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Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

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Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#81

Post by globular-toast »

smithkl42 wrote: post #19

[flagged]

I'm an atheist, but I do wish I could go to church, or at least something like that. I've tried going to other non-religious clubs but it's not really the same. A pottery class just doesn't give that same feeling of "belonging".

The trouble is it just seems a bit too serious every time I've been. I don't believe any of it, and I can't believe anyone with intelligence could believe it either. But unlike, say, WWE-style wrestling, there are way too many people taking it far too seriously. You never hear of atrocities or stupidity happening because someone took wrestling too seriously. Are there churches that are more like wrestling?

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#82

Post by lynx97 »

No need to jump on the latest buzzwords, doing science. I remember this kind of study has already been done with married/unmarried peope, with basically a similar result. The explanation they gave back then was pretty logical: If you are living alone, there is nobody around to call an ambulance if you have a heart attack or similar.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#83

Post by coldtea »

>Loneliness increases death risk by 32% but we know how to fix it. Real solutions that cut loneliness in half, from mindfulness to community programs that actually work.

And what, pray tell, works? He goes on:

>Those programs in Barcelona where almost half the people stopped feeling lonely? The mindfulness stuff that works in just two weeks? Even the robot pets for elderly people “it all works”. We’re not talking about maybe or possibly here. This stuff actually works. What gets me is that fixing loneliness doesn’t require some massive revolution. Twenty minutes of mindfulness a day. A weekly volunteer shift.

Slop.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#84

Post by hhmc »

vasco wrote: post #21
paraknight wrote: post #16

I haven't dug into all the sources, but I think there's a potential confounder here, or maybe even reverse causality. The author seems to assume causation when the studies only indicate correlation. E.g. the first link says "chronic loneliness increases mortality risk" but the actual source says "actual and perceived social isolation are both associated with increased risk for early mortality". So for example, it's p…

My dismissive but practical take is "well yeah there's nobody in the room to call an ambulance when you have the heart attack you'll most likely have", which mindfulness classes and support groups don't help with. There's practical benefits to having people around.

I once did a course with a paramedic on basic aid. We were discussing choking, which is a condition that really needs a 2nd party to intervene. Someone asked what to do if you live alone (with no close neighbours) - the answer was essentially ‘good luck’

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#85

Post by gjm11 »

The following is perfectly compatible with everything in the article being correct and important (though I share the suspicion that there may be some reverse-causality going on), but the author seems to be extremely fishy in some ways.

He's posting about two substantial (~10-30 pages) papers per week to the arXiv, in various areas of mathematics. He claims to have developed "Alpay Algebra: A recursive language for thought" and what he's written about it looks to me like (1) it was actually written by an LLM and (2) it's basically word/symbol salad. (He has some papers about it on the arXiv. The first isn't particularly bullshitty, but uses a great deal of formalism to say almost nothing. Later ones look like grandiose AI-written slop. And he has some web pages that are just grandiose AI-written slop.)

I repeat: none of this needs to cast any particular doubt on what he writes about loneliness. He might be an AI-driven mathematical crank who also has wise thoughts about loneliness. I might just be wrong about his being an AI-driven mathematical crank, though I'd be pretty surprised. Or, for that matter, his post about loneliness might be AI-written but none the less correct. (It's the kind of thing I would expect an LLM to be able to write something reasonable about -- though in that case it would be advisable to double-check the references.) But it doesn't inspire confidence.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#86

Post by mikemarsh »

jasonlotito wrote: post #60
smithkl42 wrote: post #19

[flagged]

Is this true? I see a lot of people on the right complaining about loneliness epidemic, so it would seem odd that people who are attending church would have this issue and it still being a problem. You hear about lots of young, right-wing men talking about this as an issue, so church is clearly not solving it for them. This is all hearsay and anecdotal, mind you, and I admit I have not done the research here. It's no…

Talk to any right-leaning young man who's actively engaged in a church community (even better if they're actually pursuing Christ, and not just chasing an abstract ideal of "community") and you won't hear very much about the "loneliness epidemic", except maybe in reference to their peers.

It may be hard to find them online in order to "talk" to them though, and of course that's the whole point :-) Selection bias at work.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#87

Post by SirHumphrey »

Herring wrote: post #50
al_borland wrote: post #25

Mindfullness as a treatment for loneliness is strange to me. This doesn't actually help with the problem of being alone, it could just make someone be more OK with it. As someone who spends a lot of time alone, one of my big fears is having a medical emergency, even just choking on food, and dying from something that would be easily avoided had another person been in the house. I've gone and looked up how to give mys…

It's quite a rare thing to die by choking. It just doesn't feel like it, which is where mindfulness can help. You do more dangerous things every day like walking (falls) and driving, eating (obesity), and brushing your teeth (gum disease), so if you want to work on prevention it's better to have a head that correctly assesses risk and spends your limited time/money/effort optimally.

But then choking is not the only health emergency when having people around is a plus. Even active people sometimes suffer from heart attacks and having someone being there doing chest compressions or at least calling for help leads to quite difficult health outcomes versus being found hours later. Same goes for strokes…

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#88

Post by arandr0x »

JackFr wrote: post #72
vasco wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dismissive but practical take is "well yeah there's nobody in the room to call an ambulance when you have the heart attack you'll most likely have", which mindfulness classes and support groups don't help with. There's practical benefits to having people around.

There was a funny statistical artifact I read once (well, for some value of 'funny') that home was a terrible place to have a heart attack, because people are willing to 'just lie down and see how I feel' rather than in a restaurant or movie theater where an ambulance will be called.

It would be interesting then for similar studies to add a dimension in addition to self-reported loneliness on self-reported time spent outside the home. While it's likely that sedentary elders are lonelier, it's not a 100% overlap (some elders live with close family and some lonely people are still very physically active/outside). You would expect lonely, active people to have lower death rates than lonely, sedentary people with similar pre-existing conditions under your hypothesis, and it would be a powerful thing to prove because it's a lot easier to make people go out than to make them make friends.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#89

Post by vkou »

hhmc wrote: post #84
vasco wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dismissive but practical take is "well yeah there's nobody in the room to call an ambulance when you have the heart attack you'll most likely have", which mindfulness classes and support groups don't help with. There's practical benefits to having people around.

I once did a course with a paramedic on basic aid. We were discussing choking, which is a condition that really needs a 2nd party to intervene. Someone asked what to do if you live alone (with no close neighbours) - the answer was essentially ‘good luck’

Most people don't know how to do a self-heimlich.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#90

Post by bilbo0s »

bookofjoe wrote: post #52
bilbo0s wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swear the social parts of life are what keep the elderly going, in my experience. I could've sworn there was a paper, (or maybe just an article? can't remember), a long time ago about the community on a Mediterranean island somewhere? The thesis was that people there were living abnormally long lives because of the Mediterranean style food they ate, and how socially active and interconnected they were in old age.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240322-eat-beans-and-li...

That's it!

Thanks!

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