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> This is counterintuitive and sounds like it is trying a bit too hard to be clever. Indeed. You could make the same counterintuitive and clever point about a
by amadeuspagel 3y ago
> This is counterintuitive and sounds like it is trying a bit too hard to be clever.
Indeed.
You could make the same counterintuitive and clever point about any bad thing, pointing out that there are things one might do to reduce that thing, which have other costs, and aren't worth it, but for many bad things that would not sound counterintuitive and clever, but deranged.
Consider the following statement:
> The optimal amount of salt in food is non-zero.
That's true, and it's not clever at all, we need salt. It's not that trying to remove all salt from food would be too expensive.
But consider also:
> The optimal amount of radioactive material in food is non-zero.
We might defend this in a similar clever counter-intuitive sense. But it's a completely different statement, and it's wrong.
EDIT: The three replies making the same point about bananas are a great illustration of the desire (and failure) to be clever and counter-intuitive that's also evident in the article. We don't eat bananas for their radioactive material. We don't need to eat radioactive material.
- krallja 3y agoI have some bad news for you about bananas.
- konschubert 3y ago> But it's a completely different statement, and it's wrong. Well, then I have some bad news for you regarding bananas. Which is funny, because it proves the point of the article: The optimal amount of [bad] is usually nonzero because otherwise you have give up too much of [good].
- defrost 3y agoNot just bananas .. I can't think of any foods that have zero radioactive material in them. The world is naturally awash with unstable isotopes and low level cosmic radiation.
- tremon 3y ago> The optimal amount of radioactive material in food is non-zero. But this is true! Everything except lead is radioactive in some capacity. Pretty sure us humans cannot live on lead alone.
- Alpha3031 3y agoLead-208 is the heaviest "stable" nuclide, assuming proton decay is not possible, but it is not the only stable nuclide. Excluding isotopes like argon-36 (which has an energetically permitted double electron capture to sulfur-36) and not considering possible spontaneous fissions for those A>92, there are still 146 nuclides (all of which Z<67) that are stable. Incidentally, astute readers that have picked up on the fact that Pb has Z=82 which is larger than 66 should pat themselves on the back and note that the 4 isotopes all have a yet-to-be-observed decay to mercury, with half life of >1.4×10^20 years for 204 and experimental lower bounds of >10^21 for the other 3. Theoretically, 208 takes >10^124, which means 207 is "more" stable.