The bacon thing is maybe a good example of Hamming's Closed Door Paradox:
I noticed the following facts about people who work
with the door open or the door closed. I notice that
if you have the door to your office closed, you get
more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more
productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you
don't know quite know what problems are worth working
on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in
importance. He who works with the door open gets all
kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets
clues as to what the world is and what might be
important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect
sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is
symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can
say there is a pretty good correlation between those
who work with the doors open and those who ultimately
do important things, although people who work with
doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to
work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but
enough that they miss fame.
In this case, as it turns out, bacon does give you cancer. The relative risk of high "processed meat" consumption is in the neighborhood of 20%, i.e. RR of 1.2, for colorectal and lung cancers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16991129/
In the US, there are about 200k deaths per year from these two cancers, out of 2.7 million total deaths. So your chances of dying of one of these two cancers is about 7.4%, if you live in a place somewhat like the US. And that increases to about 8.9% if you eat a lot of processed meat.
It seems to me like a 1.5% chance of dodging a death by cancer, and thus living an extra 5–20 years, is worth a single disrupted morning.
Bacon... Hamming... I see what you probably quite unintentionally did there.
Anyway, doors are nice because you have the luxury of opening and closing them. Just remember what open and closed doors are for. Open it to see what's worth doing; close it when it's time to go do it.
Ideally this all applies in the metaphorical sense to social media too, if one has the discipline to handle it that way. But the problem for a lot of people, and the problem with this door analogy, is that a door doesn't nag you, Hey. Hey. Hey. You haven't opened me lately. Hey. Tons of cool stuff is going on beyond this door. Hey. Are you okay? I'm worried about you and so are your friends. Hey. Still there?
Also the door doesn't record your phone calls and so forth.
If only social media were as flexible, disinterested and unobtrusive as the lowly, everyday door.
First and foremost, what evidence is there for Hamming's claim?
> is worth a single disrupted morning.
We're not talking about a single "disrupted" morning. We're talking about chronic depression, which can lead to suicide.
Many people I tell that I don't keep up with current events like to claim I'm ignorant. At which point I ask them to name the most important thing they learned from news two weeks ago. Haven't had someone come up with anything substantial yet.
Knowledge is valuable, it is a form of wealth, and there are many ways to get it. I do not believe we receive knowledge from modern mainstream media today. Most of it is ephemeral drama that does not matter in the least.
Spot on. It used to be when the feedback cycles were quite long that newspapers were forced to use a shotgun approach, hitting all sorts of topics in the hopes that one or two them would interest the reader. If they failed? No big deal.
With instantaneous feedback, and click-based advertising? All that crap is out the window. (Although you can make a good argument that things got really out of hand with the rise of cable news and the 24-hour-news cycle.)
It's all emotional manipulation now. Nothing else. It looks like for a lot of folks, it doesn't even matter if it's true or not.
50 years ago, if you didn't the paper, you were ignorant. Today, if you consume a bunch of online media, you're not ignorant, you're stupid: you are purposely filling your head with emotion-laden content in lieu of actually learning anything. If anything, you're most likely making yourself emotionally ill.
The best source I have for learning what's going on is the opinion columns. The format drives more honest out. As an opinion-writer, you're expected to have a thesis, an argument, and supporting data. Your bias is direct and up-front. It's a much more tractable way of evaluating information sources.
>I do not believe we receive knowledge from modern mainstream media today. Most of it is ephemeral drama that does not matter in the least.
The "news" has been like that for a long time.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
> While Jefferson neglected to read newspapers, he read many books and was arguably one of the most important figures in the Enlightenment.
This is my goal. Well, at least being more erudite by reading books and research papers and ignoring the news. I think I missed my window on being an important figure in the Enlightenment.
I'm always perplexed by these contrived scenarios used to demonstrate some point or other.
Work with the door closed some of the time, when you need to slog through a task uninterrupted, then open the door to allow the serendipity of uncontrolled interruption.
I didn't make the comment you've replied to but in my opinion, it's less about the specifics of the scenario and more about providing food for thought about _why_ you're working with the door open or closed and in what circumstances you make those choices. If you do one or the other particularly often out of habit, it's helpful to think about why and adjust your habits if necessary.
1.5% chance of a 5-20years cancer-induced loss is an expected gain of at most 4months of life, in exchange for giving up not just bacon but all "processed meat" for an entire lifetime, while also taking care not to replace that meat with any other carcinogens such as sugar.
Yes. The World Cancer Research Fund commissioned a comprehensive review of cancer risk factors, signed off on by dozens of prominent scientists. They came up with ten key recommendations. One of them is, "Limit red meat and avoid processed meat." Another is, "Avoid high-calorie foods and sugary drinks." A third is, "Keep [body] weight low within the healthy range." Sugary drinks and obesity as risks for cancer are definitely well within mainstream science.
Doesn't "carcinogen" mean something a little stronger than "may increase risk of cancer"? Like I wouldn't call walking on the street a deadly activity just because it may increase your chance of death.
I didn't mention obesity, which is definitely a risk factor.
Sugar is only partially correlated with obesity, and I have never seen anything implicating sugar itself with cancer outside of paleo / bro-science circles. Plenty of people drink multiple sugary drinks daily for decades without getting obese. Warren Buffet is a good example. So is most the population of Japan.
As someone who honestly does not desire to live an extra 5-20 years, I disagree. I’d rather have the pleasant morning now.
Mostly, I refuse to clutch and cling to life out of some sentimental attachment to the world around me. Also, there’s the cliche of preserving one’s self during the worst period of old age, and prolonging that portion of life. But then, there’s also the degree of enjoyment one derives from life.
Most people are stuck in some shitty rut. There’s a lot of obvious self-help schlock to tell you that a rut is your own fault, but I can look out at the rest of the world and anticipate outcomes for people who will never ever ascend beyond a certain ceiling of success, and I can take that same degree of qualitative assessment and point it in the mirror.
Some of us have obvious limitations, and would prefer to cut to the chase.
Using lung cancer fatalities to generalize to everyone in the US is fallacious, because most lung cancer occurs in high risk groups (primarily smokers). If you are not a smoker, looking at total fatalities from lung cancer including smokers is looking at numbers that just do not apply to you. It's bad info.
Really not sure how lung cancer figures into this anyhow. I don't see anything about lung cancer in your NIH link. Nope, not in the full article either.
In any case, the numbers you spitballed about eating bacon are definitely off.
> It seems to me like a 1.5% chance of dodging a death by cancer, and thus living an extra 5–20 years, is worth a single disrupted morning.
Counting the years you live always struck me as distracting from the things that matter: quality of life, and sticking around to see things that you might reasonably hope to see. In this worldview, bacon might totally be worth the extra 1.5% absolute chance of colorectal cancer.
That said, I was under the impression the problem was more the preservatives and the smoking part of bacon rather than the "red" or "processed" part of meat.
Your chance of dying is 100%. I'd rather enjoy some bacon every once in awhile then worry about single digit variations in my chances of getting cancer. I do tend to buy uncured bacon anyway though.
Re: "uncured" is really also cured, but using celery powder which is a source of naturally occurring nitrates, vs "industrially extracted nitrites/nitrates". The result being the same, the same substance used to prevent spoilage. Incidentally Celery is also high in oxalates, so if you tend to accumulate those (kidney stones) you might be better off with actually "cured" products in comparison with "uncured"
In this case, as it turns out, bacon does give you cancer. The relative risk of high "processed meat" consumption is in the neighborhood of 20%, i.e. RR of 1.2, for colorectal and lung cancers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16991129/
In the US, there are about 200k deaths per year from these two cancers, out of 2.7 million total deaths. So your chances of dying of one of these two cancers is about 7.4%, if you live in a place somewhat like the US. And that increases to about 8.9% if you eat a lot of processed meat.
It seems to me like a 1.5% chance of dodging a death by cancer, and thus living an extra 5–20 years, is worth a single disrupted morning.