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Comment by semiinfinitely | Hacker News Reader

Am I reading this correctly from table 2 that the highest magnitude correlation is never drinking alcohol, which is a negative correlation.

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I wonder if they tried to correct for 'exercise intensity' for that, because (fun fact), exercising regularly is negatively correlated with regularly taking all kinds of drugs -- except for alcohol, where the correlation is apparently positive [1].

[1]: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/exercise-alcohol-resear...

Furthermore, drinking weekly seems better than monthly.

But frequency doesn't mean much unless we know amounts. For example, small amounts weekly could be benefiting social relations and regulating things like anxiety. Binging monthly might not give these benefits.

Weirdly, BMI seems to have almost zero effect.

> "BMI seems to have almost zero effect."

Seeing how chubby Jon von Neumann was, this should be trivial. ;)

> Furthermore, drinking weekly seems better than monthly.

Would seem to potentially imply more routine social activity / community.

I bet this is not because alcohol is good for you in any way, but because being intelligent is related to being eager to try new things.

I knew that smoking crack meant I was smart

A hunch would be that alcohol abstinence is strongly correlated with religious fundamentalism which is correlated with lower income and cognition.

Before we rush to conclusions and make up just-so stories, note this passage from the research:

"The relationship between cognitive function and lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption and smoking proved complex. Individuals who abstained from alcohol showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed alcohol, conflicting with previous research[1] that has connected moderate drinking with cognitive impairment"

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

[1] Topiwala A, Allan CL, Valkanova V, et al. Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study. BMJ 2017;357:j2353.

Yes, the parent comment incorporated and was consistent with that. I.e., there's something confounding these results. It then hypothesized the confounder.

First Reaction: These days, less-clever folks are mostly in situations where they're lucky if they can afford food and rent. Alcohol just another out-of-reach luxury.

Really? Poor people don’t drink?

I guess where you live there are no homeless people.

Re-read the "Methods" section, on page 2 of the PDF. I'm not too familiar with the UK Biobank database, but the researchers broadly exclude anyone whose record (in the DB) did not include completion of multiple cognitive tests. And prioritized people whose data include rather comprehensive sleep & related data.

Again I don't know this dataset well...but I'd really suspect that few of the UK's homeless would have passed this study's selection criteria.

its an interesting idea, but its very complex because of varying attitudes to alcohol within and between religions.

It is interesting that fundamentalists tend to be anti-alcohol across religions with different attitudes in mainstream believers (say Christianity that commonly uses alcohol in religious rites and hose founder's first miracle was to give people alcohol, Buddhism, and Islam which is clearly anti-alcohol).

I think that means you are onto something in that there is an important correlation there. Not sure it is as simple as lower income (there are lots of rich fundamentalists of all religions) or cognition. Personality traits or associated cultural factors more likely?

> A hunch would be that alcohol abstinence is strongly correlated with religious fundamentalism which is correlated with lower income and cognition.

It seems you are pointing to second largest religion in the world - islam. It covers over 2 billions of people. They largely don't drink not because they are fundamentalists, they just follow basic premises of their religion. And my various travels to various countries with them being either majority or minority its extremely common, even when they resettle ie to Europe. There are also completely dry countries in North africa for example, they are not full of religious fundamentalists.

Please educate yourself about the world a bit before making such harsh and discriminating statements, they have no place on this forum.

And not just Islam.

The alcohol taboo is equally strong in mainstream Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism (depending on region).

Also, in a lot of the developing world, prohibitionism is a fairly mainstream Feminist opinion, due to the sadly very common issue of domestic abuse.

All this shows is that there are various confounding variables in this study, and that more studies are needed.

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