“We have no reason to believe 5G is safe” • Hacker News Board

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#471

Post by Rebelgecko » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #271

jonnypotty wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your certainty regarding the reasons we have increasing incidents of cancer to seriously detract from your previous points.

Most people in the cancer field (I worked in a tangential one) believe that incidence of cancer is due to people living longer (cancer rates go up a lot as you age), and not dying of other diseases first. In a sense, cancer is what you get after you solved the other problems.

That reminds me of one of the cell phone radiation studies that I see get bandied about sometimes. People that are skeptical of cell phones like mentioning it because they found that rats exposed to massive amounts of 2G and 3G signals were more likely to die of cancer. However, what the study also found is that the rats exposed to the signals actually lived longer than the control group.

If cell phones give me cancer because they make me live longer, then maybe I should start carrying around a second one.

https://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/newsroom/releases/2018/novemb...

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#472

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #438

magduf wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because you're only exposed to radiation if you actually use a phone. Google for "inverse square law". Your exposure is orders of magnitude lower from "second-hand cellphones" than from using it yourself; it's not like second-hand smoking.

> it's not like second-hand smoking Shouldn't smoke follow the inverse square law as well (in the absence of air currents)?

> Shouldn't smoke follow the inverse square law as well (in the absence of air currents)?

That's why smoking is allowed outdoors.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#473

Post by mikorym » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #90

I'm amazed at how many people here actually decline to click on the links in the article, which would guide one to a large list of scientific publications, with links to the original publications themselves. Yet they are very ready to call "more than 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields" "wackos" or "cranks with a PhD", call…

I think the title of the link is phrased badly. "We have no reason to believe 5G is safe" makes me want to comment that "we have no reason to believe 5G is unsafe" without even reading it. Maybe the title should be more specific. For example: pointing out that millimeter waves are not present in <=4G.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#474

Post by carapace » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

katmannthree wrote: post #445

carapace wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see, at the top of the page, "Observations | Opinion"?

Should that absolve them of writing deceptive articles that feed in to a type of paranoia that is fairly harmful to society[0]? [0]: Not that the anti-wireless people are particularly influential right now, but they're fairly close to antivacciene people in how they perceive the world with an almost complete absence of rational thought.

Well, first, I was responding to OP's complaint that the article "supports the author's point of view and offering no opposing points of view. This is not journalism." by pointing out that, in fact, it's not journalism, it's opinion.

Second, the whole reason articles like this get published and read is that, in this case, one man's "alarmism" or "deception" or "paranoia" is another man's sober scientific caution. It's the same problem with GMOs. People are rushing to market with unproven technology to make money while insisting it's all perfectly safe.

Why not wait a century, do more research, and decide then? What's the urgency to roll it out now?

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#475

Post by jokoon » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #65

jokoon wrote: post #20

I spend a lot of time in public transport, and on internet in general. I never paid for 3G or 4G on my smartphone. Only wifi. OSMAnd for maps, etc. 5G is also pretty bad for the environment (netflix, instagram, snapchat are also pretty awful). The amount of energy and resources you need to make all those electronic is gigantic, not to mention the lifespan of a smartphones is so short, smartphones vendors are now tryi…

How exactly are they "bad for the environment"? Would you prefer we revert to manufacturing plastic VHS tapes, then distribute them by diesel trucks like we used to in the good old days? Would you prefer people get their morning news on broadsheets made from the bleached pulp of rainforest trees? Or would you like to go back to the good old days of AM radio when the inadequacy of the receiver electronics was compensa…

Constantly replacing antennas, smartphones, having large datacenters, network infrastructure that consume a lot of energy is bad for the environment. Video is a big offender. Instagram and facebook feeds also consume a lot of memory and energy.

Even storing document as PDF instead of paper might be worse after all.

If at least smartphones would be designed to last 4 or 5 years it would make a big difference.

Wirth's law is also an excellent way to describe how computer software is most often horribly designed, and it also plays a huge role in how we could have cheaper and eco-friendly devices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

> You're probably one of those people

Lowering yourself to snarky comments is not helping your argument.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#476

Post by wtetzner » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

mikorym wrote: post #473

BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #90

I'm amazed at how many people here actually decline to click on the links in the article, which would guide one to a large list of scientific publications, with links to the original publications themselves. Yet they are very ready to call "more than 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields" "wackos" or "cranks with a PhD", call…

I think the title of the link is phrased badly. "We have no reason to believe 5G is safe" makes me want to comment that "we have no reason to believe 5G is unsafe " without even reading it. Maybe the title should be more specific. For example: pointing out that millimeter waves are not present in <=4G.

To be fair, it doesn't seem unreasonable to start with the assumption that something is unsafe and work to prove that it is safe. Seems safer ;)

If this was some technology where not having it would be a major impediment to society, then maybe it would be a different story. But 5G just doesn't seem that important to me.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#477

Post by acqq » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

tboyd47 wrote: post #466

Spooky23 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that concerns me about millimeter wave tech and 5G is that it seems like a solution looking for a problem. My city just had a wave of poles dropped in a few neighborhoods, and they seem to me to be an expensive boondoggle. IMO, we would be better served by the heavy hand of the FCC allowing fiber providers to run telephone poles and trenches without any accountability (as the wireless carriers can with 5G).…

It's not a solution looking for a problem. The problem is that the existing infrastructure does not support network slicing. Without network slicing the telcos are severely limited in their pricing models. "5G" is just them trying to convince consumers that this is for their benefit.

Thanks! Just reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_network_slicing#Key_concept...

"The "one-size-fits-all" network paradigm employed in the past mobile networks (2G, 3G and 4G) is no longer suited to efficiently address a market model composed by very different applications like machine-type communication, ultra reliable low latency communication and enhanced mobile broadband content delivery.[2][11]"

"to address a market model" in the sentence seems to support your claim.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#478

Post by acqq » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

tboyd47 wrote: post #461

marcosdumay wrote: post #169

Honestly, after a glance at the links, they don't inspire confidence in me either. There are papers about very small changes on very rare types of cancer, measured by proxy on a species where it's common; papers criticizing the critics claiming association with interested parties (what is a perfectly fine thing to claim, but what is it doing in a scientific paper?); and the only wide review I could find claims that t…

This comment is utterly false. Just after a brief glance at the paper, I found a study on showing a 2x increase in cancer on a sample size of over 1,000,000 humans.

Please give a link, I want to read it without going through these that aren't that interesting.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#479

Post by knzhou » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

plughs wrote: post #381

hannob wrote: post #147

I clicked on a few links and Googled a few names. It's roughly what I'd expect: People with few publications now working in other fields, people without scientific publications, but university degrees, people who regularly speak at events from radiation critics, people who are invested in other fringe theories. People get fooled by "large lists of peer-reviewed publications". Peer review is a lowest level quality mar…

> People with few publications now working in other fields I'm surprised this statement passed muster on HN where there must be some number of PhDs now working in other fields. Certainly the ones I know wouldn't take kindly to the idea that somehow, just because they left academia their research can be easily and completely dismissed.

Yeah, this is just a ridiculous way to dismiss the papers. Most authors are "people with few publications now working in other fields". One professor trains 25+ PhDs in their career, and usually all but one or two of them will end up fitting that description.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#480

Post by Skunkleton » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

blix wrote: post #398

monomyth wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the inverse square law always applies, hence the law part.

Laws of Physics are in general not always applicable. Ohm's Law, for instance, is only applicable in a narrow range of conditions. "Laws" tend to be less rigorous and more narrowly applicable than "theories," though the colloquial meaning of the terms is switched.

Yes, except in this case there isn't an exception.