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Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

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Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#271

Post by sammalloy »

Misdicorl wrote: post #265
afavour wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Maybe an overwrought comparison but I genuinely do feel like we’ll look back on this age of social media and disinformation in the same way we did leaded gas. The people making money knew exactly how dangerous it was and the problems it caused but they did everything in their power to cover it up in the name of profit. Originally it felt like a social annoyance a…

I disagree. The future doesn't have less social media, it has more. We won't look back with contempt, but amusement much as we do today at early cgi and tabloid efforts. I don't love the idea with the current iteration, but every mass media invention has the exact same trope play out as we're seeing with social media. 1) first adopters and skeptics 2) major use 3) exploitation of those users 4) combo of regulation an…

That seems highly unlikely. Almost half of social media users are considering leaving the platforms, while around 10% have deleted Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or some other app. We also know that the data shows that the pandemic increased the likelihood of people leaving social media, which would seem odd on the face of it, because you would think it would lead to more adoption due to being at home. What happened is that the pandemic was a catalyst for people finding what was truly meaningful in their personal lives; social media wasn't it.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#272

Post by MichaelZuo »

dehrmann wrote: post #193
nemacol wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Among the list of nasty things we are doing, fracking stands out. Fresh water is scarce in much of the world. Ground water is drying up and massive aquafers are eroding. Simultaneously we are pumping cancer directly in the ground, breaking up rocks, and mixing the cancer stuck in the rocks into the ground water. Pumping that cancer back out and ... god only knows…

> though I have never had it tested. Unless neighbors had theirs tested, there's no reason to assume there are issues with your well's water quality or that fracking caused them. Testing it if you plan on using it again is reasonable, though.

What has higher probability of causing contaminated groundwater than nearby fracking?

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#273

Post by xboxnolifes »

ruytlm wrote: post #249
hazbot wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your analogy is pretty apt. However, even though I don't think you can give corporations a free ride just because 'people could choose not to use the product', this is not an absolute! 'People could choose not to use the product' does hold a lot of truth.

When social media companies are trying to make the media as addictive as possible to keep you scrolling and viewing ads, and employing psychological exploits to do so, it's not quite as simple as 'people can just choose not to use it'. It's hardly a free choice when they're actively undermining your ability to choose freely.

Sounds like you agree with OP then. Content creators have the same motivation as the platform company. They want to make as many people view their content as possible, failing that they would like to make their exiting community see their content as much as possible. Exact same motivation just at a smaller scale, as they are just one part of the system.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#274

Post by amateurICEguy »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #242

If pure gasoline knocks - explodes when it's not supposed to -- why can't we run it in a diesel engine, where self-ignition is the mode of operation?

For starters gasoline would detonate at 12:1 ratios. Which isn't going to make your 17:1 diesel very happy. Also gasoline detonation causes a shock wave whereas diesel is more like a controlled burn as it is injected.

That being said, there have been engines that run on diesel or gasoline. The M35 (deuce and half) has an engine that can run on just about any flammable material, preferably diesel. Gasoline's lack of lubrication will eventually kill it, but it'll run long enough to get you out of trouble.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#275

Post by Arainach »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #243
botverse wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is unfortunately not trying to see the problem from the future hindsight. Which is the exercise that GP is suggesting.

Social media is not a toxin of any sort. To call it "toxic" is a metaphor that expresses the revulsion that people feel for the idiocies that social media channels have uncovered. So I do disagree with the liberty of the metaphor in this case. Social media is the business of providing channels of communication to people in exchange for some lucrative data. Other businesses do this too (television, radio, newspapers).…

Knowing better does not make you immune to psychology. Social media, more than any other form of communication, is optimized to drive engagement through dopamine - the endless quest for likes, views, and so on. The weaponization of this to spread misinformation is an inevitable consequence of the business model, not an accident. The biggest players in the industry know these feedback loops and their consequences and encourage them still to prop up profits. This has serious consequences to society and to human lives. The executives of social media companies are just as culpable as the executives of oil companies who suppressed research on the effects of tobacco in the 60s/70s and global warming research in the 80s.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#276

Post by xboxnolifes »

mschuster91 wrote: post #213
krisgee wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Perhaps the government should open companies that are meant to lose money and are tax supported (for-loss conpanies) that compete with the industry with solutions that are good for the people but bad for business? Many government owned companies actually make a profit until private industry lobbies them into ineffectiveness. The US Post Office was profitable until a change lobbied by Fed-Ex and UPS forced them to ke…

> People just hate seeing the government make money. No, this is too generic - name the correct groups: Conservatives, neo-liberals and the rich elites hate see "the government" or government-owned/ran entities make money. Everyone else sees that government-run services usually provide decent service at affordable prices, and that after privatization, service quality goes downhill and the cost keeps rising.

That's incredibly wrong. Nearly every conservative I know feels that government services should be ran like a business, as also profitable like a business (at least self-sustainable). What they disagree with is funding those services with tax money. Which obviously follows.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#277

Post by MichaelZuo »

Rexxar wrote: post #228
wpietri wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has two radically different concepts of freedom that travel under the same name. Both start with "I should be free to do as I want". One ends with "as long as I don't harm others". The other ends with "regardless of harm to others". You were dealing with the latter. It of course sounds insane when you say it baldly like this, which is why it rarely gets stated openly. But a lot of traditional societal structu…

To make things more complex, some (small) harms are legitimate: If you open a new store you "harm" other store owners because they have less customers. When you build/repair your home there is some noises and dusts that can annoy other people but it's considered as a legitimate temporary problem. So the question is more where is the limit ?

There’s the conundrum for society, especially American society. When there are a million rules covering every minute operation of society, it feels a lot like living in a benevolent dictatorship. And that is very near the best outcome to hope for.

But to not have those rules ultimately invites leaded gasoline 2.0 as technology progresses.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#278

Post by toofy »

cwp wrote: post #251
version_five wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a "don't hate the player hate the game" type situation. Influencers or aspiring influencers are doing what they do because they are working inside a construct that's set up to reward them for it. They are not blameless, but they are not conspiring to create that damage that social media had done to society, they are in s sense being put up to it by the platforms and users (who by the way I don't think sho…

I guess I put more of the blame on the influencers because they are the ones making editorial decisions. Sure the platforms are optimizing for engagement too, but it's all content-agnostic. The influencers choose their words carefully, and they choose harmful words because it makes them more money.

Both are absolutely to blame. Both the social media companies and the content creators.

Both are choosing to ignore the damage which is a direct result of their actions and they both ignore long term damage in the name of an immediate profit return.

There no reason we have to choose one or the other when both are clearly willing to destroy.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#279

Post by amateurICEguy »

mcguire wrote: post #109
inglor_cz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fairly trivial to avoid drinking gasoline. For example, I managed it 100 per cent of the time so far, and I am 43. It is not as trivial to avoid breathing in lead when you live around cars that use leaded gasoline.

Never had an old Kawasaki KLR650 with a leaking gas tank, eh? :-)

They just announced the new bike with fuel injection :D

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#280

Post by [deleted] »

sircastor wrote: post #8
warning26 wrote: post #2

Interesting, I had assumed they just didn’t know that lead was bad back then. What’s even weirder is how there are still people today who insist that banning leaded gasoline was an key example of government overreach. Someone once was arguing this point to me and I just had to drop the topic because it was such a baffling stance.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said in an episode of Cosmos that even the Romans understood lead was dangerous, but it was a convenient metal to work with, so they used it anyway

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