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Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

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Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#211

Post by roenxi »

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.

Fella has read the article, has an argument and some stats. What more do you want from a comment? He isn't running a study.

Besides, the point is a good one. There are a lot of professions. If we glance at the underlying study [0] Figure 1 suggests that we'd probably expect to see an outlier or two in that mess just through chance, we're expecting a few p[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#212

Post by iwontberude »

jvanderbot wrote: post #170
stymaar wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just the top one? Every top-level thread is like a multiple choice armchair takedown. Here's an interesting counterpoint. "Unthinkable" presented studies of navigation tasks in 2D/3D and testing/training. Hippocampus measurements correlated with skill and training. Interestingly, this skill and training and measurements all correlated with beneficial responses in a disaster (as in, not panicking). Weird right?

[dead]

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#213

Post by phist_mcgee »

hahahaa wrote: post #191
neuralkoi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to memorize 25,000 streets. The test is no joke. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur61kzXjvN8

Would they typically also relearn this at intervals. If you take 5000 rides a year, maybe 2000 streets that is 23000 you didn't get to remember though experience.

They also have to remember where roadwork is/was and what kind of traffic is best/worst at a given time.

There's a fantastic Tom Scott video on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmWREtcDVBE

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#214

Post by navigate8310 »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #159
cortic wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its even worse than that, i can imagine people with undiagnosed early Alzheimer's self selecting for car accidents and cardiac issues through additional stress of mental fatigue while their brain tried to compensate for loss of function. So you have people self selecting out of the profession, self selecting for early death within the profession, and on top of that, a general life expectancy discrepancy that is near…

What happens in the age of self driving cars?

At one point the amount of human induced accidents will increase since no human can account for sudden erratic brakes of a self driver, even though it predicted a correct incoming accident with another V2V connected car.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#216

Post by Cthulhu_ »

rankut wrote: post #215

Then this should stand true for gamers who play a lot of open world games too...

I'm not convinced, as every open world game after Morrowind has had a marker or route mapped out for them in the HUD. I wouldn't know how to get from A to B in most games without it. I get that it's opt-in in most cases but still.

That said, the effects of video games on brain aging will become apparent in the coming decades.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#217

Post by mewpmewp2 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #37
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.

As the paper points out that's accounted for in the analysis, because shockingly enough to most internet commentators researchers know that they need to control for confounding variables https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194

The 1/60 to 1/100 difference could be explained by just one small confounder that is impossible to cover for. Therefore in my opinion making any conclusions based on this study wouldn't be fruitful at all.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#218

Post by jstummbillig »

roenxi wrote: post #211
stymaar wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fella has read the article, has an argument and some stats. What more do you want from a comment? He isn't running a study. Besides, the point is a good one. There are a lot of professions. If we glance at the underlying study [0] Figure 1 suggests that we'd probably expect to see an outlier or two in that mess just through chance, we're expecting a few p [0] https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194

The comment insinuates that the study did not control for age. The study controlled for age.

It's not terrible to not make a good point, but it's not a good point. The not good points should not be ranked highly.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#219

Post by rankut »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #216
rankut wrote: post #215

Then this should stand true for gamers who play a lot of open world games too...

I'm not convinced, as every open world game after Morrowind has had a marker or route mapped out for them in the HUD. I wouldn't know how to get from A to B in most games without it. I get that it's opt-in in most cases but still. That said, the effects of video games on brain aging will become apparent in the coming decades.

Agreed, Open world are quite new but GenZ or GenX should show the effects.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#220

Post by 5m17h »

sixo wrote: post #173
pier25 wrote: post #172

Does gaming also use similar spatial skills?

I have a feeling gaming is quite harmful for spatial skills in the long run, because you learn many different maps (often transient ones in rng-ed games), rather than one fixed one. I would not be surprised if an epidemic of early mental decline begins to show in gamers in coming decades. I'm 36 now and feel like my spatial reasoning is declining in a strange severe way.

[dead]
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