling intelligentsia.

If you're referring to communism and national socialism here, those were rabidly anti-intellectual (the later particularly so).

Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution

#128

Post by gnode »

glofish wrote: post #102
gnode wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't IQ tests be great for studying short term cognitive effects? IQ testing is designed to test for intelligent behaviour, which is largely based on long-term neurological development. The connections in the brain, densities of neurons, and long-term potentiations don't change greatly on a short-term basis. Measures which fluctuate based on spot-performance factors are typically deemed unreliable for the p…

I believe that IQ tests (at least the majority of those that I took or seen) are mostly built as abstract problem-solving tasks, similar to those needed to be productive in modern society. Not sure how one would even measure the "intelligent behavior" that you mention. In addition, to me, it sounds that you are arguing that a test on which you do worse when tired, sleepy, hungry etc. is not an appropriate test becaus…

> Not sure how one would even measure the "intelligent behavior" that you mention.

I meant behaviour in the general psychological / cognitive sense; how an actor responds to stimuli.

Current popular IQ tests are designed to test many facets of intelligent behaviour -- verbal comprehension, arithmetic, working memory, symbol searching, etc. Abstract problem solving is only one category of testing.

I'm arguing that to study short-term cognitive deficits, it makes more sense to use other measures of cognition. It appears this is actually what was done, but this was incorrectly re-reported as "IQ".

Re: The cognitive costs of air pollution

#130

Post by ketzo »

QuanticSausage wrote: post #106

I don't know you, but in every lecture in college that was done in a room with no air flow, I got distracted every five minutes or so. If the proportion of C02 had a cognitive effect that I could feel, then I wouldn't be surprised if other kinds of contaminants do the same.

Can’t find a source, but there’s a similar thing with long meetings — after two hours in a conference room, you’ve added enough CO2 to affect cognitive function.
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