[hola_mundo]

There’s little question that having the freedom to pursue a hobby is a privilege reserved for a few, broadly speaking.

I think what’s interesting is that the study was comparing Nobel laureates to other scientists, which I’d imagine would somewhat correct for this bias.

[adamsea]

Reading. A hobby available to anyone who can read.

Playing music. So many ways to do this now — people all over the world play music without lessons.

Listening to music, live or recorded. Being a lover of music.

Dancing.

Drawing.

Poetry, although less popular, is easily accessible.

I get what you mean, and undoubtedly there are hobbies that require both a surfeit or leisure and material wealth to pursue, but with respect I think you may be underestimating the degree to which people of all economic classes have access to the various cultural activities (of which the above are some examples) of their own, well, culture.

[DoreenMichele]

Which is not indicated in the title. The title is the thing I'm critiquing. I'm a writer. Titles are hard. I get that.

This one basically sucks -- IMO, of course.

[tjr]

It appears that the actual title of the article is "Hobbies are not distractions", with the HN submission title being... I'm not sure it's really a subtitle, maybe a pull-out point from the quoted reference in the article?

[Edit: though, since it looks like the author wrote both the article and the HN submission, this point might be somewhat irrelevant.] :-)

[DoreenMichele]

Thanks. I have sucktastic eyesight and only skimmed a bit.

So this is also a pointless violation of HN guidelines, which indicate you should use the original title unless it's clickbait or a few other provisos.

[DoreenMichele]

Of course, "the first rule of downvotes is don't talk about the downvotes", but I've been genuinely puzzled by why this particular comment has so many downvotes. And I think it's because the title was changed at some point, apparently without a note being left anywhere indicating that. It didn't originally have the part about "compared to their peers".

[hola_mundo]

Ah, got it. Can’t argue with that!