4 ms·

Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Seems like that would be a more meaningful metric for an individual, rather than lum

Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Seems like that would be a more meaningful metric for an individual, rather than lumping them in with every drug addict.

decebalus1 9y ago
> Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Wow.. whenever someone asks me why the US doesn't have humane social services and still regards drug addiction as a crime in need of punishment, I'll point them to this comment.
- matte_black 9y ago
  I don't get why this is a big deal. We already serve up content based on people similar to you or making similar choices as you, why not health forecasts? If I eat healthy, exercise, get the proper amount of sleep and am not addicted to drugs, why not show me how other people with similar habits as me are doing, instead of averaging in people who treat their body like a dumpster? Showing me the life expectancy averaged across an entire country of 300 million doesn't motivate me to do anything. There is nothing I can do that will make any impact on that number. By this logic we should show life expectancy as the average of the entire planet, that would be the best wouldn't it? No. Showing people an accurate life expectancy however, could motivate them to make changes to their lifestyle or stay the course if they are happy with it. I don't know, maybe people just have negative knee-jerk reactions to anyone proposing individualist sentiments.
  - decebalus1 9y ago
    > Showing me the life expectancy averaged across an entire country of 300 million doesn't motivate me to do anything. This is not the point of life expectancy statistics. It's not to motivate people. And It's not about you. Just because you're thinking it's about you and that it's not relevant to you to be put in the same bucket with others proves my point. This is an intentionally nation-scale barometer which is used to asses the Human Development Index. It's more tied with Income inequality than with your diet and exercise regimen.
    - matte_black 9y ago
      What is your point exactly? That I don’t care about other people because I’m more concerned about myself? How is that unusual? Seems like most people are that way.
    - hueving 9y ago
      None of those reasons the life expectancy decreased had anything to do with income inequality. Nobody died from an accident or Alzheimers because rich people got more money. Please don't use this as an excuse for whatever pet issue you want.
      - decebalus1 9y ago
        I didn't state what the reason for decreased life expectancy was. I only said 'it is more tied do X' (see 1) than his individual parameters. 1. http://jech.bmj.com/content/59/2/158 http://jech.bmj.com/content/59/2/158
  - quietmonkey 9y ago
    Even if you are drug-free now, you could have a procedure in couple years and become addicted to opioids during recovery. Many people who are suffering from the opioid epidemic were prescribed these drugs.
    - hueving 9y ago
      But that's even more reason to split out the stats. It would be very good to know that the average life expectancy for opioid users is much lower before I consider taking them. Life expectancy if you get the surgery and medicate with pot: 80 years. Life expectancy if you get the surgery and use the opioids: 60 years. That seems immeasurably more useful than a national average alone which only can be used for political talking points.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        That's not a matter of splitting out stats, because the information gathered doesn't support that. That kind of research does get done, but it's expensive, time consuming, and only really possible when alternatives have been fairly widely applied for enough years to have good data to support meaningful analysis of expected lifetime (and may still, even then, be misleading I'd treatment protols for either drug have evolved significantly over the period.) So you won't find them for all the options of interest, and you emphatically won't find them for emerging options (including pot, which hasn't been even quasi-legal long enough to support good data.)
        matte_black 9y ago
        But it is something worth working toward in the future yes? Perhaps when we have massive amounts of data.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        Sure, though (and this is usually reflected in research that it includes it now), lifespan alone for alternatives isn't the only or necessarily most important piece of comparative information; relative risks of other conditions even if they are non-fatal and other quality-of-life concerns are important, too. For aggregate purposes when we aren't comparing path risks but looking at overall status, the patallel is merely statistics on the incidence of various conditions and effects with quality-of-life impacts, which is currently done separately from life expectancy.
- refurb 9y ago
  Calm down. It's a reasonable question. Is there life expectancy data for different segments of the population?
- volgo 9y ago
  Welcome to America. This is the typical rhetoric going around in the Bay Area
itronitron 9y ago
people most similar to you likely includes many drug addicts
dredmorbius 9y ago
Discussions of "risk factors" tend to take this into account. Age, sex, and socioeconomic status dominate. There are a number of conditions linked to genetics -- types of anemia, heart disease, Tay-Sachs syndrome, off the top of my head. Environmental exposures map strongly to socioeconomic status, though there are of course regional variations. Weight, "body mass index" (a horrible measure), body fat percentage (far more useful, but harder to obtain), and various specific exposures and behaviours will cover much else: drink, smokes, injectable drugs, unprotected sex, other high-risk activity. This is pretty much the life work of epidemiologists, public health statisticians, and actuaries.
pasquinelli 9y ago
it's not about you, it's about us, america. if you want meaningful metrics for you, talk to your doctor.
- hueving 9y ago
  When it comes to health 'us, America' is so incredibly diverse in behavior that it's nearly meaningless. We can have a medical break through that lets us revive stroke victims as brain dead patients that live for years in beds. Simultaneously we can have a smaller opioid epidemic that kills fewer people than the stroke victims and makes way more addicts. Average life expectancy increased, but who really gives a crap in that case?
- matte_black 9y ago
  It’s a vanity metric. Life expectancy gives no actionable information for anyone except for “move to another country”.
  - phs318u 9y ago
    I'd suggest that there's an element of the the canary in the coalmine to this metric. As another commenter noted, it is much harder to fudge deaths vs employment. Hence greater believability and therefore triggers the question "why" in the broader populace.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Sure, to some degree of similarity, if you want to spend effort analyzing the multidimensional demographic and other factors in mortality data; there's very little public policy value in that, so the public organizations that compile public health information to support policy aren't likely to package that up for you, though.
- hueving 9y ago
  >there's very little public policy value in that That's incredibly myopic and would point to a massively flawed system if that's true. It's incredibly valuable for public policy on both ends of the political spectrum to know if certain demographics are dying much sooner than others. A single national average is about as useless as you can get unless your goal is to bemoan the decline of the US or highlight how much better one nation is than another.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Nor should they, because the process has to be done on an individual basis.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  They do some demographic breakdowns: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db293.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db293.htm I wouldn't be that surprised if they also sliced out "substance abuse", because mortality of the using population is likely a useful metric in characterizing the problem.
volgo 9y ago
Republicans and poor people are Americans too

Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Seems like that would be a more meaningful metric for an individual, rather than lumping them in with every drug addict.

decebalus1 9y ago

> Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Wow.. whenever someone asks me why the US doesn't have humane social services and still regards drug addiction as a crime in need of punishment, I'll point them to this comment.

matte_black 9y ago
I don't get why this is a big deal. We already serve up content based on people similar to you or making similar choices as you, why not health forecasts? If I eat healthy, exercise, get the proper amount of sleep and am not addicted to drugs, why not show me how other people with similar habits as me are doing, instead of averaging in people who treat their body like a dumpster? Showing me the life expectancy averaged across an entire country of 300 million doesn't motivate me to do anything. There is nothing I can do that will make any impact on that number. By this logic we should show life expectancy as the average of the entire planet, that would be the best wouldn't it? No. Showing people an accurate life expectancy however, could motivate them to make changes to their lifestyle or stay the course if they are happy with it. I don't know, maybe people just have negative knee-jerk reactions to anyone proposing individualist sentiments.
- decebalus1 9y ago
  > Showing me the life expectancy averaged across an entire country of 300 million doesn't motivate me to do anything. This is not the point of life expectancy statistics. It's not to motivate people. And It's not about you. Just because you're thinking it's about you and that it's not relevant to you to be put in the same bucket with others proves my point. This is an intentionally nation-scale barometer which is used to asses the Human Development Index. It's more tied with Income inequality than with your diet and exercise regimen.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    What is your point exactly? That I don’t care about other people because I’m more concerned about myself? How is that unusual? Seems like most people are that way.
  - hueving 9y ago
    None of those reasons the life expectancy decreased had anything to do with income inequality. Nobody died from an accident or Alzheimers because rich people got more money. Please don't use this as an excuse for whatever pet issue you want.
    - decebalus1 9y ago
      I didn't state what the reason for decreased life expectancy was. I only said 'it is more tied do X' (see 1) than his individual parameters. 1. http://jech.bmj.com/content/59/2/158 http://jech.bmj.com/content/59/2/158
- quietmonkey 9y ago
  Even if you are drug-free now, you could have a procedure in couple years and become addicted to opioids during recovery. Many people who are suffering from the opioid epidemic were prescribed these drugs.
  - hueving 9y ago
    But that's even more reason to split out the stats. It would be very good to know that the average life expectancy for opioid users is much lower before I consider taking them. Life expectancy if you get the surgery and medicate with pot: 80 years. Life expectancy if you get the surgery and use the opioids: 60 years. That seems immeasurably more useful than a national average alone which only can be used for political talking points.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      That's not a matter of splitting out stats, because the information gathered doesn't support that. That kind of research does get done, but it's expensive, time consuming, and only really possible when alternatives have been fairly widely applied for enough years to have good data to support meaningful analysis of expected lifetime (and may still, even then, be misleading I'd treatment protols for either drug have evolved significantly over the period.) So you won't find them for all the options of interest, and you emphatically won't find them for emerging options (including pot, which hasn't been even quasi-legal long enough to support good data.)
      - matte_black 9y ago
        But it is something worth working toward in the future yes? Perhaps when we have massive amounts of data.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        Sure, though (and this is usually reflected in research that it includes it now), lifespan alone for alternatives isn't the only or necessarily most important piece of comparative information; relative risks of other conditions even if they are non-fatal and other quality-of-life concerns are important, too. For aggregate purposes when we aren't comparing path risks but looking at overall status, the patallel is merely statistics on the incidence of various conditions and effects with quality-of-life impacts, which is currently done separately from life expectancy.
refurb 9y ago
Calm down. It's a reasonable question. Is there life expectancy data for different segments of the population?
volgo 9y ago
Welcome to America. This is the typical rhetoric going around in the Bay Area

itronitron 9y ago

people most similar to you likely includes many drug addicts

dredmorbius 9y ago

Discussions of "risk factors" tend to take this into account. Age, sex, and socioeconomic status dominate. There are a number of conditions linked to genetics -- types of anemia, heart disease, Tay-Sachs syndrome, off the top of my head. Environmental exposures map strongly to socioeconomic status, though there are of course regional variations. Weight, "body mass index" (a horrible measure), body fat percentage (far more useful, but harder to obtain), and various specific exposures and behaviours will cover much else: drink, smokes, injectable drugs, unprotected sex, other high-risk activity. This is pretty much the life work of epidemiologists, public health statisticians, and actuaries.

pasquinelli 9y ago

it's not about you, it's about us, america. if you want meaningful metrics for you, talk to your doctor.

hueving 9y ago
When it comes to health 'us, America' is so incredibly diverse in behavior that it's nearly meaningless. We can have a medical break through that lets us revive stroke victims as brain dead patients that live for years in beds. Simultaneously we can have a smaller opioid epidemic that kills fewer people than the stroke victims and makes way more addicts. Average life expectancy increased, but who really gives a crap in that case?
matte_black 9y ago
It’s a vanity metric. Life expectancy gives no actionable information for anyone except for “move to another country”.
- phs318u 9y ago
  I'd suggest that there's an element of the the canary in the coalmine to this metric. As another commenter noted, it is much harder to fudge deaths vs employment. Hence greater believability and therefore triggers the question "why" in the broader populace.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Is there a way to measure “Life expectancy of people most similar to you”? Sure, to some degree of similarity, if you want to spend effort analyzing the multidimensional demographic and other factors in mortality data; there's very little public policy value in that, so the public organizations that compile public health information to support policy aren't likely to package that up for you, though.

hueving 9y ago
>there's very little public policy value in that That's incredibly myopic and would point to a massively flawed system if that's true. It's incredibly valuable for public policy on both ends of the political spectrum to know if certain demographics are dying much sooner than others. A single national average is about as useless as you can get unless your goal is to bemoan the decline of the US or highlight how much better one nation is than another.
matte_black 9y ago
Nor should they, because the process has to be done on an individual basis.
maxerickson 9y ago
They do some demographic breakdowns: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db293.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db293.htm I wouldn't be that surprised if they also sliced out "substance abuse", because mortality of the using population is likely a useful metric in characterizing the problem.

volgo 9y ago

Republicans and poor people are Americans too