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Jonathan_Graehl comments on Intelligence Amplification Open Thread - Less Wrong
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I'm unsure how much alcohol I should drink.
I'm perfectly happy abstaining. And I know that my memory and computer programming abilities are temporarily impaired by even one drink.
But there's fairly persuasive evidence that several drinks daily causes old people to live longer. With the notable exception of social isolation (people tend to drink more when they're socializing), just about everything I can imagine was controlled for.
Another thing that should be taken into account -- though, as far as I know, it's not discussed explicitly by any serious research into the subject -- is that with many people who drink, being a total abstainer can be a great obstacle to building trust .
From what I've observed, drinkers are apt to be prejudiced against abstainers in social situations, treating them as prissy and judgmental types in front of whom one should be extremely cautious before divulging any potentially compromising opinions and information. I myself usually have this attitude when I first meet people in parties and similar places, and I think it is on the whole a useful heuristic, though I will quickly override it as soon as I get more information about the person. (There are several people who are abstainers and nevertheless enjoy the highest level of trust from me.) I obviously have no systematic data, but it does seem like lots of people employ the same heuristic, though many would never admit it explicitly.
Excellent point: I know I tend to feel the same way about vegans (I eat dairy+meat) initially.
I wonder how many of the non-drinkers are super-tasters. If so, this could make dietary differences (like avoiding dark green veggies) which would affect longevity.
On the other hand, this is a long inferential chain, and just to generalize from one example, I don't like the taste of alcohol or other bitter flavors (grapefruit, coffee unless considerably buffered), but enjoy most dark green veggies.
I suspect, although I haven't tested the hypothesis, that I am a supertaster. Dark green veggies are delicious cooked. I love the smell but hate the taste of coffee. I don't like grapefruit by itself, although I've consumed sweetened grapefruit juice that was okay. And the single most repulsive taste experience I have ever had involved a rum-soaked tiramisu crust. I haven't tasted any alcohol since - I'll use wine to cook once in a while, but I make sure that the alcohol all boils off. I can't get myself to bring anything that smells like alcohol to my lips.
I tried eating some raw Swiss chard-- it was tolerable, and the texture of the stalks is like celery but better, but I definitely prefer the taste cooked. Someone with less tolerance for bitter would probably have hated it.
Fascinating idea for another confound they didn't control against. How common is what you call a super-taster, though? If it's infrequent enough, it can't possibly explain the entirety of the huge effect in the study.
wikipedia-- the article puts the prevalence at about 25% for people of European decent, but they're defining supertasters as people who experience tastes more intensely, and it does correlate with disliking alcohol and bitter flavors.
On the other hand, using the expansive definition of supertaster, for all I know there are people who experience bitter intensely, enjoy it, and make fine distinctions between different bitter flavors.
They didn't control for social isolation? I wouldn't take that lightly at all. I would be astonished if sociable people didn't live longer.
I didn't read the full text of the original study, but someone pointed out that "social-behavior factors" didn't include the amount of time spent hanging out with friends/colleagues/family and drinking.
The reason I take this study as any evidence at all is that it's not the first such study to indicate that drinking increases lifespan, and because they did control for quite a few things.
The link didn't work for me but assuming it refers to this study, controlling for socio-behavioural factors (which includes measures of social support) significantly reduces but does not eliminate the effect.
Could that just be because the controls used are imperfect measures of what we should be controlling for?
It could. The balance of evidence makes it seem unlikely that moderate alcohol consumption has negative health consequences and quite plausible that it has some health benefits (particularly if red wine is consumed) however.
That's right. The link no longer points directly to the text.
'Drinks' is really ambiguous. Wine drinkers average something like 18 points better than beer drinkers on IQ tests, indicating that there are very large confounding variables at play.
True. You really have to believe it's alcohol that's making a difference to just talk about "drinks". I do believe they would have noticed if it were only red-wine drinkers who benefited (via reservatol, say), though. I imagine their data included the kind of drinks imbibed.
The 18 IQ points of wine > beer is clearly mostly snobbery/signaling :)