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It doesn't help that studies like this are also usually wrong. Don't change anything in your life until something has been replicated a dozen or more times.
by antt 8y ago
It doesn't help that studies like this are also usually wrong. Don't change anything in your life until something has been replicated a dozen or more times.
- dmschulman 8y agoOr maybe take the information as a sign that perhaps caution is warranted in some areas and it might be worthwhile to consider how you might change your behaviors based on the evidence. I agree that scientific conclusions are sometime editorialized to convey the pressing nature of the findings (the evidence is what it is), but 100% wrong or 100% right I don't think it would do you much harm to reduce the amount of pollution you're exposed to on a daily basis.
- ant6n 8y agoAir pollution and smoking are both very likely to be bad for you.
- Silixon 8y agoThere's a Pascal's wager in this situation. In the worst case, there's no cognitive effect from pollution, but you clean up the environment anyway. Even without the possibility of improving your ability to reason, there are many other obvious benefits to reducing pollution, quitting smoking, and many other major changes about which the effects have been debated and exaggerated over time.
- marcusjt 8y agoSee also "The Precautionary Principle", which environmental policy should ideally always follow but alas all too often doesn't, as in this case.
- zeveb 8y ago> There's a Pascal's wager in this situation. In the worst case, there's no cognitive effect from pollution, but you clean up the environment anyway. And, as with Pascal's wager, that's unconvincing: one could spend all that money differently, on things one would like (just as in Pascal's wager, choosing to believe in God isn't cost-free: it means loving others, being charitable &c., even if one would rather not).
- Sangermaine 8y ago>(just as in Pascal's wager, choosing to believe in God isn't cost-free: it means loving others, being charitable &c., even if one would rather not) "What if you were a good person for no reason?" is perhaps the most Hacker News comment I've ever read.
- antt 8y ago>there's no cognitive effect from pollution The worst case is that there is a positive effect from pollution. When one looks at the historic data it wasn't until people started living in smog filled cities that children started attending schools. We shouldn't fall into the trap of assuming causation and correlation just because it gels with something in your subconscious.
- Brakenshire 8y agoThis is just one of many potential effects. Damage to lung formation and increased risk of asthma are very well established.
- emodendroket 8y agoI think we can be pretty confident that air pollution is bad for your health, even if some effects in the constellation of health issues attributed to it are not as strong as claimed.