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...
who never post anymore ...
Does that mean that C-SPAN is guilty of crimes against humanity? I knew it...
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
This explains the corpse in the back of that lecture hall in the math building.
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.....
I don't know about you. But I am board listening to the same old Rant. STOP SHORTENING MY LIFE SPAN!!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
A) If boredom leads to a less health lifestyle, and that lifestyle leads to decreased longevity, isn't that just an indirect way to say that boredom decreased longevity? Wouldn't treating boredom still increase longevity?
B) Even if boredom is just a symptom and not cause, isn't this still useful information? Can't we use boredom as a symptom of poor health to diagnose and help people improve their lifestyles and thus their longevity?
C) Have you considered that boredom is perhaps a symptom of a non-lifestyle-related cause of poor health? Maybe people who are more susceptible to disease X are also more susceptible to boredom, or to the perception of boredom?
I know it's cool to say correlation is not causation and pretend that you're smarter than the folks who did the study, but it's really quite petty to dismiss the study offhand simply because it does not conclusively establish causation, particularly in the medical field. How exactly do you propose that we impose boredom on a group of people, because unless you can control the treatment there's really no way to establish causation. But don't let ethics, a lack of practical tools for manipulating mood, or the enormous cost a of a 30-year clinical study take away from your slashdot oneupmanship.
As study is underway to see if you really can "Freeze your ass off".
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.
The participants who reported high levels of boredom were significantly more likely to have died than the participants, in the same age group, who didn't.
[sigh] TentireFA is about ten lines long; it doesn't give much information, but it's enough to get that much. Actually, even an intelligent reading of the summary would have given you that little bit of information. Probably too much to ask here, I know.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
God, why do you synaesthesiacs always have sound so fucking indigo?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
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.