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Comment by DethNinja | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps past lead usage in fuels will indirectly lead to collapse of the civilisation:

Lead is known to decrease empathy and increase crime.

I don’t want to generalise an entire generation but boomer generation was heavily poisoned by lead and perhaps this made them more selfish and less emphatic. Maybe this is the primary cause of many current problems? I wonder if humans were supposed to be more emphatic in past before all lead poisoning happened.

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Crime rates have fallen historically until COVID. I think it's more likely the post WW2 and post Cold War (perceived) eras were periods of irrational exuberance culturally in the west with uncommon optimism in western lead globalism and its future (What you consider civilization I take it). The last few years were a big time reality check on the collective interest in that future.

The rate of violent crime nearly quadrupled between 1960 and its peak in 1991 in the US. Even with the COIVD bump, rates are comparable to the mid 60s, and aren't tracking the previous climb.

What's the big change that happened in the 60s and started this trend?

According to the article:

Leaded gasoline consumption rose rapidly in the early 1960s and peaked in the 1970s. As a result, Reuben and his colleagues found that essentially everyone born during those two decades are all but guaranteed to have been exposed to pernicious levels of lead from car exhaust.

So lowering the general IQ in a society by a few points means an explosion in crime?

I don't believe it is the decrease in IQ that causes the crime, rather that both effects are correlated because they have the same root cause.

Is this a rhetorical question? Leaded gasoline.

A lot of baby-boomers started reaching the prime age for committing crime all at once.

Really? It looks like the complete opposite happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...

To respond to your other comment, homicide rates were falling starting around 1990, and the prison population exploded after that. Something else must be going one here. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons[1] as of last month 45.3% of the total US prison population is there for non-violent drug offenses. Only 3.1% is for homicide, assault, or kidnapping. In the late 80s and early 90s lots of states and the federal government instituted really draconian sentencing laws.

So yeah, violent crime is WAY down from 1990, drug arrests have been soaring since.

[1]https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

Yes, 2015 was about on par with 1967[1] in terms of property and violent crime. Incarceration is not what I was talking about.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...

But you agree that it needs an explanation, right? You gloat about a dramatic decrease in crime, yet the number of inmates increased tenfold over that time period.

See my other reply[1]. I'm not gloating, simply conveying facts about numbers. The increase in incarceration is mostly due to tougher sentences for non-violent crime.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30605054

Maybe the tougher sentences worked?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/...

Then why did Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan see the same drops in crime? They all lock up a minuscule fraction of their populations by comparison and had larger or similar drops in crime.

The timing is also wrong, the drop in crime started before incarceration ramped up.

Also as I mentioned the plurality of incarceration is for nonviolent crime, a lot of which is simple drug possession.

They didn't:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Homicide_Rate_in_N...

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/14/national/crime-...

The Nordic countries[1] all peak around '86-'92. Homicide is down world-wide since 1990[2]. This is a weird argument to make. I've never even encountered anyone who disagreed with this who has even a passing familiarity with criminology, economics, or broad societal trends.

I'm not even sure what you're actually arguing here. You're coming across like a contrarian who is frantically googling for a counter point.

Crime in Germany peaked in 1992[3]. Italy 1991 [4] Canada also 1991 [5]

[1] https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2%3A526664/FULLTEX... [2] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Crime_drop [3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?end=2018... [4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?end=2018... [5] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?end=2018...

The problem is there is no evidence for any crime boom unless you pick the right location and the right beginning year (typically the post war years) or some such contrieved scenario. Even the graph in your second link shows it was completely insignificant.

The whole discussion is about the post war period. But if you look back further, homicide rates where higher. Again I’m not aware of any scholar, police organization, or or anyone really who disputes this. What even are you arguing here?

I'm arguing here that your views are fuelled by wishful thinking, if not nonsense.

You can't turn the world into utopia by sticking to a moral panic triggered by the civil rights movement.

There's no utopian thinking here, just a recounting of statistics. Crime is a lot lower now in the US an Europe than it was for most of the post war period. In so far as we have data, there's a lot less murder now than at any time for which we have records.

Again these are basic facts. I'm not drawing any conclusions here really.

But why do you need to cherry pick the data, if it's so clear cut?

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/crime_statistic.htm...

The whole discussion is about the post war increase, peak, and then decrease in crime. It isn't cherrypicking to have a scope for a discussion. I'm well aware of the long term trend here and mentioned it elsewhere. This matters because the 1990-ish peak is on par with crime levels at the end of the 1800s since people have limited lifespans, a doubling of the homicide rate in a person's lifespan is alarming. It's worth exploring and unpacking the reasons for the increase and decline. Perhaps there are policy lessons to be learned, and moreover there was no guarantee that 1992 would be the peak.

You've simultaneously argued that there is no downward trend, it doesn't matter in the long term, it did happen but because of mass incarceration in the US, and you've just been tossing out contrarian bullshit. You're acting in bad faith, and that sucks.

Yes it is cherry picking. You picked the starting date to make it seem like there was a dramatic rise, while looking further shows a post war dip, and return to "normal".

I argued first with the incarceration, which suggests the opposite.

You also said it happened in all countries, while it in fact didn't.

You ignore the inconsistencies and keep pointing back to that single piece of data that seems to support your position.

There doesn't seem to be any general improvement in behavior, only a decrease in standards.

The Norway peak in 2011 is entirely from the Utøya mass homicide.

Japan follows a similar curve despite starting and peaking later, 70% of those crimes for the whole period are nonviolent petty thefts. My mistake in including Japan doesn’t support either point your tried to make. Neither place has mass incarceration.

But there is no decline.

So it's dropped for 30 years...

I'm not disputing the claim that lead poisoning can lead to violent crime, I'm disputing the claim that the turmoil of the last few years (my guess OP means starting with Brexit/Trump) is due to lead poisoned Boomer brains being less empathetic. Arguably the world is more empathetic than ever if you study history (simple data point: entire economies were built around slavery for most of human existence) and this one data point in isolation is really not a particularly strong one to point to for the claim.

I'm only commenting on violent crime, not political upheaval.

Yeah that link seems reasonably well established. The link between "current problems" (whatever they are) and a generation of lead poisoned boomer brains isn't. I'm also not exactly sure what OP is suggesting and trying to connect the dots from their offhand comment. Probably a waste of time all around so I will exit the discussion.

Yeah that seems tenuous. Declining institutional trust, and the botched handling to trade liberalization in the 80s and 90s coupled with the post 2008 bailouts probably has a lot more to do with current political instability in the west broadly.

Pun intended?

> western lead globalism

You probably meant 'western-led globalism'.

Heh not intended but I'll claim it retroactively to save face.

This is untrue. The "rome collapsed because of lead" revisionary history is bunkum.

Is there any reason to believe that post-boomer generations are more empathetic? If anything, it feels as though empathy has been decreasing across the board amongst all age groups as time goes on, right up until the present. Maybe the Internet is stronger than lead.

FWIW the article is claiming Peak Lead would be Gen X.

Yes- older gen x and the youngest boomers.

Maybe, but the events that proceeded the boomers weren't always empathetic. [Rephrased] Was leaded gasoline being used in WW2? I presume so?

> Were Nazi's eating lead for breakfast or something?

German here. The root cause for Nazism was not just a widespread acceptance of antisemitism, but especially the economic hardships following WW1 that gave rise to populism. A poor and desperate population is always liable to fall for a skilled demagogue.

And loss in WWI which was considered unfair along with wish to report it and win this time again. Stab in the back myth, the militarization of all government services and so on and so forth.

The antisemitism was not unique to Germany. It was all around the Europe for centuries.

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