6 ms·

Some things it could possibly be: - Lead gasoline stopped being sold(this is also theorized why crime dropped alot from the 90's) - Pollution being down acros

Some things it could possibly be: - Lead gasoline stopped being sold(this is also theorized why crime dropped alot from the 90's) - Pollution being down across the board due to better EPA standards and electric vehicles. - Increased internet access and more games/puzzles with smart phones to stimulate the mind. - Lead paint being taken very seriously as being detrimental to health. having specialized crews dealing with removing it, also asbestos being removed from society in the same way.

bobthepanda 6y ago
Does asbestos have impacts on mental health? I thought it was mostly just lung issues like mesothelioma.
- vaxman 6y ago
  Asbestos fibers enters the capillaries in the lungs and over 20 years work their way into the sack holding the capillaries to then scab and become tumors. During that 10-20 years, shallow coughing and shortness of breath could lower blood oxygen levels that can’t be good for cognition.
- Fezzik 6y ago
  I would say “probably not”. First, as anecdata, I was a plaintiff’s attorney for asbestosis/mesothelioma sufferers and every client I had was whip-smart. Other than being older and having concomitant capacities they were very sharp. More tellingly, we (attorneys) scoured medical literature for any and all possible claims against asbestos manufacturers, and I never once saw a claim related to diminished intellectual capacity. If there was even a skosh of evidence somewhere in that regard some attorney would have found it and figured out how to add it to a lawsuit. Edit: a word
- refurb 6y ago
  I would argue the decrease in dementia is way to large to be explained by asbestos. Even when it was commonly used, the number of people exposed was pretty low. You'd either have to be mining the stuff or working in an industry that commonly used it. Your average office worker isn't going to get exposed to asbestos except for rare situations where asbestos material is being actively manipulated.
trhway 6y ago
>- Increased internet access and more games/puzzles with smart phones to stimulate the mind and connection to friends and family thus more of communication and socialization, even if online, and less of pure solitude.
google234123 6y ago
Here are some better explanations for the drop in crime in the 90s: Innovative policing strategies, Increased reliance on prisons, Changes in crack/other drug markets, Aging of the population, Tougher gun control laws, Strong economy, Increased number of police, http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUndersta...
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  The research is by no means conclusive but a lot of the factors you mentions are primarily U.S. ones but Europe saw an even larger drop in crime.
  - wahern 6y ago
    Also, at least one of the leading papers propounding the lead hypothesis also tried to account for those confounders within the U.S. The onset of harsher policing and criminal punishment varied between states while the removal of environmental lead was more uniform, and the resulting analysis supported the lead hypothesis. Conversely, where the time of lead removal varied while policy reforms didn't vary, the same lead relationship was still found. Indeed, even outside the lead context there's a ton of research that suggests the increase and subsequent decrease of violent crime preceded policy changes. That overwhelming evidence is why there was bipartisan support at the Federal level for criminal justice reform. And that research is why progressives in California are adamant that reductions in criminal penalties aren't responsible for the huge increase in property crime in the state, even though most of that research was concerned with violent crime (and indeed violent crime hasn't substantially increased).
    - Google234 6y ago
      https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_on_lead_removal_and_declining_crime_0.pdf https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_... Steven pinker makes some good points in this short essay why there should be more skepticism towards this hypothesis: “ Also, the parallelism in curves for lead and time-shifted crime seem too good to be true, since the lead hypothesis assumes that the effects of lead exposure are greatest in childhood. But 23 years after the first lower-lead cohort, only a small fraction of the crime-prone cohort should be lead-free; there are still all those lead-laden young adults who have many years of crime ahead of them. Only gradually should the crime-prone demographic sector be increasingly populated by lead-free kids. The time-shifted curve for crime should be an attenuated, smeared version of the curve for lead, not a perfect copy of it. Also, the effects of age on crime are not sharply peaked, with a spike around the 23rd birthday, and a sharp falloff—it’s a very gentle bulge spread out over the 15-30 age range. So you would not expect such a perfect time-shifted overlap as you might, for example, for first-grade reading performance, where the measurement is so restricted in time.” I’m also not convinced on your point about crime in California. The police have essentially ceased prosecuting many of those petty crimes. It makes sense that they would go up with no deterrence.
angrais 6y ago
Can you provide sources for the first point? Who theorised it? I've never heard of the use of lead gasoline being linked to crime ... Interesting to learn more.
- theIV 6y ago
  You can check out some of the references on the wiki page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...
- natdempk 6y ago
  This article does a deep dive into some of the effects thought to be related to leaded gasoline: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur... A 2018 follow-up piece: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...
colordrops 6y ago
Some other possibilities (guesses): - Banning of transfats - Better dietary and fitness practices in general - People getting on daily antivirals if they have HSV
- nradov 6y ago
  Average fitness has been declining. Only a small percentage of the population takes antivirals.
- GeoAtreides 6y ago
  >People getting on daily antivirals if they have HSV That's not happening in Europe, only Americans are weird about HSV. Most Europeans ignore it and don't make a big thing out of it.
  - MaximumYComb 6y ago
    Is that really a thing? I live in Australia and I'm really careful about who I have sex with mainly due to not wanting to catch HSV-2. I'm an early 30's man and I turn down more potential sexual partners than not. Condom use prevents most STD's + unwanted pregnancy with a high degree of success but not HSV.
- stared 6y ago
  > - People getting on daily antivirals if they have HSV Roughly 60% population have HSV-1 (and 10% HSV-2). I don't think that the percentage of people getting daily antivirals is the same.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Gibbon1 6y ago
Idle suspicion is the elimination of childhood disease via vaccination may have played a role. For instance my generation born in the early 1960's the was first to be vaccinated against measles. And measles can cause neurological problems decades after people recover. There is also a trend to suspect that Alzheimer's is caused by inflammation. But idle suspicion.
- robocat 6y ago
  Only some vaccines were given long enough ago to affect the 70 year plus age group. For example measles vaccine introduced in late 70's I think, and chickenpox vaccine introduced in 90's? https://xkcd.com/1950/ https://xkcd.com/1950/
qserasera 6y ago
I think the reduction of occupational hazards from deindustralization has made the largest impact.
- msla 6y ago
  Particularly the reduction in brain injuries.
vaxman 6y ago
Dental X-Ray power levels!
alexfromapex 6y ago
Increased intake of probiotics as well
skissane 6y ago
IQ is a protective factor for some (but not all) forms of dementia [1]. Could the Flynn effect, by raising IQs, reduce the risk of some forms of dementia? Immigration is another factor that could be increasing IQs, which in turn may decrease the incidence of dementia. Many countries have immigration programs that give preference to skilled professionals, who are likely to have above average IQs. Another immigration route which favours above average IQ is education-based immigration – come for university, stay after graduation. [1] https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/14297193/McGurn_Deary_Starr_2008_Childhood_cognitive_ability_and_risk_of_late_onset_Alzheimer_and_vascular_dementia.pdf https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/14297193/McGurn_D...
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  IIRC the Flynn effect has been in reverse since the mid 90's. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "Research suggests that there is an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries, a development which appears to have started in the 1990s". In my country, Australia, we saw zero improvement on the Colored Porgressive Matrices from 1975-2003, and a decline since then.
  - armitron 6y ago
    It'd be interesting to see if reversal of the Flynn effect is correlated with massive unskilled immigration (esp from third world countries), which has accelerated in many European countries. If we examine countries with extremely strict immigration policies that favor the skilled (e.g. Singapore), will we see IQs going up? The concept of IQ-shredder is also relevant: http://www.xenosystems.net/iq-shredders/ http://www.xenosystems.net/iq-shredders/
    - MaximumYComb 6y ago
      The birth rate differences between high IQ and low IQ sections of the population have been suggested as the primary driver of this. The fact that it's been suggested at all is amazing due to the western world's strong avoidance of any topic that resembles an argument for eugenics.
agumonkey 6y ago
I hope old people do internet puzzle on tablets outside after a nice walk and not stuck indoor. Prolonged computer use is really not great.
sjg007 6y ago
I grew up in a house with lead paint until I was 9. I am pretty sure it's the reason I feel a limit on my brain's horsepower.

bobthepanda 6y ago

Does asbestos have impacts on mental health? I thought it was mostly just lung issues like mesothelioma.

vaxman 6y ago
Asbestos fibers enters the capillaries in the lungs and over 20 years work their way into the sack holding the capillaries to then scab and become tumors. During that 10-20 years, shallow coughing and shortness of breath could lower blood oxygen levels that can’t be good for cognition.
Fezzik 6y ago
I would say “probably not”. First, as anecdata, I was a plaintiff’s attorney for asbestosis/mesothelioma sufferers and every client I had was whip-smart. Other than being older and having concomitant capacities they were very sharp. More tellingly, we (attorneys) scoured medical literature for any and all possible claims against asbestos manufacturers, and I never once saw a claim related to diminished intellectual capacity. If there was even a skosh of evidence somewhere in that regard some attorney would have found it and figured out how to add it to a lawsuit. Edit: a word
refurb 6y ago
I would argue the decrease in dementia is way to large to be explained by asbestos. Even when it was commonly used, the number of people exposed was pretty low. You'd either have to be mining the stuff or working in an industry that commonly used it. Your average office worker isn't going to get exposed to asbestos except for rare situations where asbestos material is being actively manipulated.

trhway 6y ago

>- Increased internet access and more games/puzzles with smart phones to stimulate the mind and connection to friends and family thus more of communication and socialization, even if online, and less of pure solitude.

google234123 6y ago

Here are some better explanations for the drop in crime in the 90s: Innovative policing strategies, Increased reliance on prisons, Changes in crack/other drug markets, Aging of the population, Tougher gun control laws, Strong economy, Increased number of police, http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUndersta...

JamesBarney 6y ago
The research is by no means conclusive but a lot of the factors you mentions are primarily U.S. ones but Europe saw an even larger drop in crime.
- wahern 6y ago
  Also, at least one of the leading papers propounding the lead hypothesis also tried to account for those confounders within the U.S. The onset of harsher policing and criminal punishment varied between states while the removal of environmental lead was more uniform, and the resulting analysis supported the lead hypothesis. Conversely, where the time of lead removal varied while policy reforms didn't vary, the same lead relationship was still found. Indeed, even outside the lead context there's a ton of research that suggests the increase and subsequent decrease of violent crime preceded policy changes. That overwhelming evidence is why there was bipartisan support at the Federal level for criminal justice reform. And that research is why progressives in California are adamant that reductions in criminal penalties aren't responsible for the huge increase in property crime in the state, even though most of that research was concerned with violent crime (and indeed violent crime hasn't substantially increased).
  - Google234 6y ago
    https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_on_lead_removal_and_declining_crime_0.pdf https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/pinker_comments_... Steven pinker makes some good points in this short essay why there should be more skepticism towards this hypothesis: “ Also, the parallelism in curves for lead and time-shifted crime seem too good to be true, since the lead hypothesis assumes that the effects of lead exposure are greatest in childhood. But 23 years after the first lower-lead cohort, only a small fraction of the crime-prone cohort should be lead-free; there are still all those lead-laden young adults who have many years of crime ahead of them. Only gradually should the crime-prone demographic sector be increasingly populated by lead-free kids. The time-shifted curve for crime should be an attenuated, smeared version of the curve for lead, not a perfect copy of it. Also, the effects of age on crime are not sharply peaked, with a spike around the 23rd birthday, and a sharp falloff—it’s a very gentle bulge spread out over the 15-30 age range. So you would not expect such a perfect time-shifted overlap as you might, for example, for first-grade reading performance, where the measurement is so restricted in time.” I’m also not convinced on your point about crime in California. The police have essentially ceased prosecuting many of those petty crimes. It makes sense that they would go up with no deterrence.

angrais 6y ago

Can you provide sources for the first point? Who theorised it? I've never heard of the use of lead gasoline being linked to crime ... Interesting to learn more.

theIV 6y ago
You can check out some of the references on the wiki page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...
natdempk 6y ago
This article does a deep dive into some of the effects thought to be related to leaded gasoline: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur... A 2018 follow-up piece: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...

colordrops 6y ago

Some other possibilities (guesses): - Banning of transfats - Better dietary and fitness practices in general - People getting on daily antivirals if they have HSV

nradov 6y ago
Average fitness has been declining. Only a small percentage of the population takes antivirals.
GeoAtreides 6y ago
>People getting on daily antivirals if they have HSV That's not happening in Europe, only Americans are weird about HSV. Most Europeans ignore it and don't make a big thing out of it.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  Is that really a thing? I live in Australia and I'm really careful about who I have sex with mainly due to not wanting to catch HSV-2. I'm an early 30's man and I turn down more potential sexual partners than not. Condom use prevents most STD's + unwanted pregnancy with a high degree of success but not HSV.
stared 6y ago
> - People getting on daily antivirals if they have HSV Roughly 60% population have HSV-1 (and 10% HSV-2). I don't think that the percentage of people getting daily antivirals is the same.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Gibbon1 6y ago

Idle suspicion is the elimination of childhood disease via vaccination may have played a role. For instance my generation born in the early 1960's the was first to be vaccinated against measles. And measles can cause neurological problems decades after people recover. There is also a trend to suspect that Alzheimer's is caused by inflammation. But idle suspicion.

robocat 6y ago
Only some vaccines were given long enough ago to affect the 70 year plus age group. For example measles vaccine introduced in late 70's I think, and chickenpox vaccine introduced in 90's? https://xkcd.com/1950/ https://xkcd.com/1950/

qserasera 6y ago

I think the reduction of occupational hazards from deindustralization has made the largest impact.

msla 6y ago
Particularly the reduction in brain injuries.

vaxman 6y ago

Dental X-Ray power levels!

alexfromapex 6y ago

Increased intake of probiotics as well

skissane 6y ago

IQ is a protective factor for some (but not all) forms of dementia [1]. Could the Flynn effect, by raising IQs, reduce the risk of some forms of dementia? Immigration is another factor that could be increasing IQs, which in turn may decrease the incidence of dementia. Many countries have immigration programs that give preference to skilled professionals, who are likely to have above average IQs. Another immigration route which favours above average IQ is education-based immigration – come for university, stay after graduation. [1] https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/14297193/McGurn_Deary_Starr_2008_Childhood_cognitive_ability_and_risk_of_late_onset_Alzheimer_and_vascular_dementia.pdf https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/14297193/McGurn_D...

MaximumYComb 6y ago
IIRC the Flynn effect has been in reverse since the mid 90's. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "Research suggests that there is an ongoing reversed Flynn effect, i.e. a decline in IQ scores, in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France and German-speaking countries, a development which appears to have started in the 1990s". In my country, Australia, we saw zero improvement on the Colored Porgressive Matrices from 1975-2003, and a decline since then.
- armitron 6y ago
  It'd be interesting to see if reversal of the Flynn effect is correlated with massive unskilled immigration (esp from third world countries), which has accelerated in many European countries. If we examine countries with extremely strict immigration policies that favor the skilled (e.g. Singapore), will we see IQs going up? The concept of IQ-shredder is also relevant: http://www.xenosystems.net/iq-shredders/ http://www.xenosystems.net/iq-shredders/
  - MaximumYComb 6y ago
    The birth rate differences between high IQ and low IQ sections of the population have been suggested as the primary driver of this. The fact that it's been suggested at all is amazing due to the western world's strong avoidance of any topic that resembles an argument for eugenics.

agumonkey 6y ago

I hope old people do internet puzzle on tablets outside after a nice walk and not stuck indoor. Prolonged computer use is really not great.

sjg007 6y ago

I grew up in a house with lead paint until I was 9. I am pretty sure it's the reason I feel a limit on my brain's horsepower.