From the BBC:
Using cannabis as a teenager or young adult increases the risk of psychosis, a report suggests. The study published in the British Medical Journal involved tracking 1,900 people over a period of 10 years...
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but unless we are told:
a) What 'psychosis' actually means (the BMJ article* refers to 'expression of psychosis below the level required for a clinical diagnosis' which doesn't sound too terrible to me);
b) What the risk of having it anyway is; and
c) What the relative risk is; then
the article is meaningless. As I always like to say, stepping out of the house increases the risk that you will be hit by a meteorite by several thousand per cent, that's no reason for staying indoors for the rest of your life.
* Interestingly, the accompanying editorial (behind pay wall) "questions the UK's decision to retain criminal penalties for cannabis use, despite evidence that removing such penalties has little or no detectable effect on rates of use." Funny how the ever compliant BBC didn't mention that either.
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From FT Adviser:
In a December analysis of more than one million customers' accounts, Barclays found that, on average, people paid out 15.4 per cent of their take-home pay to cover their monthly mortgage payment, the lowest registered as part of the analysis in 10 years.
The trend, attributed largely to the low interest rate environment, is despite the average house price having increased by 68 per cent over the decade and the average salary increasing by just 37 per cent, claimed Barclays.
The sub-text of the article is Barclays trying to scare people into taking out a fixed rate mortgage at a slightly higher interest rate, but a lot of the Vested Interests have twisted this right round: "People on the lookout for a new home may be interested to learn mortgage availability is the best it has been for a decade, it has been found."
For sure, the average might well be 15.4%, but that is a meaningless figure in itself.
Commonsense tells us that people who took out a mortgage ten or twenty years ago will have paid off most of a smaller amount, and so their mortgage repayments are only (say) 5% or 10% of their take home pay. The only number which is relevant to potential first time buyers is how much they would have to pay.
Our wonderfully in touch Prime Minister reckons that a 20% deposit and a four-times-salary mortgage is normal or reasonable. If you borrow on these terms, the proportion is closer to 40% of take home pay, and could easily jump to far more if borrowers lose their jobs or take pay-cuts; if one gives up work to have a baby etc.
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Meaningless figure x meaningless figure = meaningless figure.
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12 comments:
Just as a matter of pedantry:
As I always like to say, stepping out of the house increases the risk that you will be hit by a meteorite by several thousand per cent
I doubt it. Meteorites don't aim specifically for uncovered areas. You could perhaps argue that it increases the risk of being fatally injured by several thousand percent, as there is no protective barrier around you.
If we assume that you are indoors, and that you are equally likely to be stood in any particular area of your house, then you've actually doubled your risk by staying indoors since there is an upstairs and a downstairs where you would be hit by a single meteor.
Outside, there is only one place you can be that would be hit by a single meteor.
:-) I'm only playing, so take all that with a pinch of salt.
OP, as a matter of pedantry, most meteorites are tiny by the time they reach ground level and would not penetrate the roof; even those that did, most would not penetrate through ceiling/floor etc.
Not sure if my comment is relevant. I have seen high incidence cases of mental illness in cannabis smokers relative to total users that I know personally.
I used to smoke cannabis moderately for 5 years. I will happily admit this when I'm elected president of the planet. It caused a horrible mental paranoid problem for me. I gave up and the problem diminished slowly over about 10 years. It was not much fun trust me.
This is primary, t shirt wearing evidence. Cannabis is harmful. More so than it is beneficial. If you make a habit of it. That tends to be the general case.
@MW
Those small meteorites are not a risk inside or outside then are they?
We're talking about meteors that are a risk.
Granted there will be a small subset that start out just large enough to be fatal outside but just small enough to be perfectly safe inside. It's a very particular set of meteorites you're talking about then though. Taking all possible meteorites, there are more that are dangerous to you both inside and outside.
As it happens I know nothing about the probability distribution of meteorite size, speed and composition, so perhaps you are correct: it just so happens that the universe has made most meteorites to be just the right size to be sufficiently shrunk and slowed by atmosphere that they would be deadly outside and perfectly safe inside. It seems (to me) unlikely though.
I accept that it's ridiculously small odds we're talking about, which was of course your point. Quibbling about an increase of 0.000000000000000000001% risk, whether it is 1000 times more than some other risk or not, is pretty meaningless.
OP, I said "hit by a meteorite" and not "fatally injured".
AFAIAA, a woman was hit by a pebble-sized meteorite on the elbow (and suffered nasty bruising) a few years ago while she was hanging up the washing in the garden. That was the only recorded instance in the UK ever (yes, there were unrecorded ones). Had she been indoors, it might have just about smashed a roof tile.
Ergo, the risk goes up thousands of per cent, from 0.000000000000000000001% indoors to 0.00000000000000001% outdoors, let's say, for sake of argument.
RS, yes it is evidence, it appears to be accepted that the risk of being a bit mad is higher with cannabis smokers, that was not the point of the post.
I'm so old that I was around when cannabis suddenly appeared at my university. I went to a party - and there it was, the strange smell that I'd scented on an day's visit to Berkeley Califonia a little while before. What was immediately obvious was that it was the blokes who I'd always thought were a bit bonkers who were smoking it; the rest of us stuck to beer. Correlation need not equal causation.
@MW
I wasn't disputing your point (caring about minuscule percentage increases doesn't matter).
I had in my mind that all meteorites are moving very quickly. If one ever gets to the earth, it doesn't really matter whether it's blocked by a roof tile or not -- you would still get hit.
However, there must be some percentage of meteorites that are moving slow enough to be stopped, therefore being indoors would protect you from them.
Therefore I now withdraw my pedantry -- you have outpedanted me. You are quite right, whatever the likelihood of getting hit is, it is smaller if you are indoors.
D, the causation-correlation thingy is problematic, but I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt that your risk is ever so slightly increased (in absolute terms), see what RS says.
OP: "you have outpedanted me". 'nuff said.
"your risk is ever so slightly increased": averaged across the population that may well be so. But if I'm right that the incipiently bonkers are disproportionately attracted to the stuff, it could be a more than slight effect for them, and an effectively zero effect for the rest of us.
D, that is another good way of looking at it (it tallies with my limited experience of it). The truth as ever lies somewhere in the middle, probably.
Folks, the cause of toking is social. Sometimes that is recreational. The general case is mitigation of unhappiness. The effects are natural and genetic. Chemicals cause psychosis in one. Not in the other. That one is more susceptible does not mean one is more or less mad by nature.
I focus on the big, not the small.
Every little. . . Counts a little.
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