Is it just the act of birdwatching that rewires the brain and slows cognitive decline, so I can enjoy the same effects by looking at tiktoks of birds, while sitting on my couch eating cheetos?
Or are the hiking, breathing in fresh air, the eyes seeing natural sunlight etc critical to the effects?
So if I swapped the birdwatching with watching horses run or pigs fornicate with everything else being the same (hiking, breathing in fresh air, the eyes seeing natural sunlight etc), I would enjoy the exact same benefits the article claims birdwatching results in?
I think it's obvious that what slows down their dementia is that they're bothering to remember things, socializing, expressing their expertise to peers and comparing notes. Normally a retiree doesn't have that much interpersonal connection, and if they do, it's not usually that intense.
The claims of the actual paper are much more nuanced and not anything near how the BBC headline frames it. I think this is more a case of bad science reporting than bad science.
I would maybe argue that the vast majority of science reporting especially in large news outlets is bad science reporting since the modern media ecosystem has strong preference for sensationalism.
It's why there's so much distrust of science globally. We've cured cancer! Except we haven't, it was mouse studies. Except we have! Except not really, that drug failed it's first clinical trial. Except we have! Except that's just mechanistic reasoning not proven by any observational studies.
So then people think, wow, these scientists have no idea what they're doing and just make stuff up all the time to get attention. Which they aren't - most peer-reviewed studies include a mountain of caveats and I've rarely seen, even in large meta-analyses and Cochrane Reviews, papers that make half as strong a claim as ad-revenue obsessed news editors do with their hyperbolic headlines.
If BBC hadn't editorialized, most of us likely wouldn't have clicked it. The paper is interesting but more interesting when you read it through the lens of "does this validate the health benefits of bird-watching?" which is a perspective BBC provided
Maybe naive but I tend to think there’s a way to attract people’s attention to good science without over-claiming. The downside of too much editorializing is that it leads some people (eg the comment I first replied to) to think the science itself must be as shallow as the headline suggests, which does everyone a disservice. In this article’s case, using words like “may” or “suggests” could have gone a long way.
fair criticism, but science reporting is to elicit the public interest (otherwise, you could just publish a link to the paper) and that requires getting the public's interest in the first place
Appending the ‘big’ from e.g. Big Tobacco/Pharma/Sugar to unlikely things is one of my favourite occasional jokes. I especially appreciate the double joke with Big Bird :)
> So if I swapped the birdwatching with watching horses run or pigs fornicate with everything else being the same (hiking, breathing in fresh air, the eyes seeing natural sunlight etc), I would enjoy the exact same benefits the article claims birdwatching results in?
Those activities typically don't require observation and inference. A big part of birdwatching is identifying small, fast-moving animals that exhibit specific combinations of behaviors at specific times of the year based on specific climatic conditions. That sort of rapidfire pattern matching from video and audio info is probably a big contributor to what keeps the brain sharp.
> A big part of birdwatching is identifying small, fast-moving animals that exhibit specific combinations of behaviors at specific times of the year based on specific climatic conditions
So VR birdwatching works, or no?
Remember, if VR birdwatching works, then you can now watch small, fast-moving animals that exhibit specific combinations of behaviors at any time of the year from the comfort of your couch and thus, the benefits of birdwatching can be enjoyed by a much larger population.
Not just outside but to places with sufficient interesting birds. If that costs a gallon of gas, or you have limited mobility, or limited time to spend getting to the right spot, or limited free time while the sun is up in certain months... yeah I could believe that's actually more restrictive for a lot of people than getting 5 years of use out of a VR headset at $70 per year.
Convincing yourself that your local birds aren't sufficiently interesting is a great way to rationalize avoiding getting into birding. (Source: I am trying to learn to distinguish all the pigeons that constitute most of the bird population near me. They're great.)
And it is a classic for folks with limited mobility:
There's a reason why it has a reputation as a great retiree hobby - it's "go sit on a bench and pay attention" not "first, purchase a mountain bike of adequate spec...".
I think going to benches is fine but takes non-negligible effort. As for looking out my window from home... Maybe? It really doesn't seem like there are enough birds visible to make that worth it.
The person in that article saw ten species in two months? This doesn't sound like a situation where your activity is listed as "birdwatching", it sounds like you spend a minute on it every once in a while.
And if I consider binoculars and a feeder, that's on the same price tier as VR.
It's probably better than nothing. From a human and nature perspective, you're not "touching grass". You aren't waiting with anticipation, wonder if you'll see something or what you'll find. You aren't locked in 100% to the experience. I don't think it would be the same.
I think one of the drawbacks of VR birdwatching is that you are served the bird in focus, in frame, almost immediately - there's no search, there's no WTF is making that noise?
Some parts of birdwatching could be Virtual - watching a feeder somewhere (anywhere) waiting for birds to come in and watch what they do - or watching different trees/plants at different points in the year attracting different birds exhibiting different behaviours (eg. I have a love of seeing Tui[NZ] when Taiwanese Cherry or Kowhai are in flower, they gather in the tree at different times of the day when the nectar is at its peak, there are fights for dominance between the birds, there's a racket as they all feast, then boom, as quickly as they arrive they're gone again, off to the next tree)
We just started doing meaningful bird photography (as opposed to true birdwatching) last year and I agree with you.
The couple of times we've gone with guides who are serious birdwatchers, it is impressive to watch their abilities in this area of multimodal species identification (and male/female/adult/juvenile) in challenging visual and audio environments (and recall of species names in Latin, English, and Spanish).
Meanwhile I'm out there with my camera like "Hey, look at that beautiful red+blue bird!" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've been in the hobby for a little over 5 years and the gulf between me when I began and me now is huge. And then I look at people like the experienced guides you mentioned and it's night and day again!
They have access to the same information as the rest of us (sight, sound, general awareness of season and habitat) but their inference is so amazingly fast and accurate.
I’m casually in the hobby but I’ve been able to identify way more birds than I thought I could. Started with a small bird feeder at my house. Now, when I go deer hunting I turn on the Merlin Bird ID app and try to find what it’s hearing.
The bird feeder attracted way to many mice and rats. I wish I didn’t have to take it down.
I've heard (but not tested this myself) that you can add red chilli powder to birdseed to dissuade animals that can taste capsaicin (like rodents). Birds can't taste it.
Surely there’s a way of vermin proofing considering the birds can fly? I’ve been thinking of a bird feeder, I’ve started with a hummingbird one and was thinking about unwanted creatures at the seed feeder if I get one but i naively assumed this would be a solved problem lol
My observation as that there are ways to prevent the vermin from getting to the feeder and eating directly from it, but that birds are generally pretty messy eaters and will spread seed / feed widely across the ground while eating from the feeder and that this is what the vermin end up mostly eating.
I think you misunderstand what's involved in birdwatching. It's not just looking, but searching, and using often very fine details to tell different species apart.
Comments like the one you're responding to is why I always collapse the top comment on any HN frontpage story. It wasn't always like this, but it's a reflex of mine at this point.
I’ve started to do that too. Weird. Def feels like a change happened. But then famously people have been saying this since like the second week of HN being online lol
We don't go birdwatching because we read somewhere that birdwatching is good for you.
We want to know what it is in birdwatching that registers as beneficial because if the factor(s) are distinct and isolated then the same benefits can be scaled outside of birdwatching.
And if you just went birdwatching because they said so, you wouldn't know why it might be beneficial to you. Or maybe there's a factor that wasn't identified separately and birdwatching itself doesn't improve your cognitive capabilities while, for many others, it supposedly does.
You would want to know you're getting benefits from whatever you decide to do if you're doing it in order to gain those benefits.
As a birdwatcher I strongly expect the benefit is in the identification experience and agree with this sibling comment:
> A big part of birdwatching is identifying small, fast-moving animals that exhibit specific combinations of behaviors at specific times of the year based on specific climatic conditions. That sort of rapidfire pattern matching from video and audio info is probably a big contributor to what keeps the brain sharp.
It takes time and experience to build up your identification skills but it’s really rewarding and exciting and modern tech makes it easier than ever to learn
If you find that sign up form, would you kindly post it here. I'd be interested too, but my googl-fu isn't very good apparently. The way the current administration is berating science funding, you'd think this would be something that is actually happening.
> so I can enjoy the same effects by looking at tiktoks of birds,
Birdwatching includes looking at top trees searching for birds. Looking at complex fractal-like accumulations of branches and leaves. Also following sounds and identifying their source. The brain was designed for this task.
A screen does not seem a substituted for such a incredible rich experience. Screens are a flat low-resolution, low fidelity view of reality. And no brain has evolved to watch at them. It can actually be quite tiresome to look at screens all day, as so many things about them go against how our eyes and brains work.
Isn't this counter to the idea that gaming can also slow cognitive decline for similar reasons?
The average CounterStrike player, for example, is scanning complex structures trying to identify an enemy, listening to sounds and trying to follow the source...etc. Why would the screen get in the way in one case but not the other?
Parent's point is IMHO that birdwatching involves a lot more attention, skill and experience than just plainly looking at a screen.
As sister comments point out, this could be reproduced with a lot more technology (VR with high precision controllers ?), which could bring it on par with playing Counter Strike in some ways perhaps ?
To expand on bird watching, people usually don't mindlessly choose a wood cabin and just sit there. They'll know which bird should be where depending on the season, where they tend to hide depending on the time of the day, their bird calls etc. and eventually trek to wherever the birds will be. It's also not so far from fishing.
Maybe I misunderstood, or took their argument too literally. I understood it to be damning screens specifically.
Seems like we're all generally in agreement, then. Probably nothing to do with the literal act of seeing birds, but all of the cognitive work that goes into it. Birdwatching is just an easy-to-digest hobby that demands the right sorts of cognitive activity. This can be akin to a 'Bird Spotting: the Video-game' with whatever flavor and skin, be it a shooter or racing sim or sports game.... but does not seem to cross over into 'TikTok' style less-cognitive activities behind a screen
My cat's brain sure does seem to be stimulated by birdwatching on a screen. He tries to kill them, then walks behind the screen and has a WTF moment, and returns to the front to try to kill them again.
It's very entertaining for me, but I don't do it to him very often lest he become miswired.
I come from the world of live action VR and not 3D generated, so my mind instantly went to what it would take to make a VR live action experience of finding the actual birds in an actual location possible. The image collection required to allow for a zoomed in through binocs view enough detail would be something "fun" to assemble. Everything was designed around wide angle lenses a la GoPros because of form factor which means zooming would be atrocious. Designing something with long lenses would result in a camera rig that would be insanely impractical. Now, using a set of sensors like the Rubin Observatory might might make this feasible. Hmmm...
I won't argue it's a hacker mindset - it's about learning what matters and what's accidental.
If a article headlines saying "People who wake up early live 20 years longer than people who sleep in", and then it turns out it wasn't the act of waking up early at all, rather, early risers then went out for a run or a swim and people who slept in but did the same actually lived even longer than those early risers, it's important to know that.
Or for one of my favorites, 'a glass of wine a day is healthy' because of antioxidants... or something. Except it isn't, at all. But rather as people's health deteriorates to a sufficient degree they tend to stop drinking (even if not consciously because of their own health), and so when you study light drinkers versus non-drinkers, there was enough of an undetected bias in there to make it seem that drinkers were, on average, healthier. It's easy to see echoes of that possibility in near to any study, especially observational.
> 'a glass of wine a day is healthy' because of antioxidants... or something. Except it isn't, at all
Also, in America, the kind of people who have a glass of wine a day (but not more) strongly correlate with those who can afford healthcare.
Similar for mediterranean diets. Turns out it’s the universal healthcare available in all the mediterranean countries both on the european and the african sides.
Oh this is such a nice comment. It's like saying People who live on the 5th floor are healthier than those on the ground.
Of course, the root cause being people who are unfit, sick or elderly cannot literally make it up a flight of stairs.
but if people aren't paying attention, like the vast majority of population dont, you'll suddenly have an explosion of condos that start from the 5th floor with the first 4 floors turned into something else.
> Or for one of my favorites, 'a glass of wine a day is healthy'
There are a few reasons why this is false, my favorite one is, they didn't control for alcoholics who stopped drinking and thus reported as non-drinkers. So the group of completely sober ones had people with liver damage etc. while those with only moderate drinkers had barely any heavy-drinkers in it.
Valid criticism, but I recall the study showing cab drivers have the lowest incidence of dementia among all professions, and I thing perhaps there could be something about activating the visual system in 3d space that is uniquely good.
Is it possible that if you have dementia, you cannot (or not allowed) sustain yourself to be a cab driver?
In other words, if its shown that people who eat jawbreakers have good teeth, is it possible that the underlying reason for it is you simply cannot eat jawbreakers with dentures?
The supposed link is that being a successful cab driver requires you to memorize a lot of street names and layouts, and if you do that for long enough it makes your hippocampus huge and beefy:
> According to a small brain-imaging study published in 2000, London cab drivers had unusually large hippocampi. This part of the brain also happens to degrade in people with Alzheimer’s disease.
[...]
> Interestingly, taxi drivers are not known for stellar health outcomes, Jena says. They typically have higher mortality rates compared with people in other occupations, making their very low Alzheimer’s rates especially remarkable. The researchers wondered if taxi drivers experience other factors that protect them against dementia more generally. In that case, the researchers would expect cab and ambulance drivers to be similarly protected from other types of dementia as well. But their analysis showed these drivers had ordinary rates of vascular dementia, which does not involve the hippocampus.
> And the very low incidence of Alzheimer’s disease did not manifest among drivers of other modes of transportation, which involve “fewer navigational demands.” Another brain-imaging study of long-time London bus drivers found that they do not have enlarged hippocampi. Scientists suspect that this is because “bus drivers are driving predetermined routes,” says Jena. “It’s not this on-the-fly navigational memory that taxi drivers are required to possess.” He and his colleagues found that pilots and ship captains also exhibited typical rates of Alzheimer’s mortality.
I'd also be interested to know what the speed of cognitive decline is OUTSDE the times that you are .
Like, if you have a baseline cognitive decline of 25% in 10 years, and you instead spend 2 of those 10 years (total time spent) watching birds to go from 25% to 20% reduction in cognitive decline, you haven't really slowed your cognitive decline, you've just effectively paused it during the time you were watching birds.
Birds aren't real and obviously just advanced drones designed to spy on us. Obviously we must then only send the most elite and wise of us to monitor them back.
Birdwatching is basically elderly James Bond. Who knows what undercover mysteries grandma and grandpa are secretly discovering
"The extensive training required to achieve domain-specific expertise modifies the brain. Changes in brain structure have been found in domains including music, athletics, and navigation. Training also alters brain activity."
> why would they be bound to pay out dividends or otherwise share the fruits of their economic labour?
because they don't control the physical paper that is money.
I dont understand what you mean by "fiat tokens". I don't imagine most people will accept tokens as a currency because they are as good hold of value and predictable as bitcoin.
In a token economy, certainly what you say is a possibility, but as you can imagine, that economy will be unsustainable so back to "regular" money.
Money is a medium of exchange. If I want something, I can get money in some way, then swap it for something else.
But if I have a near magical genie who can make me anything - software, farming business, physical things - and at a fraction of economic input compared to the legacy monetary policy - then the money is worthless. As the Aztec shells were to the conquistadors.
That's an oversimplification. It comes with a lot of rules and authority that will be enforced by the issuing authority that a simple "IOU" on a sheet of paper lacks. IN the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note. You certainly can refuse to accept the very IOU we agreed on a minute earlier.
Most of the developed world already has magical genies - certainly an overwhelming majority of people on HN earn enough to have LLM subs that build code, 3D Printers that print physical things.
The challenge always has been and will be humans.
You just cannot live in a vacuum. If you could subsist entirely on cheetos and figured out how to make an entire lifetime's supply of cheetos, after N days of watching Netflix, arguing on HN, raising chickens and goats, one day you will want to go and talk to a human.
> in the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note
This is a false–albeit common–misunderstanding. "Federal statutes do not require a seller to accept cash as a form of legal tender for payment of goods or services that were rendered. Thus, businesses may establish their own policies regarding whether they will accept cash as legal tender" [1].
> IN the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note.
Yeah you can. Tell that to all the stores in rougher neighborhoods that kept getting held up at gunpoint for the cash in the register, so they stopped taking cash. Bit harder to get money out of a stolen credit card terminal.
> in the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note
Absolutely untrue. Outside of some local laws governing cash at retail you're under no general obligation to trade with someone if you only want payment in cybertrucks and all they've got is dollars.
I think what you're missing is if you have a "a near magical genie who can make [you] anything" you don't need to exchange for anything.
And if your "near magical genie" can make an operate military equipment, you don't have to respect existing authorities anymore.
Basically, the "AI maximalism" scenario kicks the legs out from under all these concepts and social institutions you're relying on.
> Most of the developed world already has magical genies - certainly an overwhelming majority of people on HN earn enough to have LLM subs that build code, 3D Printers that print physical things.
Not like in the scenario we're discussing. Whatever "magical genies" we already have are incomplete and need operators or have serious quality problems. Most of us depend on those limitations for our livelihoods, and those limitations also give levers to control them.
> You just cannot live in a vacuum. If you could subsist entirely on cheetos and figured out how to make an entire lifetime's supply of cheetos, after N days of watching Netflix, arguing on HN, raising chickens and goats, one day you will want to go and talk to a human.
An oligarch with the "near magical genie" could easily build a town of 5,000 to satisfy his needs to "talk to a human."
> IN the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note.
Minor side note: this is true only for repayment of debts. Some local jurisdictions require private parties to accept cash for new purchases, but there's no federal requirement to do so.
If I purchased a stick of 32GB DDR4 RAM from you for $100, am I now not in $100 debt to you? We are private parties - can you refuse to accept a legal $100 and force me into paying you by Zelle?
Yes, but the argument is that the seller is under no obligation to sell you the stick of RAM originally that will incur the debt if you offer cash instead of Zelle. If you did manage to receive the stick of RAM without paying for it during the initial exchange and so still owe the $100, then yes, the seller is required to accept cash to settle that debt.
I don’t think he means “tokens” as in LLM input/output units here.
He just means it as in “credits”. “Fiat tokens” as in arbitrary units that are said to have value de facto by consensus, but don’t have any inherent value.
Yeah not the best choice of words in this context. And it’s quite a LessWrong-esque leap of reasoning.
But I do get the point: either Anthropic is successful and they transcend money, and thus (somehow) screw over their investors, or they are not successful. Their investors get screwed regardless.
Again, I don’t really agree with it, but it’s an intriguing point.
For all things good and holy, DO NOT purchase shares until things settle down and by that I don't mean next month, or next year but atleast 2028, IF you're doing so with the intention of enjoying an uplift.
I know it sounds and feels like the only trajectory of this company is up but HN is an echo chamber of a tiny minority of the technical populace and 3 out of 5 people on the planet don't know what ChatGPT is.
If you have the ability to lose all the money and can time the extreme volatility, have fun, but don't put anything you're going to rely on.
This is also one of the companies we will look back at 2046 and wonder what we were thinking.
Yes you can look at the entire history of the stock. From IPO to today, there was never a time that you could buy it at a meaningful discount to the IPO price.
Or are the hiking, breathing in fresh air, the eyes seeing natural sunlight etc critical to the effects?
So if I swapped the birdwatching with watching horses run or pigs fornicate with everything else being the same (hiking, breathing in fresh air, the eyes seeing natural sunlight etc), I would enjoy the exact same benefits the article claims birdwatching results in?
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