6 ms·

Let's do it one more time. Correlation != Causation Could the causation conceivably run the other direction? People with beginning dementia exercise less? Yes

Let's do it one more time. Correlation != Causation Could the causation conceivably run the other direction? People with beginning dementia exercise less? Yes, that is quite conceivable actually. Could there be a common cause explaining both? Yes, if you are in good health, with good genes, a good job, leisure time and money, then probably you are the type of person who'll live longer, sport more, and be cognitively healthy for a longer time. It doesn't mean the causality runs in the other direction. In other words, this study shows what we all know. The 'good' people have all the good stuff. But what we want to know, will an intervention that causes people to exercise more do any good?

gwd 2y ago
> Baseline self-reported frequency of VPA was categorized into low VPA (<1 session/week), and high VPA (≥1 session/week). So yeah, this is a mere correlational study, and a self-reported one at that. So technically, it could even be that people who think they exercise harder have better health outcomes.
drited 2y ago
Yes methodology here seems suspect. Also: Activity levels were self reported. Could just be that early stages of dementia cause individuals to forget - either that they exercised or to exercise or to report.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 2y ago
>Let's do it one more time. Correlation != Causation No, please let's not. This almost automatic HN reaction to every research is the lowest tier of facile dismissal.
thefz 2y ago
Sometimes I wonder if commenters in this forum will do anything to try to disprove that exercise is good for health.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  There is an undercurrent of skepticism and contrarianism bordering on anti-intellectualism on this forum - especially with those accounts started after the pandemic. This is just one of dozens of studies that have shown that good cardiovascular health (a side effect of "vigorous" exercise) has a downstream positive effect on health. And I personally can attest to that - the days I don't vigorously exercise (run, swim, BJJ, MT) are also the days I see the biggest cognitive declines - and I'm fairly young.
  - cheschire 2y ago
    This should be quantifiable. Use an LLM to help identify this undercurrent you’re referring to in maybe 10,000 conversation threads using the API from the footer. A thread being a reply to a topic, and a singular chain of replies. Then use that to train an RNN for sentiment analysis based on the values you’ve just described. Then run the entire HN corpus through your RNN and chart the values over time. For bonus points, incorporate the score of replies in the weighting of values.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      You don't need an LLM for sentiment analysis. I also don't want to pay for scraping and data ingest costs out of my personal pocket. Feel free to do it if you want - it would make a nice blogpost.
      - cheschire 2y ago
        I wasn't suggesting you need the LLM to perform sentiment analysis. The problem the LLM overcomes is generating the training data you need without having to trudge through massive amounts of material to mark a comment / thread with a 1 or a 0. There's no scraping cost, the API is free. Your message, for example, is here: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/40801233.json?print=pretty https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/40801233.json?pri... Processing 10,000 threads is probably not more than a few dollars on OpenAI's GPT API. The reason I don't do it is I don't see the trend you see.

gwd 2y ago

> Baseline self-reported frequency of VPA was categorized into low VPA (<1 session/week), and high VPA (≥1 session/week). So yeah, this is a mere correlational study, and a self-reported one at that. So technically, it could even be that people who think they exercise harder have better health outcomes.

drited 2y ago

Yes methodology here seems suspect. Also: Activity levels were self reported. Could just be that early stages of dementia cause individuals to forget - either that they exercised or to exercise or to report.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 2y ago

>Let's do it one more time. Correlation != Causation No, please let's not. This almost automatic HN reaction to every research is the lowest tier of facile dismissal.

thefz 2y ago

Sometimes I wonder if commenters in this forum will do anything to try to disprove that exercise is good for health.

alephnerd 2y ago
There is an undercurrent of skepticism and contrarianism bordering on anti-intellectualism on this forum - especially with those accounts started after the pandemic. This is just one of dozens of studies that have shown that good cardiovascular health (a side effect of "vigorous" exercise) has a downstream positive effect on health. And I personally can attest to that - the days I don't vigorously exercise (run, swim, BJJ, MT) are also the days I see the biggest cognitive declines - and I'm fairly young.
- cheschire 2y ago
  This should be quantifiable. Use an LLM to help identify this undercurrent you’re referring to in maybe 10,000 conversation threads using the API from the footer. A thread being a reply to a topic, and a singular chain of replies. Then use that to train an RNN for sentiment analysis based on the values you’ve just described. Then run the entire HN corpus through your RNN and chart the values over time. For bonus points, incorporate the score of replies in the weighting of values.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    You don't need an LLM for sentiment analysis. I also don't want to pay for scraping and data ingest costs out of my personal pocket. Feel free to do it if you want - it would make a nice blogpost.
    - cheschire 2y ago
      I wasn't suggesting you need the LLM to perform sentiment analysis. The problem the LLM overcomes is generating the training data you need without having to trudge through massive amounts of material to mark a comment / thread with a 1 or a 0. There's no scraping cost, the API is free. Your message, for example, is here: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/40801233.json?print=pretty https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/40801233.json?pri... Processing 10,000 threads is probably not more than a few dollars on OpenAI's GPT API. The reason I don't do it is I don't see the trend you see.