How much is related to people suffering a medical emergency and nobody being around to help? vs. How much is the actual emotional impact of loneliness?
I’m curious what the research says about interacting online in e.g. Discord servers and other forums for niche communities. Also, is calling your childhood friend on the regular more or less potent than meeting IRL but recently-made friends?
This is why doctors should recommend drinking and smoking. At a certain point the risk of premature death is greater from being a shut-in than it is from indulging in a pint and a ciggie with some buddies every once in a while.
Aside from a formal study, _feels_ right (for what that's worth). The healthiest people I know are generally happy and have people around who care of them and they care for. I swear the social parts of life are what keep the elderly going, in my experience.
I haven't dug into all the sources, but I think there's a potential confounder here, or maybe even reverse causality. The author seems to assume causation when the studies only indicate correlation. E.g. the first link says "chronic loneliness increases mortality risk" but the actual source says "actual and perceived social isolation are both associated with increased risk for early mortality".
So for example, it's possible that if you already have chronic illness, a disability, or any other kind of health issues, you're more likely to have higher social isolation and therefore be more lonely, in addition to having a higher mortality risk. There's an outside variable (your health) that is correlated with both (loneliness and mortality), but that doesn't necessarily mean that loneliness causes mortality. If this were the case, we could defend claims like "autism increases mortality", because we already know that autism increases social isolation.
I was not aware of this, but this actually supports my point, since the reasons in that study seem to be correlated physical comorbidities, so that makes the claim "autism increases mortality due social isolation" both easier to make (as you can misinterpret the stats) as well as less defensible.
There is considerable evidence that people who live alone are at greater risk of hospital re-admission, probably because they are less able to care for themselves properly.
Before getting tied up with bureaucratic nonsense my daughter was looking at starting a "borrow a grandma / grandpa" club at her university. The idea was to connect students with elderly people who are lonely, and they could have tea / coffee together. The elderly get to be social with a younger generation, and the younger generation gets to understand the struggles that a lot of elderly people face.
I think that the university was concerned with liability. I still think that it's a good idea.
Mortality risk is already 100% isn’t it? We’re going to die, guaranteed, so what’s another 23% increase on 100%?
I think a good study would be the effects of likes, upvotes and karma on overall lifespan. I’d bet that people who gain more upvotes and positive engagement in general probably live much longer than people who are chronically downvoted or ignored.
Mindfullness as a treatment for loneliness is strange to me. This doesn't actually help with the problem of being alone, it could just make someone be more OK with it.
As someone who spends a lot of time alone, one of my big fears is having a medical emergency, even just choking on food, and dying from something that would be easily avoided had another person been in the house. I've gone and looked up how to give myself the Heimlich maneuver on myself, and play out that scenario in my head all the time... or trying to get to a neighbor's house or just outside where someone might see me. Mindfulness won't help if this is how I meet my fate, actually community and relationships would.
I've seen this happen in person, to my grandmother. She hitched her identity to the man of the house, even signing checks "Mrs. grandad's name." She was the accountant of their farm along with housewife and cook and chicken tender. He was most of the muscle until he had to relinquish the work to their youngest son, who had moved out and into his own house. She was in relatively good health when grandad died at 76. She suddenly lost her identity, being alone in that farmhouse which she helped build and maintain, it was too full of ghosts to live alone, she moved in with the son. I never saw her smile after that. She died within months.
My great-grandmother was different. her husband died young. she had 50 more years of life after that. She gardened, she sewed, she pickled and canned. She established a strong personal identity and experienced evergreen personal growth. She was a happy woman, cackling all of the time when we'd visit. When she died at 95, it was a surprise, she seemed very alive and healthy shortly beforehand. She died in her sleep, no chronic diseases.
Makes me think that 32% might be traced to psychological/sociological factors.
Would you like to know why some people are lonely? Because they have interacted with people before and found the experience to be quite objectionable.
I am lonely because I have dealt with too many assholes. And if it kills me sooner, good. Humanity is a garbage species full of opportunistic and adversarial people just waiting to find new people to exert power over.
Loneliness directly contributes to alcoholism and a number of other self-medication addictions. Part of it is social - pubs and places that profit off of alcohol are where lonely men often go to find company. Is it malicious to exploit loneliness by offering respite to it to sell addictive substances?
I would expect this to be correlated to not having kids as well. Anecdotally the healthiest elderly I know are deeply involved in raising grandkids/great grandkids, and those relatives without kids I've lost early.
I've heard of some efforts to pair retirement homes and preschools in some way, to benefit both, and I'd love to see that idea work in some way. I expect it to have many liability challenges but would be so good for both parties.
No need to jump on the latest buzzwords, doing science. I remember this kind of study has already been done with married/unmarried peope, with basically a similar result. The explanation they gave back then was pretty logical: If you are living alone, there is nobody around to call an ambulance if you have a heart attack or similar.
>Loneliness increases death risk by 32% but we know how to fix it. Real solutions that cut loneliness in half, from mindfulness to community programs that actually work.
And what, pray tell, works? He goes on:
>Those programs in Barcelona where almost half the people stopped feeling lonely? The mindfulness stuff that works in just two weeks? Even the robot pets for elderly people “it all works”. We’re not talking about maybe or possibly here. This stuff actually works. What gets me is that fixing loneliness doesn’t require some massive revolution. Twenty minutes of mindfulness a day. A weekly volunteer shift.
The following is perfectly compatible with everything in the article being correct and important (though I share the suspicion that there may be some reverse-causality going on), but the author seems to be extremely fishy in some ways.
He's posting about two substantial (~10-30 pages) papers per week to the arXiv, in various areas of mathematics. He claims to have developed "Alpay Algebra: A recursive language for thought" and what he's written about it looks to me like (1) it was actually written by an LLM and (2) it's basically word/symbol salad. (He has some papers about it on the arXiv. The first isn't particularly bullshitty, but uses a great deal of formalism to say almost nothing. Later ones look like grandiose AI-written slop. And he has some web pages that are just grandiose AI-written slop.)
I repeat: none of this needs to cast any particular doubt on what he writes about loneliness. He might be an AI-driven mathematical crank who also has wise thoughts about loneliness. I might just be wrong about his being an AI-driven mathematical crank, though I'd be pretty surprised. Or, for that matter, his post about loneliness might be AI-written but none the less correct. (It's the kind of thing I would expect an LLM to be able to write something reasonable about -- though in that case it would be advisable to double-check the references.) But it doesn't inspire confidence.
nothing more than a n=1 anecdote, but I'm noticeably more depressed when my wife is in the office and I don't go in to a coworking space and/or do something with my friends after work.
Even as an introvert I can easily see if I didn't have a partner and access to friends and socialization I'd be significantly more likely to kill myself.
Before my mother started joining more retiree clubs I could literally see on her face how much more weathered and haggard she was. The isolation was physically visible on her face.
41 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 56.2 ms ] threadI’m curious what the research says about interacting online in e.g. Discord servers and other forums for niche communities. Also, is calling your childhood friend on the regular more or less potent than meeting IRL but recently-made friends?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness_epidemic#Causes_of_...
So for example, it's possible that if you already have chronic illness, a disability, or any other kind of health issues, you're more likely to have higher social isolation and therefore be more lonely, in addition to having a higher mortality risk. There's an outside variable (your health) that is correlated with both (loneliness and mortality), but that doesn't necessarily mean that loneliness causes mortality. If this were the case, we could defend claims like "autism increases mortality", because we already know that autism increases social isolation.
Are you aware that life expectancy is much lower for peel with autism than the general public?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6713622/
I think that the university was concerned with liability. I still think that it's a good idea.
I think a good study would be the effects of likes, upvotes and karma on overall lifespan. I’d bet that people who gain more upvotes and positive engagement in general probably live much longer than people who are chronically downvoted or ignored.
As someone who spends a lot of time alone, one of my big fears is having a medical emergency, even just choking on food, and dying from something that would be easily avoided had another person been in the house. I've gone and looked up how to give myself the Heimlich maneuver on myself, and play out that scenario in my head all the time... or trying to get to a neighbor's house or just outside where someone might see me. Mindfulness won't help if this is how I meet my fate, actually community and relationships would.
My great-grandmother was different. her husband died young. she had 50 more years of life after that. She gardened, she sewed, she pickled and canned. She established a strong personal identity and experienced evergreen personal growth. She was a happy woman, cackling all of the time when we'd visit. When she died at 95, it was a surprise, she seemed very alive and healthy shortly beforehand. She died in her sleep, no chronic diseases.
Makes me think that 32% might be traced to psychological/sociological factors.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45368911
I am lonely because I have dealt with too many assholes. And if it kills me sooner, good. Humanity is a garbage species full of opportunistic and adversarial people just waiting to find new people to exert power over.
I can't wait to leave this hellhole.
I've heard of some efforts to pair retirement homes and preschools in some way, to benefit both, and I'd love to see that idea work in some way. I expect it to have many liability challenges but would be so good for both parties.
And what, pray tell, works? He goes on:
>Those programs in Barcelona where almost half the people stopped feeling lonely? The mindfulness stuff that works in just two weeks? Even the robot pets for elderly people “it all works”. We’re not talking about maybe or possibly here. This stuff actually works. What gets me is that fixing loneliness doesn’t require some massive revolution. Twenty minutes of mindfulness a day. A weekly volunteer shift.
Slop.
He's posting about two substantial (~10-30 pages) papers per week to the arXiv, in various areas of mathematics. He claims to have developed "Alpay Algebra: A recursive language for thought" and what he's written about it looks to me like (1) it was actually written by an LLM and (2) it's basically word/symbol salad. (He has some papers about it on the arXiv. The first isn't particularly bullshitty, but uses a great deal of formalism to say almost nothing. Later ones look like grandiose AI-written slop. And he has some web pages that are just grandiose AI-written slop.)
I repeat: none of this needs to cast any particular doubt on what he writes about loneliness. He might be an AI-driven mathematical crank who also has wise thoughts about loneliness. I might just be wrong about his being an AI-driven mathematical crank, though I'd be pretty surprised. Or, for that matter, his post about loneliness might be AI-written but none the less correct. (It's the kind of thing I would expect an LLM to be able to write something reasonable about -- though in that case it would be advisable to double-check the references.) But it doesn't inspire confidence.
Even as an introvert I can easily see if I didn't have a partner and access to friends and socialization I'd be significantly more likely to kill myself.
Before my mother started joining more retiree clubs I could literally see on her face how much more weathered and haggard she was. The isolation was physically visible on her face.
Yes, that's my only issue with the article :)
So missing the good German bread.
Doesn't say where 'here' is.