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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)

#391

Post by wpietri »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #388
CRConrad wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one.

> The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one. You're the one pretending. There's a difference between these 2 things: 1) Taking actions (like smoking) that put others at some level of risk 2) Thinking that placing any level of harm onto others is justifiable as long as it's profitable You know very well there's a difference between those thing…

> Doesn't mean that smokers or drivers will do literally any level of harm to humans in order to gain the tiniest of profit to themselves.

For a guy who is very eager to accuse others of straw manning, you seem to be working very hard to invent things so that you can dismiss them.

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

#392

Post by ByteJockey »

wpietri wrote: post #365
ByteJockey wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think they talk about it in those terms. But that is absolutely the behavior. A clear historical example is America's conflict around slavery. The primary southern justification for creating the Confederacy was freedom. That continued after the Civil War; see the UDC catechisms for example. "States' rights" they'll shout, meaning the right of the white people in power to treat black people like livestock and…

> A modern example is public health.

I think this is an excellent example of what I meant about "how direct the harm is" mattering.

Imagine, if you will, a continuum ranging from absolutely direct harm to absolutely indirect harm.

On the absolute left, imagine person A stabbing person B. That's about as direct as you can get, right? And I also think there's not a ton of people who would disagree that stabbing someone should be banned (let's ignore self defense arguments).

On the absolute right, imagine person A moves a chair. Someone trips over this chair. That person ends up in a foul mood and cuts someone off in traffic. This causes a traffic jam. In this traffic jam, a refrigerated truck breaks down and a bunch of food is ruined. More food is ordered, which takes up space in a shipping container that would have gone to medicine, had the food not been ordered. Person B dies because of a lack of medicine that would have been there had person A not moved the chair.

This was about as indirect of series of events as I could come up with, but I think you get my point here. There's a direct causal chain between person A's actions and person B's death in both scenarios, but I can't imagine very many people really condemning person A in the second one. In fact I think someone trying to ban moving chairs because of this incident would be soundly ridiculed.

So where does going outside without a mask during a pandemic sit on this continuum? Well, going outside without a mask, if you have a high viral load, and someone comes close to you, there's definitely a chance they could die. That's definitely not nearly as direct of harm as stabbing someone. It's also clearly not nearly as indirect as that tortured example I came up with in the second one.

Personal opinion? It's definitely farther to the left than the right. Say, somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of the way to the left. Maybe somewhere around 2/3 of the way there.

Someone's opinion on something such as a mask mandate, is going to depend on if they view that as direct enough harm for the government to have a legitimate interest in regulating.

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

#393

Post by yibg »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #337
yibg wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smoking in public? Fracking?

> Smoking in public? Fracking? Are you saying that people who smoke openly state that they "should be free to profit regardless of harm to others"? Who said that? Where? I already asked you to point to a single example to support this claim that certain people think this way, and you couldn't do that. That's because there's literally no people who think like that.

Of course people don’t say those words exactly. But pushing for the ability to smoke indoors for example is basically saying my right to smoke should trump your right to have smoke free air. Ditto for fracking. My ability to profit off the oil I get trumps your right to have clean environment. I don’t really understand how these can not be seen as “I should be free to profit regardless of harm to others.”

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

#394

Post by yibg »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #388
CRConrad wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one.

> The act of smoking is the statement. And so is your insistence on pretending not to understand that. Not a pretty one. You're the one pretending. There's a difference between these 2 things: 1) Taking actions (like smoking) that put others at some level of risk 2) Thinking that placing any level of harm onto others is justifiable as long as it's profitable You know very well there's a difference between those thing…

I really don’t understand your insistence here. Firstly the original claim isn’t “regardless of any level of harm”, and I’ve already given examples of profiting despite harm to others. Secondly even if you insist on an extreme level of harm there are still examples. We can use any of a number of dictators that are literally willing to kill millions to stay in power.

Do they actually say out loud “I am willing to profit regardless of how much I harm others”? No, probably not. But actions speak louder than words here.

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

#395

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

CyanBird wrote: post #369
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. "food grade": I think maybe some plastics might be ok, but, when I've recently done some projects involving plastic parts, I've been shocked to learn how little is food-grade. Like, almost nothing with any dye, especially any black dye. Yet how often does one see black plastic cutlery and plates, or microwave dinner trays? Then they have this legalese on them like "do not reheat". WTF? Rubbermaid containers don't…

What is the issue with black ink? Is it part of the chemistry of it having things potentially harmful or else?

I don't know the chemistry. What I do know is that if you start searching for food-grade storage containers you'll mostly find plain white HDPE, and that other colors of the same containers, from the same manufacturers, are not rated food-safe. I forget how I formed the impression that black was least likely to be food safe, except that black is what I otherwise would have wanted, and I could not for the life of me find food-safe black containers. But I think there was something else about that specific colorant as well. Sorry I can't find more specifics. I might be motivated to find a real expert now.

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

#396

Post by stjohnswarts »

amateurICEguy wrote: post #281
stjohnswarts wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol no you will throw up everything in your stomach violently until it is completely empty and go to ER mostly likely. Then the doctor will have you stick around for a few hours and make sure you are okay and let you sleep off the headache. Ask me how I know (I was stupid and 10 and trying to siphon gas for my mini motorcycle for the first time, DM for me more for more details).

How many years ago was this? I ask because "gasoline" isn't really a thing in chemistry. It's a mixture that will run cars. You could have drank a cup of just about anything. A cup of octane wouldn't be the worse thing you could swallow. Given a choice, I'll drink a cup of octane before a teaspoon of TEL (OP appears to favor cooking units)

Dude it was gasoline out of a truck, I was 10, not 1. Obviously gas is regulated here as to what goes in it with a little bit of variation. That said I'm not a chemist. The USA is backwards compared to Europe but not that backwards.

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

#397

Post by stjohnswarts »

sonthonax wrote: post #176
stjohnswarts wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol no you will throw up everything in your stomach violently until it is completely empty and go to ER mostly likely. Then the doctor will have you stick around for a few hours and make sure you are okay and let you sleep off the headache. Ask me how I know (I was stupid and 10 and trying to siphon gas for my mini motorcycle for the first time, DM for me more for more details).

It sounds like you had a very upset stomach and a bad hangover.

extreme nausea and I suspect dehydration caused the headache because there was nothing left in me I threw for what seemed like a half hour. However it was a long time ago. I was actually fine the next day.

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

#398

Post by stjohnswarts »

adrianN wrote: post #313
stjohnswarts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets work as long as there's competition. When companies become so big they can kill any nascent competitor on a whim, that's when it becomes an issue. That's why trust busting and regulations and governments are necessary.

Free markets need not only competition, but also regulation to price in externalities like poisoning the air or causing climate change.

I will agree with this, to me this falls under "regulation from the government"

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

#399

Post by stjohnswarts »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #79
stjohnswarts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free markets work as long as there's competition. When companies become so big they can kill any nascent competitor on a whim, that's when it becomes an issue. That's why trust busting and regulations and governments are necessary.

I've had this argument many times with my friends who are libertarian leaning and they start hand waving when you bring up a 100 different examples of companies being downright evil when they became too large.

I usually go back to the East Indian Tea company and work my way forward. I love my Libertarian friends as far as social and individual rights are concerned (something Republicans seem to have given up on, except for the 2nd amendment) but have lively debates on limits on capitalism, even though I am a capitalist with asterisk marks and think Communism is a terrible form of government.

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

#400

Post by dennis_jeeves »

asdff wrote: post #383
lovecg wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can work both ways though. A single person can also invent a scalable way to sequester CO2 for example.

It's a lot easier to burn things than to figure out how to unburn them though

Correct, for most naive tech personality types, they think there is easy tech solution to everything if only one thought hard enough. Precaution is not too high on their list.
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