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stinkytaco | 2 years ago

No, seriously, I had an uncle that smoked 3 cigarettes a day and lived into his 90s. I've started smoking a pack a day and I'll live well past 100, right?

I wish we, as humans, understood odds better. All health advice is about stacking the deck in your favor, but outliers always exist. I'd be more critical, except I'm sure there's some area where I apply a similar ignorance of the basics.

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Podgajski|2 years ago

Yeah, everyone is an individual, that’s my point. You can treat us all as a mass, or the midpoint in a bell curve, but we’re not. And the majority of us will be outliers are on any bell curve

stinkytaco|2 years ago

> And the majority of us will be outliers are on any bell curve

This cannot be possible, by definition. The majority of us will be within one standard deviation of the midpoint on a bell curve because that's how bell curves work. And that means basic evidence based health and fitness advice applies to the majority of us. Not bullshit like "oxidative stress".