15 ms·

Town has no cell service, so the 'electrosensitive' have made it home

37 points by tapper 2y ago

throwup238 2y ago
Previous discussion (11 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41881527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41881527
whatshisface 2y ago
There are two ways to be in bed with an ache: lying and turning. If you had an undiagnosable chronic illness with flareups, would you content yourself with your life being essentially over, or would you keep trying to alter your environment until other people thought you had a weird lifestyle? I think pretty much all of the ambitious professionals on this forum would be wrapping themselves in tin foil like a baked potato long before they gave up on being alert and active enough to self-actualize. If you thought non-ionizing radiation only coupled to the human body thermally, it could instead be trying gluten-free, or notroopics, or buying a lot of air filters, and if your illness went into remission after starting you wouldn't want to switch back and forth twenty times to build up a statistical sample.
- BJones12 2y ago
  > If you thought non-ionizing radiation only coupled to the human body thermally, it could instead be trying gluten-free, or notroopics, or buying a lot of air filters, and if your illness went into remission after starting you wouldn't want to switch back and forth twenty times to build up a statistical sample. I think it's underappreciated that superstition is rational is when the cost of experimentation is high.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > I think it's underappreciated that superstition is rational is when the cost of experimentation is high. I believe your observation is underappreciated.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  You'd need only 3 or 4 times for a very useful sample with basically the same applicability as 20. If it's a low cost change, sure, you may not even question if it's doing anything. But if it's a major change in lifestyle, I would absolutely try to check if it's working. Even more because if it's only incidentally working, it could stop working at any time and leave you knowing nothing useful right at the point where you are both sick again and paying the cost of that lifestyle change. Do that again and again and you are sure to destroy your life.
- LorenPechtel 2y ago
  You don't need a bunch of cycling back and forth. A few times is plenty. I have every-varying food sensitivities (mostly exposure causes sensitivity which will eventually fade if I leave the offender alone for long enough) and I've been around the loop of figuring out what is it now many, many times. (At least to the degree I can figure it out--more than once it's clearly been an impurity in an item. And you often don't know--I know "artificial flavors" is very likely to be a problem--but what exactly? I'm no chemophobe--second on my list of likely to be a problem is "natural flavors".) Rarely does it take me more than one repeat to be confident of what is bothering me.
- nitwit005 2y ago
  Since time is part of your data, you can often become extremely confident in a treatment with a very quick trial. I recently tried an allergy medication. Problem cleared up under an hour after I took a pill, re-appeared next day with no treatment, and then once again cleared up under an hour after taking pill. It's extremely unlikely my body decided to randomly get healthier after taking medication, and unhealthy when I stopped. A placebo effect is possible of course, but if it was actually eliminating the symptoms, that's still a good result for the individual.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    You're dealing with something that can change in an hour, but a sampling of general health issues (hangovers, susceptibility to viral infection, healing of muscles and soft tissues after normal wear and tear) shows that the time constant ranges from days to months.
    - nitwit005 2y ago
      The same principle applies, but you need more time for the trials, rather than 20 trials.
lukaslalinsky 2y ago
I have not read article, because it's paywalled, but I was very sad reading the previous comments. Over the last few hundreds of years, the humanity has changed so much in the environment. Implications of things were not fully understood at the time they were introduced. I'm not saying whether these people are right or wrong, but calling them crazy is not really serving anything. Just imagine how people would look at you of you claimed you have serious health problems because of this wonderful new material called asbestos.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  I think the idea that the human body and brain is somehow inherently immune to any effect from radio waves, with no such mechanism even proposed as to why this might even be the case, is just as much a belief in faith. This one of those questions where an experimental design to get to the ground truth is just impossible. Everyone on earth is exposed to radiowaves, so to establish a demographically matched control population to a radio wave laden case population is simply impossible, short of raising up a large sample size of humans in a lead lined vault deep under ground. And even then, you can’t control for every latent factor.
  - plorg 2y ago
    Is there a proposed mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation is said to be harmful? I am willing to believe it could be (I would guess at certain wavelengths more than others if so), but absent any statistical evidence of such an effect and without a testable mechanism of action it is just as unreasonable to believe the contrary assertion. I haven't heard of either, so I default to the position of if this was such a significant problem we would be able to prove it by now. Unless or until that happens it's not something we need to worry about. But absolutely keep doing research. So one thing a person could do would be to identify radio emitters and compare the rates of, say, cancer among people living within a certain radius. Even if the planet is awash in electromagnetic radiation the intensity drops off significantly according to the distance to the emitter. Large emitters are well-documented so it shouldn't be hard to find this information.
hoppyhoppy2 2y ago
Gift link: https://wapo.st/4eLUEmn https://wapo.st/4eLUEmn
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/hXwpw https://archive.ph/hXwpw (gift link didn't open article for me [2 devices]. thnx for trying tho).
blacksmith_tb 2y ago
It reminds me of Todd Haynes _Safe_ [1] where it's never clear what's wrong exactly with the main character, but there's no doubt she has a plenty of toxic social relationships. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_(1995_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_(1995_film)
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
I've been reading about folks moving to the Radio Quiet Zone for a long time. I had some fear that the number of e-refugees (for lack of a better term) would grow to a counterproductive level. Thankfully, the article numbers them in the dozens. If they have more relief in their life + aren't a burden to others, what better outcome could I hope for? disclosure: married to a chemical hypersensitive for 25y, who fortunately found some peace elsewhere
latchkey 2y ago
I'm pretty proud of the fact that I've never been through an airport scanner. People treat me crazy for it and I probably am. "It is perfectly safe, you get more radiation from the plane ride." My issue is that I do not trust the operators of the machine. I do not trust the safety protocols in place. We constantly tool on the TSA and its security theater filled with incompetent people. So, why do we trust them to operate these machines? What if it malfunctions or isn't properly serviced? I was just at an airport, watched someone move a bit, and have to get immediately rescanned again. 2x the radiation, 2x the chances something goes wrong. The odds are against you. Why are we so complacent in their usage? The only way around this is to suffer humiliation. An invasive pat down where they make you wait an inordinate amount of time for someone to come along, slowly put on gloves, explain to you the same set of rules you've heard a million times, and then literally touch your entire body, including brushing up against your genitals. I have actually noticed some guards enjoying it more than others. In the end, I feel it is worth the 10 minutes of inconvenience and the humiliation (which I'm pretty immune to at this point in my life). I get to the airport early anyway. Somehow the people in the article have gotten it into their heads that the only solution to their issues are to move into the middle of nowhere. That said, I can understand their situation too and feel empathy for them.
- BadHumans 2y ago
  Why not just get TSA Precheck at this point?
  - latchkey 2y ago
    I have that, along with global entry, and even had clear for a while. I didn't renew cause it wasn't in every airport and because it really wasn't any faster than precheck. Oh and on Spirit biz class, you even get to skip the line. None of that is a guarantee that they don't require you to go through the scanner. I just flew roundtrip last week, in both airports they were making everyone go through the scanner.
- bawolff 2y ago
  > So, why do we trust them to operate these machines Because their operation is just pushing a button. They are not responsible for the safety protocols, etc. That is somebody elses job. Like if you dont like the machines fine, but their safety (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with the TSA agent.
LorenPechtel 2y ago
It's a crazy field. It's quite obvious that *most* of the effects are purely psychosomatic. The effects are related to appearances rather than reality--for example, there is a small correlation between visible high tension power lines and health. But not to the actual EMF strength. Same thing you see elsewhere--people with health issues moving to undesirable but not bad housing because that's what they can afford. I've also been in multiple online discussions where various people were sensitive to sounds that most people don't hear--typically devices that messed with magnetic fields at frequencies in the ultrasonic range. (Say, many switching power supplies.) Something a little bit loose wiggles in the field and you get an ultrasonic whine. None have struck me as kooks--but consider what happens when someone doesn't pay enough attention to detail. Is it the Wi-Fi radiation or it's power supply? Plenty of people fall for the obvious item in figuring out food reactions, I would expect to see some in other areas. And what if there actually is something of a basis? We have plenty of examples of inadvertent AM radios, including from dental fillings. Clearly, it's possible to receive radio energy in freaky ways--the AM radio is the obvious case because it carries a signal whose reception manifests in a detectable way. What if the "electrosensitives" are actually people who have some natural resonance in the brain with some common transmitter? It wouldn't take a lot of energy to generate spurious brain activity. Mistaken generalization certainly seems within the realm of possibility. Note that I'm *not* suggesting any direct harm here, just interference.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jerf 2y ago
  I'm open to both harm and interference, but what keeps me skeptical about these people's claims is that the effect level always seems to be hovering at the phantom p-ghost level... that is, exactly the level you'd expect if you keep running low powered experiments and occasionally, whether deliberately or otherwise, you end up with a p-hacked experiment that seems to maybe suggest something is there, until you look again. It's a common pattern and generally means no, there is nothing there, just p-hacked phantoms. If you claim Wifi gives you a headache within a few minutes, and I put you in a Faraday cage with a Wifi router, and your headache flares up precisely when the wifi router's lights blinks, but not when it is actually on, because for the purposes of the experiment the two indications have been severed, then that's pretty conclusive in my opinion that there's nothing there for that person. And that experiment has been done, and that's exactly the result that came out. Now, that doesn't therefore prove that no radio waves ever affect any human in any way, and it also doesn't prove that there isn't "something" going on in the person reporting headaches (they could getting headaches and just dead wrong about why; goodness knows I've spent enough of my life in that exact situation myself, I'm in no position to complain! add a bit of trying to get the result they expect and/or want and it's not hard to understand what's going on), but it does seem to leave us with a dearth of evidence to date that radio waves have immediately detectable impacts.
LiquidPolymer 2y ago
I don’t know what to make of people in this situation. Some claim it’s obviously psychosomatic. Possibly, but humans are actively evolving genetically and is it possible that some small group is sensitive via an undiscovered genetic quirk? I’m super curious about this.
- MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
  If they're actually sensitive, which I don't think has been proven one way or the other, then I don't think it's some newly evolved trait. Rather, I think it's the artifacts of traits we've evolved away from resurfacing. Birds have EM-sensitive receptors in their retinas, which is how their internal compasses work. Some aboriginal people have been known to always know which way is north, even in the dark, which I wouldn't be surprised to learn if it's something similar. Humans also used to have senses of smell that rival dogs, as evidenced by our oversized nasal cavities and that one woman in the UK who can smell cancer. We've lost a great deal of useful physical abilities since the advent of intelligence, and getting a handful of people that randomly got some of it back isn't too surprising to me. It would be interesting if we could isolate such things and maybe bring them back for everyone.
_xerces_ 2y ago
If enough of these crazies move to Greenbank it will at least help keep the area a radio quiet zone, so good for the observatory!
amatecha 2y ago
Ah man, don't go in there with a shortwave receiver and scan through the dozens/hundreds of stations you'll pick up anywhere in North America (or really anywhere in the world)... :\
jl6 2y ago
If someone identifies as electrosensitive, and moving to a low-EM zone helps relieve their symptoms, it seems more likely we have something to learn about the nature of psychosomatic illnesses than something to learn about radiation physics.
onewheeltom 2y ago
There are many things that can not be explained. I am glad that they have found relief.
drweevil 2y ago
I've seen countless articles like this one, and what irks me most about them is the almost exclusive focus by their authors on these people and their ailments. It's like the long-time residents of these tiny communities--and the effects the influx of these people are having on them--are an afterthought not worth considering.
phillipseamore 2y ago
I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCK26X-U678 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCK26X-U678 NRQZ used for testing 5G above legal limits and I guess none of the electosensitive noticed.

37 points by tapper 2y ago

Previous discussion (11 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41881527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41881527

whatshisface 2y ago

There are two ways to be in bed with an ache: lying and turning. If you had an undiagnosable chronic illness with flareups, would you content yourself with your life being essentially over, or would you keep trying to alter your environment until other people thought you had a weird lifestyle? I think pretty much all of the ambitious professionals on this forum would be wrapping themselves in tin foil like a baked potato long before they gave up on being alert and active enough to self-actualize. If you thought non-ionizing radiation only coupled to the human body thermally, it could instead be trying gluten-free, or notroopics, or buying a lot of air filters, and if your illness went into remission after starting you wouldn't want to switch back and forth twenty times to build up a statistical sample.

BJones12 2y ago
> If you thought non-ionizing radiation only coupled to the human body thermally, it could instead be trying gluten-free, or notroopics, or buying a lot of air filters, and if your illness went into remission after starting you wouldn't want to switch back and forth twenty times to build up a statistical sample. I think it's underappreciated that superstition is rational is when the cost of experimentation is high.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > I think it's underappreciated that superstition is rational is when the cost of experimentation is high. I believe your observation is underappreciated.
marcosdumay 2y ago
You'd need only 3 or 4 times for a very useful sample with basically the same applicability as 20. If it's a low cost change, sure, you may not even question if it's doing anything. But if it's a major change in lifestyle, I would absolutely try to check if it's working. Even more because if it's only incidentally working, it could stop working at any time and leave you knowing nothing useful right at the point where you are both sick again and paying the cost of that lifestyle change. Do that again and again and you are sure to destroy your life.
LorenPechtel 2y ago
You don't need a bunch of cycling back and forth. A few times is plenty. I have every-varying food sensitivities (mostly exposure causes sensitivity which will eventually fade if I leave the offender alone for long enough) and I've been around the loop of figuring out what is it now many, many times. (At least to the degree I can figure it out--more than once it's clearly been an impurity in an item. And you often don't know--I know "artificial flavors" is very likely to be a problem--but what exactly? I'm no chemophobe--second on my list of likely to be a problem is "natural flavors".) Rarely does it take me more than one repeat to be confident of what is bothering me.
nitwit005 2y ago
Since time is part of your data, you can often become extremely confident in a treatment with a very quick trial. I recently tried an allergy medication. Problem cleared up under an hour after I took a pill, re-appeared next day with no treatment, and then once again cleared up under an hour after taking pill. It's extremely unlikely my body decided to randomly get healthier after taking medication, and unhealthy when I stopped. A placebo effect is possible of course, but if it was actually eliminating the symptoms, that's still a good result for the individual.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  You're dealing with something that can change in an hour, but a sampling of general health issues (hangovers, susceptibility to viral infection, healing of muscles and soft tissues after normal wear and tear) shows that the time constant ranges from days to months.
  - nitwit005 2y ago
    The same principle applies, but you need more time for the trials, rather than 20 trials.

lukaslalinsky 2y ago

I have not read article, because it's paywalled, but I was very sad reading the previous comments. Over the last few hundreds of years, the humanity has changed so much in the environment. Implications of things were not fully understood at the time they were introduced. I'm not saying whether these people are right or wrong, but calling them crazy is not really serving anything. Just imagine how people would look at you of you claimed you have serious health problems because of this wonderful new material called asbestos.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
I think the idea that the human body and brain is somehow inherently immune to any effect from radio waves, with no such mechanism even proposed as to why this might even be the case, is just as much a belief in faith. This one of those questions where an experimental design to get to the ground truth is just impossible. Everyone on earth is exposed to radiowaves, so to establish a demographically matched control population to a radio wave laden case population is simply impossible, short of raising up a large sample size of humans in a lead lined vault deep under ground. And even then, you can’t control for every latent factor.
- plorg 2y ago
  Is there a proposed mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation is said to be harmful? I am willing to believe it could be (I would guess at certain wavelengths more than others if so), but absent any statistical evidence of such an effect and without a testable mechanism of action it is just as unreasonable to believe the contrary assertion. I haven't heard of either, so I default to the position of if this was such a significant problem we would be able to prove it by now. Unless or until that happens it's not something we need to worry about. But absolutely keep doing research. So one thing a person could do would be to identify radio emitters and compare the rates of, say, cancer among people living within a certain radius. Even if the planet is awash in electromagnetic radiation the intensity drops off significantly according to the distance to the emitter. Large emitters are well-documented so it shouldn't be hard to find this information.

hoppyhoppy2 2y ago

Gift link: https://wapo.st/4eLUEmn https://wapo.st/4eLUEmn

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
https://archive.ph/hXwpw https://archive.ph/hXwpw (gift link didn't open article for me [2 devices]. thnx for trying tho).

blacksmith_tb 2y ago

It reminds me of Todd Haynes _Safe_ [1] where it's never clear what's wrong exactly with the main character, but there's no doubt she has a plenty of toxic social relationships. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_(1995_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_(1995_film)

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

I've been reading about folks moving to the Radio Quiet Zone for a long time. I had some fear that the number of e-refugees (for lack of a better term) would grow to a counterproductive level. Thankfully, the article numbers them in the dozens. If they have more relief in their life + aren't a burden to others, what better outcome could I hope for? disclosure: married to a chemical hypersensitive for 25y, who fortunately found some peace elsewhere

latchkey 2y ago

I'm pretty proud of the fact that I've never been through an airport scanner. People treat me crazy for it and I probably am. "It is perfectly safe, you get more radiation from the plane ride." My issue is that I do not trust the operators of the machine. I do not trust the safety protocols in place. We constantly tool on the TSA and its security theater filled with incompetent people. So, why do we trust them to operate these machines? What if it malfunctions or isn't properly serviced? I was just at an airport, watched someone move a bit, and have to get immediately rescanned again. 2x the radiation, 2x the chances something goes wrong. The odds are against you. Why are we so complacent in their usage? The only way around this is to suffer humiliation. An invasive pat down where they make you wait an inordinate amount of time for someone to come along, slowly put on gloves, explain to you the same set of rules you've heard a million times, and then literally touch your entire body, including brushing up against your genitals. I have actually noticed some guards enjoying it more than others. In the end, I feel it is worth the 10 minutes of inconvenience and the humiliation (which I'm pretty immune to at this point in my life). I get to the airport early anyway. Somehow the people in the article have gotten it into their heads that the only solution to their issues are to move into the middle of nowhere. That said, I can understand their situation too and feel empathy for them.

BadHumans 2y ago
Why not just get TSA Precheck at this point?
- latchkey 2y ago
  I have that, along with global entry, and even had clear for a while. I didn't renew cause it wasn't in every airport and because it really wasn't any faster than precheck. Oh and on Spirit biz class, you even get to skip the line. None of that is a guarantee that they don't require you to go through the scanner. I just flew roundtrip last week, in both airports they were making everyone go through the scanner.
bawolff 2y ago
> So, why do we trust them to operate these machines Because their operation is just pushing a button. They are not responsible for the safety protocols, etc. That is somebody elses job. Like if you dont like the machines fine, but their safety (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with the TSA agent.

LorenPechtel 2y ago

It's a crazy field. It's quite obvious that *most* of the effects are purely psychosomatic. The effects are related to appearances rather than reality--for example, there is a small correlation between visible high tension power lines and health. But not to the actual EMF strength. Same thing you see elsewhere--people with health issues moving to undesirable but not bad housing because that's what they can afford. I've also been in multiple online discussions where various people were sensitive to sounds that most people don't hear--typically devices that messed with magnetic fields at frequencies in the ultrasonic range. (Say, many switching power supplies.) Something a little bit loose wiggles in the field and you get an ultrasonic whine. None have struck me as kooks--but consider what happens when someone doesn't pay enough attention to detail. Is it the Wi-Fi radiation or it's power supply? Plenty of people fall for the obvious item in figuring out food reactions, I would expect to see some in other areas. And what if there actually is something of a basis? We have plenty of examples of inadvertent AM radios, including from dental fillings. Clearly, it's possible to receive radio energy in freaky ways--the AM radio is the obvious case because it carries a signal whose reception manifests in a detectable way. What if the "electrosensitives" are actually people who have some natural resonance in the brain with some common transmitter? It wouldn't take a lot of energy to generate spurious brain activity. Mistaken generalization certainly seems within the realm of possibility. Note that I'm *not* suggesting any direct harm here, just interference.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jerf 2y ago
I'm open to both harm and interference, but what keeps me skeptical about these people's claims is that the effect level always seems to be hovering at the phantom p-ghost level... that is, exactly the level you'd expect if you keep running low powered experiments and occasionally, whether deliberately or otherwise, you end up with a p-hacked experiment that seems to maybe suggest something is there, until you look again. It's a common pattern and generally means no, there is nothing there, just p-hacked phantoms. If you claim Wifi gives you a headache within a few minutes, and I put you in a Faraday cage with a Wifi router, and your headache flares up precisely when the wifi router's lights blinks, but not when it is actually on, because for the purposes of the experiment the two indications have been severed, then that's pretty conclusive in my opinion that there's nothing there for that person. And that experiment has been done, and that's exactly the result that came out. Now, that doesn't therefore prove that no radio waves ever affect any human in any way, and it also doesn't prove that there isn't "something" going on in the person reporting headaches (they could getting headaches and just dead wrong about why; goodness knows I've spent enough of my life in that exact situation myself, I'm in no position to complain! add a bit of trying to get the result they expect and/or want and it's not hard to understand what's going on), but it does seem to leave us with a dearth of evidence to date that radio waves have immediately detectable impacts.

LiquidPolymer 2y ago

I don’t know what to make of people in this situation. Some claim it’s obviously psychosomatic. Possibly, but humans are actively evolving genetically and is it possible that some small group is sensitive via an undiscovered genetic quirk? I’m super curious about this.

MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
If they're actually sensitive, which I don't think has been proven one way or the other, then I don't think it's some newly evolved trait. Rather, I think it's the artifacts of traits we've evolved away from resurfacing. Birds have EM-sensitive receptors in their retinas, which is how their internal compasses work. Some aboriginal people have been known to always know which way is north, even in the dark, which I wouldn't be surprised to learn if it's something similar. Humans also used to have senses of smell that rival dogs, as evidenced by our oversized nasal cavities and that one woman in the UK who can smell cancer. We've lost a great deal of useful physical abilities since the advent of intelligence, and getting a handful of people that randomly got some of it back isn't too surprising to me. It would be interesting if we could isolate such things and maybe bring them back for everyone.

_xerces_ 2y ago

If enough of these crazies move to Greenbank it will at least help keep the area a radio quiet zone, so good for the observatory!

amatecha 2y ago

Ah man, don't go in there with a shortwave receiver and scan through the dozens/hundreds of stations you'll pick up anywhere in North America (or really anywhere in the world)... :\

jl6 2y ago

If someone identifies as electrosensitive, and moving to a low-EM zone helps relieve their symptoms, it seems more likely we have something to learn about the nature of psychosomatic illnesses than something to learn about radiation physics.

onewheeltom 2y ago

There are many things that can not be explained. I am glad that they have found relief.

drweevil 2y ago

I've seen countless articles like this one, and what irks me most about them is the almost exclusive focus by their authors on these people and their ailments. It's like the long-time residents of these tiny communities--and the effects the influx of these people are having on them--are an afterthought not worth considering.

phillipseamore 2y ago

I'll just leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCK26X-U678 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCK26X-U678 NRQZ used for testing 5G above legal limits and I guess none of the electosensitive noticed.