We're not allowed to begin bailing the water out of the sinking ship until the ship is sunk.
You'd think we'd finally have gotten far enough in education to not be so easily carrot and sticked. But damn. People coming out of the woodwork in this thread to defend literal world contamination.
This intentional nitpicking of the colloquial usage of the word chemicals is a favorite of both, disingenuous conversationalists who like to take a chance to feel correct rather than participate earnestly, and lobbyists.
Its hardly a nitpick, you're being so vauge that its impossible to understand what you are actually proposing.
Why not just use more specific language? If indeed everyone is acting in bad faith, using clear language would shut them up. If instead they are being ernest and cannot understand you because of the "colloquial" language, then being rigorous would further your stated goal of ernest participation. Either way seems like a win-win for you.
I didn't propose anything, I'm just nitpicking HN's nitpicking of attempts to have a real conversation.
Which, since HN is a place for technically minded people, has resulted in people arguing that chemical contamination of PFAS is categorically the same as watering my lawn.
You are technically correct, but this is called a "gotcha": it's not about continuing the conversation in earnest, if anything, it shuts down conversation about the important details by, in the writing of mike judge, "playing lawyerball" instead.
In reality we all know that none of us are writing the technical legislation, so any of us becoming enamored with defending for profit entities against hazardous chemical classification through technical usage of language is...basically the core spirit of corporate lobbyism.
> has resulted in people arguing that chemical contamination of PFAS is categorically the same as watering my lawn.
I don't recognise anyone here arguing this. Let me recap the conversation: tankaiji said it is good to ban these, but expressed concern that companies will find other dangerous chemicals to replace them with. mensetmanusman responded something along the lines of this being an inevitable consequence of human technology. edgyquant responded that the problem is overly complex regulation and seemingly proposed a simpler solution.
People rightfully pointed out that his simpler solution can't distinguish between the chemical contamination of PFAS and watering ones lawn. Which is ridiculous. So clearly the problem is not that simple. In fact the problem is complex and therefore the regulations around it are complex too.
This intentional nitpicking is necessary for anyone who has taken a first course in chemistry.
You do not appear to have done that. That's why you are arguing with the colloquial usage of the word. Because you can't offer a useful and precise definition.
>What is the difference between lye (dangerous), sand (not dangerous unless it suffocates things or gets crushed and inhaled), water (can cause flooding or drowning, otherwise harmless), and sodium bicarbonate (quite basic, generally harmless), and hydrazine (mutagenic, highly toxic, highly flammable)?
The MSDSes will elaborate on this and you probably know that.
This thread chain has gotten impressively disingenuous very fast. We aren't arguing the colloquial definition of chemicals which if we're not being pedantic, we know brings up ideas of substances damaging to other substances or life itself.
Which is fairly obviously the line that you're giving a good traditional "but where would we POSSIBLY STOP?!" gambit that comes out of paid lobbyist's mouths more often than hello or goodbye.
The line to be crossed is obviously at least a few blocks up the way from "what is the difference between water and hydrazine though".
And also, anything cumulative becomes "too hazardous" within years. But by then profits are made, and war chests are filled to keep the spice flowing.
The world got by for thousands of years sustainably without a lot of these "huge benefits" and I'm willing to take a hit or two within my lifetime to ensure there's still lifetimes at all down the road.
> the colloquial definition of chemicals which if we're not being pedantic, we know brings up ideas of substances damaging to other substances or life itself.
From the comment you're responding to. Damage is quantifiable, if it wasn't, the OP (EPA proposing hazardous substance classification) wouldn't even exist.
one presumes it is not when there is any quantifiable damage, no matter how slight. I assume nobody is proposing banning water, etc. But even plain water can result in large amounts of environmental damage in certain contexts.
If the point is just to ban things when the risks outweigh the benefits, that is simply the status quo.
The challenge is, one can usually only make that kind of trade off when something is well known enough to know the risks and benefits in a wide variety of environments.
The first real problematic PFAS compounds were in fire fighting foam used to put out aircraft fires for example, and took decades for their problems to show up.
Which requires either extremely exhaustive (or essentially impossible economically) testing, or yolo’ng it. Or only using already known compounds.
How do you create a MSDS for a chemical that hasn’t been made yet?
How do you decide it’s safe to create a large enough quantity of a chemical to figure out what even should be in that MSDS?
How can you know if something is mutagenic without exposing it to DNA? Or cancer causing without exposing it to a living organism? Or causes reproductive harm without exposing it to organisms and seeing how it impacts reproduction?
Those all are potential harms.
Traditionally, some enterprising alchemist/chemist would just try it - and if they lived, would write a paper on it. Further research and experience would then inform if a better alternative should be used.
The Haber-Bosch process that allowed the creation of artificial fertilizers has allowed for the massive expansion of the human race. Roughly 3/4 of the humans on this planet right now would starve to death without it. Assuming they didn’t get nuked first. That was in 1909.
It also allowed for the creation of modern high explosives (and propellants) at scale, and the horrors of WW1 and WW2. And the mining revolution, which has provided the raw materials necessary to build our modern economies at vastly cheaper prices than were ever possible before for humanity.
Chemistry is a fundamental building block of modern society, and removing it would literally cause its sudden and violent collapse.
Deciding if ‘freezing’ it in place, or letting it continue to develop new and interesting applications is the discussion - because no, we weren’t sustainable before (unless you count constant and ongoing genocides as ‘sustainable’), and we’ve long passed the point where trying to return to that would be anything but apocalyptic.
Literally.
And keeping in mind that just because we agree to stop research in one area doesn’t mean anyone else (competitors) will do so. Regardless of if that is in the realm of drugs, or weapons, or soaps, or foods, or whatever.
So, let me get this straight: I've claimed reducing everything to "chemicals" is disingenuous, and in response, I'm immediately told "no, you" and then challenged with debates over topics or ideas I haven't actually talked about like
>How do you create a MSDS for a chemical that hasn’t been made yet?
What argument that I've made do you present this logical fallacy to?
> Deciding if ‘freezing’ it in place, or letting it continue to develop new and interesting applications is the discussion
This is not my viewpoint and was never mentioned by me. This is an argument you're either making in reference to another comment, a point not addressed by myself, or you're talking to your own strawman, who doesn't seem to have a significant stance other than "well, it's basically unsolveable!".
That is the discussion I was having. You're doing exactly what I mentioned, being disingenuous about the literal technical definition of chemicals and muddying waters because water is a chemical too, man!
Well watering my lawn doesn't kill it or give organisms that live mere decades cancer. That's a reasonable measurement to start.
And if you're really saying there can't be more in depth, slower research to chemicals that people will end up having in their bloodstream, then I don't even know what to say to that, other than Andrew Ryan would be proud.
It doesn’t seem like you’re reading your comments or my replies?
The concern about the chemicals we’re talking about is that they are in the water you are using to water your lawn, anmong other things, and have been getting made at scale for over 50 years. And is a family of 6 million something chemicals, some of which we suspect now may be dangerous - including causing cancer - and some we have no idea.
We can only test for things we suspect are an actual issue and have a test for. And for which we actually test.
Which we don’t really have reasonable tests for ‘doesn’t bio degrade over decades+ and bio accumulates to potentially dangerous levels’ yet. Except watching nature, anyway, which is how we discovered this problem. There are millions more chemicals that this hasn’t happened either.
So what do you propose doing here besides freezing it until such tests can be put in place and developed?
Let's not get too relaxed here. There's gigantic masses of plastic all over the world that would like to say that anything mass produced and cumulative "WILL become 'not-small' amounts".
Unfortunately Terrence McKenna (or fortunately depending on how you look at things) doesn't seem to have retained the same popularity.
He does still have some decent "pithy one liners" but if I remember right, he didn't stay in a philosophical lane and was known to indulge in pop culture conspiracies and his own pet theories (based on excruciatingly little but conjecture and didn't really respond to criticism of it)
I've honestly started to consider it a little bit unbecoming to compare people to McKenna. He's a major contributor to a romantic and oversimplified/inaccurate understanding of things like shamanhood and the roles drugs played in ancient societies, so it's probably a good thing people don't talk about him like they used to.
Almost kind of the antithesis to Watts in my mind, but seemingly from the same side of the fence: McKenna was all about what he thought, and Watts never gave me the impression he even had an agenda for me to believe in, rather wanting to help people explore the world he'd discovered, he labored to find the words to depict, not to convince.
Yeah, they don’t compare in that sense. But I still find McKenna very charming to listen to, and am sometimes wowed to what cooky ideas he may have reached in his lectures. The man has a fascinating oratory skill. Despite his wild speculations he has a very interesting depiction of his own ideas and his overarching theme is one of union with the nature which no matter how reached at it’s a positive thing IMO.
That's unusual if that's the case, in my experience. I rely on syncthing to keep my notes synced between devices/applications (and photos) and using "run according to time schedule" for "5 minutes" has never produced a problem for me, through reboot and months between opening the app sometimes.
Well quite frankly, saying "the claim that these are lies are just as disingenuous as the claims themselves" is a pretty low quality, classic stick-in-the-spokes "debate" tactic that essentially hand waves the ball back in the other person's court with minimal effort or contribution or real debate and puts maximum onus on someone else in public in the "flow" of discourse.
This is "great" for televised debates but this is kind of passive aggressive for the tone people prefer here. We're talking to people here. More directly than a formal debate.
Someone participating earnestly knows they are capable of either politely expressing interest and asking for sources, or as another mentioned: typing and clicking all by themselves.
Ironically, many of the "respectable" discord servers (i.e. revolving around hobbies people under the age of 18 aren't/can't get into) seem to not allow cross-server emojis (which mostly stops all usage of them and discourages gif-memeing as well).
Combined with "compact" mode in user settings, I find myself having a vaguely IRC-like experience in the servers worth participating in.
Terrible shame how many of us have come full circle just to do the same things on the corpo's surveillance state owned land instead of our own.
The reasoning behind the banning of cross-server emojis in most "respectable" servers is that you can split an image into a 5x5 grid of "emoji" and post images in channels you're not supposed to. It's a mess.
Yeah, I am getting prompted to subscribe and pay to even participte. Perhaps it's part of the larger theme of capitalism and monetization consuming all parts of human existence, including those that come from a purely artistic or communicative self expression. It's supposed to be part of the technological progress that builds us up, as a society, but I am strugging to fill the bash.org void.
Well if OP's original "missing the forest for the trees" analogy is to be revisited (which I tend to agree with), it's that pedantry is sort of by (some) definition focusing on the letter rather than the spirit of what's at hand, and due to its often lack of necessity, comes across as taking the opportunity to "one up" or criticize something that doesn't end up making any pragmatic differences.
I've heard some people describe the compulsion something along the lines of "I don't think of it that way, I just noticed something they said was incorrect and so I presented them the correct information", often assuming it would be appreciated.
I mean, it's probably good for engineers in the engineering room, but the culture outside of maker's spaces probably won't consider it smashing conversation.
You'd think we'd finally have gotten far enough in education to not be so easily carrot and sticked. But damn. People coming out of the woodwork in this thread to defend literal world contamination.