6 ms·

What is this literal global agenda? I love a good weekend drink as much as the next person but it’s very obvious that alcohol is literal poison and best to be

by theNJR 8y ago

What is this literal global agenda? I love a good weekend drink as much as the next person but it’s very obvious that alcohol is literal poison and best to be avoided. That conclusion doesn’t require a bunch of health organizations to conspire.

coldtea 8y ago
>What is this literal global agenda? It's basically "some bureaucrats want to secure funds for their agencies and have some global mission to justify them, so they invent new targets when the previous ones have dragged too long, so like the "war on drugs", "war on fat", etc. before, you now have more "war on alcohol", etc. And since those control a lot of money, and public policy, they get to decide where grants go, and you get to up your chances of a career if you go along. Plus all the private interests that can be attached to that (e.g. selling non-alcoholic versions of beverages, etc). >but it’s very obvious that alcohol is literal poison and best to be avoided No, it's not "very obvious" at all. It's just the residuals of the tee-totaling puritanical view of alcohol ("it must be bad!"), or considering alcoholics at the canonical example of what happens when you consume alcohol (and not e.g. the blue zone diets, where people live more than anybody else on the planet on average, and still regularly consume alcohol). In other words, it's as obvious as "fat makes us fat". Science is not about accepting some "obvious", it's about investigating what's actually the case. And there's the historical perspective: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/09/3-questions-patrick-mcgovern/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/09/3-questi... Or: To our fruit-eating primate ancestors swinging through the trees, however, the ethanol in rotting fruit would have had three other appealing characteristics. First, it has a strong, distinctive smell that makes the fruit easy to locate. Second, it’s easier to digest, allowing animals to get more of a commodity that was precious back then: calories. Third, its antiseptic qualities repel microbes that might sicken a primate. Millions of years ago one of them developed a taste for fruit that had fallen from the tree. “Our ape ancestors started eating fermented fruits on the forest floor, and that made all the difference,” says Nathaniel Dominy, a biological anthropologist at Dartmouth College. “We’re preadapted for consuming alcohol.”
- theNJR 8y ago
  I don’t have a dog in this fight, just curious, is there any experimentally proven benefit? Smell, ease of digestion and being an antiseptic (which I believe you mean in relation to fermented fruit) have nothing to do with modern alcohol consumption. I understand its utility as a social lubricant. My guess is that’s why it has persisted for thousands of years. But don’t you think alcohol is a societal net negative?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >I understand its utility as a social lubricant. My guess is that’s why it has persisted for thousands of years. But don’t you think alcohol is a societal net negative? If it helps people party, mingle, and eventually create babies, it's a net positive for the survival of the species... Also, some things can still be positive by fiat, even if the logistics (e.g. re health) are against them. We're not on this planet just to live as long as we can. That's not a goal in itself. There might not be a goal in the end too -- e.g. it all might be meaningless. In any case, if we're here to enjoy our stay, and alcohol (or e.g. taking risks) is part of that, then those things are good for us, even if it means we lose some years to them.
    - theNJR 8y ago
      I actually like your nihilistic rationalization here. If one is overtly optimiziming for health and longevity, drinking is a bad idea. If one is optimizing for enjoyment, drink. And of course there is a middle ground. Although I would say that alchohol is specifically designed to remove the middle ground (drinking alchohol dehydrates you, so you drink more, etc). Anyway, I appreciate your stance and find it to be the most honest pro-alchohol comment thus far.
    - DougN7 8y ago
      I’m sorry but you can rationalize literally almost anything using that argument. I’m quite sure the babies will get made just fine without alcohol.
      - 8y ago
headShrinker 8y ago
> and best to be avoided In any quantity? Prove it The problem is everything is a poison in quantity. Moderation is key with anything. The agenda was clearly indicated. Please reread my parent post, Reduce alcohol consumption. We consume many extremely dangerous poisons throughout the day and there is not a ton of research of the effects of those molecules. Or there is and almost no follow up action.
- theNJR 8y ago
  I guess my point is the risk of alcohol consumption is incredibly high and the reward is incredibly low. It’s an irrational game we play (myself included, my wife and I will surely share a bottle of wine tonight at dinner).
  - headShrinker 8y ago
    I get your point but like it or not alcohol is very complex and has many benefits as well as deficits. What organizations are doing now to alcohol with their studies is the equivalent of what people did to marijuana in the 40s and 50s. They decided alcohol was bad and then they went about producing propaganda and attributing science fortify their claims. In limited quantities alcohol has been shown to improve sleep, reduce stress, thin blood, and increase social behaviors. All of these are huge markers for life longevity and lower mortality. If you’re really concerned about poisons and risk factors you would look at the American diet and realize just what havoc it’s wreaking on its population, i.e. diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and heart disease. Statistically you will likely die of one of them
    - theNJR 8y ago
      Alcohol DESTROYS sleep. You wont like any of the studies that google comes up with, so do what I did. Buy an Oura ring, get your baseline sleep data, then have just two glasses of wine and see what happens. It's crazy what just a little alcohol does to the quality of your sleep. Any increase in social behaviors are vastly outweighed by anti-social behavior. I agree with you on stress reduction but that is a dangerous, dangerous game.
flippyhead 8y ago
> obvious that alcohol is literal poison and best to be avoided I'm really curious how this is obvious and how you know it. Anything is literally poison if consume too much of it. Even water [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
- theNJR 8y ago
  I meant to set a timer to see how long it took for someone to bring this up. Do we really need to compare deaths and injuries from self-inflicted water intoxication to that of alchohol?
- imgabe 8y ago
  This is a bad type of argument that has to stop. Water has literally nothing to do with how good alcohol is or isn't for you. If you insist on comparing the two, consider that if you stop drinking water you die in a couple of days. If you stop drinking alcohol you generally become healthier. "X isn't bad because literally anything can be bad in some scenario! If you eat too many bean sprouts you'll choke and die, so it must be fine to eat arsenic, right??"
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - flippyhead 8y ago
    I don't understand this counter argument. I drink less than a glass of wine a day and because quantity is a critical factor when considering a poison, to me, alcohol is literally not a poison. Just because some people drink too much, but not including amount in the argument don't you miss completely all the safe uses of it?
kpU8efre7r 8y ago
>it’s very obvious that alcohol is literal poison Faulty logic. Practically everything can be a poison. The poison is the dose. There is no argument that heavy alcohol use is detrimental to your health. There is still quite a bit of argument whether or not moderate alcohol use has benefits. And where are the benefits? Does it benefit the human as a whole as in- the benefits in one area (anti coagulant, anti inflammatory) outweigh the additional risks of (throat cancer, breast cancer)? Doesn't seem obvious to me. You should conduct a study where you simply proclaim things as obvious. The Earth is obviously flat, just look at it. /s

by theNJR 8y ago

coldtea 8y ago

>What is this literal global agenda? It's basically "some bureaucrats want to secure funds for their agencies and have some global mission to justify them, so they invent new targets when the previous ones have dragged too long, so like the "war on drugs", "war on fat", etc. before, you now have more "war on alcohol", etc. And since those control a lot of money, and public policy, they get to decide where grants go, and you get to up your chances of a career if you go along. Plus all the private interests that can be attached to that (e.g. selling non-alcoholic versions of beverages, etc). >but it’s very obvious that alcohol is literal poison and best to be avoided No, it's not "very obvious" at all. It's just the residuals of the tee-totaling puritanical view of alcohol ("it must be bad!"), or considering alcoholics at the canonical example of what happens when you consume alcohol (and not e.g. the blue zone diets, where people live more than anybody else on the planet on average, and still regularly consume alcohol). In other words, it's as obvious as "fat makes us fat". Science is not about accepting some "obvious", it's about investigating what's actually the case. And there's the historical perspective: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/09/3-questions-patrick-mcgovern/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/09/3-questi... Or: To our fruit-eating primate ancestors swinging through the trees, however, the ethanol in rotting fruit would have had three other appealing characteristics. First, it has a strong, distinctive smell that makes the fruit easy to locate. Second, it’s easier to digest, allowing animals to get more of a commodity that was precious back then: calories. Third, its antiseptic qualities repel microbes that might sicken a primate. Millions of years ago one of them developed a taste for fruit that had fallen from the tree. “Our ape ancestors started eating fermented fruits on the forest floor, and that made all the difference,” says Nathaniel Dominy, a biological anthropologist at Dartmouth College. “We’re preadapted for consuming alcohol.”

theNJR 8y ago
I don’t have a dog in this fight, just curious, is there any experimentally proven benefit? Smell, ease of digestion and being an antiseptic (which I believe you mean in relation to fermented fruit) have nothing to do with modern alcohol consumption. I understand its utility as a social lubricant. My guess is that’s why it has persisted for thousands of years. But don’t you think alcohol is a societal net negative?
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I understand its utility as a social lubricant. My guess is that’s why it has persisted for thousands of years. But don’t you think alcohol is a societal net negative? If it helps people party, mingle, and eventually create babies, it's a net positive for the survival of the species... Also, some things can still be positive by fiat, even if the logistics (e.g. re health) are against them. We're not on this planet just to live as long as we can. That's not a goal in itself. There might not be a goal in the end too -- e.g. it all might be meaningless. In any case, if we're here to enjoy our stay, and alcohol (or e.g. taking risks) is part of that, then those things are good for us, even if it means we lose some years to them.
  - theNJR 8y ago
    I actually like your nihilistic rationalization here. If one is overtly optimiziming for health and longevity, drinking is a bad idea. If one is optimizing for enjoyment, drink. And of course there is a middle ground. Although I would say that alchohol is specifically designed to remove the middle ground (drinking alchohol dehydrates you, so you drink more, etc). Anyway, I appreciate your stance and find it to be the most honest pro-alchohol comment thus far.
  - DougN7 8y ago
    I’m sorry but you can rationalize literally almost anything using that argument. I’m quite sure the babies will get made just fine without alcohol.
    - 8y ago

headShrinker 8y ago

> and best to be avoided In any quantity? Prove it The problem is everything is a poison in quantity. Moderation is key with anything. The agenda was clearly indicated. Please reread my parent post, Reduce alcohol consumption. We consume many extremely dangerous poisons throughout the day and there is not a ton of research of the effects of those molecules. Or there is and almost no follow up action.

theNJR 8y ago
I guess my point is the risk of alcohol consumption is incredibly high and the reward is incredibly low. It’s an irrational game we play (myself included, my wife and I will surely share a bottle of wine tonight at dinner).
- headShrinker 8y ago
  I get your point but like it or not alcohol is very complex and has many benefits as well as deficits. What organizations are doing now to alcohol with their studies is the equivalent of what people did to marijuana in the 40s and 50s. They decided alcohol was bad and then they went about producing propaganda and attributing science fortify their claims. In limited quantities alcohol has been shown to improve sleep, reduce stress, thin blood, and increase social behaviors. All of these are huge markers for life longevity and lower mortality. If you’re really concerned about poisons and risk factors you would look at the American diet and realize just what havoc it’s wreaking on its population, i.e. diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and heart disease. Statistically you will likely die of one of them
  - theNJR 8y ago
    Alcohol DESTROYS sleep. You wont like any of the studies that google comes up with, so do what I did. Buy an Oura ring, get your baseline sleep data, then have just two glasses of wine and see what happens. It's crazy what just a little alcohol does to the quality of your sleep. Any increase in social behaviors are vastly outweighed by anti-social behavior. I agree with you on stress reduction but that is a dangerous, dangerous game.

flippyhead 8y ago

> obvious that alcohol is literal poison and best to be avoided I'm really curious how this is obvious and how you know it. Anything is literally poison if consume too much of it. Even water [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

theNJR 8y ago
I meant to set a timer to see how long it took for someone to bring this up. Do we really need to compare deaths and injuries from self-inflicted water intoxication to that of alchohol?
imgabe 8y ago
This is a bad type of argument that has to stop. Water has literally nothing to do with how good alcohol is or isn't for you. If you insist on comparing the two, consider that if you stop drinking water you die in a couple of days. If you stop drinking alcohol you generally become healthier. "X isn't bad because literally anything can be bad in some scenario! If you eat too many bean sprouts you'll choke and die, so it must be fine to eat arsenic, right??"
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- flippyhead 8y ago
  I don't understand this counter argument. I drink less than a glass of wine a day and because quantity is a critical factor when considering a poison, to me, alcohol is literally not a poison. Just because some people drink too much, but not including amount in the argument don't you miss completely all the safe uses of it?

kpU8efre7r 8y ago

>it’s very obvious that alcohol is literal poison Faulty logic. Practically everything can be a poison. The poison is the dose. There is no argument that heavy alcohol use is detrimental to your health. There is still quite a bit of argument whether or not moderate alcohol use has benefits. And where are the benefits? Does it benefit the human as a whole as in- the benefits in one area (anti coagulant, anti inflammatory) outweigh the additional risks of (throat cancer, breast cancer)? Doesn't seem obvious to me. You should conduct a study where you simply proclaim things as obvious. The Earth is obviously flat, just look at it. /s