4 ms·

will be interesting to see if plastic ends up being our modern day equivalent to Rome and their lead pipes

anlaw 3y ago
Sounds like leaded gas. Wasn’t banned until 1980s. Our leaders are 80 year old post war shell shocked, Cold War paranoids who huffed leaded gas fumes for decades. Explains quite a lot actually.
- edem 3y ago
  [flagged]
- hnick 3y ago
  A lot of voters, too...
Frost1x 3y ago
There's a delicate balance between adhering to empirical data and paranoia of something. On the one hand, you can point at mountains of data that show for the most part, to our knowledge, many plastics are safe when used appropriately. Specific cases have shown otherwise (e.g. BPA use and hazards in certain plastic manufacturering is a well studied example). Then there's all the cases where we have little evidence it's harmful. Our ignorance of harm doesn't mean there isn't harm though. Transition to paranoia. Everything we don't empirically know is a non-hazard and non-dangerous and should be avoided or leveraged very cautiously. We use materials that have been around for ages like wood and ceramics because we know most the hazards at this point and rely on the maturity to mitigate risk of the unknowns. Somewhere in between we can try to reason about things, but frankly we don't know either way, so either extreme argument (avoid at all costs, use it because it's safe as far as we know) is rational. The Roman's has no reason to think lead was hazardous until it was a bit too late. Marie Curie had no idea she was slowly killing herself. In some places where time isn't critical, we should probably lean towards the paranoia and tread cautiously. In times where time is important and progress should be made we should tread more toward risk taking and accept the unknowns while trying to manage risk as we go. No matter what risk exists. Lead propelled the Roman's in some aspects, then in some perspectives may have been one of their ultimate downfalls.

Sounds like leaded gas. Wasn’t banned until 1980s. Our leaders are 80 year old post war shell shocked, Cold War paranoids who huffed leaded gas fumes for decades. Explains quite a lot actually.

edem 3y ago
[flagged]
hnick 3y ago
A lot of voters, too...

Frost1x 3y ago

There's a delicate balance between adhering to empirical data and paranoia of something. On the one hand, you can point at mountains of data that show for the most part, to our knowledge, many plastics are safe when used appropriately. Specific cases have shown otherwise (e.g. BPA use and hazards in certain plastic manufacturering is a well studied example). Then there's all the cases where we have little evidence it's harmful. Our ignorance of harm doesn't mean there isn't harm though. Transition to paranoia. Everything we don't empirically know is a non-hazard and non-dangerous and should be avoided or leveraged very cautiously. We use materials that have been around for ages like wood and ceramics because we know most the hazards at this point and rely on the maturity to mitigate risk of the unknowns. Somewhere in between we can try to reason about things, but frankly we don't know either way, so either extreme argument (avoid at all costs, use it because it's safe as far as we know) is rational. The Roman's has no reason to think lead was hazardous until it was a bit too late. Marie Curie had no idea she was slowly killing herself. In some places where time isn't critical, we should probably lean towards the paranoia and tread cautiously. In times where time is important and progress should be made we should tread more toward risk taking and accept the unknowns while trying to manage risk as we go. No matter what risk exists. Lead propelled the Roman's in some aspects, then in some perspectives may have been one of their ultimate downfalls.