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I would hypothesize thats its related to getting ousted from the job as a taxi driver if you have just early Alzheimer’s meaning no cognitive benefits from jus

I would hypothesize thats its related to getting ousted from the job as a taxi driver if you have just early Alzheimer’s meaning no cognitive benefits from just navigating around a city more often

LorenPechtel 2y ago
That wouldn't surprise me in the least. Beyond the basic health things (weight, activity, smoking, diet, blood pressure) just about everything that they come up with that relates to living longer could also be filtering. I remain unimpressed because of this.
robwwilliams 2y ago
Brilliant comment—-The effect could easily be an ascertainment bias that is downstream of winnowing 55-70 year-old drivers who cannot hack route selection effectively anymore. They drop out and take on other jobs.
- noduerme 2y ago
  I'm not so sure. The study didn't stipulate that taxi driving was the patient's last occupation, nor how long they did the job for. Also, with Alzheimers, aren't older memories the last to go? A driver would probably be more likely to have trouble finding their keys before they forgot the streets they'd been driving for 30+ years. At that point, it would be hard to train for another job. Additionally, I've never heard of a cab driver losing their license for getting confused en route. Taking the wrong way on purpose can lead to some disciplinary action, but even that is rarely if ever pursued.
  - robwwilliams 2y ago
    I am not sure either. The authors (more correctly, the author of the review of the the parent paper) imply that the constant challenges to adapt to complex spatial navigational tasks is the most likely explanation. Familiarity with routes is not the key variable (no bus driver benefit). It is active navigational adjustment or perhaps just ascertainment. Controlling for ascertainment bias would be possible but hard because you would face secular confounds (e,g., impact of COVID-19 on taxi drivers vs other professions). By the way, the original l”London taxi drivers have larger hippocampii paper” was NOT replicated. So sad since this is such a fun story.
    - noduerme 2y ago
      From a programmer's and former taxi driver's perspectice, finding a fuzzy path through something chaotic and shifting like a city optimizes for very different logic than finding a path through a maze or a jam of vehicles. It's reducing from a big picture versus trying to iterate solutions from a small picture. And I can't tell you how many times I get in a lyft these days and know better than the GPS how to get around a traffic snarl, because pathfinding generally doesn't consider what might happen to traffic 30 minutes from now given the current conditions (if everyone is headed northeast to a concert, for example).
  - robwwilliams 2y ago
    Here is there selection criterion and justification: “occupations involving extensive day-to-day navigation, with often unpredictable, real time navigational demands.” All subjects died between Jan 1 2020 (COVID) to Dec 31, 2022. There was no data on duration between active employment in listed employment categories and age of death. This is a problem given the fact that Uber and Lyft have radically changed the taxi industry in 101 ways that will interact with age of drivers. Not true of ambulance drivers. Mean age of death of target groups: 64 (ambulance) to 68 years (taxi) and mostly men. Both values are awfully (sadly) low. I want to understand the poor expectancy of ambulance drivers. Is it stress? And here is summary of their analysis: >For each occupation, we first calculated the percentage of deaths due to Alzheimer’s disease and the mean age at death in years (ie, average life expectancy). We plotted the association between these two variables, with each observation reflecting a single occupation. The purpose of this analysis was to illustrate the need to account for the person’s age at death since the risk of Alzheimer’s disease rises with age and therefore Alzheimer’s mortality would naturally be lower in occupations with a lower life expectancy. And here is their discussion on ascertainment bias (great job): >Firstly and perhaps most importantly, selection bias is possible because individuals who are at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease may be less likely to enter or remain in memory intensive driving occupations such as taxi and ambulance driving. This could mean that the lower Alzheimer’s disease mortality observed in these occupations is not due to the protective effect of the job itself but rather because those prone to the disease may have self-selected out of such roles. However, Alzheimer’s disease symptoms typically develop after patients’ working years, with only 5-10% of cases occurring in people younger than 65 years (early onset).1114 While subtle symptoms could develop earlier, they would still most likely be after a person had worked long enough to deem the occupation to be a so-called usual occupation, suggesting against substantial attrition from navigational jobs due to development of Alzheimer’s disease.
    - noduerme 2y ago
      >> The purpose of this analysis was to illustrate the need to account for the person’s age at death since the risk of Alzheimer’s disease rises with age and therefore Alzheimer’s mortality would naturally be lower in occupations with a lower life expectancy. Just a nit: This sort of analysis seems lazy, because while it's true that without advanced age one's likelihood of dying from Alzheimers is lower, it's also true that without Alzheimers one's likelihood of dying at advanced age is lower. The dataset used for the non-Alzheimers death rate should be adjusted for what the death rate would be if Alzheimers didn't exist, not the death rate from all other age-related causes in a world where it does exist.
mattigames 2y ago
Only a tiny group of people with Alzheimer show symptoms at their 30s, while practically nobody at their 20s (early Alzheimer)
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  okay. that might be a medical industry distinction for early Alzheimer’s, I am referring to a colloquial definition of “passengers noticed it and reported the driver and their their license got revoked so they arent a taxi driver anymore”
  - mattigames 2y ago
    The vast majority of people don't report when taxi drivers get a little lost, for most something really serious must occur to report, e.g. crashes, overcharging
    - krisoft 2y ago
      I agree with that. I don’t think passenger reports leading to taxi driver termination is a likely path. But if a taxi driver has cognitive decline which imparts their ability to route plan effectively that would increase their stress, and preceived workload. What i think can be more likely is that those drivers would self-select out of the pool of taxi drivers. Subjectively they would say something like “it was too much trouble, there are better jobs elsewhere, etc” but what might be behind is the early symptomps of Alzheimer.
      - noduerme 2y ago
        This is not how taxi driving works / worked. Let me give you a slice of taxi driving here, since I did it for some years. 99% of taxi drivers in America are immigrants. I was one of the few exceptions, one of only 3 native born drivers in Los Angeles that I knew of. (One was in a rock band, one was on drugs and slept in different motels every night; then me). The young immigrant drivers might be from anywhere, most of them have no education. But the drivers in their 50s to 70s (all men) who are still working are all either Korean or Russian immigrants. They have university degrees, they were engineers or factory managers in Russia. They're highly educated and extremely intelligent. They're also excellent at committing petty fraud. There is absolutely no such thing as one of these people quitting their job as a taxi driver to do something else. Never happened. They will spend all day playing poker on the hood of their cab waiting in line at the airport and saying that "driving taxi is killing my soul", they will die in the driver's seat before quitting because they think they've become too out-of-touch to continue. And by no means would they get some other job if they quit. The scenario in which they quit and get another job just doesn't exist. For a rough analog, go to a casino and look at the people over 60 who are playing a slot machine who used to have a somewhat respectable career as a service manager at a car dealership in the mists of the distant past, and consider the chances of them quitting gambling and going to rehab and then training to be a bank teller, and actually getting a job as one. That's about the chance of a 60 year old cab driver in LA quitting before he dies. Driving taxi is/was, among other things, deeply addicting as a gambling pathology. Any given ride could get you killed, get you robbed, or get you laid. And driving around picking up strangers at 4am with a wad of $500 in your pocket is a thrill. The only difference between you and the cops was that you were unarmed and the cops would find your body. You were picking up the same people.

I would hypothesize thats its related to getting ousted from the job as a taxi driver if you have just early Alzheimer’s meaning no cognitive benefits from just navigating around a city more often

LorenPechtel 2y ago

That wouldn't surprise me in the least. Beyond the basic health things (weight, activity, smoking, diet, blood pressure) just about everything that they come up with that relates to living longer could also be filtering. I remain unimpressed because of this.

robwwilliams 2y ago

Brilliant comment—-The effect could easily be an ascertainment bias that is downstream of winnowing 55-70 year-old drivers who cannot hack route selection effectively anymore. They drop out and take on other jobs.

noduerme 2y ago
I'm not so sure. The study didn't stipulate that taxi driving was the patient's last occupation, nor how long they did the job for. Also, with Alzheimers, aren't older memories the last to go? A driver would probably be more likely to have trouble finding their keys before they forgot the streets they'd been driving for 30+ years. At that point, it would be hard to train for another job. Additionally, I've never heard of a cab driver losing their license for getting confused en route. Taking the wrong way on purpose can lead to some disciplinary action, but even that is rarely if ever pursued.
- robwwilliams 2y ago
  I am not sure either. The authors (more correctly, the author of the review of the the parent paper) imply that the constant challenges to adapt to complex spatial navigational tasks is the most likely explanation. Familiarity with routes is not the key variable (no bus driver benefit). It is active navigational adjustment or perhaps just ascertainment. Controlling for ascertainment bias would be possible but hard because you would face secular confounds (e,g., impact of COVID-19 on taxi drivers vs other professions). By the way, the original l”London taxi drivers have larger hippocampii paper” was NOT replicated. So sad since this is such a fun story.
  - noduerme 2y ago
    From a programmer's and former taxi driver's perspectice, finding a fuzzy path through something chaotic and shifting like a city optimizes for very different logic than finding a path through a maze or a jam of vehicles. It's reducing from a big picture versus trying to iterate solutions from a small picture. And I can't tell you how many times I get in a lyft these days and know better than the GPS how to get around a traffic snarl, because pathfinding generally doesn't consider what might happen to traffic 30 minutes from now given the current conditions (if everyone is headed northeast to a concert, for example).
- robwwilliams 2y ago
  Here is there selection criterion and justification: “occupations involving extensive day-to-day navigation, with often unpredictable, real time navigational demands.” All subjects died between Jan 1 2020 (COVID) to Dec 31, 2022. There was no data on duration between active employment in listed employment categories and age of death. This is a problem given the fact that Uber and Lyft have radically changed the taxi industry in 101 ways that will interact with age of drivers. Not true of ambulance drivers. Mean age of death of target groups: 64 (ambulance) to 68 years (taxi) and mostly men. Both values are awfully (sadly) low. I want to understand the poor expectancy of ambulance drivers. Is it stress? And here is summary of their analysis: >For each occupation, we first calculated the percentage of deaths due to Alzheimer’s disease and the mean age at death in years (ie, average life expectancy). We plotted the association between these two variables, with each observation reflecting a single occupation. The purpose of this analysis was to illustrate the need to account for the person’s age at death since the risk of Alzheimer’s disease rises with age and therefore Alzheimer’s mortality would naturally be lower in occupations with a lower life expectancy. And here is their discussion on ascertainment bias (great job): >Firstly and perhaps most importantly, selection bias is possible because individuals who are at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease may be less likely to enter or remain in memory intensive driving occupations such as taxi and ambulance driving. This could mean that the lower Alzheimer’s disease mortality observed in these occupations is not due to the protective effect of the job itself but rather because those prone to the disease may have self-selected out of such roles. However, Alzheimer’s disease symptoms typically develop after patients’ working years, with only 5-10% of cases occurring in people younger than 65 years (early onset).1114 While subtle symptoms could develop earlier, they would still most likely be after a person had worked long enough to deem the occupation to be a so-called usual occupation, suggesting against substantial attrition from navigational jobs due to development of Alzheimer’s disease.
  - noduerme 2y ago
    >> The purpose of this analysis was to illustrate the need to account for the person’s age at death since the risk of Alzheimer’s disease rises with age and therefore Alzheimer’s mortality would naturally be lower in occupations with a lower life expectancy. Just a nit: This sort of analysis seems lazy, because while it's true that without advanced age one's likelihood of dying from Alzheimers is lower, it's also true that without Alzheimers one's likelihood of dying at advanced age is lower. The dataset used for the non-Alzheimers death rate should be adjusted for what the death rate would be if Alzheimers didn't exist, not the death rate from all other age-related causes in a world where it does exist.

mattigames 2y ago

Only a tiny group of people with Alzheimer show symptoms at their 30s, while practically nobody at their 20s (early Alzheimer)

yieldcrv 2y ago
okay. that might be a medical industry distinction for early Alzheimer’s, I am referring to a colloquial definition of “passengers noticed it and reported the driver and their their license got revoked so they arent a taxi driver anymore”
- mattigames 2y ago
  The vast majority of people don't report when taxi drivers get a little lost, for most something really serious must occur to report, e.g. crashes, overcharging
  - krisoft 2y ago
    I agree with that. I don’t think passenger reports leading to taxi driver termination is a likely path. But if a taxi driver has cognitive decline which imparts their ability to route plan effectively that would increase their stress, and preceived workload. What i think can be more likely is that those drivers would self-select out of the pool of taxi drivers. Subjectively they would say something like “it was too much trouble, there are better jobs elsewhere, etc” but what might be behind is the early symptomps of Alzheimer.
    - noduerme 2y ago
      This is not how taxi driving works / worked. Let me give you a slice of taxi driving here, since I did it for some years. 99% of taxi drivers in America are immigrants. I was one of the few exceptions, one of only 3 native born drivers in Los Angeles that I knew of. (One was in a rock band, one was on drugs and slept in different motels every night; then me). The young immigrant drivers might be from anywhere, most of them have no education. But the drivers in their 50s to 70s (all men) who are still working are all either Korean or Russian immigrants. They have university degrees, they were engineers or factory managers in Russia. They're highly educated and extremely intelligent. They're also excellent at committing petty fraud. There is absolutely no such thing as one of these people quitting their job as a taxi driver to do something else. Never happened. They will spend all day playing poker on the hood of their cab waiting in line at the airport and saying that "driving taxi is killing my soul", they will die in the driver's seat before quitting because they think they've become too out-of-touch to continue. And by no means would they get some other job if they quit. The scenario in which they quit and get another job just doesn't exist. For a rough analog, go to a casino and look at the people over 60 who are playing a slot machine who used to have a somewhat respectable career as a service manager at a car dealership in the mists of the distant past, and consider the chances of them quitting gambling and going to rehab and then training to be a bank teller, and actually getting a job as one. That's about the chance of a 60 year old cab driver in LA quitting before he dies. Driving taxi is/was, among other things, deeply addicting as a gambling pathology. Any given ride could get you killed, get you robbed, or get you laid. And driving around picking up strangers at 4am with a wad of $500 in your pocket is a thrill. The only difference between you and the cops was that you were unarmed and the cops would find your body. You were picking up the same people.