= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
G0W51 comments on Immortality: A Practical Guide - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (61)
Could you give sources for your claims?
As for the one source you did give, which was Wikipedia, it may have been referring to the average effect on expectancy, which, given the sizable frequencies of alcoholism and drunk driving, very well could be negative. Wikipedia gave two citations for the claim, but one of them wasn't available. The other one was a brief mention on a powerpoint slide from Harvard that gave no further explanation. Ironically, I got my information on alcohol's effect on death from Harvard as well.
I didn't have particular sources in mind, but decent sources on all of these topics can be found with a quick search.
The risk from wine-drinking (2 micromorts per Liter) cited on Wikipedia was only due to cirrhosis of the liver; drunk driving would cause one to incur a greater risk of death than indicated by that estimate. I'm willing to believe that there are some narrow benefits of drinking alcohol, but it seems like the costs outweigh the benefits.
Regarding cell phones causing cancer, the Mayo Clinic post you linked to in the response to this comment makes it seem like the matter isn't settled, despite there not being much evidence for cellphones causing cancer. (Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, given that there's been enough studies done on the matter). Part of why I was previously (and still am) particularly skeptical about the ability of cellphones to cause cancer is because I can't see any plausible mechanism for this being true-- the highest energy radio waves don't even have enough energy to break weaker-than-average hydrogen bonds, much less covalent bonds that would need to be damaged to mutate DNA.
I did more research, and the results I found support my statements on cellphones and alcohol.
Could you rephrase your last paragraph? It's missing a word. :)
Thanks for pointing that out, I've added a bit to my last paragraph in the mentioned post.
I'm not having tons of luck with quantitatively relating alcohol consumption with lifespan extension in a reliable and satisfying way that allows the risks vs. benefits of consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol to be compared. I'm going to give up on this for now, since it has the potential to become very time consuming.
All of the studies on CR I was able to find were in monkeys and other nonhuman animals, but there's a proposed mechanism for CR's positive effects on longevity-- reduction of oxidative stress.