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Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

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Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#201

Post by fluoridation »

monster_truck wrote: post #95
genxy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who would pass The Knowledge test might already develop dementia at a much lower rate.

They could also develop it at the exact same rate and mask it effectively. Had a very sharp family member who was completely lucid through all of dementia, it was like watching a tape rewind. Got to meet each decade's version of them over a couple of years. Towards the end they were completely normal

I don't understand. Do you mean they were lucid, but they believed they were living in a different year? Like thinking adults were still children in school and wondering when dead people were going to call? That kind of thing?

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#202

Post by vanderZwan »

stymaar wrote: post #163
cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

It pains me to see such a low-effort contrarian comment at the top: as stated in TFA taxi drivers are below other profession when controlling for age, and there are multiple professions with lower life expectancy that still have significantly higher Alzheimer rate than taxi drivers.

I do wonder if you can truly control for it in this case, or if doing so doesn't in and of itself introduce a survivar bias that masks a reversal of causality. That is: could the taxi drivers who are already predisposed to have a lower chance of developing Alzheimer for other reasons also be the ones who are more likely to live to be older than the average taxi driver?

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#203

Post by reichstein »

coldtea wrote: post #60
TacticalCoder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very interesting but why do taxi drivers have a job that lowers life expectancy? Is it because they're sitting too much? Or because they're inhaling CO from cars too much? Or staying inside (the car) too much? Or is it just stressful? For from the look of it it doesn't look like an exceptionally hard job (btw a brother of mine did years of "VTC": "Vehicule de Tourisme avec Chauffeur" , basically high-end taxis…

> For from the look of it it doesn't look like an exceptionally hard job Define "hard job". Carrying heavy objects?

Stressful on the body.

Odd hours, sitting too much, inhaling too many exhaust fumes, having people yell at you if _they're_ late.

Sounds like a fairly hard job.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#205

Post by coldtea »

reichstein wrote: post #203
coldtea wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For from the look of it it doesn't look like an exceptionally hard job Define "hard job". Carrying heavy objects?

Stressful on the body. Odd hours, sitting too much, inhaling too many exhaust fumes, having people yell at you if _they're_ late. Sounds like a fairly hard job.

Yes, taxi driving can be hard.

There are jobs stressful on the mind too - and some of them have very low "life expectancies".

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#206

Post by cenamus »

toast0 wrote: post #80
OptionOfT wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 2019 car had the cardinal directions in the mirror (N, NE, E, ES, S etc). My 2025 does not anymore. I hate it. I think it helps to get that baseline of orientation, and then you look at the street numbers, and it all starts to come together.

Suction cup compasses are ~ $10 on amazon if it bothers you. Won't be in the mirror though.

You'd also need to mount them facing up, pretty inconvenient when driving

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#207

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

somenameforme wrote: post #174
cromka wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People jump the gun to show their perceived intellectual superiority. Typically same kind of people are last to admit of a mistake.

It's not necessarily about intellectualism. Science in modern times is plagued by publish or perish. Researchers just need to get things published to keep working, and negative results don't get published. So I think people often publish stuff without proper controls/missing confounding variables/inversion of causality/etc not out of ignorance, but because they know the conclusion is dubious - but if they don't publi…

> It's not necessarily about intellectualism. Science in modern times is plagued by publish or perish. Researchers just need to get things published to keep working, and negative results don't get published. So I think people often publish stuff without proper controls/missing confounding variables/inversion of causality/etc not out of ignorance, but because they know the conclusion is dubious - but if they don't publish, they're going to be out of a job.

This is very true. In my PhD research, I managed to perfectly predict the placebo effect using a random forest. Now, this was actually due to sampling variance, and the finding went away when I averaged over splits.

I often wonder if I'd still been in academia when this happened, if I would have been able to resist the siren call of a Nature/Science paper (and the consequent career benefits).

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#208

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

keiferski wrote: post #198
stymaar wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There weren't a lot of taxis outside of major cities What? In my country at least (France), taxis have been a thing even in the countryside for as long as cars existed (or rather, as long as the telephone has). And I'd be very surprised if that wasn't also the case in most of Western Europe. In fact it's a much easier job when it comes to routing and knowing your passengers' destinations than doing it in a metropol…

In America, ordering a taxi before rideshare apps was unreliable at best, if you were outside of central parts of major cities. More than one time I got stuck somewhere and had to walk 4 hours home.

> In America, ordering a taxi before rideshare apps was unreliable at best, if you were outside of central parts of major cities.

This was not the case everywhere. For instance, Ireland deregulated taxis in 2002, and service improved massively after that.

It's funny how many amazing tech developments are really just a reaction to the peculiar pathologies of American/SF culture.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#209

Post by lelanthran »

kfarr wrote: post #135
harrall wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study accounts for that. Delay your aging by using your brain a fuck ton, all the time, learning brand new things nowhere near anything you already know.

Learning new languages (and actually using them) is a great way to do this for all ages!

I'm bilingual. Learning new languages is pointless if you have no one to talk to in the new language.

Language skills atrophy surprisingly fast.

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