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Comment by pmichaud | Hacker News Reader

On priors and given how they sample, I'm guessing it's just p-hacking.

I cant find the episode now, but a few years ago an episode CBC's science show Quirks and Quarks interviewed a researcher that found being bilingual seemed to delay the onset of dementia by a couple of years. Although it doesnt sound like much, from a public policy pov, its pretty significant when you look at what that can mean for quality of life as well as costs for our public health system.

I wonder if knowing one language delays the onset of dementia by X. then being bilingual delays dementia by X/2. then being trilingual delays dementia by X/3. and so on ...

Unfortunately, you can't take an 50-something english only American and tell him to "go learn Italian", for health. It's hard enough to make people eat less, exercise, or quit smoking - picking up new language without another motivation than "for health" is going to be even harder.

Most schools introduce more languages today, no ? And I guess there is no motivation to keep language skills active beyond school, so any skill here will likely atrophy like me French :(

Has NAFTA not meant that one can, even without internet, practise french and spanish from food packaging?

I enjoyed Bon Cop Bad Cop (2006), a bilingual flick which IIRC can be found with either english or french subs.

its been a while since I heard the doc, but I dont think it was so much a "lets all learn another language" as opposed to looking what might be happening in the brain to cause such an odd disparity in how the disease manifests itself.

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