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Scientists are wrong... a lot. The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choic

Scientists are wrong... a lot. The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice.

ethanbond 3y ago
This is an absolutely horrible heuristic. Let’s put radioactive toys, toys painted with lead, leaded gasoline, DDT, and thalidomide back on the market. None of these were “obvious to the layman.” Individual scientists are wrong a lot. Science as a process continues to be the (imperfect) reigning world champ of truth discovery, no matter what contrarianism du jour memes are spreading over the internet.
- dwighttk 3y ago
  note how all of those have a horrifying story Tell the horrifying plastic story (if there is one)
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Uhh no. Lead, mercury, radioactivity, thalidomide, and asbestos poisoning are not detectable as “my child put a toy in their mouth and their tongue fell off.” These were uncovered over the course of years by statistical analysis, prompted by suspicions created by (noisy, often non-human) information about the mechanisms. Similarly, we have tons of data supporting a bunch of theories of micro plastic harm in the lab. The waiting revelation isn’t going to be “omg all these people are sick and we didn’t know it,” it’s going to be “all these people have been sick and we didn’t know why.” Which is exactly the form of the sperm quality/fertility theory as well as obesity. We know these compounds cause fertility and metabolism issues in cell cultures and in animal models. We know we are facing civilization-scale problems with obesity and fertility. Drawing the connection between these types of observations is always extremely noisy because there are obviously trillions of variables affecting “does a specific individual become infertile or obese,” or “does a person have an elevated risk of birth defects.” I’m not necessarily on the side of an immediate and total ban, but this “we’ll see the problems if they exist” attitude is profoundly ignorant and arrogant. The historical examples appear obvious to you because you saw the results of extremely deep study prompted from initially low-quality suspicions.
  - STRML 3y ago
    Does lead exposure have a "horrifying" story? It has measurable effects over years and decades, but very little acute effect.
- deleted 3y ago
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bowsamic 3y ago
> The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice. I'm not sure if this is sarcasm but if it's not, this is really the peak of anti-intellectualism ideology, i.e., that if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I don't think that kind of opinion is a good fit for this forum to be honest, which has learning and information sharing as an important goal, so I will have to flag your message, which is an extremely rare thing for me to do (actually this may be my first time ever)
- superhumanuser 3y ago
  > if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I'm not sure if you're willfully ignorant or just saw an opportunity to pass a pejorative and took it. I didn't say we should "ignore it". I said we shouldn't allow scientists to exclusively decide what should or should not be legal.
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    No you didn't, you said that if a layman cannot understand it immediately, then we should never use the information in the context of law, i.e. we should just ignore the information, i.e. remain ignorant
    - superhumanuser 3y ago
      OK. Have a nice day. Maybe take a little internet timeout and touch grass.

Scientists are wrong... a lot. The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice.

ethanbond 3y ago

This is an absolutely horrible heuristic. Let’s put radioactive toys, toys painted with lead, leaded gasoline, DDT, and thalidomide back on the market. None of these were “obvious to the layman.” Individual scientists are wrong a lot. Science as a process continues to be the (imperfect) reigning world champ of truth discovery, no matter what contrarianism du jour memes are spreading over the internet.

dwighttk 3y ago
note how all of those have a horrifying story Tell the horrifying plastic story (if there is one)
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Uhh no. Lead, mercury, radioactivity, thalidomide, and asbestos poisoning are not detectable as “my child put a toy in their mouth and their tongue fell off.” These were uncovered over the course of years by statistical analysis, prompted by suspicions created by (noisy, often non-human) information about the mechanisms. Similarly, we have tons of data supporting a bunch of theories of micro plastic harm in the lab. The waiting revelation isn’t going to be “omg all these people are sick and we didn’t know it,” it’s going to be “all these people have been sick and we didn’t know why.” Which is exactly the form of the sperm quality/fertility theory as well as obesity. We know these compounds cause fertility and metabolism issues in cell cultures and in animal models. We know we are facing civilization-scale problems with obesity and fertility. Drawing the connection between these types of observations is always extremely noisy because there are obviously trillions of variables affecting “does a specific individual become infertile or obese,” or “does a person have an elevated risk of birth defects.” I’m not necessarily on the side of an immediate and total ban, but this “we’ll see the problems if they exist” attitude is profoundly ignorant and arrogant. The historical examples appear obvious to you because you saw the results of extremely deep study prompted from initially low-quality suspicions.
- STRML 3y ago
  Does lead exposure have a "horrifying" story? It has measurable effects over years and decades, but very little acute effect.
deleted 3y ago
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bowsamic 3y ago

> The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice. I'm not sure if this is sarcasm but if it's not, this is really the peak of anti-intellectualism ideology, i.e., that if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I don't think that kind of opinion is a good fit for this forum to be honest, which has learning and information sharing as an important goal, so I will have to flag your message, which is an extremely rare thing for me to do (actually this may be my first time ever)

superhumanuser 3y ago
> if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I'm not sure if you're willfully ignorant or just saw an opportunity to pass a pejorative and took it. I didn't say we should "ignore it". I said we shouldn't allow scientists to exclusively decide what should or should not be legal.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  No you didn't, you said that if a layman cannot understand it immediately, then we should never use the information in the context of law, i.e. we should just ignore the information, i.e. remain ignorant
  - superhumanuser 3y ago
    OK. Have a nice day. Maybe take a little internet timeout and touch grass.