Slashdot Mirror
Turns Out You Actually Can Be Bored To Death
A study conducted by researchers at University College London shows that boredom can kill you. The researchers found that people who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study. Martin Shipley, who co-wrote the report said, "The findings on heart disease show there was sufficient evidence to say there is a link with boredom."
maybe because by doing nothing and being bored, you are likely to not be as healthy...
Is this really the kind of news that we need on the front page? NEWS for nerds, anyone?
I've been exclusively reading Slashdot news all day, and not even one is remotely interesting enough to *hurk* *ack* *ug.*
The participants were 35-55 years old in 1985-88 when surveyed about their boredom. 25 years later, maybe they just died because they were almost 80 when the surveyors checked up on them last April...
In other news, despite headlines claiming otherwise, correlation is found to not be causation.
//phil dokas
... of IgNobel prize winner.
who never post anymore ...
Does that mean that C-SPAN is guilty of crimes against humanity? I knew it...
Same story, different day.
Oh, wait....
Hey, look at that chicken! Wow!
...
I'm tired
Sick and tired of love
I've had my fill of love
From below and above
Tired, tired of being admired
Tired of love uninspired
Let's face it
I'm tired
I've been with 1000's of men
Again and again
They promise the moon
They always coming and going
Going and coming
And always too soon
Right girls?
I'm tired, ...
Tired of playing the game
Ain't it a crying shame
I'm so tired
God dammit I'm exhausted
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, that's why they say there is a "link" rather than saying that it is the cause. In other words, the two correlate, but they are silent as to the cause. Personally, I think both boredom and heart disease tend to have a common cause, such as sitting on your fat ass and drinking too much.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
He laughed at me when I said my ultimate technique was the Long Winded Anecdote With No Point (Napping Crane Style). But now I'm 37% more likely to have the last laugh!
The enemies of Democracy are
boredom can kill you
"The researchers found that people who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study."
How long did this study take?!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This explains the corpse in the back of that lecture hall in the math building.
What a waste of time and money. Boredom is completely self defined. One person could be "suffering" from boredom, while the next person who is experiencing the same as the first could be peeing their pants from excitement. How they managed to put a study together baised out of this ambiguity is the only impressive thing here.
Seriously, in the first 18 posts I at least 5 times read the above expression with some profound comment like "..and you suck".
Yea, correlation != causation. I know that, but that does not bring me more insight.
The story was not that bad either. They had a set of similar people and they showed differences in death rates depending on their boredom. + We know how boring boredom can be, and considering the complex interaction of mood with health (and don't say there is none), it is very likely that there is a correlation.
The study fails to convince us, so instead of moaning about it, how about trying to get some other resources, other clues? Or just leaving it as open question?
I think I just found the methodological flaw in the study. Too small sample size in the non-bored civil servant cohort.
Pfew that was exciting.
Medical doctors and their sience games.
Always failing to tell correlation and causality apart.
I'd be far more inclined to speculate that bored people just don't have that healthy life-style on average...
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
If boredom could kill, the german military in the 80's would have run casualties higher than at Stalingrad. I've never been so bored before or after ever. You were given a task that would you take 5min at a crawling pace, 4 hours of time and the order not to leave the room while being denied anything to read and bereft of all company. If boredom could kill, i would have been a casualty then.....
As study is underway to see if you really can "Freeze your ass off".
You forgot, "and it's all W's fault."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
correlation is found to not be causation.
I see that comment so often it bores me.
Ow...ow, chest pain...numb left arm...aaaaghgghgh!!!!
Yes! Exactly! Correlation != causation!
If only researchers would read slashdot. Then they could benefit from our superior knowledge, and we would never have to say "correlation != causation" again.
*sigh*
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
In fact, it could even be more likely to kill you.
I rarely post here, but this is so stupid I can't help myself.
I would love to see what percentage of participants were over the age of 50 twenty-five years ago. Not only that, but maybe those 37 percent were not only over 50 yrs old, but also reported boredom since having been a civil servant for many years.
And I could be way off, but my guess is you could survey 7524 people in that age group about ANYTHING and find that about that same percentage of them had died over that kind of time span.
How many died in accidents or by unrelated disease? What percentage reported boredom in the first place? And finally, how many died in murder-suicide pacts? After all, we are talking about civil servants here, they are ALL bored.
over 95% of those doing heavy drugs were breastfed. Hence ... what?
Now how to they now those being bored had that feeling because they already had some health problems?
When some people get bored, they drink...
Yes!
Let's set up a study where we have a control group who gets to do fun and interesting things, and another group where we attempt to bore them to death.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, no, no.
In Soviet Russia, dead horse beats you.
The Long Winded Anecdote With No Point (Napping Crane Style) is no match for the Everending Rehashment Of Stale Joke (Slashdottian Ape Style):
Now, I'm not sure that the ISR joke above is actually funny -- not sure that people will understand that the reason to stop beating a dead horse is because it's boring. I think it is funny, slightly -- but the great thing is, I'm not concerned. Because anyone who finds it not funny will be bored by it, and therefore will be nudged slightly closer to a premature death. And anyone who has read this far into my post is surely even more bored by now. Mwuah-ha-ha-ha.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
And you still watch tv.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It has already been established that stress can kill. The most stressful periods of my life have been when I have been bored. If you are bored it generally means you are under utilized. Knowing this you will be quite stressed. Besides, having nothing to do is like sensory deprivation, a psychological form of torture. This it is not terribly surprising that people who are "bored" also tend to end up stressed, and ultimately dead.
I halfway expected it to say they were so bored that they just killed themselves.
Are you suggesting that drinking too much is somehow a bad thing?
There is this Game I played once, where I attended a party. In England, London, Islington... oh... THAT party... This party was really pretty average except for the occasional alien, as long as you never spoke to the hostess. If you spoke to her, you would literally be board to death.
**** YOU HAVE DIED **** Press ENTER to restart.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Too long, died reading.
Next time my inlaws try to make me watch one of their vacation slide shows, I can have them charged with attempted murder!
reading this article?
School is often boring for many people. Is this study proof that compulsory schooling is bad for most people's health?
See also:
"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to Life/Work Planning" by Richard N. Bolles (also writes "What Color is Your Parachute")
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Boxes-Life-How-Them/dp/0913668583
Other links:
"College Daze links (was Re: : FlossedBk, "Free/Libre and Open Source Solutions for Education")"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Oh boy! Finally a reason to write a medical prescription for porn.