5 ms·

You can’t win. Freedom, IQ, precious bodily fluids. There’s no end to the nonsense. My city started fluoridating a few years ago. The crazy was off the chart,

You can’t win. Freedom, IQ, precious bodily fluids. There’s no end to the nonsense. My city started fluoridating a few years ago. The crazy was off the chart, they’re still active. NYC has fluoridated for 60 years, you’d think someone would have figured out that the entire city is dumber.

like_any_other 2y ago
Bodily autonomy is "nonsense"?
- scheeseman486 2y ago
  How do you feel about the fossil fuel industry, because they're responsible for far more carcinogens entering your body than Big Flouride.
  - grues-dinner 2y ago
    Not just regular toxic chemicals, either, through the is plenty of that. Quite a bit of radiation too. And companies that adulterate, misrepresent and obfuscate what they put in food as well. No-one is putting corn syrup or brominated vegetable oil in food with any intention other than money money money. In fact, if I were an evil subgenius and really actively wanted to damage the IQs of the nation for some nefarious purpose, and it has to be substance-based, I'd avoid things with annoying oversight like public drinking water and vaccines and focus on food and pollution as a vector. If challenged, I just say "why do you hate my freedom to make a profit and provide jobs". Sure, the FDA and EPA exist, but even then you can get away with far, far more in those areas. Food wise, HFCS, BVO, etc, pollution wise, almost everything to with plastics or polymers, oil, coal, gas the list goes on and on.
- TheBicPen 2y ago
  Do you think bodily autonomy is absolute? Your comments seem to imply that bodily autonomy is the only relevant thing to consider when discussing patient care. The world doesn't work that way. Believe it or not, a doctor won't amputate a limb when you show up with a runny nose even if you insist that that's the procedure you want. Search up the 4 principles of biomedical ethics if you want to learn more about the factors that influence doctors' ethical decisions. Or do you mean that your opinion should trump that of any doctor or expert in any field when the issue pertains to your person? If that's the case, I wonder why you choose to participate in society at all, given that you're uncomfortable with the idea that other people might know more than you.
  - like_any_other 2y ago
    > Do you think bodily autonomy is absolute? No. When decisions I take could affect others, that can, in a limited way, justify overriding bodily autonomy. E.g. preventing someone with an infectious disease from spreading it by quarantining them. Or when they can't make their own decisions, e.g. if they're children, suffering dementia, or are unconscious and time is critical. > Believe it or not, a doctor won't amputate a limb I struggle to understand how this is a reasonable, much less charitable, interpretation of my words. Bodily autonomy does not include commanding others. But people can refuse care, even when it is medically sound. Except in very limited circumstances, doctors may not force procedures or medicine on unwilling patients. > Or do you mean that your opinion should trump that of any doctor or expert in any field when the issue pertains to your person? If that's the case, I wonder why you choose to participate in society at all, given that you're uncomfortable with the idea that other people might know more than you. One does not at all follow from the other. Experts in the field will tell me excessive sweets are bad for me (and I believe them) - should they get to put a block my credit card so it cannot be used to buy unhealthy snacks, only healthy food? I have humored your post, now please explain to me: How does believing people have a right to refuse medical treatment imply I am uncomfortable with others being more knowledgeable?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wqaatwt 2y ago
> you’d think someone would have figured out that Maybe that’s why they haven’t? But being serious if it’s relatively low and the negative effects only occur during pregnancy it’s not that easy to measure it. Obviously there is no conclusive evidence (even if the studies from China seem somewhat credible) but IMHO even if the likelihood of this being true is e.g. only 5-10%, risk of a population wide loss of 1-2 IQ points seems like a massively too high price to pay just to slightly reduce cavity rates. Also dismissing all credible (albeit weak) scientific evidence out of hand just because crazy people hold similar beliefs is a about as stupid as what they are doing..
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
somenameforme 2y ago
Well one issue with your snark here is that IQs within the country are going down, and nobody really knows why. [1] The Flynn Effect was the observation that real IQ scores were increasing over time. But sometime around 1990 this seems to have stopped in pretty much the entire developed world, including the US. I'm not implying that this is solely due to fluoridation, though it's certainly a plausible contributing factor. But as for your snark about 'someone would have figured out people are getting dumber' - well, they have, and we don't know why. [1] (pop media coverage of study) - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-... [1] (study - no paywall!) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...
- alpaca128 2y ago
  Flouridation of drinking water does not happen in the entire developed world, though. And lower IQ scores don't necessarily say much about pure intelligence directly, a worsening education system could also contribute and that's not exactly far fetched. And your linked source says: > The steepest slopes occurred for ages 18–22 and lower levels of education
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Absolutely. And nutrition in general, the internet, and a large number of other factors. Starting around the 90s the world started changing far faster than we were able to measure the consequences of in many different domains. That's even when the rates of autism and other mental disorders also started to skyrocket. That's why I think it's a viable contributing factor rather than the alpha and omega. But it's relevant here because most people don't know that general intelligence levels (so far as IQ can measure) have begun to decrease, to the point that the GP here was overtly mocking the mere possibility of such as a [implied] practical impossibility.
    - alpaca128 2y ago
      > rates of autism and other mental disorders also started to skyrocket Diagnoses for them started to skyrocket. Important difference.

like_any_other 2y ago

Bodily autonomy is "nonsense"?

scheeseman486 2y ago
How do you feel about the fossil fuel industry, because they're responsible for far more carcinogens entering your body than Big Flouride.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  Not just regular toxic chemicals, either, through the is plenty of that. Quite a bit of radiation too. And companies that adulterate, misrepresent and obfuscate what they put in food as well. No-one is putting corn syrup or brominated vegetable oil in food with any intention other than money money money. In fact, if I were an evil subgenius and really actively wanted to damage the IQs of the nation for some nefarious purpose, and it has to be substance-based, I'd avoid things with annoying oversight like public drinking water and vaccines and focus on food and pollution as a vector. If challenged, I just say "why do you hate my freedom to make a profit and provide jobs". Sure, the FDA and EPA exist, but even then you can get away with far, far more in those areas. Food wise, HFCS, BVO, etc, pollution wise, almost everything to with plastics or polymers, oil, coal, gas the list goes on and on.
TheBicPen 2y ago
Do you think bodily autonomy is absolute? Your comments seem to imply that bodily autonomy is the only relevant thing to consider when discussing patient care. The world doesn't work that way. Believe it or not, a doctor won't amputate a limb when you show up with a runny nose even if you insist that that's the procedure you want. Search up the 4 principles of biomedical ethics if you want to learn more about the factors that influence doctors' ethical decisions. Or do you mean that your opinion should trump that of any doctor or expert in any field when the issue pertains to your person? If that's the case, I wonder why you choose to participate in society at all, given that you're uncomfortable with the idea that other people might know more than you.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  > Do you think bodily autonomy is absolute? No. When decisions I take could affect others, that can, in a limited way, justify overriding bodily autonomy. E.g. preventing someone with an infectious disease from spreading it by quarantining them. Or when they can't make their own decisions, e.g. if they're children, suffering dementia, or are unconscious and time is critical. > Believe it or not, a doctor won't amputate a limb I struggle to understand how this is a reasonable, much less charitable, interpretation of my words. Bodily autonomy does not include commanding others. But people can refuse care, even when it is medically sound. Except in very limited circumstances, doctors may not force procedures or medicine on unwilling patients. > Or do you mean that your opinion should trump that of any doctor or expert in any field when the issue pertains to your person? If that's the case, I wonder why you choose to participate in society at all, given that you're uncomfortable with the idea that other people might know more than you. One does not at all follow from the other. Experts in the field will tell me excessive sweets are bad for me (and I believe them) - should they get to put a block my credit card so it cannot be used to buy unhealthy snacks, only healthy food? I have humored your post, now please explain to me: How does believing people have a right to refuse medical treatment imply I am uncomfortable with others being more knowledgeable?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wqaatwt 2y ago

> you’d think someone would have figured out that Maybe that’s why they haven’t? But being serious if it’s relatively low and the negative effects only occur during pregnancy it’s not that easy to measure it. Obviously there is no conclusive evidence (even if the studies from China seem somewhat credible) but IMHO even if the likelihood of this being true is e.g. only 5-10%, risk of a population wide loss of 1-2 IQ points seems like a massively too high price to pay just to slightly reduce cavity rates. Also dismissing all credible (albeit weak) scientific evidence out of hand just because crazy people hold similar beliefs is a about as stupid as what they are doing..

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

somenameforme 2y ago

Well one issue with your snark here is that IQs within the country are going down, and nobody really knows why. [1] The Flynn Effect was the observation that real IQ scores were increasing over time. But sometime around 1990 this seems to have stopped in pretty much the entire developed world, including the US. I'm not implying that this is solely due to fluoridation, though it's certainly a plausible contributing factor. But as for your snark about 'someone would have figured out people are getting dumber' - well, they have, and we don't know why. [1] (pop media coverage of study) - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-... [1] (study - no paywall!) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...

alpaca128 2y ago
Flouridation of drinking water does not happen in the entire developed world, though. And lower IQ scores don't necessarily say much about pure intelligence directly, a worsening education system could also contribute and that's not exactly far fetched. And your linked source says: > The steepest slopes occurred for ages 18–22 and lower levels of education
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Absolutely. And nutrition in general, the internet, and a large number of other factors. Starting around the 90s the world started changing far faster than we were able to measure the consequences of in many different domains. That's even when the rates of autism and other mental disorders also started to skyrocket. That's why I think it's a viable contributing factor rather than the alpha and omega. But it's relevant here because most people don't know that general intelligence levels (so far as IQ can measure) have begun to decrease, to the point that the GP here was overtly mocking the mere possibility of such as a [implied] practical impossibility.
  - alpaca128 2y ago
    > rates of autism and other mental disorders also started to skyrocket Diagnoses for them started to skyrocket. Important difference.