151–160 of 508 posts
It makes me angry to think of how wreckless the generations before millenials were. Lead's risks and damages were well-known long before 1996. And they still didn't ban it until then.
Premise is off...
This assuming millenials are not reckless. We're humans and our behavior is not defined by our generation.
I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. And anecdotally, this seems very apparent in my peer group. And Americans are using copious amounts of the stuff right now, and younger than ever before. I…
>> But the risk in 50 years of people saying "we should have known better" seems really high. Well, we are just about 100 years after alcohol was legalized. We have lots of data on how horrible it is for out bodies, how many accidents and premature deaths it causes. But I hear absolutely nobody in North America talking about curtailing alcohol in any way. (The UK medical bodies have spoken out against alcohol use in…
It makes me angry to think of how wreckless the generations before millenials were. Lead's risks and damages were well-known long before 1996. And they still didn't ban it until then.
I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. And anecdotally, this seems very apparent in my peer group. And Americans are using copious amounts of the stuff right now, and younger than ever before. I…
Exposure to marijuana and marijuana derivatives is optional. Exposure to lead is almost never optional.
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there's this thing about the modern internet era which makes it possible to find a study to debunk (or support) pretty much any idea/theory you want. specially in the midst of an information/propaganda war all I'm trying to say is that I have decided not to think in the way you just did e.g. "where's that study which supports what I already believe?". It doesn't seem like a good tactic anymore
Indeed. One issue we have today is a glut of scientific information, some of which is high quality and some isn't. Also, some will later be shown to be false, and some correct, in any given context. It's not enough to say simply that a study exists (even if it is a large meta-study); it's necessary to actually read it in full and critically appraise it. But ain't nobody got time for that.... which is a problem!
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As of 2021, out of 432 members in the house of congress, a scant 31 are millenials. In the senate, just 1. Millenials are -not- the ones responsible for disastrous policies (yet). They haven't been around long enough yet. It's mainly boomers, some gen x, and a few silents. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/12/boomers-sil... edit: Added "(yet)" because it's not obvious, I suppose. My point here is that the…
So what you're saying is, millenials aren't responsible for disastrous policies yet. They'll get their turn.
It's difficult to be omniscient about the impact of everything to everything else for all future outcomes.
Smacks of Ageism, to my mind.
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Both are a product of the same process of privileging of commodity production for profit over overall collective well-being. And yes, I'm aware that said commodity production produces wealth which also improves well-being. But there's a contradiction there in our economic model that is not serving us well. EDIT: I should add to my point above that what's common with both these is one overarching world altering produc…
Economics has a term for this: negative externalities. A buys a snowblower from B, gaining 4 health for not shoveling and reducing everybody's health by 3 from pollution. B buys a leaf blower from C, gaining 4 health from not raking and reducing everybody's health by 3 from pollution. C buys a lawnmower from A, gaining 4 health from not scything and reducing everybody's health by 3. Each seller gets 4 health from the…
The way it usually goes is "everyone is +5, except the village that shares the watershed with the mine"
On anything but the shortest timeline things like like wealth, health and productivity are fungible at the societal level.
If the net cumulative effect of the externalities wasn't smaller than the benefits of the progress then the progress wouldn't happen because more people would be worse off and things would grind to a halt because the gains would be more than offset.
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Marijuana needs to be reclassified off of Schedule I Status in the USA, so it can be more thoroughly studied. Schedule I category shouldn't include recreational drugs like marijuana, which has no overdose possibility and has limited withdrawal side-effects. This wrong classification, going back to ignorant viewpoints of the early-mid 1900's, has heavily limited our scientific understanding of marijuana's effects on h…
This much is clear. Scheduling MJ is extremely unwise. But I would also extend this to everything in the psychedelic / hallucinogenic category. They do no psychological harm and an increasing body of evidence indicates that they, in all likelihood, do a significant amount of mental good for responsible users. An acute example of this is a psychedelic called “DMT”. This psychedelic is nearly everywhere in nature, incl…
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So what you're saying is, millenials aren't responsible for disastrous policies yet. They'll get their turn.
Correct. I've no doubt that the new generation will also make some terrible calls thanks to lobbying being legal. I believe the environment will be much more prioritized, but we'll have to see. However, I'm tired of silents/boomers/gen-xers making comments about and blaming millenials as if it's somehow our fault the boomers and silents in congress are out of touch. A quick look at voting demographics and the demogra…
The blame game is unhelpful unless a holistic explanation of Why Did You Do That is also given.
I have a strong worries that our current generation will have a similar huge reckoning with marijuana. We are already seeing studies that show regular marijuana use is correlated with permanent decreases in intelligence, memory loss, motivation, and mental health. And anecdotally, this seems very apparent in my peer group. And Americans are using copious amounts of the stuff right now, and younger than ever before. I…
As a long time marijuana user I am leaning towards that view and I've ceased using it but largely "permanent" is wrong and its the same thinking that lead to war on drugs. In large doses, it can bring about negative effects especially in people with ADD but the bad parts are almost always gone after cessation. I don't think it It's that when you are in your teens and you start smoking marijuana, the risk is big but I…