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Maybe the point is that taking advice from ANY single person is a bad idea since thay are making conclusions from a sample size of 1, while a "scientist" is tel

Maybe the point is that taking advice from ANY single person is a bad idea since thay are making conclusions from a sample size of 1, while a "scientist" is telling you things that are statistically more likely to help you?

jraph 2y ago
Exactly, that's the whole point. It's quite unintuitive but us mere mortals are not experts in our own health/longevity. We know our own bodies better than anybody else experimentally speaking, but we don't know shit about how it works for the most part and we know even less how others work. Unless it's your area of expertise of course, but then I hope you'll avoid spreading unproven advice.
- sillyfluke 2y ago
  The guy quoted in the article, Faragher, seems completely unaware of his biogeronologist collegue Valter Longo at the USC Davis School of Geronology and Longevity Institute, whose recommendations have picked up mainstream adoption by the public. Of course, he is probably aware of Longo but he is probably unaware that his statements as quoted in the article, contradict Longo's own first hand research and other additional research on centenarian studies. In fact, the unhealthy habits that Farragher says are common among most old people are in fact not common lifelong habits of centenarians, according to Longo. If Faragher is aware of the contradiction then he should state on what evidence and research he is disputing Longo's findings. Based on his research, Longo's recommendation is basically: Eat vegetables, complex carbs and whole grains most of the time, fish ocassionally, meat very rarely unless over 65, and fast some of the time. Longo in fact claims that these are supported--along with epistmilogical and clinical studies-- by centarian studies which are literally first-hand detailed interviews with 100+ year-old people. Farragher's incomplete explanation of survivorship bias also seems to have confused other commentators in this thread.
  - jraph 2y ago
    I don't understand how your comment answers mine, and what is your actual concern. Assuming Longo conducts good scientific research, the whole article might as well mean "Don't listen to any single old people, read studies from people like Longo". > In fact, the unhealthy habits that Farragher says are common among most old people are in fact not common lifelong habits of centenarians, according to Longo. I don't know, but this is certainly not the main point of the article. I suppose you are taking issues with the two following quotes: > What you see with most centenarians most of the time – and these are generalisations – is that they don’t take much exercise. That's where he says "most". Do you have a source to contradict this? > Quite often, their diets are rather unhealthy Do you have a source to contradict this? Note that "quite often" is not quite precise, and doesn't mean "most". Anyway, it takes only some centenarians to have unhealthy habits for the point to still stand. When receiving advice from a centenarian, you don't really know that you are not speaking to one of those. I would even argue that it's not even necessary, because as I developed in another reply to you, nobody actually knows what allowed them to live long. They might as well have some specific genes allowing them to do all sorts of things that would be unhealthy for many people but that have no serious consequences for them.
    - sillyfluke 2y ago
      EDIT: had a response here to your "most" comment because I thought you hadn't seen the full quote from Farragher in the article but saw that you referred to it earlier in your comment and were just making a distinction between the frequency of "exercise" and "healthy diet", so I deleted it. >Do you have a source to contradict this? My claim, as I hoped was fairly clear in my comment, was that Valter Longo, an expert with similar crendentials presumably, presents a contradicting view to the source being cited in the article. As I stated in my comment, Longo claims that the healthy diet he prescribes is supported by centenarian studies -- ie supported by interviews with very old people about their diets and way of living. Now if you want me to literally cite Longo's work in detail despite your lack of citations supporting Farragher's position, I only can at the moment point you to Longo's book: The Longevity Diet. I am recalling all this from memory, so I apologize for not providing word-for-word citations. I can only remind you have not done so as well. >I don't understand how your comment answers mine Your comment had this phrase: >Unless it's your area of expertise of course, but then I hope you'll avoid spreading unproven advice. I was pointing to the irony that the expert quoted in the article was possibly saying something that was itself disputed by other experts in his field. In fact just a few hours ago, someone shared this article on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353957 The claim in this article is that many of those old people with bad health habits were most likely frauds, and that experts who relied on government statistics, and who didn't bother talking to these people and checking whether these people were actually alive, came to the wrong conclusion. It well be that Longo's research is also affected, but the Farragher quote cited in the article matches the supposed bad habits attributed to those fraudulent (?) Blue Zone inhabitants. moral of the story: before jumping on an expert's bandwagon, check with other experts.*

jraph 2y ago

Exactly, that's the whole point. It's quite unintuitive but us mere mortals are not experts in our own health/longevity. We know our own bodies better than anybody else experimentally speaking, but we don't know shit about how it works for the most part and we know even less how others work. Unless it's your area of expertise of course, but then I hope you'll avoid spreading unproven advice.

sillyfluke 2y ago
The guy quoted in the article, Faragher, seems completely unaware of his biogeronologist collegue Valter Longo at the USC Davis School of Geronology and Longevity Institute, whose recommendations have picked up mainstream adoption by the public. Of course, he is probably aware of Longo but he is probably unaware that his statements as quoted in the article, contradict Longo's own first hand research and other additional research on centenarian studies. In fact, the unhealthy habits that Farragher says are common among most old people are in fact not common lifelong habits of centenarians, according to Longo. If Faragher is aware of the contradiction then he should state on what evidence and research he is disputing Longo's findings. Based on his research, Longo's recommendation is basically: Eat vegetables, complex carbs and whole grains most of the time, fish ocassionally, meat very rarely unless over 65, and fast some of the time. Longo in fact claims that these are supported--along with epistmilogical and clinical studies-- by centarian studies which are literally first-hand detailed interviews with 100+ year-old people. Farragher's incomplete explanation of survivorship bias also seems to have confused other commentators in this thread.
- jraph 2y ago
  I don't understand how your comment answers mine, and what is your actual concern. Assuming Longo conducts good scientific research, the whole article might as well mean "Don't listen to any single old people, read studies from people like Longo". > In fact, the unhealthy habits that Farragher says are common among most old people are in fact not common lifelong habits of centenarians, according to Longo. I don't know, but this is certainly not the main point of the article. I suppose you are taking issues with the two following quotes: > What you see with most centenarians most of the time – and these are generalisations – is that they don’t take much exercise. That's where he says "most". Do you have a source to contradict this? > Quite often, their diets are rather unhealthy Do you have a source to contradict this? Note that "quite often" is not quite precise, and doesn't mean "most". Anyway, it takes only some centenarians to have unhealthy habits for the point to still stand. When receiving advice from a centenarian, you don't really know that you are not speaking to one of those. I would even argue that it's not even necessary, because as I developed in another reply to you, nobody actually knows what allowed them to live long. They might as well have some specific genes allowing them to do all sorts of things that would be unhealthy for many people but that have no serious consequences for them.
  - sillyfluke 2y ago
    EDIT: had a response here to your "most" comment because I thought you hadn't seen the full quote from Farragher in the article but saw that you referred to it earlier in your comment and were just making a distinction between the frequency of "exercise" and "healthy diet", so I deleted it. >Do you have a source to contradict this? My claim, as I hoped was fairly clear in my comment, was that Valter Longo, an expert with similar crendentials presumably, presents a contradicting view to the source being cited in the article. As I stated in my comment, Longo claims that the healthy diet he prescribes is supported by centenarian studies -- ie supported by interviews with very old people about their diets and way of living. Now if you want me to literally cite Longo's work in detail despite your lack of citations supporting Farragher's position, I only can at the moment point you to Longo's book: The Longevity Diet. I am recalling all this from memory, so I apologize for not providing word-for-word citations. I can only remind you have not done so as well. >I don't understand how your comment answers mine Your comment had this phrase: >Unless it's your area of expertise of course, but then I hope you'll avoid spreading unproven advice. I was pointing to the irony that the expert quoted in the article was possibly saying something that was itself disputed by other experts in his field. In fact just a few hours ago, someone shared this article on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41353957 The claim in this article is that many of those old people with bad health habits were most likely frauds, and that experts who relied on government statistics, and who didn't bother talking to these people and checking whether these people were actually alive, came to the wrong conclusion. It well be that Longo's research is also affected, but the Farragher quote cited in the article matches the supposed bad habits attributed to those fraudulent (?) Blue Zone inhabitants. moral of the story: before jumping on an expert's bandwagon, check with other experts.*