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Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

This kind of stuff makes me wonder if plastics are to us as lead was to the romans. To useful to avoid even though we know it has risks, but perhaps we don’t appreciate the risks fully... and it’s very difficult to precisely measure exposure or to know how much is safe. The world is complicated. :/

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People laugh at how "stupid" the Romans were, just as we'll probably have a chuckle at our own expense about the sorts of plastics we used.

There is a cool conspiratorial take on it.

This plastic epidemic is not an accident- it's population control.

Plastic is fundamentally tied to endocrine disrupting chemicals, endocrine disrupting chemicals interfere with testosterone, and reduce fertility. Furthermore, that reduction in fertility is passed down epigenetically, compounding with each generation.

I don't understand why people waste their time imagining chemtrails when the plastic endocrine disruptor theory is so close at hand, and the consequence of it is easily proven. The only part that is a conspiracy is the part you can't prove anyway.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28842957

I find it more likely that plastic is just a dope material for cheap, durable manufacturing, but I do appreciate having another conspiracy to put in my pocket.

There are definitely health risks. Look at all the bottles that have the "BPA-free" disclaimer on them.

The fact that they’re advertising to consumers that they’re BPA free is itself not enough to conclude that there is definite harm. It may just be that consumers prefer to buy BPA free versions, science be damned. My understanding is that vaccines often don’t contain thiomersal anymore because of unsubstantiated consumer fears, not any demonstrated health risk.

Who would benefit from it? Foreign entities trying to wage a silent chemical war? How would take make sure that their own country is getting hit by microplastics in the international oceans ?

Conspiracy theory sites.

Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity/incompetence/ignorance.

The corollary being that sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

That's fantastic. Do you happen to have an attribution?

It should be called the estebank corollary from now on.

I can't claim it, as it is just a conjunction of Clarke's third law and Hanlon's razor :)

I can't find an actual citation (apart from Wikipedia, which cites a book), but it's known as Grey's Law.

It seems to be "Grey's Law", but with hazy attribution. It is a conjunction of Clarke's third law and Hanlon's razor.

And the other corollary is that the malicious use the phrase to fool the stupid.

Or more appropriately: Never attribute to some grand conspiracy theory what can be attributed to people just trying to make an extra buck by cutting corners.

Occam's razor suggests you're completely wrong.

One of the things is we need not make the same mistakes the Romans made. Many of us know the problems that face us and how to solve them, we just lack the will and organization to take them on.

Yeah, except the "theory" that the fall of the Roman Empire was caused by lead exposure has been thoroughly debunked multiple times: not only were the Romans well-aware of lead poisoning, they also understood that lead piping is (generally) safe, Flint aside.

We used lead gasoline knowing it was toxic. Their are real trade offs with this stuff, and lead exposure was a significant issue in Rome even if it was not their only issue.

> not only were the Romans well-aware of lead poisoning, they also understood that lead piping is (generally) safe

Would you mind citing that, please? Contemporary works on Roman culinary practices (e.g. Cool’s Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain) continue to underline that Romans were exposed to troublingly high levels of lead through consumption of defrutum boiled in lead pots.

My understanding is that lead exposure was more due to cooking with lead cookware. But yes they knew lead was dangerous, and we know that plastics are dangerous. The question is HOW dangerous. We know now that lead exposure was worse than they realized. Will future people look back on us the same way?

a very apt comparison, i think.

we understand the risks of gross poisoning, as the ancients may have eventually, but our understanding of the peripheral risks of chronic exposure are more or less childish. but what we do know is that they're bad when there is chronic exposure.

but we're too addicted to stop.

And of course, the plastics come from oil, which is affected by things like the petrodollar.

The fun thing is that even in the US it was only in the last few decades that the effects of lead poisoning was fully understood.

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