6 ms·

"I can't believe people were so dumb about smoking in the 1950s.. how were they so dumb? did they not know it caused cancer?" this is a kinda modern equivalent

by pizza 9y ago

"I can't believe people were so dumb about smoking in the 1950s.. how were they so dumb? did they not know it caused cancer?" this is a kinda modern equivalent, imo..

woolvalley 9y ago
At least it's limited to a small few playing a sport, vs. pretty much every adult.
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  How many kids play tackle football in High School? How many young people play tackle football in college? How many parent allow this?
- mobilefriendly 9y ago
  Well over 1 million American boys and young men play football every year. The game is a rite of passage. Further these studies have implications for head contact that occurs in other sports and in general.
  - lgas 9y ago
    I'm not trying to diminish the suffering/risks/etc of a million people, but that is about one-third of one percent of the US population so I think woolvalley's comment is pretty on point.
    - meddlepal 9y ago
      It's a much larger percent though of just male children say ages 12 to 18. And there's a new set of victims every year.
    - code_duck 9y ago
      That’s just the quantity that are actively playing it now. The important thing is, what proportion of adults played as children? According to statistics online, football is the most popular high school sport, with participation twice that of the nearest, basketball, and 2/3 of children participate in organized sports. I looked it up, and apparently the stats for tackle football are about 4.5% of kids 6-12 and 9% in the 13-17 range.
  - slg 9y ago
    >these studies have implications for head contact that occurs in other sports and in general. Football is clearly the worst offender, but at the high school level the rate of concussions really isn't that far behind for hockey, lacrosse, soccer, wrestling, and basketball. Even a complete non-contact sport like baseball has a concussion rate that is 10% of football's rate. So the question isn't really what percentage of American children play football, it is what percentage play any sport and how can these sports be changed to increase safety.
    - emj 9y ago
      Most importantly addressing behaviour is the only way to get injuries down, buying more useless protection gear does not work. The cult of the helmet need to stop.
      - slg 9y ago
        I have said it elsewhere in the thread, but will repeat it and expand on it here. The helmet is a big red herring in the brain trauma debate. The trauma in football is caused by a simple physics problem. Imagine a person moving at full speed. That person collides with an identical person moving at the same speed in the opposite direction and they both hit each other at their center of mass. These two people now come to a complete stop. Newton's laws of motion say that every part of their body wanted to continue moving forward, but this collision causes a chain of events that stops the entire body. First their torso might stop. Their extremities might lurch forward until they are eventually stopped by the pull of the bodies muscles and ligaments from the stopped torso. But even as the head stops, the brain still has inertia of its own. The brain doesn't stop until it collides into the front of the skulls. This is the type of trauma that is common in football and will occur regardless of whether a player wears a helmet or not. The reason other full contact sports like rugby aren't as dangerous is because football is unique in that it has regular stoppages that realign all the players in the direction of their objective. You therefore have offensive and defensive players colliding head-on regularly on each play. In rugby this doesn't happen because the game is mostly continuous so offensive and defensive players are often moving in the same direction so collisions are less intense. For a little video evidence, this [1] is the first result for "rugby biggest hits" on Youtube and this is the first result for "football biggest hits" [2]. Notice how in a majority of the rugby hits either the offensive or defensive players is at a complete standstill before the hit while in the majority of the football hits the players are both moving towards each other. It is a physics and rules problem not a problem with protective gear. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1A06stpydY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1A06stpydY [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1MQ0Cnbhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1MQ0Cnbhs
ajuc 9y ago
> this is a kinda modern equivalent, imo.. Nah, the modern equivalent is sugar. Most people don't do enough sports to suffer from it (except for broken bones etc.)
- pizza 9y ago
  re:sugar - true that!!! generations of fucked up neuroendocrinological functioning.. is very bad.. and yet many people will dismiss "low carb is just a fad"
  - mcny 9y ago
    Sugar != Carbohydrates Talking about sugar will make many enemies. For example, the dairy industry. Or worse, fruit-farming. How do we convince people their smoothie is actively bad for health? Because at the end of the day, we don't know for sure. There are of course, some benefits to eating fruits. There are also likely downsides as well. I don't want to poop on keto but I suspect a lot of people can't follow it through and even if they could, I don't know if it is good for them.
code_duck 9y ago
The thing is that both activities were always clearly likely to be harmful, if you took a step back from the cultural perspective that accepted them so thoroughly. Smoking tobacco is inhaling an acrid a mix of chemicals that makes you cough, kind of feel sick and lightheaded, smells awful and leaves a tan stain - it’s not hard to guess that it’s not healthy. Remember that half of people who die from tobacco die from heart disease, too, not cancer. Same with football. I was never attracted to sports where participants beat each other in the head repeatedly, whether it’s boxing or football. I don’t think it’s surprising to find out that people who experience concussions every week as part of their jobs and hobbies end up damaging their brains. Edit to add, It’s a bit frustrating, because surely if one was to stand up 30 years ago and say “hey, I don’t think this high school football program is a good idea because I’m worried about all these young people knocking their heads together with full force”... The response would have been to mock you and dispute it, if they paid any attention at all.
- whyleyc 9y ago
  "Both activities were always clearly likely to be harmful". With the benefit of 70 years of medical research this is an easy statement to make, but at the time this was far less clear - smoking was for a long time actively promoted as having health benefits [1][2] It's easy from a modern perspective to look back and apply our accumulated wisdom, but it was not self-evident that smoking was necessarily bad. Otherwise millions would not have signed up for an early death. [1]https://www.healthcare-administration-degree.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/8-Philip-Morris–Scientifically-Proved-Far-Less-Irritating-To-The-Nose-And-Throat.jpg https://www.healthcare-administration-degree.net/wp-content/... [2]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/40/50/4f/40504f0de983d78f3c0f0b22c2de0a3b--retro-ads-vintage-ads.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/40/50/4f/40504f0de983d78f3c0f0b22c...
  - code_duck 9y ago
    It's true that smoking was promoted as healthful by parties with a financial interest. By clearly harmful, I mean that the indicators I listed should inform one's common sense that it is likely to be harmful, because physical senses perceive many things about tobacco smoke as unpleasant. For example, lore is replete with stories of young people's initial experiences with smoking involving coughing, choking, turning green and feeling nauseous or vomiting. There's also the fact that nicotine has long been known to be a poison as strong as cyanide, and has been used for insect control by Europeans as far back as 1763.
protonfish 9y ago
I think a closer modern equivalent is soda-pop and diabetes.

by pizza 9y ago

"I can't believe people were so dumb about smoking in the 1950s.. how were they so dumb? did they not know it caused cancer?" this is a kinda modern equivalent, imo..

woolvalley 9y ago

At least it's limited to a small few playing a sport, vs. pretty much every adult.

joe_the_user 9y ago
How many kids play tackle football in High School? How many young people play tackle football in college? How many parent allow this?
mobilefriendly 9y ago
Well over 1 million American boys and young men play football every year. The game is a rite of passage. Further these studies have implications for head contact that occurs in other sports and in general.
- lgas 9y ago
  I'm not trying to diminish the suffering/risks/etc of a million people, but that is about one-third of one percent of the US population so I think woolvalley's comment is pretty on point.
  - meddlepal 9y ago
    It's a much larger percent though of just male children say ages 12 to 18. And there's a new set of victims every year.
  - code_duck 9y ago
    That’s just the quantity that are actively playing it now. The important thing is, what proportion of adults played as children? According to statistics online, football is the most popular high school sport, with participation twice that of the nearest, basketball, and 2/3 of children participate in organized sports. I looked it up, and apparently the stats for tackle football are about 4.5% of kids 6-12 and 9% in the 13-17 range.
- slg 9y ago
  >these studies have implications for head contact that occurs in other sports and in general. Football is clearly the worst offender, but at the high school level the rate of concussions really isn't that far behind for hockey, lacrosse, soccer, wrestling, and basketball. Even a complete non-contact sport like baseball has a concussion rate that is 10% of football's rate. So the question isn't really what percentage of American children play football, it is what percentage play any sport and how can these sports be changed to increase safety.
  - emj 9y ago
    Most importantly addressing behaviour is the only way to get injuries down, buying more useless protection gear does not work. The cult of the helmet need to stop.
    - slg 9y ago
      I have said it elsewhere in the thread, but will repeat it and expand on it here. The helmet is a big red herring in the brain trauma debate. The trauma in football is caused by a simple physics problem. Imagine a person moving at full speed. That person collides with an identical person moving at the same speed in the opposite direction and they both hit each other at their center of mass. These two people now come to a complete stop. Newton's laws of motion say that every part of their body wanted to continue moving forward, but this collision causes a chain of events that stops the entire body. First their torso might stop. Their extremities might lurch forward until they are eventually stopped by the pull of the bodies muscles and ligaments from the stopped torso. But even as the head stops, the brain still has inertia of its own. The brain doesn't stop until it collides into the front of the skulls. This is the type of trauma that is common in football and will occur regardless of whether a player wears a helmet or not. The reason other full contact sports like rugby aren't as dangerous is because football is unique in that it has regular stoppages that realign all the players in the direction of their objective. You therefore have offensive and defensive players colliding head-on regularly on each play. In rugby this doesn't happen because the game is mostly continuous so offensive and defensive players are often moving in the same direction so collisions are less intense. For a little video evidence, this [1] is the first result for "rugby biggest hits" on Youtube and this is the first result for "football biggest hits" [2]. Notice how in a majority of the rugby hits either the offensive or defensive players is at a complete standstill before the hit while in the majority of the football hits the players are both moving towards each other. It is a physics and rules problem not a problem with protective gear. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1A06stpydY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1A06stpydY [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1MQ0Cnbhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1MQ0Cnbhs

ajuc 9y ago

> this is a kinda modern equivalent, imo.. Nah, the modern equivalent is sugar. Most people don't do enough sports to suffer from it (except for broken bones etc.)

pizza 9y ago
re:sugar - true that!!! generations of fucked up neuroendocrinological functioning.. is very bad.. and yet many people will dismiss "low carb is just a fad"
- mcny 9y ago
  Sugar != Carbohydrates Talking about sugar will make many enemies. For example, the dairy industry. Or worse, fruit-farming. How do we convince people their smoothie is actively bad for health? Because at the end of the day, we don't know for sure. There are of course, some benefits to eating fruits. There are also likely downsides as well. I don't want to poop on keto but I suspect a lot of people can't follow it through and even if they could, I don't know if it is good for them.

code_duck 9y ago

The thing is that both activities were always clearly likely to be harmful, if you took a step back from the cultural perspective that accepted them so thoroughly. Smoking tobacco is inhaling an acrid a mix of chemicals that makes you cough, kind of feel sick and lightheaded, smells awful and leaves a tan stain - it’s not hard to guess that it’s not healthy. Remember that half of people who die from tobacco die from heart disease, too, not cancer. Same with football. I was never attracted to sports where participants beat each other in the head repeatedly, whether it’s boxing or football. I don’t think it’s surprising to find out that people who experience concussions every week as part of their jobs and hobbies end up damaging their brains. Edit to add, It’s a bit frustrating, because surely if one was to stand up 30 years ago and say “hey, I don’t think this high school football program is a good idea because I’m worried about all these young people knocking their heads together with full force”... The response would have been to mock you and dispute it, if they paid any attention at all.

whyleyc 9y ago
"Both activities were always clearly likely to be harmful". With the benefit of 70 years of medical research this is an easy statement to make, but at the time this was far less clear - smoking was for a long time actively promoted as having health benefits [1][2] It's easy from a modern perspective to look back and apply our accumulated wisdom, but it was not self-evident that smoking was necessarily bad. Otherwise millions would not have signed up for an early death. [1]https://www.healthcare-administration-degree.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/8-Philip-Morris–Scientifically-Proved-Far-Less-Irritating-To-The-Nose-And-Throat.jpg https://www.healthcare-administration-degree.net/wp-content/... [2]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/40/50/4f/40504f0de983d78f3c0f0b22c2de0a3b--retro-ads-vintage-ads.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/40/50/4f/40504f0de983d78f3c0f0b22c...
- code_duck 9y ago
  It's true that smoking was promoted as healthful by parties with a financial interest. By clearly harmful, I mean that the indicators I listed should inform one's common sense that it is likely to be harmful, because physical senses perceive many things about tobacco smoke as unpleasant. For example, lore is replete with stories of young people's initial experiences with smoking involving coughing, choking, turning green and feeling nauseous or vomiting. There's also the fact that nicotine has long been known to be a poison as strong as cyanide, and has been used for insect control by Europeans as far back as 1763.

protonfish 9y ago

I think a closer modern equivalent is soda-pop and diabetes.