4 ms·

> The purpose of the law is to protect people who act within reason. This is just flat out wrong, and pretty gross. The purpose of the law is to protect peop

> The purpose of the law is to protect people who act within reason. This is just flat out wrong, and pretty gross. The purpose of the law is to protect people. Not white people, not land-owning people, not smart people, not literate people, not able-bodied people, not "reasonable" people. People. Full stop. Assuming people are reasonable is a recipe for disaster, and ablest. Perhaps one day someone you know will get dementia, or have a stroke, or get macular degeneration, or any of the number of ailments that can relieve you of your ability to read and comprehend long texts, lists, and warnings, then maybe you will understand how ridiculous this view is.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
I hope your argument isn't that only white people can exercise reason. If you have a mental illness you can go to the store and buy rat poison and eat it. The law doesn't address this by prohibiting rodenticides. If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity. Acting within reason in that context is getting treatment, which is a whole different set of laws.
- Retric 3y ago
  This isn’t about extremely dumb behavior, this is about extreme consequences for reasonable actions. If you walk up to a food truck you shouldn’t need to worry about long term mercury exposure from a single lunch. But the same is true if you happen to eat the same item from the same truck for 30 years. The maximum allowable exposure from food is very different between those two cases. But the second case isn’t unreasonable so that’s what the standard should be set for.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    It seems like the main issue here is that the level of "informed" has to scale with the level of danger and surprise. If the product is bread and "wheat" is listed as an ingredient, someone with a gluten allergy can be reasonably expected to suss this out. If the product is a granola bar and it contains shellfish, maybe this should be separately noted and not just somewhere in the middle of the ingredients list. If the product contains unsafe levels of mercury, the words "This Product Contains Unsafe Levels Of Mercury" better be featured at least as prominently as the name of the product.
- riversflow 3y ago
  My argument is that you are picking a specific group and saying the law is only for them. >If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity The law can make it so you have guardrail on your roof if it is publicly accessible. The law can also make you put up suicide guards if it's really a problem, all of my favorite bridge have them now. > The law doesn't address this by prohibiting rodenticides. Rat poison has actually been getting more scrutiny lately, the traditional pellet form was banned this year in favor of bricks in the US, and non-professional exterminators are limited to buying it a pound at a time. Also, rats are a real pressing problem that is being handled with rat poison. Without it, we go back to food security problems related to controlling pest populations. The same can't be said in reverse, we don't have a real, pressing problem with an overabundance of safety.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > My argument is that you are picking a specific group and saying the law is only for them. I'm saying that people can make mistakes and incur the consequences of those mistakes. The only way to prevent this is to remove all choice. This has nothing to do with whether you have some kind of disability. Have someone read it to you, use a magnifying glass, look it up on the internet with a screen reader, buy it from a store you trust not to carry controversial products, do as you like. > The law can make it so you have guardrail on your roof if it is publicly accessible. The law can also make you put up suicide guards if it's really a problem, all of my favorite bridge have them now. Guardrails are for preventing accidents, not purposeful action. You can't convert the entire world into a padded room. Suicide guards are a political maneuver meant to demonstrate something being done when politicians don't want to address underlying causes, not any kind of solution when there are an unending number of other bridges or tall buildings etc. Their purpose is to prevent enough people from jumping off the same bridge for a newspaper to put a morbid number in a headline, when they should be addressing why those people wanted to jump. > Rat poison has actually been getting more scrutiny lately, the traditional pellet form was banned this year in favor of bricks in the US, and non-professional exterminators are limited to buying it a pound at a time. Excellent example of regulation created by the need of legislators to be seen doing something even when nothing needs doing. Poisons aren't rare. You can also buy a bottle of methanol, or various cleaning solvents, petroleum products, coolants etc. Many over the counter drugs are fatal in high doses. Someone could drown, in water. Which is also fatal if you drink too much. Or too little. Danger is everywhere and it's fine. > The same can't be said in reverse, we don't have a real, pressing problem with an overabundance of safety. That's exactly what we have. Safety measures with body counts. Mandating inaction in cases of uncertainty is a harm in every case where something is better than nothing.
Exoristos 3y ago
Do you really have any idea what a body of laws would look like that treated the public as though everyone has "dementia, ... a stroke," and "macular degeneration"?
- ben_w 3y ago
  "Everyone has" goes beyond what the op wrote. "Anyone could have" is closer. From what little of various laws I've looked at (with the huge caveat that I'm not a lawyer), I think they are written to assume the general public doesn't know what's going on most of the time.
ben_w 3y ago
> Perhaps one day someone you know will get dementia To further this point with anecdotes, both my mother and my grandmother had dementia. Gran started a pot of water boiling, left the room, forgot about it, and thought the subsequent smoke alarm was her neighbours'. Mum stopped being able to count past four, and lost general concept of things existing on the left side of objects from her PoV[0]. When my mum noticed my gran had forgotten to renew her road tax (and noticed this six months after it had expired), she hid the car keys until gran forgot she had a car. When my mum got dementia herself, a similar thing happened. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispatial_neglect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispatial_neglect which is distinct from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonymous_hemianopsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonymous_hemianopsia — eating dinner, thinking she'd finished, but left half of her plate was full of food she couldn't see until we rotated it 180°, sketching my face and missing my right (her left), that thing with the clock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AllochiriaClock.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AllochiriaClock.png

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

I hope your argument isn't that only white people can exercise reason. If you have a mental illness you can go to the store and buy rat poison and eat it. The law doesn't address this by prohibiting rodenticides. If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity. Acting within reason in that context is getting treatment, which is a whole different set of laws.

Retric 3y ago
This isn’t about extremely dumb behavior, this is about extreme consequences for reasonable actions. If you walk up to a food truck you shouldn’t need to worry about long term mercury exposure from a single lunch. But the same is true if you happen to eat the same item from the same truck for 30 years. The maximum allowable exposure from food is very different between those two cases. But the second case isn’t unreasonable so that’s what the standard should be set for.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  It seems like the main issue here is that the level of "informed" has to scale with the level of danger and surprise. If the product is bread and "wheat" is listed as an ingredient, someone with a gluten allergy can be reasonably expected to suss this out. If the product is a granola bar and it contains shellfish, maybe this should be separately noted and not just somewhere in the middle of the ingredients list. If the product contains unsafe levels of mercury, the words "This Product Contains Unsafe Levels Of Mercury" better be featured at least as prominently as the name of the product.
riversflow 3y ago
My argument is that you are picking a specific group and saying the law is only for them. >If you think you can fly and jump off the roof of a parking structure, the government can't disable gravity The law can make it so you have guardrail on your roof if it is publicly accessible. The law can also make you put up suicide guards if it's really a problem, all of my favorite bridge have them now. > The law doesn't address this by prohibiting rodenticides. Rat poison has actually been getting more scrutiny lately, the traditional pellet form was banned this year in favor of bricks in the US, and non-professional exterminators are limited to buying it a pound at a time. Also, rats are a real pressing problem that is being handled with rat poison. Without it, we go back to food security problems related to controlling pest populations. The same can't be said in reverse, we don't have a real, pressing problem with an overabundance of safety.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > My argument is that you are picking a specific group and saying the law is only for them. I'm saying that people can make mistakes and incur the consequences of those mistakes. The only way to prevent this is to remove all choice. This has nothing to do with whether you have some kind of disability. Have someone read it to you, use a magnifying glass, look it up on the internet with a screen reader, buy it from a store you trust not to carry controversial products, do as you like. > The law can make it so you have guardrail on your roof if it is publicly accessible. The law can also make you put up suicide guards if it's really a problem, all of my favorite bridge have them now. Guardrails are for preventing accidents, not purposeful action. You can't convert the entire world into a padded room. Suicide guards are a political maneuver meant to demonstrate something being done when politicians don't want to address underlying causes, not any kind of solution when there are an unending number of other bridges or tall buildings etc. Their purpose is to prevent enough people from jumping off the same bridge for a newspaper to put a morbid number in a headline, when they should be addressing why those people wanted to jump. > Rat poison has actually been getting more scrutiny lately, the traditional pellet form was banned this year in favor of bricks in the US, and non-professional exterminators are limited to buying it a pound at a time. Excellent example of regulation created by the need of legislators to be seen doing something even when nothing needs doing. Poisons aren't rare. You can also buy a bottle of methanol, or various cleaning solvents, petroleum products, coolants etc. Many over the counter drugs are fatal in high doses. Someone could drown, in water. Which is also fatal if you drink too much. Or too little. Danger is everywhere and it's fine. > The same can't be said in reverse, we don't have a real, pressing problem with an overabundance of safety. That's exactly what we have. Safety measures with body counts. Mandating inaction in cases of uncertainty is a harm in every case where something is better than nothing.

Exoristos 3y ago

Do you really have any idea what a body of laws would look like that treated the public as though everyone has "dementia, ... a stroke," and "macular degeneration"?

ben_w 3y ago
"Everyone has" goes beyond what the op wrote. "Anyone could have" is closer. From what little of various laws I've looked at (with the huge caveat that I'm not a lawyer), I think they are written to assume the general public doesn't know what's going on most of the time.

ben_w 3y ago

> Perhaps one day someone you know will get dementia To further this point with anecdotes, both my mother and my grandmother had dementia. Gran started a pot of water boiling, left the room, forgot about it, and thought the subsequent smoke alarm was her neighbours'. Mum stopped being able to count past four, and lost general concept of things existing on the left side of objects from her PoV[0]. When my mum noticed my gran had forgotten to renew her road tax (and noticed this six months after it had expired), she hid the car keys until gran forgot she had a car. When my mum got dementia herself, a similar thing happened. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispatial_neglect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispatial_neglect which is distinct from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonymous_hemianopsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonymous_hemianopsia — eating dinner, thinking she'd finished, but left half of her plate was full of food she couldn't see until we rotated it 180°, sketching my face and missing my right (her left), that thing with the clock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AllochiriaClock.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AllochiriaClock.png