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>So we already have evidence that something with long term negative impacts (and smoking has some pretty immediate easily noticeable negative impacts as well),
by treis 3y ago
>So we already have evidence that something with long term negative impacts (and smoking has some pretty immediate easily noticeable negative impacts as well), can persist without this being obvious for a while.
I didn't say that we'd stop using cell phones if they posed significant dangers. I said that the abrupt increase in usage would make those dangers obvious if they existed.
To use your example, Tobacco was seen as bad from the git go because the impact was obvious. King James wrote a book against it in 1604:
>A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.
- asdajksah2123 3y agoAnd yet, it seemed bad but the consensus in the mid 20th century was that cigarettes were good for you. You can watch Tour De France videos of bicyclists smoking while biking because it was supposed to provide energy. And the fact that the dangers were known to some, but yet society widely considered tobacco safe and even good for you, does not help the idea that the dangers would be obvious. If we continue the analogy, it's very possible people 50 years from now will be pointing to this paper to show that the dangers of cellphone radiation was known in the early 2020s, even though society and the scientific community broadly haven't accepted these dangers.
- treis 3y ago>And yet, it seemed bad but the consensus in the mid 20th century was that cigarettes were good for you. That was not the consensus