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Yes. Imagine if they put lithium in the water based on the evidence that microdosing it calms the population and reduces violence and overall mental health issu
by SilasX 3y ago
Yes. Imagine if they put lithium in the water based on the evidence that microdosing it calms the population and reduces violence and overall mental health issues. That atomic number is a lot more controversial!
- woodruffw 3y agoIt should not be especially astonishing that public health programs for dental health and public immunity are substantially less controversial than putting a mood stabilizer in the water would be. Why conflate these as if one implies the other?
- ryandrake 3y agoActually, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea, IF it could be shown to 1. be effective and 2. cost the public less than the aggregate sum of individual mental health mitigations. A more mentally healthy, less violent, less aggressive, less belligerent society sounds great to me.
- rokkitmensch 3y agoBring on the Soma, Dr. Orwell!
- voisin 3y agoDr Huxley! (Soma was Brave New World.)
- rokkitmensch 3y agoahhh I get my visionaries mixed up and fail to double check my citations!
- salawat 3y agoSomeone didn't pay attention to what happened to Miranda in Firefly. Furthermore, as others mentioned, Huxley would like a word.
- SilasX 3y agoBecause nature doesn’t care that one is intended for (m)ental health and one is intended for (d)ental health. They both are major interventions whose side effects are hard to isolate and reason about. What a difference an atomic number makes!
- woodruffw 3y agoI don’t understand how nature enters into this argument. The decision to put fluoride in municipal water supplies is based on its effect on dental health, not a priori reasoning about elemental weights. (Despite your assertion, the effects of fluoride, including their effects beyond safe levels in water, have been extremely well studied. Fluoride is well understood not to accumulate in soft tissue, and is present to some degree in much of the food you eat. If you drink a cup of tea a day, you’re already getting 6-8x as much fluoride as you’re getting from your municipal water supply.)
- SilasX 3y ago>The decision to put fluoride in municipal water supplies is based on its effect on dental health, not a priori reasoning about elemental weights. Yes, and the decision to put lithium in municipal water supplies would be based on its effect on mental health, not on a priori reasoning about elemental weights. Do you remember the comment you made? If not, I'll quote it for you: >It should not be especially astonishing that public health programs for dental health and public immunity are substantially less controversial than putting a mood stabilizer in the water would be. Your comment was an attempt to differentiate the two policies on the grounds that one is "for dental health" and one is "for mental health". I was replying that "what they're intended for" has no causal power (and thus shouldn't affect how controversial it is) -- the chemical mechanisms that play out don't look at policymaker intent. I don't know what you find so objectionable about that point. As a courtesy, if you switch to a different, better argument, you shouldn't conflate it with the bad argument I was just replying to. But sure, I'll reply to the different argument. >Despite your assertion, the effects of fluoride, including their effects beyond safe levels in water, have been extremely well studied. Its understood now, was less so at the time. Doing it at the time seemed just as reckless as the lithium intervention, because the water supply is a system with many different touch points and many different interactions, same as with lithium and brains.