6 ms·

Consider the possibility that some such chemicals are good for society. For example, exposure to pseudoestrogens may reduce violence. Medical literature doesn't

by tlb 8y ago

Consider the possibility that some such chemicals are good for society. For example, exposure to pseudoestrogens may reduce violence. Medical literature doesn't really have a category for this -- there is only 'burden and cost' of environmental effects, assuming that any change from evolved human biology is bad. But it seems like evolved human biology is a little too violent for the society we want, and perhaps we'd benefit from even more X in the water/air/food supply.

trendia 8y ago
You should work for the pharmaceutical companies to get Xanax added to the water supply. Just imagine how much crime would go down if everyone was too chill to steal or murder!
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  You might love reading Brave New World (if you are not purposely paraphrasing it here), kinda blew my mind in high school so not sure what effect it would have on adults now.
bronson 8y ago
lol, and smoking has health benefits! Yes, there's a chance. But, if history is any guide, not a good one.
- wavegeek 8y ago
  The benefits of nicotine on focus, concentration and mental ability are reasonably well established. It is unfortunate that it comes packaged with so many nasties in cigarette smoke. Of course you can get nicotine inhalers that avoid this problem. To avoid too much of a blast/crash, you can spray it onto the skin. I think if nicotine were discovered for the first time today it would be considered a wonder drug.
  - bronson 8y ago
    Seems unlikely. It doesn't have any known health benefits (which is generally what people mean when they say "wonder drug"). If you want more focus etc, there are better drugs than nicotine these days.
lightyrs 8y ago
Regardless of whether or not one agrees with your position (that our society could benefit from even more X in the water/air/food supply), it would need to be the stated purpose of distributing X in order for it to be acceptable. If the increased distribution of X is simply a side-effect, then it is unacceptable (even if the end result is viewed positively by some).
eebynight 8y ago
This is a perfect example of naive intervention. there is no evidence that pseudoestrogens may reduce violence and I have no idea how you came to such a ludicrous conclusion. Is it because you believe the myth that high testosterone causes violence? That "roid rage" people normally picture when thinking of people who do steroids is actually people who neglect or don't put enough effort into post cycle therapy or aromatase inhibitors to LOWER their estrogen levels. Yes taking steroids greatly increases Estrogen levels as well and this is the main reason many men who have done steroids without proper cycling have some semblance of breasts... If anything this "violent" society you speak of is most likely a result of these pseudoestrogens / xenoestrogens and other endocrine disrupting chemicals.
- smt88 8y ago
  The positive correlation between testosterone and violence is not a myth in animals. It has also been observed in humans, though the correlation is weak[1]. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135917890000032X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135917890...
  - felix_nagaand 8y ago
    A weak correlation cannot intelligently be used to justify anything except further research...
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      In this case, it's a weak correlation across a meta-analysis of 45 independent studies. While I'd agree that further research would probably be beneficial, this is a result that already includes some further research.
- atomical 8y ago
  You posted pseudoscience of your own to counter pseudoscience. Where is the evidence that lack of "post cycle therapy," which isn't accepted science in itself, and estrogen causes violence? I don't see any evidence of what you suggest on Cochrane Collab. https://us.cochrane.org/ https://us.cochrane.org/
hnaccy 8y ago
Let's just castrate ugly men.
ra1n85 8y ago
This is the kind of perverse-nightmare-thought I only imagined strummed along in the heads of the psychopathic power hungry.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tomp 8y ago
Brave New World? After all, maybe slavery, exploitation, the Holocaust and potential "AI overlords" (I Robot-the-movie-style) are overall "good" for the (majority of) society. But I'd still try to avoid any (all) of them.
- tomp 8y ago
  I just wanted to say (and the edit window is gone), although I disagree with you, I want to encourage discussion, even of controversial ideas (I know, I have plenty!). It's a shame you're downvoted.
Raphmedia 8y ago
The issue is that you are not getting proper hormone replacement therapy with those. You are getting random levels of chemicals that mess up your hormone balance. Ask anyone on hormone replacement therapy what happens when they skip a dose or mix up the dosage. Depression, headaches, migraines, suicidal thoughts etc. Not something you want the entire society to experience.
- smt88 8y ago
  Another major difference between the pseudoestrogen problem and proper hormone replacement: consent. The general public has not consented to poorly-understood, poorly-controlled hormone therapy. Most of us are already nonviolent, so the proposed decrease in violence isn't even possible for us. The only net effect, therefore, is likely negative. It's kind of like saying that a minority of men have a testosterone deficiency, so let's put it in the water supply. Doesn't it sound more insane when formulated that way?
- tlb 8y ago
  The entire society is, in fact, experiencing it today, with 1000s of chemicals, as the Lancet article describes. Most are harmful. But if there are some beneficial ones in there, the medical literature doesn't seem to have a way to account for them.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Somewhat playing devil's advocate (I don't particularly buy the specific pseudoestrogen example here), there's a real reporting bias in these random environmental studies. Assume that the environment is always changing, and that some of these changes will be good, some of them will be bad, and most of them will be neutral. If a change is bad, then eventually some study will discover it, there will be a widespread press cycle, and outrage will eventually attempt to revert it. If a change is good, however, it will probably never get published, and if it does it will likely not generate much notice. This is as much a statement about psychology than about biology, and what the definitions of "good" and "bad" are. Us paying more attention to potential negative consequences than positive ones is an example of loss aversion, and the resulting pressure to repress change (because negative changes get more airtime than positive one) is an example of status quo bias. They're often rational from the POV of an individual - you exist by virtue of being well-adapted to the present environment, and so any change in the environment is more likely to harm your own fitness function than individuals who do not yet exist - yet they're irrational from the POV of the system, where you would expect good and bad changes to occur in equal numbers and individuals who are no longer suited to the current environment to be replaced by ones who are. Come to think of it, this may be behind the observed effect where any radical technical innovation or societal change that happens in your teens and twenties is an awesome opportunity to be capitalized on, while any such change that happens in your thirties or later is a threat to the natural order of things. In your late 20s and early 30s you typically make (nearly) irrevocable commitments in life that are the best adaptations you have to the world as it exists then; any change that happens afterwards will relatively benefit younger people who have not made such commitments more than it will benefit you. For biological changes the benefits are shifted even earlier: any change in the environment that affects relative survival rates will benefit people yet to be born more than people already born, because the latter have already won the evolutionary lottery while the future winners among the former still face selection pressure.
core-questions 8y ago
Are you literally arguing for men to become the "soy boy" stereotype with insufficient testosterone for proper male development simply because it will keep them docile? Today, I watched a leftist argue for something worse than eugenics.
- sctb 8y ago
  This is not a good comment for Hacker News and it breaks several guidelines. Please don't post like this, no matter how you feel about what you're replying to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
acct1771 8y ago
Consider the possibility that human sovereignty doesn't give a good goddamn what's "good for society", only the ability to be free. I'll decide how I want my interactions with the rest of humanity to go, thanks. We'd be 100% safe if we were all in cells with a telescreen, or if we had our brainwaves monitored for aggressive thoughts/disruptive emotions. Think that's too extreme of a comparison? Well, that's where your comment leads: China is monitoring employees' brain waves and emotions: $315M profit increase - https://nordic.businessinsider.com/china-emotional-surveillance-technology-2018-4 https://nordic.businessinsider.com/china-emotional-surveilla...
- elago 8y ago
  To be cynical regarding that link, there are 2 separate facts presented but not a good explanation of why the two are related. 1) A chinese electricity company began collecting wireless sensor data in 2014 2) In April 2018 their profits were up $315M Did they begin doing more business? Did their competition remain the same? Are they subsidized by the government somehow? So many reasons why a utility company could be more profitable, they should explain the connection between the monitoring and profitability, otherwise someone can probably show you evidence that switching brands of office coffee increase profitability 200%.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Good news, that wasn't the point of the link =]
hammock 8y ago
Wish you weren't downvoted because there are probably people in power who think along the same line. 7-UP soda used to be lithiated and there have been proposals to add lithium to drinking water (mood stabilizer). People have suggested that fluoride in drinking water can achieve the same. Of course testosterone levels have been cut in half among comparable men over the last 20 years. So endocrine disruptors in our environment are something to look into.
- xutopia 8y ago
  Testosterone levels halved over the last 20 years? You need to back that up with some evidence please.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - hammock 8y ago
    Scroll down to the chart: https://www.healio.com/endocrinology/hormone-therapy/news/print/endocrine-today/%7Bac23497d-f1ed-4278-bbd2-92bb1e552e3a%7D/generational-decline-in-testosterone-levels-observed https://www.healio.com/endocrinology/hormone-therapy/news/pr... 22% decrease in total and 45% decrease in bioavailable testosterone (the more important metric)
  - NeoBasilisk 8y ago
    It's a pretty well-documented phenomenon in the west.
  - wavegeek 8y ago
    See posts below yes - this is a real thing. It was controversial until about 10-15 years ago. And the effect is bigger if you go back 50-60 years. What is interesting is that this is news to you. You would think the media would bring this important news to people's attention. It is as if things are being subtly filtered.
mirimir 8y ago
Damn, that's quite the conspiracy theory. So are you arguing that radical SCUM-style feminists have pushed the commercialization of persistent estrogenic chemicals? To basically chemically castrate troublesome men? Although it's quite the SF trope, I can't imagine how it's plausible. Simple careless greed is the most likely reason.

by tlb 8y ago

trendia 8y ago

You should work for the pharmaceutical companies to get Xanax added to the water supply. Just imagine how much crime would go down if everyone was too chill to steal or murder!

stevenwoo 8y ago
You might love reading Brave New World (if you are not purposely paraphrasing it here), kinda blew my mind in high school so not sure what effect it would have on adults now.

bronson 8y ago

lol, and smoking has health benefits! Yes, there's a chance. But, if history is any guide, not a good one.

wavegeek 8y ago
The benefits of nicotine on focus, concentration and mental ability are reasonably well established. It is unfortunate that it comes packaged with so many nasties in cigarette smoke. Of course you can get nicotine inhalers that avoid this problem. To avoid too much of a blast/crash, you can spray it onto the skin. I think if nicotine were discovered for the first time today it would be considered a wonder drug.
- bronson 8y ago
  Seems unlikely. It doesn't have any known health benefits (which is generally what people mean when they say "wonder drug"). If you want more focus etc, there are better drugs than nicotine these days.

lightyrs 8y ago

Regardless of whether or not one agrees with your position (that our society could benefit from even more X in the water/air/food supply), it would need to be the stated purpose of distributing X in order for it to be acceptable. If the increased distribution of X is simply a side-effect, then it is unacceptable (even if the end result is viewed positively by some).

eebynight 8y ago

This is a perfect example of naive intervention. there is no evidence that pseudoestrogens may reduce violence and I have no idea how you came to such a ludicrous conclusion. Is it because you believe the myth that high testosterone causes violence? That "roid rage" people normally picture when thinking of people who do steroids is actually people who neglect or don't put enough effort into post cycle therapy or aromatase inhibitors to LOWER their estrogen levels. Yes taking steroids greatly increases Estrogen levels as well and this is the main reason many men who have done steroids without proper cycling have some semblance of breasts... If anything this "violent" society you speak of is most likely a result of these pseudoestrogens / xenoestrogens and other endocrine disrupting chemicals.

smt88 8y ago
The positive correlation between testosterone and violence is not a myth in animals. It has also been observed in humans, though the correlation is weak[1]. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135917890000032X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135917890...
- felix_nagaand 8y ago
  A weak correlation cannot intelligently be used to justify anything except further research...
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    In this case, it's a weak correlation across a meta-analysis of 45 independent studies. While I'd agree that further research would probably be beneficial, this is a result that already includes some further research.
atomical 8y ago
You posted pseudoscience of your own to counter pseudoscience. Where is the evidence that lack of "post cycle therapy," which isn't accepted science in itself, and estrogen causes violence? I don't see any evidence of what you suggest on Cochrane Collab. https://us.cochrane.org/ https://us.cochrane.org/

hnaccy 8y ago

Let's just castrate ugly men.

ra1n85 8y ago

This is the kind of perverse-nightmare-thought I only imagined strummed along in the heads of the psychopathic power hungry.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

tomp 8y ago

Brave New World? After all, maybe slavery, exploitation, the Holocaust and potential "AI overlords" (I Robot-the-movie-style) are overall "good" for the (majority of) society. But I'd still try to avoid any (all) of them.

tomp 8y ago
I just wanted to say (and the edit window is gone), although I disagree with you, I want to encourage discussion, even of controversial ideas (I know, I have plenty!). It's a shame you're downvoted.

Raphmedia 8y ago

The issue is that you are not getting proper hormone replacement therapy with those. You are getting random levels of chemicals that mess up your hormone balance. Ask anyone on hormone replacement therapy what happens when they skip a dose or mix up the dosage. Depression, headaches, migraines, suicidal thoughts etc. Not something you want the entire society to experience.

smt88 8y ago
Another major difference between the pseudoestrogen problem and proper hormone replacement: consent. The general public has not consented to poorly-understood, poorly-controlled hormone therapy. Most of us are already nonviolent, so the proposed decrease in violence isn't even possible for us. The only net effect, therefore, is likely negative. It's kind of like saying that a minority of men have a testosterone deficiency, so let's put it in the water supply. Doesn't it sound more insane when formulated that way?
tlb 8y ago
The entire society is, in fact, experiencing it today, with 1000s of chemicals, as the Lancet article describes. Most are harmful. But if there are some beneficial ones in there, the medical literature doesn't seem to have a way to account for them.
nostrademons 8y ago
Somewhat playing devil's advocate (I don't particularly buy the specific pseudoestrogen example here), there's a real reporting bias in these random environmental studies. Assume that the environment is always changing, and that some of these changes will be good, some of them will be bad, and most of them will be neutral. If a change is bad, then eventually some study will discover it, there will be a widespread press cycle, and outrage will eventually attempt to revert it. If a change is good, however, it will probably never get published, and if it does it will likely not generate much notice. This is as much a statement about psychology than about biology, and what the definitions of "good" and "bad" are. Us paying more attention to potential negative consequences than positive ones is an example of loss aversion, and the resulting pressure to repress change (because negative changes get more airtime than positive one) is an example of status quo bias. They're often rational from the POV of an individual - you exist by virtue of being well-adapted to the present environment, and so any change in the environment is more likely to harm your own fitness function than individuals who do not yet exist - yet they're irrational from the POV of the system, where you would expect good and bad changes to occur in equal numbers and individuals who are no longer suited to the current environment to be replaced by ones who are. Come to think of it, this may be behind the observed effect where any radical technical innovation or societal change that happens in your teens and twenties is an awesome opportunity to be capitalized on, while any such change that happens in your thirties or later is a threat to the natural order of things. In your late 20s and early 30s you typically make (nearly) irrevocable commitments in life that are the best adaptations you have to the world as it exists then; any change that happens afterwards will relatively benefit younger people who have not made such commitments more than it will benefit you. For biological changes the benefits are shifted even earlier: any change in the environment that affects relative survival rates will benefit people yet to be born more than people already born, because the latter have already won the evolutionary lottery while the future winners among the former still face selection pressure.

core-questions 8y ago

Are you literally arguing for men to become the "soy boy" stereotype with insufficient testosterone for proper male development simply because it will keep them docile? Today, I watched a leftist argue for something worse than eugenics.

sctb 8y ago
This is not a good comment for Hacker News and it breaks several guidelines. Please don't post like this, no matter how you feel about what you're replying to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

acct1771 8y ago

Consider the possibility that human sovereignty doesn't give a good goddamn what's "good for society", only the ability to be free. I'll decide how I want my interactions with the rest of humanity to go, thanks. We'd be 100% safe if we were all in cells with a telescreen, or if we had our brainwaves monitored for aggressive thoughts/disruptive emotions. Think that's too extreme of a comparison? Well, that's where your comment leads: China is monitoring employees' brain waves and emotions: $315M profit increase - https://nordic.businessinsider.com/china-emotional-surveillance-technology-2018-4 https://nordic.businessinsider.com/china-emotional-surveilla...

elago 8y ago
To be cynical regarding that link, there are 2 separate facts presented but not a good explanation of why the two are related. 1) A chinese electricity company began collecting wireless sensor data in 2014 2) In April 2018 their profits were up $315M Did they begin doing more business? Did their competition remain the same? Are they subsidized by the government somehow? So many reasons why a utility company could be more profitable, they should explain the connection between the monitoring and profitability, otherwise someone can probably show you evidence that switching brands of office coffee increase profitability 200%.
- acct1771 8y ago
  Good news, that wasn't the point of the link =]

hammock 8y ago

Wish you weren't downvoted because there are probably people in power who think along the same line. 7-UP soda used to be lithiated and there have been proposals to add lithium to drinking water (mood stabilizer). People have suggested that fluoride in drinking water can achieve the same. Of course testosterone levels have been cut in half among comparable men over the last 20 years. So endocrine disruptors in our environment are something to look into.

xutopia 8y ago
Testosterone levels halved over the last 20 years? You need to back that up with some evidence please.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- hammock 8y ago
  Scroll down to the chart: https://www.healio.com/endocrinology/hormone-therapy/news/print/endocrine-today/%7Bac23497d-f1ed-4278-bbd2-92bb1e552e3a%7D/generational-decline-in-testosterone-levels-observed https://www.healio.com/endocrinology/hormone-therapy/news/pr... 22% decrease in total and 45% decrease in bioavailable testosterone (the more important metric)
- NeoBasilisk 8y ago
  It's a pretty well-documented phenomenon in the west.
- wavegeek 8y ago
  See posts below yes - this is a real thing. It was controversial until about 10-15 years ago. And the effect is bigger if you go back 50-60 years. What is interesting is that this is news to you. You would think the media would bring this important news to people's attention. It is as if things are being subtly filtered.

mirimir 8y ago

Damn, that's quite the conspiracy theory. So are you arguing that radical SCUM-style feminists have pushed the commercialization of persistent estrogenic chemicals? To basically chemically castrate troublesome men? Although it's quite the SF trope, I can't imagine how it's plausible. Simple careless greed is the most likely reason.