I am not sure how much do I trust an article about Madrid's metro that doesn't mention the fact that one of those expansions (Line 7, in San Fernando de Henares) was done with political instead of technical criteria, ending up in several hundreds losing their homes and a metro line that has to close every once in a while for repairs.
I am also heavily distrusting of the "75 percent of passengers described themselves as ‘very satisfied’". The infrastructure might be ok now, but the frequencies are getting worse (except when the pope visits, in that case they apparently have the money) and in rush hour everything is packed.
I don’t think it’s false, much less obviously false. On one hand I have my personal experience about it, on the other you can see there’s only a small range in the “I want a conversation” scale where they want it enough to ignore the nonverbal signs that the person doesn’t want to talk but not enough to ignore the verbal ones.
The people likely to talk to strangers unprompted are also likely to ignore those kind of messages. Anything that can lead to further conversation can be used (like "oh, what's worrying you?") so actually politely nodding and smiling without giving any footing to further conversation works better than being assertive.
Several options on how to burn that amount of money without being specifically looking to tokenmaxx
- Agents that spawn other agents
- Telling agents to go look at the entire codebase or at a lot of documents constantly
- MCP/API use with a lot of noise
- Loops where the agent is running unattended.
I do think it's not really responsible use and a loop where the agent is trying to fix CI for one hour for something that would take you five minutes (for example) is absurd. But people do that.
I explored quite a bit because I was curious to see how it was possible that sauna had these great effects and why no one used it outside of Finland. But to this point I haven’t seen anything that really supports the idea that sauna is such a massive health protector as claimed. It’s probably beneficial, yes, but the real benefits are probably far lower than claimed.
> Bias is different from precision. If both conditions have the same bias, their difference is still unbiased.
Not really, and I wouldn’t assume that when the condition under study can also affect how the measurement is taken.
> If you quantize so much that you have no variance in the measurements, then sure. But watches typically have 1 bpm quantization, which is fine at the scale of variation in HR.
At the scale of variation in HR in general yes, but not if the difference you’re trying to measure is in the range of 3 BPM.
> If you have independent error in measurements and quantization that gives you variance in measurement
That’s a big if. I am not confident we can claim that the errors are independent in this case, using sauna or not can affect how the sensor measures BPM.
The first study shows a 0.37 hazard ratio for frequent sauna use. That’s better than a lot of the HRs reported for physical activity. It’s even better than not smoking. It just doesn’t really fit.
Also, the fact that there are practically no sauna related studies outside of Nordic populations is suspicious too. I bet that with those hazards ratios a lot of people have tried to study the effects more, it’s suspicious there’s practically nothing out there.
But you can't really assume that the estimate of the mean represents the real value. For example, if the sensor is equally likely to show 80 or 81 BPM when the real heartrate is 80.7, the mean estimator will be biased.
> with 100 measurements
Also, wearables aren't taking 100 measurements of the BPM at a given point in time. I think the highest frequency they usually have is 1 second measurement interval. So they don't really have a lot of measurements for each point in time.
> mean estimate standard deviation
That's the standard deviation of the mean of the values. Doesn't imply that the standard deviation of the values themselves will go to zero.
> I don't understand what you mean by that.
That as a rule of thumb, you should not assume that repeating measurements will give you more precision than what the tool can offer. E.g., trying to measure down to milimeters with a ruler that has only 1cm marks will not really work well.
Much of that body of evidence relies on self-reported and self-assigned sauna usage rather than actual randomized trials, and also the papers show massive risk reductions that do not really fit with the country-level data (e.g., if saunas are that good for cardiovascular health and finns use them that much, why do they have similar rates of CV disease as neighboring countries that don't use that much sauna?)
How did you control for activity level? Do you have similar BPM plots for the different situations (sauna+exercise, sauna+no exercise, no sauna + exercise, no sauna + no exercise) for a visual representation?
> minimum nighttime HR drops ~3 bpm (~5%)
What wearables were used? These devices don't usually have enough precision to reliably detect ~3bpm changes. Also, the measurements are sensitive to skin, blood flow changes and temperature. How do you know the difference doesn't come from different sensor behavior after sauna?
> Feeling good and with lasting energy is pretty much the same as having good health.
I'm referring to feeling like that specifically after the sauna. I also feel great after eating a great steak and yet it's not the same as having good health.
> Yes and there are studies, so do you have anything concrete why they ain't beneficial, besides your personal dislike?
> You lead with "Basically, the sauna studies are probably mostly discovering that "healthier people can stand sauna longer" that implies you did not even read them.
Not that they are not beneficial, but that the benefits are not as large as they are assumed to be. The main reason is that there are no randomized trials and practically no replications outside of nordic countries. Also, if you compare the risk reduction reported by sauna use to other health interventions, you'll quickly see that it doesn't really make that much sense. Depending on the studies, you'll see risk ratios that say that frequent sauna use is as effective (or more) as doing high intensity exercise or smoking cessation.
> (Besides, allmost everyone goes to Sauna in the nordic countries, that implies allmost everyone there is healthy by your logic)
Actually, you have that backwards. If finnish people go so much to the sauna compared to other countries and it's as good as the studies say, why are they not much more healthy than other countries? Prevalence of cardiovascular disease in Finland is pretty similar to other countries. Same with life expectancy.
There are two options: either the finns are doing something radically different from other countries that negates the benefits from sauna use; or the risk reduction shown from the studies is not real.
The most likely explanation is that sauna provides similar benefits as any of the other interventions based around mildly stressing your body: somewhat beneficial but nothing magical, with probably an additional, significant placebo effect.
> But if Sauna for you was breathing fire .. one easy solution is to go to a less hot sauna.
Another easy solution is to not go to a sauna and just do anything else that's beneficial to me in that time and not extremely uncomfortable. I already live in Spain, I get more than my fair share of hot uncomfortable environments.
It’s not only that confounder but also the fact that the studies show massive risk reductions that are really surprising. Considering how much finns apparently go to the sauna compared to similar countries and how good the sauna appears to be based on the studies, it’s weird that they have similar health stats at a country level.
There are two separate issues there. One, you feeling good about going to the sauna. If you feel good, that’s nice. But it’s your personal feeling from it. I personally did not have the same opinion about my lungs feeling as I was breathing fire, but to each their own. I’d rather do other nicer things to activate blood flow and feel revived.
The other is the health benefits, and that can only be measured from serious studies and not from how you or me feel about it later.
That might have an effect, but these studies are probably mostly selecting for people who can tolerate a hostile environment for longer, which are usually healthier. I find it unlikely that sauna alone explains the fantastic, almost miraculous hazard ratios that these studies report.