Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016) • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by Talanes » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 3:42 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #203

bobthechef wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are always people around, more than we care to admit, who will do things they know are bad to make a buck and to wield power (and frankly, most of us, sadly, have a price; look at the widespread participation of people in tech in the aforementioned industries and companies even though they and we all know the bad stuff they're doing). So I wouldn't treat this as some exception. I think people are extrem…

On the contrary, I think it's dangerous to ignore the very close link. Yes, they've switched talking points from mercury to spike proteins but it's the same playbook. The meme just got more viral when it hitched a ride on politics.

I think telling people who are only skeptical of this one new thing that they are anti-vax is just driving people to become anti-vax rather than change their mind about the Covid vaccines.

I have a data point of one in my father, who followed exactly this path.

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

#302

Post by wpietri » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

artificial wrote: post #149

wpietri wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not generally. It mainly gets complex when the latter side wants to deny the harm. Then it's an ocean of motivated reasoning and endless arguments. We still have people arguing today that American slavery was good for the slaves.

Excellent! Together we can ban fast food and sugar consumption for the greater good. Heart disease and diabetes from the scourge of empty calories finally eliminated. Hundreds of thousands saved each year from poor choices. Up next: sedentary lifestyle enablers :). It’s such a rabbit hole, who should know best?

I am for personal freedom as long as it doesn't harm others. So if people want to make a batch of cookies, I think that's a reasonable personal choice. But it's not as clear to me that junk food companies have an absolute right to hook others on harmful, addictive products. Especially given that addiction, by undermining choice, necessarily harms a person's freedom.

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

#303

Post by ByteJockey » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #297

ByteJockey wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an entire spectrum of what constitutes "enough" harm to others to be limited (in addition to how direct the harm is).

Sure, but that comes later. All serious discussions about rights involve balancing the practical consequences of different rights. But the two concepts of freedom are still quite distinct.

I don't think it does come later.

I don't think there is anyone who actually thinks of these things in terms of "regardless of the harm it causes others". Ok, this being the internet, we can probably find one, but I don't think there's any significant portion of the population. That position is basically a strawman.

I do think, however, that there's people who draw the lines in very different places, or put different weight on different categories of harm.

As an example, physical or financial harm are very easy to verify. There's not a lot of debate about if they qualify. Mental or emotional harm, on the other hand, is very hard to verify. This presents a significant problem for anyone who is worried about the system being abused. These groups will draw lines at very different places around any claim of harm within those categories.

The end result is that you'll end up with one group being labeled as grifters who want to fleece the system, and the other as being completely insensitive to human suffering (sound familiar?)

That's not even to get into the debate of what constitutes harm. For example, is not helping someone harming them? Is ceasing help once you've started helping someone harming them? These are too big of questions for the post, but I imagine you get the idea.

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

#304

Post by sangnoir » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

air7 wrote: post #6

> The most compelling option was actually ethanol. But from the perspective of GM, Kitman wrote, ethanol wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be patented and GM couldn’t control its production. And oil companies like Du Pont "hated it," he wrote, perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal combustion engine. I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for positive change, so these types of "r…

> 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?

These will be derided as loss-makers by a surprisingly large contingent, and they'll defeat the whole purpose (when they can) by changing the approach so it either turns a profit, or fails entirely (see the US Postal Service, which always delivers, including on unprofitable routes)

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

#305

Post by ravenstine » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

stephen_g wrote: post #288

lovecg wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of hard to discern from the article, so is fat good and was unfairly blamed? Or fat and sugar are both bad, but they emphasized the fat part?

I think the biggest takeaway from all the research I did is that not all fats are equal. Monounsaturated fats seem to be generally just good. Omega-3, also, seems good, and Omega-6 less so, but part of that could actually be more about the ratios of omega-6 to -3, which can be 15:1 in the Western diet but people have better health outcomes when they bring omega-6 consumption down and increase omega-3 to get the ratio…

> I think the biggest takeaway from all the research I did is that not all fats are equal.

You can say that again...

I was recently looking at the nutrition content of Wendy's cheeseburgers; they actually do a pretty good job at displaying nutrition facts and also scaling it with custom orders. Anyway, I noticed that a triple cheeseburger could have ~4g of trans fats.

Wait a sec, is Wendy's ignoring regulations about trans fats?

No, as it turns out. I discovered that some trans fats from nature are actually beneficial (palmitoleic acid and vaccenic acid in the beef patties). This went totally counter to everything I thought I knew.

In other words, it never ceases to surprise me how nuanced nutrition can be and how easily we oversimplify it.

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

#306

Post by ravenstine » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:12 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #286

Misdicorl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It depends what you mean by "social media". Facebook already feels very dated and Instagram is getting that way. People will get bored of it all, I know I have. Right now my platform of choice is Discord. It might technically be social media but it's way less toxic as it encourages people to build relationships rather than shouting at each other.

Or acting as faux celebrities. That is what I find to be the worst aspect of social media. I don't really care as much about disinformation and such, but the amplification of ego is what truly makes things toxic whether or not people are right about anything.

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

#307

Post by ravenstine » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

cwp wrote: post #250

CharlesW wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody likes to hate on "big tech" these days, but if there's anyone that knows the dangers and all the ill effects but ignores them to make a profit, it's content creators. This is like blaming smokers instead of Philip Morris.

Yup. It's blaming smokers for second-hand smoke. We need to figure out the social-media equivalent of "no smoking" signs.

A circle-cross with the Twitter bird in the middle would do.

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

#308

Post by TedDoesntTalk » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

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.

See also gambling and addictive gambling behaviors in video games, like loot boxes

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

#309

Post by TedDoesntTalk » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #305

stephen_g wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest takeaway from all the research I did is that not all fats are equal. Monounsaturated fats seem to be generally just good. Omega-3, also, seems good, and Omega-6 less so, but part of that could actually be more about the ratios of omega-6 to -3, which can be 15:1 in the Western diet but people have better health outcomes when they bring omega-6 consumption down and increase omega-3 to get the ratio…

> I think the biggest takeaway from all the research I did is that not all fats are equal. You can say that again... I was recently looking at the nutrition content of Wendy's cheeseburgers; they actually do a pretty good job at displaying nutrition facts and also scaling it with custom orders. Anyway, I noticed that a triple cheeseburger could have ~4g of trans fats. Wait a sec, is Wendy's ignoring regulations about…

A Wendy’s triple cheeseburger still sounds like a poor choice.

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

#310

Post by rsync » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:37 AM UTC

haimez wrote: post #238

rsync wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today?" I have a suspicion that slathering typical consumer sunblock agents (and spraying the out of aerosol cans, and breathing the sunblock, etc.) is going to seem unwise to future us.

Well… maybe. I mean, certainly we could find out that was the case and that there was a safer sunblock alternative we might have been using if we had only known about it- but compared to what we definitely know today about sun exposure I think this is a bit of a different story, especially for light skinned people.

Sorry - I wasn't clear ...

I am not contrasting sunblock vs. no sunblock ...

I am contrasting cheapy chemical sunblocks vs. pure titanium dioxide (?) which appears to be totally benign/inert and which is easy to purchase in a few different form factors (although not spray, which, again, I think is problematic).