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India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

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Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#111

Post by lern_too_spel »

akvadrako wrote: post #69
lern_too_spel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't carve away at science fiction without the human capital to do the science. Lifting huge populations out of disease and poverty is going to have a larger effect on scientific progress than spending money on directing the few who can do science right now.

I agree with the sentiment and some aspects of science, like medical trials, may scale fairly well. However the most significant scientific discoveries seem to come from the top of the pile. You need to be in the right place and time with the right background to make the right connections that reveal a previously hidden truth. Science is about seeing something that's staring you in the face but nobody has even notice…

Even finding many major breakthroughs like the blue LED is ultimately just probability. The more people who are able to find them, the more breakthroughs you will find.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#112

Post by burkaman »

sirclueless wrote: post #101
burkaman wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally don't have a toilet. Are they going to conjure one if they become smart enough? I understand there's an issue of people not using them once they have one, but step one is getting a toilet, and step two is educating people enough to want to use them.

I'm not so sure. Step 1 is making sure people want a toilet. If you give someone a toilet without their understanding its purpose, it is going to be neglected and considered pointless. If people want toilets, they can spend some free time to dig a big pit in a nearby yard, and it will be more sanitary than their current situation. Ultimately the two go hand in hand (toilets and education) but education without toilet…

Well, that's not the goal they're talking about: "There are two keys to achieving the targets of Clean India. One involves giving everyone access to a well-managed toilet, which means all the waste is treated (either on-site or in a treatment facility) to remove the pathogens that make people sick. It’s crucial to get the entire process right, from containing the waste in a toilet to collecting it, transporting it if necessary, and treating it. If one link in the chain fails, people still get sick."

Anyway, the original comment here, "this has nothing to do with toilets", still doesn't make sense. High literacy states aren't clean because of education, they are clean and educated because they aren't poor. And we all agree that education and toilets go hand in hand, the article addresses this. All I was responding to was the idea that toilets are irrelevant, which is ridiculous.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#113

Post by Pica_soO »

The thing that strikes me as the most odd - is that until ww1 (thats right the recent Battlefieldified one)- soldiers would carry talismans into the battle, that where supposed to make them bulletproof and immortal. Thats right, something that sounds oh, so exotic, right in the midst of the west.

Also, it helps if you look at the Congo and Europe during WW2. The same chaos, the same refugee rows, the same anarchy and murdering. Noting is written in stone.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#114

Post by gozur88 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #106
gozur88 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think we don't have the human capital to do science? From what I can see, it's more that we have a shortage of plain old capital, and there are plenty of would-be scientists who take jobs in Wall St or at Twitter clones because there's no money for the science.

You only need one person if your bar is merely to "do science," but if you want to do more science, you need more people. Do you really think that if we increased the number of people who could be scientists by 10X that scientific advancement wouldn't significantly increase in velocity? Just look at how primitive modern medicine still is.

Where is the money for this 10x increase?

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#115

Post by lern_too_spel »

gozur88 wrote: post #114
lern_too_spel wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need one person if your bar is merely to "do science," but if you want to do more science, you need more people. Do you really think that if we increased the number of people who could be scientists by 10X that scientific advancement wouldn't significantly increase in velocity? Just look at how primitive modern medicine still is.

Where is the money for this 10x increase?

From the GDP lift caused by lifting large populations out of disease and poverty.

Thought experiment: how fast do you think our scientific knowledge would advance if 90% of the US were living in poverty and spent most of their day simply figuring out how to survive?

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#116

Post by ralfd »

CodeCube wrote: post #49
chiph wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 1854. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb... Which about ten years later resulted in the Victorians building over 100 miles of sewers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system

that's only 163 years ago ... that is distressingly recent

New York was even later. Paris though began to built sewers in the middle ages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_sewers

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#117

Post by ralfd »

Pica_soO wrote: post #113

The thing that strikes me as the most odd - is that until ww1 (thats right the recent Battlefieldified one)- soldiers would carry talismans into the battle, that where supposed to make them bulletproof and immortal. Thats right, something that sounds oh, so exotic, right in the midst of the west. Also, it helps if you look at the Congo and Europe during WW2. The same chaos, the same refugee rows, the same anarchy and…

That doesn't sound so odd? I bet quite a few modern soldiers still have some talismans or lucky charms.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#118

Post by mmanfrin »

abandonliberty wrote: post #103
avar wrote: post #16

> Unfortunately, in many places, it’s not > feasible to lay down sewer pipes or build > treatment facilities. [...] But giving > people access to toilets isn’t enough. You > also have to persuade them to use the > toilets. I can't find it now, but there was a news video making the rounds a year or two ago that showed that this problem is much more fundamental than that. It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were…

This is an area for innovation. Managing change/altering beliefs are extremely difficult. To help iron deficiency in Cambodians, they were encouraged to cook with iron ingots. No one used them. So they shaped the ingot into a lotus flower. Dice. Cultural investigation showed that fish were symbols of luck, health, and happiness. Fish-shaped ingots worked out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish

This is very fascinating; it's so interesting when something as simple as the shape of an iron ingot can have such huge effects.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#119

Post by staticassertion »

sidlls wrote: post #102
staticassertion wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first or second chapter of Diffusion of Innovation covers a case where a health organization official tried to convince people to boil their water. No one did it. The concept of "germs" was so foreign to them, and their beliefs about water were already so ingrained. It was a complete failure. It seems obvious to say "if you drink dirty water you will get sick" but you're assuming that people can make so many conn…

People understand just fine what "illness" is. Every culture has a long tradition of medical practice since long before anyone knew what a germ was, and people in many civilizations (this isn't some eurocentric western-world thing) have known for hundreds or thousands of years to keep feces away from their food and water. It seems obvious because it is obvious and has been, in India and practically everywhere else, f…

Everyone understands that illness exists. Not everyone understands what it is, or why it occurs. This has nothing to do with stupidity.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#120

Post by bluetwo »

staticassertion wrote: post #40
avar wrote: post #16

> Unfortunately, in many places, it’s not > feasible to lay down sewer pipes or build > treatment facilities. [...] But giving > people access to toilets isn’t enough. You > also have to persuade them to use the > toilets. I can't find it now, but there was a news video making the rounds a year or two ago that showed that this problem is much more fundamental than that. It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were…

The first or second chapter of Diffusion of Innovation covers a case where a health organization official tried to convince people to boil their water. No one did it. The concept of "germs" was so foreign to them, and their beliefs about water were already so ingrained. It was a complete failure. It seems obvious to say "if you drink dirty water you will get sick" but you're assuming that people can make so many conn…

On one hand I think 'what the heck is wrong with these people' and on the other hand is the painting The Gross Clinic, which shows a complete disregard for the concept of hygiene during an operation, even though germs and their effects were discovered decades earlier.

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/299524.html

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