4 ms·

People in a few decades will think we were crazy for packaging 100% of our food in plastic, the same way we think putting asbestos everywhere was crazy back the

People in a few decades will think we were crazy for packaging 100% of our food in plastic, the same way we think putting asbestos everywhere was crazy back then. The amount of strokes and aneurysms that are gonna happen in 20~50 years is gonna be truly fantastic.

awestroke 2y ago
People in a few decades may have too much microplastics in their brain for such thoughts
9283409232 2y ago
It does make me wonder how many strokes or aneurysms in otherwise healthy people can be attributed to plastics. We don't have the data for that but maybe random aneurysms aren't so random after all?
ImHereToVote 2y ago
We didn't. The experts did.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Not even the experts, the MBAs did. Then the JDs did the lobbying to make sure government agencies were powerless to stop them. In reality, there was not a single "expert" in the room. In fact, if you were "expert" in any field other than business or law, you were very likely removed as a candidate to even be one of the people chosen to be in the room long ago.
lm28469 2y ago
Try to wipe your mind and walk in a supermarket as if you've never been in one, nothing makes sense whatsoever. Same for roads in the cities, endless streams of 2000kg+ hunk of steel, plastic and glass, 95% of them transport about 80kg of human, 95% of the time they're just parked taking space for no reason. Most things we designed are just so fucking inefficient and borderline insane, humans are very adaptable and if you're born in this mess it just seems normal
- sympil 2y ago
  It is the era of extreme inefficiency and waste. We are local min/max machines and need government to direct us to the global min/max but it doesn’t do that.
  - short_sells_poo 2y ago
    That's because the at best, the government can be a penalty condition in the objective function, and recently it's effect has been almost completely eclipsed by the near term gains. I believe what we'd need is education. The more educated the masses are, the more likely it is that they vote for governments that have the long term interests in mind, and the more likely it is that the government itself will then prevent swings to short term thinking. There are many feedback loops in the system, and we are so far down the short term maximization route that it'll be mighty difficult to swing it back.
    - cheschire 2y ago
      The success of future education efforts is highly dependent on variables directly related to the success of past education efforts. We're talking multi-generational efforts necessary to overcome the inertia. Consider the ongoing racism and marginalism against a large portion of the population and the resistance it has to ongoing public education efforts. Consider the topic of evolution. Or vaccinations. Sure, we should ensure that those ready to learn are provided with the opportunity to do so, but we have to accept that not everyone is ready, and that is where government comes in.
    - cowfriend 2y ago
      > the government can be a penalty condition in the objective function, and recently it's effect has been almost completely eclipsed by the near term gains. You are forgetting about the influence of government subsidies. What would the housing market be like if home mortgage interest payments were not, and had never been deductible? Think back to the 70s, when mortgages had double-digit rates. Would the US be swamped in HFCS, would we be producing ethanol, were it not for subsidies? I agree with you on the importance of education. However, incentives matter, and government can incentivize both to the positive and negative.
BenFranklin100 2y ago
Devils advocate here: food has been packaged in plastics for decades and plastic containers have been around longer than that. If plastics were as damaging as you claim, wouldn’t we have already seen this in the epidemiology?
- fallinditch 2y ago
  Yes, I wondered this myself. I guess it's simply that it's taken a long time for the amount of micro plastics to become problematic. Some types of micro plastics come from disintegration of plastic materials, which takes time.
- butchkass 2y ago
  That’a fair point and I might be overpanicking. I could argue that it might be happening and we just don’t know about it, but from what I gathered, yes strokes are on the rise, but experts seem to believe it’s related to blood pressure. Although there probably weren’t as much microplastics when the last generation was born ; it’s now ubiquitous to the point of being found in the blood of fetuses. If gen Z and Alpha don’t die from aneurysms at 45, then yeah, I guess we could assume it isn’t dangerous. I’m just tired of this kind of things : conglomerates are putting X everywhere, and then we have to prove that X is indeed dangerous, when they should be the ones proving that it isn’t. All the while they’re lobbying billions of dollars to try and make the research as slow as possible so that they can get every last cent of profit before X gets banned.
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    > If gen Z and Alpha don’t die from aneurysms at 45, then yeah, I guess we could assume it isn’t dangerous. I think this is still overly alarmist. Plastic production basically started really ramping up in the 1950s in industrialized nations-- thats 75 years ago. Yes, you can argue that exposure might have increased significantly since (+ bioaccumulation etc.), but excess mortality should've been roughly proportional, and I'd argue that it's implausible for "plastic lethality" to stay hidden for so long (I fully agree that it's not pretty that the stuff is everywhere nowadays, but I think "next generation is all gonna die from this before they get 50" is just not reasonable to assume, and we arguably cause much bigger problems for the next generations already anyway). > I’m just tired of this kind of things : conglomerates are putting X everywhere, and then we have to prove that X is indeed dangerous, when they should be the ones proving that it isn’t. I think this is a luxury problem-- you might be very willing to forego all remotely risky innovations/technologies now-- but you are rich compared to a person 75 years ago (and we reaped lots of benefits from that risk already!). De-risking everything might look attractive in hindsight, but it is unclear what you would have lost to such a policy: Possibly a big chunk of modern material science, electronics, communication technology, ... It is easy to downplay all that today, and pretend we never really wanted smartphones anyway, but I'm skeptical that the average person a hundred years ago would have seen this in the same way.

awestroke 2y ago

People in a few decades may have too much microplastics in their brain for such thoughts

9283409232 2y ago

It does make me wonder how many strokes or aneurysms in otherwise healthy people can be attributed to plastics. We don't have the data for that but maybe random aneurysms aren't so random after all?

ImHereToVote 2y ago

We didn't. The experts did.

bilbo0s 2y ago
Not even the experts, the MBAs did. Then the JDs did the lobbying to make sure government agencies were powerless to stop them. In reality, there was not a single "expert" in the room. In fact, if you were "expert" in any field other than business or law, you were very likely removed as a candidate to even be one of the people chosen to be in the room long ago.

lm28469 2y ago

Try to wipe your mind and walk in a supermarket as if you've never been in one, nothing makes sense whatsoever. Same for roads in the cities, endless streams of 2000kg+ hunk of steel, plastic and glass, 95% of them transport about 80kg of human, 95% of the time they're just parked taking space for no reason. Most things we designed are just so fucking inefficient and borderline insane, humans are very adaptable and if you're born in this mess it just seems normal

sympil 2y ago
It is the era of extreme inefficiency and waste. We are local min/max machines and need government to direct us to the global min/max but it doesn’t do that.
- short_sells_poo 2y ago
  That's because the at best, the government can be a penalty condition in the objective function, and recently it's effect has been almost completely eclipsed by the near term gains. I believe what we'd need is education. The more educated the masses are, the more likely it is that they vote for governments that have the long term interests in mind, and the more likely it is that the government itself will then prevent swings to short term thinking. There are many feedback loops in the system, and we are so far down the short term maximization route that it'll be mighty difficult to swing it back.
  - cheschire 2y ago
    The success of future education efforts is highly dependent on variables directly related to the success of past education efforts. We're talking multi-generational efforts necessary to overcome the inertia. Consider the ongoing racism and marginalism against a large portion of the population and the resistance it has to ongoing public education efforts. Consider the topic of evolution. Or vaccinations. Sure, we should ensure that those ready to learn are provided with the opportunity to do so, but we have to accept that not everyone is ready, and that is where government comes in.
  - cowfriend 2y ago
    > the government can be a penalty condition in the objective function, and recently it's effect has been almost completely eclipsed by the near term gains. You are forgetting about the influence of government subsidies. What would the housing market be like if home mortgage interest payments were not, and had never been deductible? Think back to the 70s, when mortgages had double-digit rates. Would the US be swamped in HFCS, would we be producing ethanol, were it not for subsidies? I agree with you on the importance of education. However, incentives matter, and government can incentivize both to the positive and negative.

BenFranklin100 2y ago

Devils advocate here: food has been packaged in plastics for decades and plastic containers have been around longer than that. If plastics were as damaging as you claim, wouldn’t we have already seen this in the epidemiology?

fallinditch 2y ago
Yes, I wondered this myself. I guess it's simply that it's taken a long time for the amount of micro plastics to become problematic. Some types of micro plastics come from disintegration of plastic materials, which takes time.
butchkass 2y ago
That’a fair point and I might be overpanicking. I could argue that it might be happening and we just don’t know about it, but from what I gathered, yes strokes are on the rise, but experts seem to believe it’s related to blood pressure. Although there probably weren’t as much microplastics when the last generation was born ; it’s now ubiquitous to the point of being found in the blood of fetuses. If gen Z and Alpha don’t die from aneurysms at 45, then yeah, I guess we could assume it isn’t dangerous. I’m just tired of this kind of things : conglomerates are putting X everywhere, and then we have to prove that X is indeed dangerous, when they should be the ones proving that it isn’t. All the while they’re lobbying billions of dollars to try and make the research as slow as possible so that they can get every last cent of profit before X gets banned.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  > If gen Z and Alpha don’t die from aneurysms at 45, then yeah, I guess we could assume it isn’t dangerous. I think this is still overly alarmist. Plastic production basically started really ramping up in the 1950s in industrialized nations-- thats 75 years ago. Yes, you can argue that exposure might have increased significantly since (+ bioaccumulation etc.), but excess mortality should've been roughly proportional, and I'd argue that it's implausible for "plastic lethality" to stay hidden for so long (I fully agree that it's not pretty that the stuff is everywhere nowadays, but I think "next generation is all gonna die from this before they get 50" is just not reasonable to assume, and we arguably cause much bigger problems for the next generations already anyway). > I’m just tired of this kind of things : conglomerates are putting X everywhere, and then we have to prove that X is indeed dangerous, when they should be the ones proving that it isn’t. I think this is a luxury problem-- you might be very willing to forego all remotely risky innovations/technologies now-- but you are rich compared to a person 75 years ago (and we reaped lots of benefits from that risk already!). De-risking everything might look attractive in hindsight, but it is unclear what you would have lost to such a policy: Possibly a big chunk of modern material science, electronics, communication technology, ... It is easy to downplay all that today, and pretend we never really wanted smartphones anyway, but I'm skeptical that the average person a hundred years ago would have seen this in the same way.