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Correlation doesn't equal causation. I'd bet that an alcoholic millionaire would have a shorter life expectancy than a healthy street sweeper. It isn't money th

Correlation doesn't equal causation. I'd bet that an alcoholic millionaire would have a shorter life expectancy than a healthy street sweeper. It isn't money that matters, it's the cultural norms.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Indirect causation is still causation. Two people have heart-attacks in middle age after eating cheeseburgers their whole lives. One of them doesn't have health-insurance, and dies, perhaps having never even received good health advice from a yearly check-up. The other is well-off, and so gets stabilized in the hospital and eventually provided with heart surgery (and a whole load of admonishments regarding lifestyle).
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  As I said before, it's about the cultural norms, which is exactly what you've just described. For an example showing that money and cultural norms are not necessarily linked, take a look at Ikaria: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-...
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    What cultural norms? We're talking about two men who made exactly the same bad lifestyle choices. And I know a number of living candidates to be both these guys!
joefarish 11y ago
An alcoholic millionaire having a shorter life expectancy than a healthy street sweeper doesn't mean there isn't a correlation between wealth and life expectancy.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  I never denied that correlations could exist, but correlation is not the same as causation. In other words, you can have overlap, but one doesn't cause the other. In terms of causation, stress can influence life expectancy, and lack of wealth can affect stress (which is especially exacerbated if a country doesn't have public healthcare). Quality of food and water can also be an issue in a society with stark inequality. That's basically as far as it goes. Poor people can be healthier than rich people. If wealth was a dominant cause of better health then that outcome would be unlikely.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    It's just an empty statement. A dead millionaire has a lower life expectancy than a living welfare recipient. True, but irrelevant - the fact that you choose to add details to even things out means that you had some cause in your perception of their relative baselines to decide on the direction of your adjustments. > Poor people can be healthier than rich people. If wealth was a dominant cause of better health then that outcome would be unlikely. You're mixing possibility and probability, and the entire point is that it is unlikely. edit: I feel like I have to be very explicit here, because this is very basic: A particular result of a comparison being unlikely to be true for any pair of individuals does not mean that if you find a single example of a comparison going the other way, you've proved something. People are very unlikely to be on an airplane at any particular time. That doesn't mean that no one is on an airplane, or that anyone anywhere being on an airplane is an uncommon event.
    - ZenoArrow 11y ago
      > "It's just an empty statement. A dead millionaire has a lower life expectancy than a living welfare recipient. True, but irrelevant - the fact that you choose to add details to even things out means that you had some cause in your perception of their relative baselines to decide on the direction of your adjustments." I'm making that extra distinction to make it clear that it's about the lifestyle, not the money per se. The perception is that wealthier people in the US have a healthier lifestyle on average than poor people in the US. However, by looking at the issue globally you can see that people who live in cultures that are healthier than the US do not necessarily have more money than the US, nor is there such a pronounced difference between the health of the richest and the health of the poorest in those healthier cultures. With that in mind, you can see that it's not the money making the difference, but rather the cultural norms. If you want to get more specific, compare the diets of the various countries with the best life expectancy, and look at the affordability to the locals for such a diet. > "You're mixing possibility and probability, and the entire point is that it is unlikely. edit: I feel like I have to be very explicit here, because this is very basic: A particular result of a comparison being unlikely to be true for any pair of individuals does not mean that if you find a single example of a comparison going the other way, you've proved something. People are very unlikely to be on an airplane at any particular time. That doesn't mean that no one is on an airplane, or that anyone anywhere being on an airplane is an uncommon event." Look at what the countries with the longest life expectancy do to achieve that. Now ask yourself how much it would cost other countries to achieve similar results.

Correlation doesn't equal causation. I'd bet that an alcoholic millionaire would have a shorter life expectancy than a healthy street sweeper. It isn't money that matters, it's the cultural norms.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

Indirect causation is still causation. Two people have heart-attacks in middle age after eating cheeseburgers their whole lives. One of them doesn't have health-insurance, and dies, perhaps having never even received good health advice from a yearly check-up. The other is well-off, and so gets stabilized in the hospital and eventually provided with heart surgery (and a whole load of admonishments regarding lifestyle).

ZenoArrow 11y ago
As I said before, it's about the cultural norms, which is exactly what you've just described. For an example showing that money and cultural norms are not necessarily linked, take a look at Ikaria: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-...
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  What cultural norms? We're talking about two men who made exactly the same bad lifestyle choices. And I know a number of living candidates to be both these guys!

joefarish 11y ago

An alcoholic millionaire having a shorter life expectancy than a healthy street sweeper doesn't mean there isn't a correlation between wealth and life expectancy.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
I never denied that correlations could exist, but correlation is not the same as causation. In other words, you can have overlap, but one doesn't cause the other. In terms of causation, stress can influence life expectancy, and lack of wealth can affect stress (which is especially exacerbated if a country doesn't have public healthcare). Quality of food and water can also be an issue in a society with stark inequality. That's basically as far as it goes. Poor people can be healthier than rich people. If wealth was a dominant cause of better health then that outcome would be unlikely.
- pessimizer 11y ago
  It's just an empty statement. A dead millionaire has a lower life expectancy than a living welfare recipient. True, but irrelevant - the fact that you choose to add details to even things out means that you had some cause in your perception of their relative baselines to decide on the direction of your adjustments. > Poor people can be healthier than rich people. If wealth was a dominant cause of better health then that outcome would be unlikely. You're mixing possibility and probability, and the entire point is that it is unlikely. edit: I feel like I have to be very explicit here, because this is very basic: A particular result of a comparison being unlikely to be true for any pair of individuals does not mean that if you find a single example of a comparison going the other way, you've proved something. People are very unlikely to be on an airplane at any particular time. That doesn't mean that no one is on an airplane, or that anyone anywhere being on an airplane is an uncommon event.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    > "It's just an empty statement. A dead millionaire has a lower life expectancy than a living welfare recipient. True, but irrelevant - the fact that you choose to add details to even things out means that you had some cause in your perception of their relative baselines to decide on the direction of your adjustments." I'm making that extra distinction to make it clear that it's about the lifestyle, not the money per se. The perception is that wealthier people in the US have a healthier lifestyle on average than poor people in the US. However, by looking at the issue globally you can see that people who live in cultures that are healthier than the US do not necessarily have more money than the US, nor is there such a pronounced difference between the health of the richest and the health of the poorest in those healthier cultures. With that in mind, you can see that it's not the money making the difference, but rather the cultural norms. If you want to get more specific, compare the diets of the various countries with the best life expectancy, and look at the affordability to the locals for such a diet. > "You're mixing possibility and probability, and the entire point is that it is unlikely. edit: I feel like I have to be very explicit here, because this is very basic: A particular result of a comparison being unlikely to be true for any pair of individuals does not mean that if you find a single example of a comparison going the other way, you've proved something. People are very unlikely to be on an airplane at any particular time. That doesn't mean that no one is on an airplane, or that anyone anywhere being on an airplane is an uncommon event." Look at what the countries with the longest life expectancy do to achieve that. Now ask yourself how much it would cost other countries to achieve similar results.