261–270 of 300 posts
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yeah right.. evolution observed in the tiny span of time that is recorded modern science?
The record of human evolution we know of is ~3000 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_adaptation_in_hu...
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Our diet is full of fruits and vegetables containing thousands of complex chemicals, indistinguishable from "synthetic" chemicals, that have entered our diet far too short a time ago to have had evolutionary impact. If one wanted they could surely distill many chemicals in isolation from these naturally occurring fruits and vegetables that in concentration would have many concerning health effects. The fact that many…
The scientific process has also led to chemicals such as Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, resulting in 10000 babies born with phocomelia. The point is not to be overly confident with what you think a chemical can do to your body, even if it is approved by the FDA.
Unless you can pinpoint all the causal factors of a relationship, there is no other option I have heard of other than the scientific process, i.e. testing, calculating, re-testing, calculating, retesting...etc that could provide us with knowledge about the relationship between cause and effect. And obviously, it will be wrong sometimes, hence the need to re-test, but there is no better option.
If anything, we need more actual scientific process, meaning using our newfound computing capabilities to open up data so that all experiments can be vetted for accuracy and differing populations tested, etc.
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I think you need good regulation and that is difficult to achieve. Seriously you can ask the consumer to be a little knowledgeable but you can't ask all consumer to have the equivalence of master in Biology, Chemistry, Material science ... and conduct testing on their food, water, car ... when you have sophisticate actor with huge budget and can make profit by tricking consumer.
Consumers don't need to be experts to discover organizations that use experts to create standards for safe food, and only buy products certified by said organization. Regulation is about controlling what other people buy, which I find to be absolutely unjustifiable. If you don't want unsafe food, you should deliberately avoid it. The problem is no government or private company provides any kind of certification on th…
Also we need to take in account that you cant only take in account the consumer point of view. Other aspect like geopolitics or pollution or security need to be addressed: Japan still try to support agriculture because they don't want to have starvation in case of a maritime blockade. We still have states secure maritime transport and fight piracy.
The difficulty, is to see what need to be regulated and what can be let to the market force. And there is no definitive answer because the market react to regulation and regulation are adapted according to market behavior. But ideology and culture background are determinant to define what proportion you want. It is clearly the opposition between collectivism and individualism. I think both to the extreme are wrong.
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Consumers don't need to be experts to discover organizations that use experts to create standards for safe food, and only buy products certified by said organization. Regulation is about controlling what other people buy, which I find to be absolutely unjustifiable. If you don't want unsafe food, you should deliberately avoid it. The problem is no government or private company provides any kind of certification on th…
We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right. I think the difficulty is to find a source of 'Authority' that can control the controller. I don't believe that the State is always doing the right think (Flint water ...) but the private sector has already been caught doing very nasty thing…
>We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right.
I think you're underestimating how reputation and communication lead to consumers gaining reliable information in the marketplace. Apple didn't develop a reputation for quality and customer service for nothing. It earned that reputation, and the marker rewarded it for it. Consumer knowledge is often times far more sophisticated than voter knowledge. If consumers are too ignorant to solve this problem, then I have no faith voters will solve it. This comes down to a problem of ignorance, and once that problem is solved, then marketplace solutions can be introduced, whether through cookie-cutter mandates imposed by government that reduce our freedom, or through a diverse array of products/services provided by entrepreneurs that expand our options.
This idea that since you need an expert, it must be done through regulations imposed on everyone, is nonsensical. Experts can work for nongovernmental organizations too, and can have a contractual obligation to serve the public interest, just as government officials do. Moreover, the government can appoint experts to the task, and provide its own certification of what products meet its standards, without making said standards mandatory.
Frankly I find this insistence that only a government appointed body, that imposes standards that no one in society is allowed to opt out of (even if they like BPA in their food), would work, because of an almost religious like faith that market mechanisms, meaning people interacting through voluntary exchanges and contracts, can't work, to be immature.
Assuming no pollution-related concerns affecting non-participants, there is absolutely no moral justification for prohibiting people from buying/selling food containing some hormone disrupting chemical. What society needs is the information with which to make informed decisions. But that decision should be each individual's to make.
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We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right. I think the difficulty is to find a source of 'Authority' that can control the controller. I don't believe that the State is always doing the right think (Flint water ...) but the private sector has already been caught doing very nasty thing…
The certification programs on the market are excellent. The problem is there is no certification program for the problem elucidated by the parent comment. This is an entrepreneurial opportunity. >We have already plenty of certification companies that take your money in exchange for a nice logo/label on the packaging. You still need an expert to tells if they do it right. I think you're underestimating how reputation…
I don't believe that government are perfect and the only solution but I think they can be part of it. You have classes of problem where regulation is an answer, one of them is when the condition of a fair market are not met: Monopoly, information asymmetry (You don't have the same resource as GS to understand the market condition ). So some regulation are in place to allow a market to work for all.
The state is there to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior because he is the only one that is allowed to use violence to enforce rules. I think we need to have a minimal level of regulation because we need some liberty to have innovation. This minimum is difficult to agree on and I suspect the level of regulation i would accept is higher than yours but I think you accept certain level. Most people would reject slavery, experimentation on human, kidnapping, extortion ... as normal behavior. But they were accepted at some point.
My belief is that the primary cause is environmental chemicals, specifically Phthalates and BPA (and related chemicals). The science on this is fairly conclusive. We can show that these chemicals bind to estrogen receptors, that they're present in everyone's body, and that if you're acutely exposed to a higher dose, your testosterone goes down. In my opinion, these chemicals are having social and cultural effects bey…
Not that toxic load isn't an interesting subject. But you "Trump's fault" comment is juvenile. A lot of the status quo in DC is why we have all these problems--government not working for the people. I stand with anyone who wants to reform that bad system where a corporation can spend a bunch of money lobbying so that the government turns a blind eye to their pollution or "socializes" that cost while privatizing their profits.
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Our diet is full of fruits and vegetables containing thousands of complex chemicals, indistinguishable from "synthetic" chemicals, that have entered our diet far too short a time ago to have had evolutionary impact. If one wanted they could surely distill many chemicals in isolation from these naturally occurring fruits and vegetables that in concentration would have many concerning health effects. The fact that many…
The scientific process has also led to chemicals such as Thalidomide to be given to pregnant women, resulting in 10000 babies born with phocomelia. The point is not to be overly confident with what you think a chemical can do to your body, even if it is approved by the FDA.
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If I may pick a nit: there are no pills in sewage streams. We're talking drugs in solution or suspension (the term "dissolved solids" is used in the water treatment industry). Drugs can very difficult to remove, and water treatment facilities are only able to remove roughly half [ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-half-of-drug... ].
Urine, not pills. Urine is filled with hormone and from what I've heard most water processing plants can't remove those completely. In fact, one of the pills is made of urine: "The estrogen-replacement drug Premarin, prescribed to menopausal women, is made from horse urine; in fact, the drug's name is short for PREgnant MARes' urINe". Since that the majority of female in the West are on birth control pills[1] that me…
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If I may pick a nit: there are no pills in sewage streams. We're talking drugs in solution or suspension (the term "dissolved solids" is used in the water treatment industry). Drugs can very difficult to remove, and water treatment facilities are only able to remove roughly half [ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-half-of-drug... ].
I'm curious: if you run that substandard tap water through a reverse-osmosis system, how clean is the resulting water?
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Our diet is full of fruits and vegetables containing thousands of complex chemicals, indistinguishable from "synthetic" chemicals, that have entered our diet far too short a time ago to have had evolutionary impact. If one wanted they could surely distill many chemicals in isolation from these naturally occurring fruits and vegetables that in concentration would have many concerning health effects. The fact that many…
This is, I’ve found, a good way to start a dialogue with people about chemophobia. If you ask someone “Which do you think is safer: artificial vanilla or vanilla extract?” they’ll often prefer the “natural” one. But vanilla extract contains exactly the same chemical (vanillin) in addition to hundreds of other compounds, many of which are known to be irritants, hepatotoxins, and carcinogens—in high enough doses. Of co…
This feels like an accidental trick question :-)
For me personally, I know I'll prefer vanilla extract (or rather, actual vanilla shoots) simply because it tastes much better -- precisely because of the impurities. I know it isn't what you asked at all, but since the question is meant to uncover emotions: I'm having a hard time taking my emotional preference for natural vanilla aroma out of my reply.
It would be better to use an example where people don't have a strong preference for one of the choices for unrelated reasons. Unfortunately I can't think of an example right now.