23 December 2019, 09:43 PM
QuirtEvansGo To a Museum or the Opera, Live Longer
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/1...test&pgtype=Homepage23 December 2019, 09:58 PM
AxtremusDogs too ...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...e-longer/3907770002/Now if they'd just let you take your dogs to the museum or opera ...
24 December 2019, 12:44 AM
RealPlayerWow, I'm really going to get old!
24 December 2019, 10:50 AM
Piano*DadSorry to be the artistic killjoy, but we've been meme-ing that article on twitter for the past week. That's the kind of study that gives medical research a bad name. Any economics undergrad who has taken a basic class in causal inference would be shaking their head in wonder that a "good" journal published it. The study makes no attempt to identify a causal pathway.
And this long and speculative paragraph doesn't get them off the hook ...
quote:
Within health research, arts engagement could be linked to longevity by alleviating chronic stress and depression, and providing emotional, cognitive, and social coping resources that support biological regulatory systems and behavioural choices.8 Arts engagement is also known to enhance social capital, which builds individual and collective resources,910 and to reduce loneliness, which is associated with mortality.11 Arts engagement can support cognitive reserve,212 and promotes empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, which are all linked to a greater chance of survival.13 Arts engagement could help to reduce sedentary behaviours, which are well established predictors of cardiovascular health and immune function,1415 and might also reduce risk taking behaviours. Arts engagement is linked to a greater sense of purpose in life, which is itself associated with better immune function and healthier behaviours.16 Further, creativity and imagination, which are an intrinsic part of artistic engagement, have been linked to increased chance of survival across the evolution of our species.17 So there is a strong theoretical rationale that underlies the hypothesis that arts engagement could be linked to people’s chance of survival.
I can think of many "behaviours" that would fit the bill besides going to museums or to the opera. Give me that data and my undergrads could find tons of correlations that they could play with and make up really fun stories (even with research backing) to explain them.
24 December 2019, 03:33 PM
QuirtEvansI take your point, but do you care about causation? You know that doing X is correlated with good outcome Y. Does it matter whether it's because you're walking more, because your brain is more engaged, or because the paintings emit cancer-killing photons? Nah. All I care about is that, if I do X, I may have a better chance of achieving Y. (Assuming Y is a goal.) I'll let other people worry about causality.
24 December 2019, 10:46 PM
Piano*DadIf the source of the "effect" is an ingrained personality type, then forcing yourself to go to a museum doesn't change who you are, and it's who you are that is what "causes" the effect. That "study" offers absolutely NO reason to think that a person can improve their health by going to the opera when they otherwise wouldn't have.
26 December 2019, 08:00 AM
QuirtEvansI understand. You're arguing causality, and saying there's no evidence of causality.
I'm pointing out correlation.
Your answer is that, perhaps, there is a separate correlation with a desire to go to the museum or the opera, and that the desire itself is the trait that causes the outcome. And you say there's no reason to believe that attendance creates the desirable outcome. I could argue that we could make a guess about probabilities, and therefore that the notion that there's NO reason to believe might be a little aggressive, but I'll go in a different direction.
Instead, I will give you the obligatory Jewish grandmother joke.
"Give him chicken soup!"
"Grandma, he has cancer. Chicken soup won't help."
"Listen Mr. Big Shot, it couldn't hurt!"
27 December 2019, 10:51 AM
Piano*DadHaving a Jewish grandmother, I've heard that line many times before!
