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on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Thousands of U.S. farmers have Parkinson's. They blame a deadly pesticide
mapt wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
Paraquat is something that can cause acute toxicity to the point of
death.
Glyphosate is a teddy bear by comparison.
Many chemicals that cause acute toxicity at high doses also have poorly
studied chronic toxicity or carcinogenicity issues, either from
bioaccumulation or from cumulative low-grade damage. These issues are
much less well-studied than chronic effects of less harmful chemicals,
specifically because acute toxicity and attempts to avoid it makes
objective testing difficult.
RataNova wrote 5 hours 11 min ago:
The "safe when used as directed" line also feels hollow when the
real-world data includes spills, inhalation, secondary exposure, and
long-term low-dose contact
senectus1 wrote 15 hours 16 min ago:
Dammit, this is one thats allowed in Australia.
ashwinne wrote 16 hours 19 min ago:
How can consumers avoid/reduce risk of ingesting this from the produce
we buy at the store?
expedition32 wrote 19 hours 3 min ago:
In the Netherlands there is a discussion about agriculture impact on
public health.
Each pesticide individually is safe but nobody knows what happens when
you mix fifty chemicals and put them in the ground water.
On a positive note you have to die from something and ignorance is
bliss.
01100011 wrote 19 hours 4 min ago:
There are plenty of things that can lead to Parkinson's. Recently we
learned even copper salts carry a risk: [1] (Unfortunate for many like
me who considered them relatively safe for years and did a lot of
chemistry with them.)
Farmers use many chemicals for a variety of tasks and it wouldn't
surprise me if there were multiple chemicals involved, perhaps even
synergistically. Maybe a farmer exposed to paraquat is fine, but one
who is exposed to both paraquat and a copper-based antifungal or fumes
from a welding repair become more damaged. Hard to say.
HTML [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0161813...
MPSFounder wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
Under Trump, so many regulations have been setback. It will only get
worse. I think the answer has to be on the community level, pushing
back against industrial use that has not been rigorously tested.
However, many believe that job creation is more important than the
right of individuals (innocents) to a life free of health issues.
thelittlenag wrote 19 hours 54 min ago:
My father is a data point in this. He was a farmer all his life and
ultimately it was Parkinson's that did him in. While we took some
precautions, I have no doubt that the herbicides we used should have
been handled more carefully.
biddit wrote 18 hours 25 min ago:
Sorry for your loss - it's a terrible disease.
My mother is also data point - grew up on a farm where her father
used it. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's 2018.
hereme888 wrote 19 hours 59 min ago:
So the U.S. is still using 11-17 lbs/yr despite warnings and bans
really since 1986, a re-authorization in 2021 by the EPA, and known
elevated risk near use sites, which corporations have fought against
claiming "no definitive proof". So if the U.S. allows its use "as
directed", who can be legally accountable for all this?
sixothree wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
I honestly think there's a technology / robotics solution to the
pesticide, and especially herbicide, problems. I'm in completely the
wrong space to see it happen, but I'm still hopeful someone smart can
do it.
OutOfHere wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
The government absolutely cannot be trusted to protect the individual,
whether a farmer or a consumer. It is coming down to each individual
protecting himself by assessing the safety of the ingredients,
sometimes also the purity.
misja111 wrote 21 hours 17 min ago:
There is so much evidence of this connection piling up ..
E.g.:
Proximity to golf courses where pesticides are used -> Parkinson: [1]
Farmers using pesticides have 60% higher Parkinson risk (2019): [2]
(Dutch)
Parkinson should be labeled as profession-linked disease for
farmers(Swiss):
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43933580
HTML [2]: https://nos.nl/artikel/2302396-landbouwgif-kan-kans-op-parkins...
HTML [3]: https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/pestizide-als-krankmacher-park...
Aloisius wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
You're conflating different chemicals together.
Paraquat (what this article is about), isn't used by any people in
the links you gave (golf courses, Dutch or Swiss farmers).
m463 wrote 15 hours 41 min ago:
parkinsons might have multiple causes.
HTML [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-thought-parkinsons-...
dontlikeyoueith wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
Too bad they voted to eliminate accountability for businesses that
poison people.
Now they get to find out.
reducesuffering wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
The chemical manufacturer, Syngenta, is the same one involved in the
creation of atrazine, the chemical notorious for preliminary evidence
of the whole frog sex-changing while it's been sprayed all over the US
but banned in most other countries.
josefritzishere wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
This reminded me that the current administration has approved PFAS
pesticides aka forever chemicals which are linked to certain cancers.
What could possibly go wrong.
HTML [1]: https://time.com/7336883/epa-pfas-pesticides-health-risks/
ck2 wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
propublica.org has endless great articles on this and other horrors in
the US
but if we aren't going to change a damn thing with daily mass shooting
we sure aren't going to fix poisoning the environment, fracking is 100x
worse than this and "sacrifice zones" are a real thing
follow the money, sue before current administration makes it illegal to
sue
HTML [1]: https://www.propublica.org/series/sacrifice-zones
alex_young wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://archive.ph/YVt2I
bilsbie wrote 23 hours 4 min ago:
Same issue as living near golf courses?
francisofascii wrote 20 hours 35 min ago:
I know a guy who had a weird habit of using his mouth to clean his
golf ball. He eventually got oral cancer.
DudeOpotomus wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
Except the data doesnt back up that assertion. Golf course employees
and golfers have no higher rates of than the public at large. So what
gives?
If the very people who spend most of their waking lives on the
grounds and among those fertilizers and pesticides do not have any
great instance, maybe just maybe its something else. Like the gallons
of unregulated chemicals that are in those tract houses that were all
built around the same time...
one example is the drywall was used extensively in the 90's. Its
makeup banned in the country of origin, China but its product was
used all throughout the US for decades.
misja111 wrote 21 hours 13 min ago:
Data does back up this assertion: [1] The correlation seems to
point to usage ground water that is contaminated with pesticides.
So people living close to the golf courses have higher Parkinson
risk.
Probably golfers and employees less so.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43933580
DudeOpotomus wrote 4 min ago:
There is no causation. Your bias is showing.
What else uses massive amounts of pesticides and herbicides and
is consumed by people every day?
neilv wrote 23 hours 9 min ago:
> While Chinese companies supply paraquat to American farmers, the
report points out China is also a big purchaser of crops, like
soybeans, that are grown with help from the pesticide.
> âIn these two ways, China economically benefits from the
application of paraquat in the U.S., where it outsources many of its
associated health hazards,â the report said.
There would arguably be a poetic justice to the US taking a turn at
bearing health and environmental costs to benefit other nations, but
it's not right for that to happen to any country.
kevin061 wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
I looked up this pesticide. It is banned in EU. Not exactly surprising.
reboot81 wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
They did that in 2007. Some countries banned it as early as 1983.
Remind me, what year is it now?
mring33621 wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
Huh.
Poisons are poison!
And they sprayed this shit all over themselves and people nearby.
krautburglar wrote 23 hours 24 min ago:
Many medical preparations are oil rather than water soluble. Seed oils
tend to be the cheapest choice, and probably still have trace amounts
of pesticides/herbicides/fungicide--even after processing. Under such
conditions, one must wonder how many of our modern neurodegenerative
conditions are iatrogenic. Genetics may load the chamber, but
environment pulls the trigger.
georgeburdell wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
One of my relatives owned an animal farm for a couple of decades and
got a very rare muscle wasting disease. A high school friend of his,
who was also a farmer, got the same disease. I imagine there were
innumerable harmful chemicals on the land and in the water from decades
of use before he bought it in the 90s.
kamaal wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
I was casually chatting with my uncle who is a doctor, he says
something along the lines that if a chemical can kill a rat or a
mosquito, to assume it won't do any damage to humans is kind of
hilarious.
Of course humans who inhale this thing in small quantities won't die,
but you can be sure they will kill some tissues that they go into. Now
comes another problem of regular exposure, and these chemicals having
an entry, but no exit path. That just means there are tissues, that are
likely dying out every time there is a exposure.
Again none of this might kill you at the first exposure, but if there
are enough dead tissues, there sure is likely to be things like
Parkinson's or may be even diabetes.
Im guessing combined with this, if you already some bad genetics it
could cause issues like these.
bikenaga wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
Here's some of the research linked in the article.
"Rotenone, Paraquat, and Parkinsonâs Disease" - [1] "In 110 PD cases
and 358 controls, PD was associated with use of a group of pesticides
that inhibit mitochondrial complex I [odds ratio (OR) = 1.7; 95%
confidence interval (CI), 1.0â2.8] including rotenone (OR = 2.5; 95%
CI, 1.3â4.7) and with use of a group of pesticides that cause
oxidative stress (OR = 2.0; 95% CI, 1.2â3.6), including paraquat (OR
= 2.5; 95% CI, 1.4â4.7)."
"Agricultural paraquat dichloride use and Parkinson's disease in
California's Central Valley" - [2] "Ambient paraquat exposure assessed
at both residence and workplace was associated with PD, based on
several different exposure measures. The PD patients both lived and
worked near agricultural facilities applying greater amounts of the
herbicide than community controls. For workplace proximity to
commercial applications since 1974, working near paraquat applications
every year in the window [odds ratio (OR) = 2.15, 95% confidence
interval (CI) = 1.46, 3.19] and a higher average intensity of exposure
[per 10 pounds (4.54 kilograms), OR = 2.08, 95% CI = 1.31, 3.38] were
both associated with an increased odds of PD. Similar associations were
observed for residential proximity (duration: OR = 1.91, 95% CI = 1.30,
2.83; average intensity: OR = 1.72, 95% CI = 0.99, 3.04). Risk
estimates were comparable for men and women, and the strongest odds
were observed for those diagnosed at â¤60 years of age."
"Department of Pesticide Regulation Releases Preliminary Findings from
Review of Environmental and Human Health Studies Related to the Use of
the Pesticide Paraquat" - [3] "DPRâs preliminary scientific
evaluation found that the current registered uses of paraquat in
California may adversely affect non-target organisms, including birds,
mammals and aquatic organisms, with the most significant risks to
birds. Additional mitigation measures, beyond current restrictions on
paraquat use currently in effect, may not feasibly reduce these
environmental impacts to acceptable levels.
Consistent with United States Environmental Protection Agencyâs (U.S.
EPA) 2019 review, DPRâs review of existing human health studies does
not indicate a causal association between paraquat exposure and
Parkinsonâs disease."
HTML [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3114824/
HTML [2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38309714/#full-view-affiliatio...
HTML [3]: https://www.cdpr.ca.gov/2024/12/30/department-of-pesticide-reg...
ltbarcly3 wrote 23 hours 45 min ago:
It's a herbicide, not a pesticide. I clicked the article because I was
surprised that any current pesticides are that harmful to humans.
Pesticides are, generally, safe to humans. Herbicides are, generally,
not at all safe to humans. Roundup is probably the most safe outside
of per-emergents like corn husks or whatever, but it's not a free ride
either.
ericmcer wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
I am dubious of all the claims that say something designed to kill
organic life is safe because it just means "safe at X dose". Like
there isn't a pesticide made where I could drink a tablespoon of it
and be fine. It just doesn't present noticeable effects at tiny
doses so it is labeled safe.
Like if I drank a 1/4 shot of Vodka every morning I wouldn't notice
it at all, but I imagine it would have some impacts on my health over
the long run.
Not to mention we might have 30+
chemicals/medications/additives/whatever all being consumed
constantly at "safe levels" with no research into how they interact
or accumulate.
manarth wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
> "Pesticides are, generally, safe to humans."
There are many common pesticides which have extreme toxicity to
humans, including HCN (Hydrogen Cyanide), (ab)used under the
brand-name Zyklon B in WW2, and still sold today as a
(controlled-use) pesticide under generic brand names.
It's a chasm-leap to say that pesticides are generally safe to
humans.
neogodless wrote 23 hours 25 min ago:
[1] > Pesticides are substances that are used to control pests. They
include herbicides, insecticides, nematicides, fungicides, and many
others (see table). The most common of these are herbicides, which
account for approximately 50% of all pesticide use globally.[0]
[0] [2] You're trying to be pedantic, but you're actually wrong. If
you think about it, from the perspective of anyone trying to raise
crops, weeds are pests. (They are pests to lots of non-farmers, too.)
Similarly...
> A pest is any organism harmful to humans or human concerns. The
term is particularly used for creatures that damage crops, livestock,
and forestry or cause a nuisance to people, especially in their
homes.
> Plants may be considered pests, for example, if they are invasive
species or weeds.
HTML [1]: https://kagi.com/search?q=Pesticide
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide
ltbarcly3 wrote 7 hours 8 min ago:
I'm not trying to be pedantic, I've literally never heard of
pesticide used to mean anything but bug killer. I guess you are
technically correct?
pitaj wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
While saying "it's an herbicide, not a pesticide" is categorically
incorrect, I still think it would be better if the journalist used
the more specific and less confusing term here.
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 42 min ago:
> Pesticides are, generally, safe to humans
Out of curiosity, why?
steviedotboston wrote 23 hours 32 min ago:
they are designed to target specific aspects of the insects nervous
systems that humans dont have and are used in small doses/by the
time any residue reaches a human its diluted. herbicides are very
different.
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 27 min ago:
Why can't we be similarly selective with plants?
IlikeKitties wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
Here in Germany, farmers are regularly complaining about all the
bureaucracy and "unnecessary" safety requirements in regards to
pesticides and over-fertilization . But they also complain when nothing
grows anymore because they killed the top soil with too much
fertilizer, poisoned the groundwater and then die of Parkinson because,
who would have thought, all those regulations and safety requirements
had a point after all. I don't know how to help those people, I really
don't.
jtrn wrote 23 hours 48 min ago:
The chance this is a trustworthy source for me is close to 0. This just
sound like fantastic pseudology:
âEven secondary exposure can be dangerous. One case published in the
Rhode Island Medical Journal described an instance where a 50-year-old
man accidentally ingested paraquat, and the nurse treating him was
burned by his urine that splashed onto her forearms. Within a day, her
skin blistered and sloughed off.
sentrysapper wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
Why does that sound untrustworthy? Do you have any idea of what the
tobacco industry hid about second hand smoke exposure? How is it
somehow more plausible this nurse made up her condition than
pesticide manufactures being honest about the impacts?
jtrn wrote 21 hours 40 min ago:
I donât think the nurse is lying at all. The medical case is
real. My point is that the article omitted the fact that the
patient she treated had ingested a massive, lethal dose of
concentrate (acute poisoning), and she was exposed to it when
extracting it. The journalist used the symptoms of a suicide
attempt to illustrate the risks of routine farming, which I think
is misleading. Itâs not about the nurse making it up... itâs
about the article leaving out the context that matters most.
Especially when pushing the argument that it causes Parkinson's.
My gut intuition just didn't like the framing. Now that I have read
through it thoroughly, my answer is this: It's untrustworthy
because it is obviously extremely selective with what it includes,
omits relevant base rates, uses graphical examples out of context,
and has an obvious bias and agenda. That is just one of tens of
examples in the article.
Your tobacco reference can be condensed into: "Large firms are
known to lie and cover up things." I agree 100%. They plainly
outright lied directly AND lied by covering up.
But the reaction to that is not to lie better. And by better, I
mean lying by omission, juxtaposition, and framing. These are still
methods of lying, just that they are harder for people to detect.
jtrn wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
I just finished reading article
and honestly, my BS detector is going off the charts.
Iâm not saying pesticides are health tonics, but this piece feels
like pure litigation PR rather than an actual investigation. It
prioritizes storytelling over science and engages in what I can only
describe as lying by omission. Here are the main issues I found:
The nurse whose skin peeled off just from touching a patientâs
urine? The article frames this to make you think, "Wow, this stuff is
so toxic that if a farmer uses it, his body becomes a weapon." I
looked into the medical case this is likely based on. That patient
didn't just "farm" with Paraquat; he ingested a lethal, concentrated
dose (usually a suicide attempt). By leaving out that the patient
drank a cup of poison, the author conflates Acute Poisoning (death in
days, acid urine) with Chronic Exposure (trace amounts over years).
If the farmer in the main story had enough Paraquat in his system to
burn a nurseâs skin, he wouldnât be alive to give an interview
about Parkinsonâs. Heâd be dead from multi-organ failure.
Omitting this context is manipulative fear-mongering.
Then there is the math: Parkinsonâs affects about 1% of the elderly
population. There are 2 million farms in the US. Even if Paraquat was
essentially harmless water, you would still have tens of thousands of
farmers with Parkinsonâs purely by chance. The article ignores this
base rate to imply that every diagnosis is a result of the chemical.
It treats a probabilistic risk as a deterministic cause.
It also ignores confounders (like the "Rural Cluster" Problem).
Farming is a "chemical soup" lifestyle. You have well water (a known
PD risk), head trauma risks, and exposure to dozens of other
chemicals like Rotenone or Maneb. The article presents a direct line:
Paraquat -> PD. But scientifically, isolating one chemical from 30
years of rural living is a nightmare. The article doesn't even
attempt to falsify the hypothesis or look at other factors; it just
assumes the lawsuit's narrative is the scientific truth.
The article also fails basic science standards. It is storytelling,
not science. A real scientific inquiry follows Popperian
standardsâyou make a conjecture and then try to disprove it. This
article does the opposite: it acts like a defense attorney. It stacks
up emotional anecdotes and selective correlations to confirm its bias
and ignores the replication crisis in epidemiology where results
often don't stick.
This isn't journalism and itâs not science; itâs advocacy via
outrage. It uses the real tragedy of these farmers to push a specific
narrative, relying on readers not knowing the difference between
drinking poison and spraying crops. If youâve ever wondered why
science doesnât make more progress, and we have the replication
crisis, look no further.
desro wrote 23 hours 25 min ago:
I was able to find the references (including photos of the mentioned
forearms) on PubMed and the RIMJ after a quick search. Paraquat is
nasty stuff.
- [0] [1] - [1] [2] (via [3] )
- [2]
HTML [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33769492/
HTML [2]: http://www.rimed.org/rimedicaljournal/2023/06/2023-06-40-ima...
HTML [3]: https://rimedicalsociety.org/rhode-island-medical-journal/
HTML [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraquat
jtrn wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
Yeah, I found it myself. And yes, it's nasty stuff. But in the
context of the article, itâs pure nonsense.
Should we ban anhydrous ammonia, chlorine, or gasoline? They are
nasty and dangerous too. The article is purely scare-mongering to
make it seem true while obviously pushing an agenda. This is not
science. See my reply at the same level after I did a review.
stogot wrote 17 hours 57 min ago:
How did his urethra not burn off?
I canât believe Iâm typing this question
burkaman wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
I mean you can click on the source right there, that is literally
what happened: [1] . The description maybe makes it sound a little
more extreme than it actually was, but it's the correct terminology
and an accurate description of events.
HTML [1]: http://www.rimed.org/rimedicaljournal/2023/06/2023-06-40-ima...
jtrn wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
Is lying by omission and juxtaposition. It's manipulation. And it
pisses me off to no end. I read the original source. It has NOTHING
to do with Parkinsonâs. Itâs a suicidal dose ingested, and when
extracted, it was still a dangerous chemical. If I drank a gallon
of gasoline and you pumped it out of me, then it caught fire, it
wouldn't explain anything except that gasoline is dangerous and
burns. Nobody disputes that with regard to this chemical. So why
slip it in like that? And the fact that people don't care just
shows why they CAN âjust slip it in thereâ in an article about
Parkinsonâs... nobody cares as long as it confirms their bias.
I only care about evidence that proves that it causes
Parkinsonâs, with basic scientific rigor. Iâll eat my hat if
any of the cited studies did basic attempt at falsification.
LPisGood wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
I agree. If merely being splashed by his corrosive urine sloughed off
her skin, I think he would not be alive to urinate.
phainopepla2 wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
It seems unlikely but possible that she was highly sensitive or
allergic to the substance in a way that he wasn't
JKCalhoun wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
"Paraquat, a heavily regulated weed killer, is banned in more than 70
countriesâ¦"
Seventy countries kind of suggested to me that something is up with
this chemical.
cm2012 wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
GMOs are harmless but also widely banned.
downrightmike wrote 20 hours 14 min ago:
GMOs aren't toxic chemicals, two distinct things
kstrauser wrote 20 hours 20 min ago:
I was on that train, too, but... harmless according to whom? The
same ag lobbyists who claimed Roundup was harmless?
I'm pretty freaking far from a conspiracy theorist, but I've
lived through:
* Tobacco companies claiming it was safe.
* Alcohol companies claiming it was safe.
* Food companies claiming trans fats were safe.
* Oil companies claiming leaded gasoline was safe.
* Mining companies claiming asbestos was safe.
...and a gazillion similar episodes.
At this point, it seems absolutely insane to trust any large
industry's claims that their products are safe.
bluGill wrote 19 hours 30 min ago:
Harmless compared to random genitic mutation which happens all
the time and is never studied. only gmo is held to any standard
at all, when other forms of genetic change are held to any
standard we can ask if one is better - but for now even the
most biased corporate study is better than the alternatives.
Nasrudith wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
Paraquat seems like it should be banned on its acute toxicity grounds
alone, but the Parkinson's link as phrased doesn't stand out given the
article's statistics. A thousand out of a million is a thousandth.
A baseline rate or Parkinsons would be a good addition to the article.
I have seen figures of 1 out of 331 for total or apparently about 1.1M
total. Farmers make up about 2% of the population. Doing rough back of
envelope math shows that you would expect 22K farmers to have
Parkinsons assuming even distribution by population.
The numbers aren't precise but if the article's thousands was taken
literally it would ironically suggest paraquat has a protective effect
against Parkinsons which is obviously absurd thing to assume from a
known neurotoxin.
Not every farmer with Parkinsons is suing though. If we assume 1% of
farmers are involved in lawsuits then thousands is alarming because it
would imply 10x rates. 10% suing though and it is expected. 100% suing
would be 1/10th the general rate which would fit with the absurd
counterfactual hypothesis that non-lethal paraquat exposure prevents
Parkinsons.
phendrenad2 wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
Are the migrant workers getting Parkinson's, or only the white males
who can pull the heartstrings of MAGA folks?
francisofascii wrote 23 hours 59 min ago:
Isn't this old news? If you are a Vietnam vet who were exposed to
Agent Orange or other herbicides, and you get Parkinson's, the VA
assumes it was from Vietnam. My grandfather had Parkinson's a long time
ago it was always said it was due to pesticides they used while
farming.
01100011 wrote 19 hours 1 min ago:
IIRC the issue with AO was the dioxins present as a side-product of
the synthesis, not the herbicide itself. Dioxins are nasty.
downrightmike wrote 20 hours 15 min ago:
First acknowledge AO death was in 2015, they gaslighted entire
generations. Had Nixon not sent his campaign manager to Vietnam in
1969, and promised the VietCong a better deal later when he was
president, we wouldn't have spent those five unneeded years there and
wouldn't have used AO.
clivestaples wrote 1 day ago:
I got shingles-ish rash after sitting in an outdoor jacuzzi in Salinas,
California. Visited the urgent care and the Standard-trained doctor of
immigrant farm laborers said it was related to the pesticides. Said he
lost both parents in their 40s and suspects it was the indiscriminate
spraying from the air in the 70/80/90s. Eye-opening and
thought-provoking.
bloomingeek wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
As a city dweller, I used to use Roundup along my fence line. Then I
read an article in a newspaper about spraying chemicals when there is
a breeze. So I read the label on the Roundup bottle and it said
absolutely do not spray in any windy conditions. Next I polled my
coworkers about this and they all said they just stay upwind!
The bottle label also said Roundup is active for up to 30 days, then
I thought about my dogs. I no longer use any chemical for lawn care.
As to the plight of the farmers: I wonder if most of them bothered to
used proper personal protection gear when spraying? Even if they had
enclosed cabs, the chemical would still coat the tractor and tank
surfaces which can be rubbed against at any time.
vel0city wrote 18 hours 59 min ago:
> So I read the label on the Roundup bottle
Something that is supposed to be done to legally use it properly
under FIFRA. There's a reason why it says in big letters READ
ENTIRE LABEL BEFORE USE.
Its nuts to me there's so many people out there buying crazy
chemicals and just #yolo'ing it all over the place.
downrightmike wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
And get in in the air intakes for the AC, or even if they closed it
off to only recycle internal air, they brought chemical in with
them
bloomingeek wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
Most modern home AC systems have, as a rule of thumb, ten percent
fresh air intake. This varies, depending on the home size and
state and local codes. On my home the fresh air vent is high up
in my attic, which should protect me from over spraying of
chemicals. However, if you have a window unit or an on ground
system this will affect your exposure.
In an effort to save money, some will close their fresh air vent,
this is not recommended because of the lack of air trade out in
the system.
buildsjets wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
When the stories about Roundup started floating around, I switched
to 30% strength vinegar with a squirt of dish soap in it. It kills
weeds and undesired plants off just as quickly and effectively as
Roundup did, but obviously it does not prevent new seeds from
sprouting. It is indiscriminate, whereas Roundup selectively
targets broad-leafed plants, so you want to avoid getting it on
grass. I use a big tarp to mask off the grass if I am using it
heavily along the lawn borders. It's very effective for things
like borders, gravel paths, stuff like that.
Also, instead of smelling like a chemical factory, your yard will
smell like salad dressing for a day or so.
phantasmish wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
In many parts of the country whole counties smell of pesticide for
a few days every year (and pig-shit another few days, but thatâs
a different issue)
Iâve lived in some of them, and my mom did a lot of by-hand
weed-killer spraying (big plastic refillable jug with sprayer hose
& wand) along a mile-plus of fence line, for years. Her generation
didnât really do PPE, so no respirator. Died relatively young of
a Parkinsonâs-adjacent dementia a little while back. No history
of any of that in the family. Hm.
stef25 wrote 23 hours 31 min ago:
My dad used Roundup extensively in the garden in the 80s and 90s.
Both he and a gardener he hired to help died from dementia.
The scientist in me wants to see definitive proof from validated
studies.
bloomingeek wrote 19 hours 30 min ago:
Monsanto has muddied the waters on many studies and was caught.
They are currently involved in many lawsuits and have lost most.
juujian wrote 1 day ago:
Meanwhile, RFK is too busy talking vaccines and beef tallow...
NotGMan wrote 1 day ago:
Why can't all of these things be problematic? Why the binary
thinking?
jmclnx wrote 1 day ago:
>Chevron, which never manufactured paraquat and hasnât sold it since
1986 ... should not be liable
I think Chevron may have a point, no one knew back then and they
stopped selling it ~40 years ago. But ---
To me, if the US had a real Health Care System, people would not have
to file lawsuits to get the care they need.
But in the US, this is how things work. The care these people need is
unaffordable by everyone in the US except for the very rich. So they
will be waiting probably 10 to 20 years for relief as the lawsuit works
it way through the courts and appeals.
stickfigure wrote 1 day ago:
Related: [1] ChubbyEmu video for "A Farmer Mistakenly Drank His Own
Herbicide. This Is What Happened To His Brain."
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VtUGoGZtI8
keiferski wrote 1 day ago:
An excellent movie on basically the same topic is Michael Clayton, with
George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and Tilda Swinton in IMO each of their
best career performances.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Clayton
jamestimmins wrote 1 day ago:
Excellent movie. Worth noting that it was written by Tony Gilroy, who
created Andor and cowrote The Bourne Identity, so if you enjoyed
those you're likely to enjoy this.
losthobbies wrote 1 day ago:
One of my favourite movies. Everyone in it is so good.
MarkMarine wrote 1 day ago:
I just read another article about this, but the affected group is
military from Camp Legume. The water in Legume was contaminated, and
its actually given a control group test for the incidence of
Parkinsonâs with Camp Pendleton, where the water was not
contaminated.
Spoiler: it looks like the farmers are right [1] Amazing thing is TCE
was banned by the Biden EPA in 2024 and Trumpâs EPA stopped its ban.
HTML [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-thought-parkinsons-was-...
brendoelfrendo wrote 1 day ago:
Minor correction: it's Camp Lejeune. I just had to chime in because
Camp Legume is both very funny and kind of an appropriate typo for
the topic.
Infernal wrote 1 day ago:
For anyone stopping by looking for more info, itâs Camp Lejeune not
Legume.
MarkMarine wrote 23 hours 18 min ago:
Good lord. Thank you. Served in Pendleton and I should know better.
lapetitejort wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
The EPA should check crayons for brain-eating chemicals
krustyburger wrote 1 day ago:
Camp Legume may be a reference to this scene from the film Blazing
Saddles:
HTML [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=VPIP9KXdmO0
mathgradthrow wrote 1 day ago:
1 in 400 US citizens is diagnosed with parkinsons, if by "thousands",
this headline means 5000, then 1 in 2000 US farmers has Parkinson's.
Stop it.
tredre3 wrote 1 day ago:
Skepticism is healthy. You've found that the numbers don't make sense
at face value. The problem is that you stopped there, you haven't
even made any attempt at reconciling them with the original claim.
What if the US number of 1 in 400 figure is that high precisely
because it includes people exposed to pesticide? In other words,
maybe the number would be 1 in 500 if it weren't for Paraquat? You'd
have to look at concentration maps or at the very least check what's
the diagnosis rates in other countries before you can truly dismiss
the claim, imho.
lm28469 wrote 1 day ago:
If only we had tools like science and statistics...
HTML [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139...
tastyfreeze wrote 1 day ago:
Paraquat was used in horrendous amounts mid century. It may be a
dose dependant outcome.
slashdev wrote 1 day ago:
The article mentions epidemiological studies showing that people
living or working near farmland where paraquat is used have a higher
incidence of Parkinson's.
Don't be so quick to dismiss it, there could be a link.
zamadatix wrote 1 day ago:
The article already talks to the numbers they mean and what scale
they believe it to be:
> More than 6,400 lawsuits against Syngenta and Chevron that allege a
link between paraquat and Parkinsonâs are pending in the U.S.
District Court of Southern Illinois. Another 1,300 cases have been
brought in Pennsylvania, 450 in California and more are scattered
throughout state courts.
> âI do think itâs important to be clear that number is probably
not even close to representative of how many people have been
impacted by this,â said Christian Simmons, a legal expert for
Drugwatch.
mathgradthrow wrote 1 day ago:
There are hundreds of pictures of the Loch Ness monster.
sentrysapper wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
My grandfather was a crop duster pilot in the 60s-70s. He died of
Parkinson's almost 4 years ago today. He is the only one in my
family to succumb to this disease. For a brief moment I was
relieved to know there was some explanation for his suffering.
Then I read the HN comments.
It is beyond infuriating to read a well researched paper with
1300 open cases legal with overwhelming evidence only to be met
with "zero chance this is real."
zamadatix wrote 1 day ago:
I'm not saying you have to believe it, just that rhetorically
asking if it's more than 5,000 in the US is redundant when the
article already says there are more than that many individual
cases about it in a single district court.
mathgradthrow wrote 1 day ago:
I drastically underestimated the number of farmers, who skew
older. This is very unlikely to be anything.
zamadatix wrote 1 day ago:
Is that just stating a hunch or do you have new data outside
the 2 narratives presented in the article driving that?
jtbayly wrote 1 day ago:
Am I the only one that thinks it's weird to call a weed killer a
pesticide?
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
Herbicides are a pesticide [1]. (Alongside insecticides, fungicides
and fumigants, among others.)
HTML [1]: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-01/documents/pe...
lordswork wrote 1 day ago:
Technically, yes, but it's a similar relationship of humans being
animals. If you say animals, the audience will assume you're not
talking about humans.
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
Did you mean "beast" or "creature"?
connicpu wrote 1 day ago:
Scientific terminology should be precise, not based on colloquial
usages
SideburnsOfDoom wrote 1 day ago:
A related, recent story: "Scientists Thought Parkinsonâs Was in Our
Genes. It Might Be in the Water"
Highlighting the role of environmental pollution in causing
Parkinsonâs. [1] [2]
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46216422
HTML [2]: https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-thought-parkinsons-was-...
HTML [3]: https://archive.is/ZvjZH
chasil wrote 1 day ago:
HTML [1]: https://archive.ph/YVt2I
SavioMak wrote 10 hours 12 min ago:
or ublock origin `www.mlive.com##+js(rc, article__paragraph--blur)`
zug_zug wrote 1 day ago:
Reminds me of "cancer alley" [1].
As somebody who's looked in to this a bit, the deeper I dug the more I
ultimately moved toward the conclusion (reluctantly) that indeed big
corporations are the baddies. I have an instinct to steel-math both
sides, but not every issue has two compelling sides to it...
One example of them clearly being the baddies is them paying people to
social media astroturf to defend the roundup pesticide online [2].
1. [1] 2.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
HTML [2]: https://galiherlaw.com/media-manipulation-comes-out-during-mon...
RataNova wrote 5 hours 9 min ago:
"Cancer Alley" is a good comparison because it shows how this plays
out over decades
GuB-42 wrote 21 hours 40 min ago:
We need some more nuance here.
Companies are not evil, they are profit driven, and they make profit
by responding to demand. If people demand evil, they will make evil,
if people demand good, they will make good. I think it is too easy to
blame them when ultimately, we are the one who support them.
In the case of farming, we want cheap food, and the way to make cheap
food is intensive farming, with pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.
So, companies make pesticides, farmers use them, and we eat the cheap
food. Because we recognize that some checks need to be put in place,
we elect governments to regulate all that, and or vote goes to
whoever makes the best balance between cheap food, taxes and
subsidies, and general health and precautions. This is crucial
because cheap food is a matter of survival to some.
So in the end, there are no "baddies", just a system that's not
perfect. Also keep in mind that big corporation are made of a lot of
people, you may be one of them. I am. Does it make us evil? Maybe a
little, but I don't think any more than average, as middle-class, I
even tend to think we define the average.
array_key_first wrote 20 hours 48 min ago:
This is assuming that every consumers knows what evil goes into
their consumption. They don't, and not by choice, but because
nobody will tell them. Ever. In fact, everyone will spend billions
to make sure they don't know.
The problem with simplistic free market dynamics views is that they
rely on consumer choice. Consumer choice relies on consumer consent
and free information flow.
As soon as EITHER of those two are chilled, even just a tiny bit,
the free market dynamics thinking falls down like a house of cards.
Now the situation is orders of magnitude more complex, and we
actually have to think about what's going on, inatead of appealing
to a model so bare-bones it's practically impossible to see in real
life.
schubidubiduba wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
The issue is when companies try to hide their evil, manipulate
public opinion, lobby (bribe) lawmakers to disable the democratic
process, ...
All of which happens regularly, and especially in this case, as the
person you responded to showed.
Don't seek nuance where there is none.
aqme28 wrote 21 hours 1 min ago:
> Companies are not evil, they are profit driven, and they make
profit by responding to demand
How do you define evil? Profit motivation at the expense of human
life is as evil as anything you're ever going to find outside of
fantasy literature.
multiplegeorges wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
> If people demand evil, they will make evil, if people demand
good, they will make good.
This is so naive.
People do not ask corporations to be evil and they certainly don't
demand it. People ask for good value and convenience and
corporations respond by doing by amorally pursuing that.
However, when you ask consumers if they want value and convenience
at the cost of *evil*, they almost always say no.
Corporations have a demonstrated and well-documented history of
actively hiding their evil actions because they know consumers are
not aligned with them at all.
If consumers "demand" evil, as you say, then corporations wouldn't
try to hide it.
GuB-42 wrote 20 hours 43 min ago:
Counterexample.
Even when eggs are clearly labeled "caged" and "free range", many
people will buy the "caged" eggs despite the clear implications
in terms of animal welfare.
Also, while I consider organic food to be mostly (but not
completely) a scam, most people don't buy organic. Which can be
interpreted as "if it is cheaper with pesticides than without, I
will go for pesticides".
In cars, emission control devices have to me made mandatory and
almost no one would pay for them. And even with that, people
sometimes break the law to remove them (ex: catalytic converter).
It is common for all environmental laws.
Of course, if you talk to people face to face, most will tell you
that they don't want value and convenience at the cost of evil,
but in private, if can turn a blind eye, they will.
And most of these company evil practices are often not very well
hidden. Sometimes, they are genuinely criminal, highly secret
operations, but they are often not, as criminal lawsuits are
costly, and secrets like that don't last long in big companies.
But if it is legal and it brings value convenience to people,
people usually don't want to look too much, even when some NGOs
try to bring awareness.
nhumrich wrote 19 hours 6 min ago:
I think "caged" is not "evil" in a lot of people's minds. This
is NOT society saying "we will look the other way", it's
society saying, "that's not evil"
Also, organic doesn't mean, "without pesticides" it means a lot
MORE than that. For example, I have no problem buying
genetically modified produce. If there was an option for
"pesticide free, but not organic because of GMO" I would
probably buy that.
Anyways, my point really being, you can't extrapolate that
people are looking the other way because of price. All your
examples are more of examples of society not being morally
aligned to what you are considering evil.
vel0city wrote 19 hours 18 min ago:
> Even when eggs are clearly labeled "caged" and "free range",
many people will buy the "caged" eggs despite the clear
implications in terms of animal welfare.
Are many egg cartons actually labeled as "caged" around you?
Where I am its either advertised as cage-free or its unlabeled.
Its not like the options are "tiny torture chambers": $2.99,
"unclean hellscape": $3.99, "rainbows and sunshine": $4.99. Its
also hard to tell what these things mean, because "cage-free"
can still be a pretty terrible existence for the birds as well.
But I do agree though, if there's a seemingly similar product
with a much cheaper price tag a ton of people (myself included)
will often reach for the cheaper product.
anticensor wrote 2 hours 47 min ago:
caged = tiny torture chambers
cage-free / some freeroam = unclean hellscape
good freeroam / organic = rainbows & sunshine
Paedor wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
This only really applies in a world of complete information.
Pesticide side effects were an enormous externality, which only the
company was aware of. And they obviously worked hard to keep that
information out of the public consciousness. Perhaps there could be
nuance to producing the pesticide, weighing food prices against
health impacts, but thatâs no justification for lying about what
it does.
eitau_1 wrote 22 hours 6 min ago:
Seeing how much having an unlimited upside corrupts corporations
seeded my first serious doubts about capitalism.
parineum wrote 23 hours 23 min ago:
> One example of them clearly being the baddies is them paying people
to social media astroturf to defend the roundup pesticide online [2].
It certainly looks bad but I'm not sure the logic really follows.
It's just modern PR. Companies used to just do that by having good
relationships with journalist but now social media has taken a lot of
that role away. It's a fairly natural transition for companies to
make and I'd be surprised if you couldn't find a lot of major
corporations that don't do something similar.
And, also, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are either
willingly lying or that their products are unsafe.
littlestymaar wrote 23 hours 42 min ago:
I used to be a proponent of the industrial agriculture, because
technological progress of all kinds (genetics, chemicals,
mechanisation) are the reason why food is now abundant.
But the massive disinformation campaigns and targeted harassment of
researchers, as well as the outright corruption of science is where
they lost me. Surely you wouldn't do things like that if you had
clear consciousness.
soulofmischief wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
Checking in from cancer alley!
There are refineries within a stone's throw from my house. One of
them sits on the highest point in our water table and the vacuum it
creates has been destroying our famously soft water by creating
underground fault lines which pollute the aquifer with leeched hard
minerals.
But hey, oil.
kwanbix wrote 1 day ago:
It is a consequence of our current model of living, where the only
thing that matters is proffit.
littlestymaar wrote 23 hours 38 min ago:
Unfortunately, in the current political environment saying that
there are things that matters more than profit makes you a Commie
somehowâ¦
aeternum wrote 23 hours 22 min ago:
It's a Chinese company selling this stuff so being a commie
doesn't save you.
didibus wrote 19 hours 11 min ago:
Use of it is banned in China though...
aeternum wrote 12 hours 45 min ago:
Yes but the fact it's primarily a Chinese export makes the
profit as the cause narrative much less convincing. The US
FDA is ignoring evidence to protect a Chinese supplier?
littlestymaar wrote 5 hours 35 min ago:
> Yes but the fact it's primarily a Chinese export makes
the profit as the cause narrative much less convincing. The
US FDA is ignoring evidence to protect a Chinese supplier?
Who said it was done to protect the pesticide's
manufacturer? It protects the industry as a whole: the
agro-industry aims for low costs, and that means using
cheap pesticides to increase crop yield, even it it ends up
harming farmers in the process.
peppersghost93 wrote 1 day ago:
You should consider dropping that instinct. If you look into how
corporations have behaved historically you'd assume evil until proven
innocent. Especially US corps.
samdoesnothing wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
You're right. That's why I never took the Covid vaccine and I
convinced everyone I know to avoid it as well. You cannot trust big
pharma after all the evil things they've done.
tootie wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
You can certainly accept a bias against corporations but you still
should never assume every accusation is correct. Otherwise you'd be
inclined to believe bullshit theories like Moderna wants our kids
to have autism.
NaOH wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
>Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please
don't be rigidly or generically negative.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
CursedSilicon wrote 23 hours 12 min ago:
>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less,
as a topic gets more divisive
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
bombcar wrote 1 day ago:
Corporations have to be assumed to be amoral, which means that
practically speaking, you can assume they'll tend towards evil.
At least you have to continually monitor them as such.
svara wrote 23 hours 11 min ago:
> you can assume they'll tend towards evil.
An unnecessarily cynical take. What this is implying is that, in
the absence of any morals, evil provides a selective advantage.
And yet, pro-social behavior has evolved many times independently
through natural selection.
atmavatar wrote 20 hours 56 min ago:
It's not that cynical when you consider that corporations exist
precisely to shield owners and leadership from legal (and to a
lesser extent) monetary responsibility.
kelseyfrog wrote 23 hours 6 min ago:
Evil confers an individual advantage. Pro-social behavior
confers a group advantage. That's why sociopaths continue to
walk along us. Society can tolerate a few of them, but only up
to a point.
svara wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Evolution works on the level of the reproducing organism,
i.e. the individual.
Google group selection if you'd like to go down a deep rabbit
hole but the upshot is, if pro-social behavior did not confer
and individual advantage, the individuals who lose the trait
would outcompete their conspecifics and the pro-social trait
would not be fixed in the population.
This is why you usually see additional stabilizing
mechanism(s) to suppress free-loading, in addition to the
pro-social traits themselves, even in very simple examples of
pro-social traits such as bacteria collaboratively creating
biofilms.
The genes coding for the biofilms are usually coded on
transmissible plasmids, making it possible for one individual
to re-infect another that has lost it.
You might consider the justice system, police etc. as
analogous to that.
So yes, in the case where you're part of a functioning
society and free-loading on the pro-social behavior of
others, that is temporarily beneficial to you - until the
stabilizing mechanisms kick in.
I'm not saying in practice you can never get away with
anything, of course you can. But on average you can't, we
wouldn't be a social species otherwise.
kelseyfrog wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
In your Durkheimian analogy, sociopaths are cancer and
while the body usually handles one off rogue cells, it
often fails when tumors and eventually metastasis develop.
svara wrote 21 hours 24 min ago:
That can happen, sure, but the cancer's strategy is not a
winning one - it dies along with the host.
Again, I'm not arguing for some naive Panglossian view.
Things can get pretty bad transiently.
I just take exception at the cynical view that evil is
somehow intrinsically more powerful than good.
"Survival of the fittest" is often misunderstood that way
too, as survival of the strong and selfish, when, on the
contrary, evolution is full of examples of cooperation
being stable over long timescales.
kelseyfrog wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
Evil simply has more options available than good. Sure,
those options, like all options, have pros and cons.
Cancer, like sociopathy, can have a pretty good run
even if it ends ultimately in demise.
I very much want to push back against any bias towards
a just world. Bad people often live their whole lives
without any consequence (think prostate cancer) while
good people struggle (think my cuticles, which deserve
much more than I usually give).
svara wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
The cynical view suffers from availability bias -
it's easy for us to think of someone who sticks out
through bad behavior, but somehow gets away with it,
precisely because it is not normal. (1)
But if you look at long timescales, it's pretty
obvious that cooperation is the more powerful
strategy.
We used to live in tribes of hunter gatherers, in
constant danger from a hostile environment. Now,
we're part of a global technological superorganism
that provides for us.
If free-loading was a dominant strategy, this would
never have developed.
(1) From the evolutionary biology point of view this
can be explained by rate dependent selection- meaning
the strategy is strong as long as only a small
fraction of a population employ it. Durkheim would
probably say you need these people to establish what
the norms of a society are.
armonster wrote 1 day ago:
Corporations should be assumed to act in line with their
interests, which is the bottom line. "Morality" isn't the lens
that you need to try to view them through to understand their
intentions and actions. But yes, their motivations pretty much
always lay outside of any moral good due to the nature of them.
jayd16 wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
Yeah ok, the bear isn't evil but it will still maul you on
sight.
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 13 min ago:
> the bear isn't evil but it will still maul you on sight
The bear still has unified agency. Corporations do not. (No
group of people do.) More than the wind, less than a bear.
And I think their flaws are probably shared by all large
human organisations.
ptx wrote 20 hours 44 min ago:
Isn't unified agency the point of forming an organization?
The organization generally elects leaders to direct the
actions of the organization for some common purpose, e.g.
through policies and direct decisions, and they can (or
should) be held accountable for those actions.
ryandrake wrote 22 hours 49 min ago:
They're lawnmowers[1], not bears.
1:
HTML [1]: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s
Lutger wrote 23 hours 54 min ago:
Maybe this is taking it too far, but anyway: corporations don't
have any agency. They are not persons. The organization and
constellation of interests of corporations may be such that:
1. immoral people (such as psychopaths) will be
disproportionately at the helm of large corporations
2. regular people will make immoral decisions, because to do
otherwise would be against their own interests or because the
consequences / moral impact are hidden from their awareness
There is no way to act in life that isn't in some sense moral
or political, because it also impacts others and you are always
responsible for your what you do (or don't do). And
corporations are just a bunch of people doing stuff together.
To maintain otherwise is in itself a (im)moral act,
intentionally or not, see point 2 above.
amelius wrote 20 hours 45 min ago:
If corporations are not people then why are their ads full of
elements that make us feel warm and fuzzy?
We're being tricked!
throwaway132448 wrote 1 day ago:
Perhaps, but itâs much easier to find contrived ways to stay
neutral, than take a stance and actually be the change you want to
see.
reactordev wrote 1 day ago:
Legislatively allowed evil
bcrosby95 wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
If the corporate veil, a legislative invention, were abolished or
significantly weakened companies would stop acting evil pretty
quickly. So yeah, this tracks.
samdoesnothing wrote 21 hours 7 min ago:
This is a gross misunderstanding of what the corporate veil is.
Permit wrote 1 day ago:
> You should consider dropping that instinct.
This is the reason we have people mistakenly repeating the
conclusion that AI consumes huge amounts of water comparable to
that of entire cities.
If you make any other assumption than "I don't know what's
happening here and need to learn more" you'll constantly be making
these kind of errors. You don't have to have an opinion on every
topic.
Edit: By the way, I also don't think we should trust big companies
indiscriminately. Like, we could have a system for pesticide
approval that errs on the side of caution: We only permit
pesticides for which there is undisputed evidence that the
chemicals do not cause problems for humans/animals/other plants
etc.
MSFT_Edging wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
AI water usage is pretty bad on a local scale where a large water
consumer(Data centers) start sucking up more water than the local
table can bear at the expense of the people living there.
Even if the general takes seen on water use is wrong, it's
correct in that these companies don't have the best in mind for
the average person. It's correct that these companies will push
limits and avoid accountability. It's correct that they're
generally a liability creating a massive bubble and speculation
based on an immature tech designed to automate as many careers
away as possible without a proposed solution to the newly
unemployed besides "deliver fast food" or "die".
Despite legally treating corporations as people, there's no
consistently enforced mechanism that can punish them like people.
Monsanto can't be sent to jail for murder. Their C-Levels will
never see a cell the way the average person can have the book
thrown at them for comparably minor crimes.
Because companies cannot be held accountable legally and
effectively, it's important to assume the worst, to generate the
public blowback to hold them accountable via lost business.
gruez wrote 19 hours 22 min ago:
>Even if the general takes seen on water use is wrong, it's
correct in that these companies don't have the best in mind for
the average person.
That just sounds more like cope than anything else. eg. "AI
companies sucking up all the water might not be a real issue,
but I still think they're evil for other reasons".
MSFT_Edging wrote 3 hours 2 min ago:
Buddy no one can buy RAM right now because Ole sammy bought
up the useless wafers for datacenters they can't power for 10
years.
They don't have your best interest at heart. They're going to
willingly nuke the economy before admitting their chatbots
aren't the god machine they've been preaching about.
JDEW wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
> â¦undisputed evidence⦠do not cause problemsâ¦
This is unworkable in practice; nothing will ever be completely
safe. Instead, we need a public regulatory body that makes
reasonable risk/reward tradeoffs when approving necessary
chemicals. However, this system breaks down completely when you
allow for lobbying and a revolving door between the public and
private sectors.
qarl wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
Not at all. NOT AT ALL.
There are shades of gray here. But you are absolutely not
required to extend benefit of the doubt to entities that have not
earned it. That's a recipe for disaster.
Personally, I find myself to be incredibly biased against
corporations over people. I've met a lot of people in my life,
they seem mostly nice if a bit stupid. Well intentioned.
Selfish.
Are corporations mostly well intentioned? Well, consider that
some people tried to put "good intentions" into corporations
bylaws and has been viciously resisted.
Corporations will happily take everything you have if you
accidentally give it to them. Actual human beings aren't like
that.
more_corn wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
Ai does us a crap-ton of water.
Most data centers use closed loop liquid cooling with heat
exchangers to water cooling. (At least all the big ones like
Google and Amazon do)
Iâm curious what evidence you think youâve seen to the
contrary. from my side, I used to build data centers and my
friends are still in the industry. As of a month ago Iâve had
discussions with Google engineers who build data centers
regarding their carful navigation of water rights, testing of
waste water etc.
seg_lol wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
> Most data centers use closed loop liquid cooling with heat
exchangers to water cooling.
If these data centers are so water efficient, please explain
the Dalles data center use > 25% of their water supply? [1]
HTML [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230130142801/https://cen...
HTML [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20251014013855/https://www...
vel0city wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
So we'll move the datacenters from the tiny town to just
outside of a giant city which will probably move that
percentage down to only a few percent if even that. Problem
solved!
You're looking at the wrong metrics to compare here if we're
trying to just gauge how efficient a datacenter is or is not.
This metric could be useful if the datacenters are attached
to the municipal water system and thus begin to be a massive
load compared to what was originally planned/built, but in
terms of understanding the total water use compared to other
industrial users its kind of a meaningless statistic.
Aloisius wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
Did they say it was efficient? The "closed loop" is only one
part of the system that cycles water between the heat
exchanger and the building/servers.
The second part of the system is an open loop that uses water
to cool the closed loop at the heat exchanger.
seg_lol wrote 16 hours 28 min ago:
They implied that DCs somehow save water because of being
closed loop. The closed loop is a red herring, since the
outer loop dumps potable water.
jeffbee wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
The Dalles data centers use a large fraction of the water
supply of The Dalles because the data centers are extremely
large and the town of The Dalles is of negligible size. It is
also true that the paper mill of Valliant, Oklahoma uses 50
million gallons of water per day and that the town of
Valliant, Oklahoma, population 819, uses less than 1% of that
amount, so the paper mill can be said to be using > 99% of
the local water supply but this is also a meaningless
comparison.
SV_BubbleTime wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
Parent says consume, you write use.
Iâve been unclear on this. What datacenter out there is using
an open loop cooling system that does not return the water
after cooling for other uses?
It seems extremely inefficient to have to filter river water
over and over then to dump it into the ground so deep it
doesnât go back to getting into an aquifer.
jeffbee wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
The water that is "used" by data centers is evaporated.
That's where it goes. The sky.
SV_BubbleTime wrote 19 hours 8 min ago:
So you are saying itâs an open loop, and can we not
calculate when these million of gallons of water are going
to come back down?
jeffbee wrote 19 hours 4 min ago:
As is always the case when discussing systems, the answer
changes depending on where you draw the system boundary.
In some cases you would expect water to fall as rain in
the same watershed where it was drawn. This is the case
for example of water "used by" California rice fields
that are irrigated by flood. In other cases, you can
expect the water to disappear into a distant system. This
would be the case for water drawn from fossil aquifers.
SV_BubbleTime wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
That water becomes rice.
Does the water that cool datacebters become AI? Do we
ship water bearing AI around the world?
gamblor956 wrote 23 hours 4 min ago:
AI does consume huge amounts of water comparable to entire
cities. A single AI facility consumes more water than most
cities.
That AI consumes somewhat less water than cities of millions is
not a defense.
nradov wrote 18 hours 51 min ago:
No that's incorrect. Now you're just lying and making things
up.
gamblor956 wrote 15 hours 14 min ago:
No, that's incorrect. Others have provided citations
demonstrating that the big tech AI facilities use more water
than cities with populations of 100,000 people.
A city is not defined by its size. It is defined by its legal
incorporation as a city. There are big cities, and there are
small cities, and most cities are on the smaller side.
Try again.
CGMthrowaway wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
>people mistakenly repeating the conclusion that AI consumes huge
amounts of water comparable to that of entire cities
Does it not?
"We estimate that 1 MWh of energy consumption by a data center
requires 7.1 m3 of water." If Microsoft, Amazon and Google are
assumed to have ~8000 MW of data centers in the US, that is 1.4M
m3 per day. The city of Philadelphia supplies 850K m3 per day.
HTML [1]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abf...
jeffbee wrote 21 hours 40 min ago:
Why do we need to assume so many things, when we can peg it to
reality.
Worldwide, Google's data centers averaged 3.7GW in 2024.
Globally, they use 8.135e9 gallons of water in the year, which
is 30.8e6m³ per year, which is 84e3m³ per day. Double that to
meet the assumed 8GW data center capacity, 168e3m³/day. QED:
the estimate 1.4e6m³/day is high by a factor of 10x. Or, in
other words, the entire information industry consumes the same
amount of water as one very small city.
I believe this is why Google states their water consumption as
equivalent to 51 golf courses. It gives a useful benchmark for
comparison. But any way you look at it the water consumption of
the information sector is basically nothing.
Aloisius wrote 19 hours 9 min ago:
All the golf courses where I live use grey water - water that
would otherwise be dumped into oceans/estuaries/rivers/etc.
That's not really not comparable to data centers using
potable water.
jeffbee wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
Even the golf course trade association only claims 10% grey
water use.
Also, you're going to be shocked, data centers can cool
with grey water as well. The now-cancelled Project Blue
data center near Tucson was going to build and operate a
wastewater pipeline and treatment plant and give it to the
city, but the shouting NIMBYs prevailed anyway. The
developer now intends to use air-to-air cooling, which
costs more energy.
shadowgovt wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
Resource consumption of AI is unclear on two axes:
1) As other commenters have noted: raw numbers. In general,
people are taking the resource consumption of new datacenters
and attributing 100% of that to "because AI," when the reality
is generally that while AI is increasing spend on new
infrastructure, data companies are always spending on new
infrastructure because of everything they do.
2) Comparative cost. In general, image synthesis takes between
80 and 300 times fewer resources (mostly electricity) per image
than human creation does. It turns out a modern digital artist
letting their CPU idle and screen on while they muse is soaking
significant resources that an AI is using to just synthesize.
Granted, this is also not an apples-to-apples comparison
because the average AI flow generates dozens of draft images to
find the one that is used, but the net resource effect might be
less energy spent in total per produced image (on a skew of
"more spent by computers" and "less by people").
pegasus wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
Comparing humans with machines on resource use gives some
seriously dystopian vibes.
shadowgovt wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
I agree, but that's what people are implicitly doing every
time they toss out one of those "The machine drinks a glass
of water every time it" statistics. We are to assume a
human doesn't.
baq wrote 23 hours 8 min ago:
how much is it in burgers and steaks? serious question
CGMthrowaway wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
Philadelphia? 80K m3 water for 10K lbs beef per day. But
that's not potable water, which is a lot of what data centers
are using
tobyjsullivan wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
Donât forget cotton.
234 m3 per tonne, of clean water.
25M tonnes per year.
=> 16M m3 of clean water per day
Edit: convert to comparable units
marcyb5st wrote 23 hours 9 min ago:
Yeah, but that is for everything. YouTube, Amazon itself, AWS,
Azure, GCP, ... not just AI stuff. I mean, it is still a lot of
water, but the numbers are not that easy to calculate IMHO
seg_lol wrote 22 hours 8 min ago:
Many if not most data centers are pulling water out of the
ground that will never be replaced. The problem is
multidimensional, not just volume.
pajko wrote 23 hours 34 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yzls...
SoftTalker wrote 23 hours 38 min ago:
"undisputed evidence that the chemicals do not cause problems"
Impossible standard. You cannot prove a negative.
But, I think it's fair to assume that any chemical that is toxic
to plant or insect life is probably something you want to be
careful with.
hgomersall wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Nonsense, if we view proving as providing evidence for, then
absolutely we can prove a negative. We have our priors, we
accumulate evidence, we generate a posterior. At some point we
are sufficiently convinced. Don't get hung up on the narrow
mathematical definition of prove (c.f. the exception[al case]
that proves [tests] the rule), and we're just dandy.
drdeca wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
I like to think that what the âcanât prove a negativeâ
phrase originated from was someone grasping at the difference
between Pi_1 and Sigma_1 statements . For a Pi_1 statement,
one needs only a single counterexample to refute it, but to
verify it by considering individual cases, one has to
consider all of them and show that they all work (which, if
there are infinitely many, it is impossible to handle them
all individually, and if there are just a lot, it may still
be infeasible) . Conversely, for a Sigma_1 statement, a
single example is sufficient to verify the claim, but
refuting it by checking individual cases would require
checking every case.
jjgreen wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
You cannot prove a negative.
How about Fermat's last theorem?
miltonlost wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
Mathematics and scientific proof of negatives are different
kinds of proofs.
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 21 min ago:
> Impossible standard. You cannot prove a negative
It's also a deep incumbency advantage. Of course the guys
selling the existing stuff are going to dispute the safety of a
competitor.
pfdietz wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
And when a chemical goes off patent protection and you have a
new patented chemical ready to go, it's advantageous to
suddenly dis the now public domain entity.
peppersghost93 wrote 23 hours 58 min ago:
"If you make any other assumption than "I don't know what's
happening here and need to learn more" you'll constantly be
making these kind of errors. You don't have to have an opinion on
every topic."
I can do this and still start off by assuming the corporation is
in the wrong. The tendency to optimize for profits at the expense
of everything else, to ignore all negative externalities is
inherent to all American corporations.
ljsprague wrote 15 hours 9 min ago:
Many individuals optimize for profits too.
api wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
When you go shopping and see two items for sale that seem
nearly identical, do you buy the cheaper one?
If you have long term savings do you want it to earn interest?
The desire to optimize for profit exists at all levels among
all participants in the economy. Everyone does it. We are the
system and the system is us.
Regulations are usually the only way to fix these things
because there are game theoretic effects in play. If your
company spends more to clean up and others donât, you loseâ¦
because people buy cheaper products and invest in firms with
higher profit margins. The only way out weâve found is to
simultaneously compel everyone. But that doesnât remove the
incentive.
peppersghost93 wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
Yeah I'm aware. Learning about how American capitalism
functions is what set me on the path of being an
anticapitalist. Reforms and regulations will never be
effective here in solving this issue. The system itself is
poisonous.
engineer_22 wrote 18 hours 49 min ago:
what is the solution
Workaccount2 wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
The main thing that people snag on is scale and frequency.
If you are super into "ACAB" (all cops are bastards) you can
easily "research" this all day for weeks and find so many
insane cases of police being absolute bastards. You would be so
solidified in your belief that police as an institution are
fundamentally a force of evil.
But you would probably never come across the boring stat that
less than 1 in 500,000 police encounters ever register on the
"ACAB" radar.
This is almost always where people run aground. Stats are
almost always obfuscated for things that people develop a moral
conviction around. Imagine trying to acknowledge the stat there
are effectively zero transgender people perving on others in
public bathrooms.
ImPleadThe5th wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
"If you research police corruption you'll probably find out
the police are corrupt."
Large corporations and the police both have statistically
significant problems to be a concern to the average person.
Frequency isn't the issue it's recurrence across
municipalities. That's what makes it clear there is a
systemic issue.
Imagine if we didn't make laws about murder because "It's not
that frequent of a problem only 1 in 500,000 people are
murdered"
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote 18 hours 42 min ago:
>But you would probably never come across the boring stat
that less than 1 in 500,000 police encounters ever register
on the "ACAB" radar.
This is hardly a revelation. There are levels of bastardy in
between "angelic philosopher-saint and paladin of justice"
and "demonic hellspawn stomping babies for resisting arrest".
The cop who just hands out false tickets to meet quota is
just as ACAB as the one who finally loses his temper and
shoots someone without true cause, but one gets to hide it
better. Intuitively, I suspect that the cumulative actions of
the low-level ACAB behaviors add more misery and injustice to
the world than all the wrongful deaths and incarceration
combined.
ryandrake wrote 22 hours 54 min ago:
ACAB is not about the proportion of bad encounters to good
encounters. It is about the police system as a whole that
defends and provides cover for the bad ones.
If you have a system where 1 actor is bad, and the other
500,000 actors are good but also protect the 1, then you have
a system with 500,001 bad actors.
Workaccount2 wrote 15 hours 18 min ago:
The fact that 6 people replied to my comment in order to
"correct me" on something that is less deadly than hunting
accidents, is the most evidence I can offer for my point.
In the signal of things that are damaging society,
negatively impacting individuals,
police-brutality-self-investigation-no-harm-found is so far
down in the noise floor, it should be about as worrying as
people who live on busy street intersections not trimming
back their hedges for safe driving visibility.
But somehow, here are 6 people deep in random HN comments
telling me all about the importance of trimming hedges.
Err, reforming police.
defrost wrote 14 hours 52 min ago:
> something that is less deadly than hunting accidents,
Is this a lazy figure of speech?
US police have recently been killing ~ 1,100 people in
the US per year.
* [1] Near as I can tell that's more than a decades worth
of hunting fatalities in the US.
IHEA published a report of 79 fatal hunting-related
accidents in 2001. Twenty-nine fatalities resulted from
huntersâ failures to identify targets; 11 resulted from
huntersâ inability to see victims; 10 resulted from
hunters firing while swinging on game (the hunter follows
a moving target with their firearm).
* [2] ( Not a great source, it has some obvious errors
but largely meshes with other sources, I admit I've not
found a good comprehensive report on the overall state of
US hunting acidents, I did look at a several good state
summaries )
HTML [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/peopl...
HTML [2]: https://ammo.com/research/hunting-accident-stati...
everdrive wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
>If you have a system where 1 actor is bad, and the other
500,000 actors are good but also protect the 1, then you
have a system with 500,001 bad actors.
This line of thinking will either be totally unable to ever
build a large organization, or else will pathologically
explain-away wrong-doing due to black and white thinking.
MSFT_Edging wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
A large organization that gives their employees paid
vacation when any other person is sent to prison isn't an
organization worth having.
nickff wrote 20 hours 5 min ago:
This sort of thing is unfortunately very common in many
large bureaucracies, especially across the government.
A notable (and likely controversial) case in point is
teachers who (sexually or physically) abuse students,
and are kept on the payrolls, often in
ârubber-roomsâ. Are public schools worth having?
MSFT_Edging wrote 2 hours 17 min ago:
Police killed about 1200 people last year, with 118
happening during a wellness check, 116 during a
traffic stop, and an additional 213 for unspecified
non-violent offenses.
Only 10 officers were charged with a crime from these
cases. What do the 'rubber-room' stats look like?
HTML [1]: https://policeviolencereport.org/
collingreen wrote 18 hours 36 min ago:
I guess the equivalent here is the teachers and the
teachers unions covering up that abuse, moving the
abuses around to other schools, and lobbying for
special protection for those abusers even after they
are caught and convicted.
Its not perfect as an analogy since police are the
state's sanctioned violence and teachers are not, nor
are teachers in charge of preventing rape generally,
but it kind of works since kids generally do have to
go to school of some kind.
I expect in the above hypothetical the person you're
asking would agree that yes, all teachers are part of
the rape problem. The logic is the same and it hinges
on the idea that allowing and intentionally enabling
instead of fighting to expose and stop it makes you
part of that problem even if you aren't directly
doing the bad thing. Doubly so if your job is to
expose and stop that abuse in every group except your
own.
nickff wrote 18 hours 15 min ago:
Teachers in many jurisdictions (I donât know
about every jurisdiction) are required (and paid)
to take training in spotting signs of sexual or
physical abuse, and are (at least often) legally
required to report it. In that sense, they are
âin charge ofâ preventing sexual abuse.
QuercusMax wrote 19 hours 47 min ago:
I don't think many teachers think that abusing
students is part of their job, but there are LOTS of
cops who think that abusing their power to kill /
maim / steal from / rape citizens is JUST fine.
drdeca wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
Suppose you have a system where 1 actor is bad, and 500000
actors are âgood except that they protect that one
guyâ, and then the one guy dies of a freak heart attack,
and then all but one of the 500000 are replaced with
âgood actorsâ except that they defend the guy who
remains from the 500000.
Are they bad actors?
pstuart wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
You're reducing it down too far. Policing has a problem
policing itself -- it's very well documented.
People take it too far in both directions, but it's safe
to say that there's more than one bad actors and the
system demonstrably tolerates and defends them right up
to the point where they are forced not to.
drdeca wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
Right, thereâs clearly a problem, and I think even a
systemic problem. I just donât think it follows that
literally every officer is therefore culpable. I think
I would say that probably almost every police union
leader is culpable.
roywiggins wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
The good cops, such as they are, get run out if they
try to challenge the institutional problems in police
forces. This radically restricts how good a cop can
be while still being a cop.
Can good cops speak up about bad cops and keep their
job, or do they have to remain silent? How many bad
things can you see in your workplace without quitting
or whistleblowing while still being a decent person?
Can they opt out of illegal but defacto ticket quotas
and still have a career? Does writing a few extra
tickets so you can stay in the force long enough to
maybe change it make you part of the problem?
Many people look at the problems in policing and say
that anyone working inside that system simply must
have compromised themselves to stay in.
pstuart wrote 19 hours 42 min ago:
I explicitly stated that it was "more than one" and
in no way intimated that it was all cops.
One of the simplest things we could do as a country
to help mitigate this is to end the War on Drugs. It
was never about protecting people, and was always
about enabling oppression of "others".
The other simple thing to do is to stop using cops
for "welfare checks" and mental health crises --
those situations are uniformly better handled by
social workers. This has tragically been put under
the category of "defund the police", but the idea
itself is sound. The "defund" slogan is so bad it's
almost like it was created to sabotage the effort.
lotsofpulp wrote 3 hours 24 min ago:
As much as I understand ACAB due to their systemic
corruption and acting as a gang to provide their
friends and family with more âjusticeâ than
others, I disagree with ending the war on drugs.
While it would be nice to think we can live in a
world where everyone can be healed from mental
problems (including drug addiction), I donât
think itâs possible to come back from the hardest
of drugs (on a population level). The only thing
you are inviting is chaos into your neighborhood.
drdeca wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
Sorry, I think I replied to your previous comment
too quickly without reading it carefully enough.
I was trying to defend my previous comment, and
didnât adequately consider your point.
pstuart wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
All good -- I just wanted to clarify.
Police reform would be simple to implement if we
could all agree on what that looked like.
QuercusMax wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
And who votes for those union leaders? The cops. They
vote for corrupt people to protect their own
corruption. It's a corrupt system from top to bottom.
lotsofpulp wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
You picked a terrible example as a counterpoint, because ACAB
is about police protecting bad police (or generally,
authorities defending each other as a gang themselves).
Which is seen in every group of authorities around the
country. They literally give out get out of jail free cards
for copsâ friends and family in many parts of the country,
that is systemic, and has nothing to do with frequency of
cops committing crimes.
roywiggins wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
And when a cop tries to do something about it, this is the
sort of thing that happens. This guy seems like he's trying
to do the right thing, but the system is designed so he
can't: [1] > Bianchi claims his superiors retaliated
against him for his stance against the âcorruptâ cards
after he was warned by an official with the Police
Benevolent Association, New York Cityâs largest police
union, that he would not be protected by his union if he
wrote tickets for people with cards. And if he continued,
heâd be reassigned... The lawsuit cites several instances
where his NYPD colleagues complained about his
ticket-writing, including on Facebook...
> Bianchiâs service as a traffic cop ended last summer
when he wrote a ticket to a friend of the NYPDâs
highest-ranking uniformed officer, Chief Jeffrey Maddrey,
the lawsuit states.
HTML [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/04/ny...
teraflop wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
Adrian Schoolcraft is the name that comes to mind for me:
[1] > Schoolcraft amassed a set of tapes which
demonstrated corruption and abuse within New York City's
81st Police Precinct. The tapes include conversations
related to the issues of arrest quotas and
investigations. [...] Schoolcraft was harassed,
particularly in 2009, after he began to voice his
concerns within the precinct. He was told he needed to
increase arrest numbers and received a bad evaluation.
His fellow officers had him involuntarily committed to a
psychiatric ward. They told the hospital that his claims
were a sign of paranoid delusions. He was eventually
vindicated, but his career was destroyed.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
hydrogen7800 wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
It's been a long time since I heard this, but I believe
there is recording here [0] of his colleagues forcing
themselves into his apartment to have him committed.
[0] [1] Also, watch Serpico.
HTML [1]: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/414/right-to-...
HTML [2]: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0070666/
GuinansEyebrows wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
pedantic, but "ACAB" doesn't necessarily mean every (or most)
cops do horrible things all the time (that's the strawman
version).
one, more nuanced, sentiment is something more like "all cops
are bastards as long as bad cops are protected."
another sentiment is "modern police institutions are directly
descended from slavecatchers and strikebreakers; thus, all of
policing is rooted in bastard behavior, therefore: all cops
are bastards".
there are plenty of other ways to interpret the phrase.
"acab" is shorthand for a lot of legitimate grievances.
0x457 wrote 18 hours 37 min ago:
> modern police institutions are directly descended from
slavecatchers and strikebreakers;
That's not (entirely) true, though? Every modern police
department has its roots in London Metropolitan Police
Force which had nothing to do with salve catching can't say
much about strikebreakers, but I know specifically LMPF
went on multiple strikes themselves. It had also nothing to
do with solving crimes, that's just a bonus.
ImJamal wrote 19 hours 25 min ago:
That is a lot of words to make a claim that nobody would
accept if they used it for other issues. If somebody said
that all blacks are criminals and used your exact argument,
nobody would buy it.
GuinansEyebrows wrote 18 hours 48 min ago:
ah yes, race, something famously chosen
drdeca wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
My favorite slogan is âSlogans are always bad.â . It
can be interpreted in a lot of different ways that make a
lot of sense, and thatâs why I repeat it often, without
clarifying what I mean by it.
GuinansEyebrows wrote 20 hours 40 min ago:
and yet, here you are, indirectly swiping at something
instead of just saying what you mean :)
drewbeck wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
If someone had this experience Iâd encourage them to look
into how police departments across the US consistently fight
against any accountability for the cops who perpetuate those
relatively few awful encounters. âMost interactions are
harmless therefore the negativity is overblown and cops are
trustworthyâ is one takeaway if you stop your research at
the right point. âif you have a bad experience with a cop
the entire department will turn against you; they are not to
be trustedâ is a more accurate takeaway.
As you say, stats very often obfuscate.
gruez wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
If we apply your logic, would you say it's fair to go
around and say "all teachers are bastards", when referring
to teacher unions that make it hard to fire incompetent
teachers? Or maybe "all doctors are bastards" when
referencing how the american medical association (the trade
association for doctors) makes it hard for more doctors to
be admitted?
vel0city wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
How many teachers are getting off on murder charges due
to their position as a teacher?
Seems like a pretty big difference.
febusravenga wrote 19 hours 8 min ago:
They only murder talents and/or curiosity in children
or self esteem.
(I'm totally not ATAB here, just agree that parent post
analogy)
collingreen wrote 18 hours 34 min ago:
Using murder in this context to minimize -actually
murder- is pretty bad taste.
alexashka wrote 21 hours 15 min ago:
Yes.
It's not the root however. The root is nepotism. What
you're describing is one of ten thousand problems
nepotism causes.
shadowgovt wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
Sure, but one key difference is that if either of those
groups steps outside the law, you can recourse to the law
to check them.
Since police are part of the law, when they don't hold
their own accountable, there's no recourse. And that's a
real problem. This is before one even starts unpacking
the knapsack of how much law is designed to protect the
police from consequences of performing their duties
(leading to the unfortunate example "They can blow the
side off your house if they have reason to believe it
will help them catch a suspect and the recompense is that
your insurance might cover that damage.")
gruez wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
>Since police are part of the law, when they don't hold
their own accountable, there's no recourse. And that's
a real problem.
I don't see how this is a relevant factor for the two
cases I mentioned. Sure, it's bad that are part of the
justice system, and therefore you can't use the justice
system to correct their misbehavior, but you're not
going to involve the justice system for incompetent
teachers, or not enough doctors being admitted. For all
intents and purposes the dynamic is the same.
mrwrong wrote 20 hours 1 min ago:
you are definitely going to start involving the
justice system if teachers and doctors start
physically abusing people, illegally detaining them
and killing them!
roywiggins wrote 13 hours 4 min ago:
that is unfortunately less true that you might
think for some students: [1] [2] [3] [4] "Selected
Cases of Death and Abuse at Public and Private
Schools and Treatment Centers" [5] > Death ruled a
homicide but grand jury did not indict teacher.
Teacher currently teaches in Virginia
HTML [1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/garriso...
HTML [2]: https://www.propublica.org/article/shrub-o...
HTML [3]: https://autisticadvocacy.org/actioncenter/...
HTML [4]: https://www.the74million.org/article/trump...
HTML [5]: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-09-719t.pdf
HTML [6]: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/a...
thatcat wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
Teachers and doctors may abuse their authority, but
there is a sharp legal limit to what they can get
away with.
ethbr1 wrote 19 hours 9 min ago:
There are sharp legal limits to what cops can get
away with: they've just historically been
unenforced by government prosecutors and/or juries.
AngryData wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
Those limits don't seem very sharp if they are
rarely enforces.
shadowgovt wrote 20 hours 27 min ago:
> incompetent teachers
I'm not really talking about incompetence, and
incomptenece isn't the largest issue in the category
of "things that make people say ACAB." [1] I am not
at all joking when I make the claim that police
committing sex crimes is a problem that is frequently
swept under the rug by both police internal affairs
and the judicial system.
HTML [1]: https://www.wtrf.com/top-stories/teacher-cha...
HTML [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar...
adrianN wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
Misanthropy is the logical conclusion /s
dmos62 wrote 23 hours 42 min ago:
It might seem like bias will get you to where you're going
faster, but at the end of the day it's just bias.
ang_cire wrote 20 hours 43 min ago:
I have a bias towards not dying, and so far that has steered
me away from activities that increase my likelihood of it.
Bias is not intrinsically negative (that's prejudice), it
just means a preference towards.
dmos62 wrote 18 hours 30 min ago:
A bias in perception won't help you be perceptive.
ang_cire wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
Sure it will.
I see some lifted pickup truck, I know where to focus my
attention to better perceive a potential outsize source
of accidents.
If I know where a hidden driveway is, I know where to
focus my attention to better perceive any cars emerging.
My knowledge of the driveway biases me towards looking
towards it, where another driver without that knowledge
would not.
Biased perceptions of things as dangerous will absolutely
make us observe them more closely in order to better
perceive danger.
You're still (perhaps inadvertently) equating 'bias' with
'prejudice', but experience biases our perceptions in
positive ways, like clocking a hot stovetop.
peppersghost93 wrote 21 hours 36 min ago:
That bias is well earned. Maybe one day corporations will do
enough good things in the world to undo the evil they've
perpetuated. I'm not holding my breath.
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
> I can do this and still start off by assuming the corporation
is in the wrong
You really can't. You can start off with a prior that it's more
likely the corporation is wrong than not. But if you're
assuming your conclusion, you're going to find evidence for
what you're looking for. (You see the same thing happen with
folks who start off by assuming the government is in the
wrong.)
christophilus wrote 1 day ago:
Your edit was a good one.
It's a rational default position to say, "I'll default to
distrusting large corporate scientific literature that tells me
neurotoxins on my food aren't a problem."
As with any rule of thumb, that one will sometimes land you on
the wrong side of history, but my guess is that it will more
often than not guide you well if you don't have the time to dive
deeper into a subject.
I'm not saying all corporations are evil. I'm not saying all
corporate science is bad or bunk. But, corporations have a poor
track record with this sort of thing, and it's the kind of thing
that could obviously have large, negative societal consequences
if we get it wrong. This is the category of problem for which the
science needs to be clear and overwhelming in favor of a thing
before we should allow it.
jollyllama wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
Indeed. Every rule has an exception but heuristics are useful.
calebm wrote 1 day ago:
"With evidence of its harms stacking up, itâs already been banned in
dozens of countries all over the world, including the United Kingdom
and China, where itâs made. Yet last year, its manufacturer Syngenta,
a subsidiary of a company owned by the Chinese government, continued
selling paraquat in the United States and other nations that havenât
banned it."
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
"Critics point to research linking paraquat exposure to Parkinsonâs,
while the manufacturer pushes back, saying none of it is
peer-reviewed."
What lead it to being "banned in dozens of countries all over the
world, including the United Kingdom and China"?
Aloisius wrote 18 hours 39 min ago:
> What lead it to being "banned in dozens of countries all over the
world, including the United Kingdom and China"?
Almost everyone who banned it did so because of acute toxicity - it
requires careful handling to use safely.
Unfortunately, it was commonly used to commit suicide in many
countries. In other countries, it was deaths from accidental
ingestion, lung damage from unsafe handling, etc.
I don't know of any country that banned it because of a purported
link to Parkinson's.
downrightmike wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
The other thing you should know is that they use it to help the
plants grow, but they use larger amounts to kill the plants at the
same time so they can uniformly harvest. So we eat more of this crap
than you'd expect, because they are using it beyond expected ways
anonnon wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
There's a synthetic opioid called MPPP, which, if inappropriately
synthesized (IIRC, using too much heat in one step), yields MPTP,
which is non-toxic in and of itself, but has the ability to penetrate
the blood-brain barrier, where it is then metabolized into MPP+,
which is potently neurotoxic to the dopaminergic neurons of the
Substantia Nigra, reliably producing a Parkinsonism in those exposed
to it (from wikipedia):
>The chloride salt of MPP+ found use in the 1970s as an herbicide
under the common name cyperquat.[4][3] Though no longer in use as an
herbicide, cyperquat's closely related structural analog paraquat
still finds widespread usage, raising some safety concerns.
EDIT: the neurotoxicity of MPTP was discovered after a number of
heroin addicts developed a sudden, irreversible Parkinsonism after
injecting bad batches: [1] The doctor featured in that NOVA episdoe
summarizes the history of MPTP and its relevance to Parkinson's
research and epidemiology here: [2] > Over the last two centuries the
pendulum of opinion has swung widely as to whether the cause of PD
was due to genetics or environment causes [69]. While MPTP has not
yet been found in the native environment, beginning in the 1980s the
pendulum swung dramatically in the direction of the environmental
hypothesis, spurred not only by the observation that a simple
pyridine (MPTP) could induce so many of the features of PD, but also
the striking similarity between its toxic metabolite, MPP+ and
paraquat (differing only by one methyl group) [70], an herbicide that
is used worldwide. Since that time, a large number of studies have
shown pesticide exposure is a risk factor for PD [71]. Interesting,
this risk is enhanced by the presence of certain genetic variants
[72], consistent to the adage that âgenetics load the gun, but
environment pulls the triggerâ.
HTML [1]: https://archive.org/details/TheCaseoftheFrozenAddict
HTML [2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5345642/
anonnon wrote 19 hours 9 min ago:
Actually, surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly, given the
interesting history and a large chunk of HNers being functional
drug addicts--albeit not necessarily of opioids), MPPP was
discussed here just last year:
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41053383
jdasdf wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
>What lead it to being "banned in dozens of countries all over the
world, including the United Kingdom and China"?
political pressure. Same reason lots of stuff is banned in the EU
even when it's safer than other things that aren't banned.
3D30497420 wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
I believe the EU tends to follow a precautionary principle, namely
a substance generally must be shown to be safe before itâs
approved. In contrast, the US follows a risk-based approach where a
substance can often be used unless itâs shown to be harmful. So
it isn't really that many "safe" things in the EU are banned,
rather they have not been approved. Pretty sure this is specific to
food additives, though may apply to other areas.
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
> believe the EU tends to follow a precautionary principle
It does, but that isn't relevant here. There were poisoning cases
in France that lead to the ban [1]
HTML [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3657034/
nosianu wrote 23 hours 50 min ago:
> political pressure. Same reason lots of stuff is banned in the EU
even when it's safer than other things that aren't banned.
You avoid the question instead of answering it (What caused that
"political pressure"? Does such a thing just occur randomly in
nature?), following it by an assertion that you don't bother to
provide any evidence for.
zug_zug wrote 1 day ago:
So assessments of safety of a chemical aren't hard science. They are
statistical judgment calls (often based on things like giving a much,
much higher dose to a rodent and looking for short-term effects).
And the reason that is is because there's no affordable, moral way to
give 100,000 farmers [nor consumers] a small dose of a product for 20
years before declaring it safe. So the system guesses, and it guesses
wrong, often erring against the side of caution in the US (it's
actually quite shocking how many pesticides later get revoked after
approval).
Europe takes a more "precautionary principle" approach. In those
cases of ambiguity (which is most things approved and not), they err
to the side of caution.
Notice how this claim here is again shifting the burden to the
victims (their research doesn't meet standard X, allegedly). Absence
of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
bobbylarrybobby wrote 17 hours 37 min ago:
Shouldn't most chemicals be assumed unsafe until proven otherwise?
How many chemicals have we produced in a lab that have no harmful
effects? Even medicine is bad for you, it's just better than the
disease it's meant to treat. I don't know why we'd treat something
designed to kill animals as safe for humans without studies showing
that it's not harmful. (Well I do know why, but I don't know why
voters go along with it.)
1over137 wrote 12 hours 32 min ago:
>Shouldn't most chemicals be assumed unsafe until proven
otherwise?
Of course not, that would be bad for capitalists. /s
horsawlarway wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
Literally everything is "chemicals".
And when we're talking about things in this realm, the general
saying is "The dose makes the poison"... Water will kill you if
you drink enough of it.
And we do have all sorts of studies showing that harm from these
substances isn't immediately apparent (they all have safety
sheets, and maximum safe exposure levels) . What we're missing,
mainly because it's just incredibly hard to ethically source, is
long term studies.
So the question you're really asking is "what's your tolerance to
risk?". I think it's fine to have different governing bodies
take different stances on that scale. What's less fine is
failure to act on information because of profit motives.
Long story short - this isn't so simple. You bathe in chemicals
all day every day.
ndsipa_pomu wrote 6 hours 10 min ago:
I daresay that the issue is less about "chemicals" and more
about "new chemicals". If a substance already exists in nature
and has been in use for a long time, then it's reasonable to
take the position that it is probably within harm limits. If
it's a newly synthesised/extracted substance, then it should be
subject to reasonable testing.
Also, if a chemical is known to be toxic, then rigorous testing
should be performed before allowing it to be widely distributed
and used.
horsawlarway wrote 2 hours 12 min ago:
> If a substance already exists in nature and has been in use
for a long time, then it's reasonable to take the position
that it is probably within harm limits.
Reasonable, but wrong.
Simple case: Did you know that occupational sawdust exposure
is strongly associated with cancer in the paranasal sinuses
and nasal cavity?
There's also some pretty compelling evidence that
coronavirus's (so common cold & flu) are associated with
dementia/Alzheimer's.
Alcohol increases cancer rate more than some of the
"chemicals" people will complain about. So does Bacon. So
does sunlight.
All of which have been floating around in Human contact for a
LONG time.
Again - we do a pretty good job at filtering out the stuff
that's fast acting and harmful. It's just really difficult
to tease out information that requires long term monitoring
and involves small/moderate increases in risk.
Think about how long it took us to figure out that lead
exposure is really nasty. We used lead for thousands of
years prior, and it's literally a base element.
---
As for
> Also, if a chemical is known to be toxic, then rigorous
testing should be performed before allowing it to be widely
distributed and used.
No one is arguing otherwise, and normally large and expensive
studies are done on short term harm (extensive animal
testing). But you tell me how we can reasonably and
ethically do longitudinal studies on large groups of humans
to determine if a new substance is going to cause
small/moderate cancer rate bumps over 50+ years?
This is just genuinely a difficult problem to address, and
it's not simply like we can go "wait 50 years and see"!
Because usually we're trying to use these things to address
existing problems. Ex - pesticides and fertilizers might
still be net positives even with the cancer risk - do we
avoid them and let people starve today? Or feed everyone now
and have a 10% bump in cancer rates 50 years later? There's
no golden ticket here.
aeternum wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
IMO the FDA should do a better job at helping the populace
distinguish between these two:
1) Evidence for the null hypothesis (there are enough studies with
sufficient statistical power to determine that product likely does
not cause harm at a >95% CI).
2) There is no evidence that it is unsafe. (nor that it is safe).
The problem is #2 sounds a lot stronger and often better than #1
when put into English. There must be some easy to understand way
to do it, IE an 'insufficient testing' vs. 'tested' label/website
or something.
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 45 min ago:
> assessments of safety of a chemical aren't hard science
These are still data. I'm curious for the contexts that lead other
countries to actively ban the substance.
If it simply hasn't been approved in other countries, one can't use
that information to infer about its safety.
zug_zug wrote 23 hours 29 min ago:
Because of its high toxicity, the European Union withdrew
paraquat from its market in July 2007 [1] So it's clearly
poisonous to humans in high doses, I guess the argument is that
perhaps the smaller doses exposed to farmers may not lead to
sufficient ingestion to cause harm. The parkinsons seems like
pretty clear evidence against that.
> If it simply hasn't been approved in other countries, one can't
use that information to infer about its safety.
I don't know why you're trying to defend this with
counterfactuals/hypotheticals instead of just googling. Feels
like you're bending over backward here.
HTML [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3657034/
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 6 min ago:
> don't know why you're trying to defend this with
counterfactuals/hypotheticals instead of just googling
Genuinely appreciate the source. I wasn't finding it on my own,
at least not with the nexus to the EU's decision.
threethirtytwo wrote 1 day ago:
The US is very capitalist and consumer based. They error on the
side of âdoes it make money?â Or âwill I lose money?â
tastyfreeze wrote 1 day ago:
[Edit] The below comment is inaccurate. The pesticide sprayed for
gypsy moths was DDT. I am leaving this comment because it should be
known that this was a thing even though it is now off topic.
P̵a̵r̵a̵q̵u̵a̵t̵ DDT is also linked to the polio pandemic.
It was sprayed everywhere gypsy moths were found. Great success at
killing moths. Also weakened human children to to where a common
disease could get into spines and cause paralysis.
Researching this kind of stuff is not for the faint of heart. Its
horrible all the way down. Not recommended for the faint of heart.
itintheory wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
>gypsy moths
The common name is "spongy moths" now, to avoid a racial epithet.
"In July 2021 the Entomological Society of America decided to
remove the name "gypsy moth" from its Common Names of Insects and
Related Organisms List as "hurtful to the Romani people", since
gypsy is considered an ethnic slur by some Romani people." [1]
HTML [1]: https://www.entsoc.org/entomological-society-america-disco...
paddleon wrote 22 hours 59 min ago:
um. My uncle died of polio, and I was a medical researcher (phd)
for a while.
Polio can cause paralysis just fine on its own, it doesn't need DDT
or paraquat to help it.
And you are also right that widespread spraying of DDT lead to all
kind of problems (killed all the birds, for one, leading to "Silent
Spring"), which one reason it was banned.
another reason is the mosquitos developed resistance.
kens wrote 23 hours 47 min ago:
Paraquat is a herbicide, not an insecticide, so why would it be
sprayed for moths? I searched for information linking moths,
paraquat, and polio, but couldn't find any. Is this claim a
hallucination?
tastyfreeze wrote 23 hours 16 min ago:
Well damn... my bad. Comment before coffee. It was DDT.
"Moth and the Iron Lung" by Forrest Maready
Forrest was interviewed by Bret Weinstein if you are interested (
[1] )
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7wYUnQUESU
nospice wrote 23 hours 22 min ago:
It is. The polio link was suggested for DDT, which was a
controversial insecticide. But it was probably bunk, as were most
other concerns about DDT:
HTML [1]: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-polio-vaccine-ddt-...
witte wrote 1 day ago:
Chevron clasically has ignored health and safety requirements to the
point where there was once the âChevron Doctrineâ which deferred
legal interpretations to specialized regulatory agencies which
established clearer guidance against murky legislative directives.
The Doctrine was recently overturned by the ostensibly rogue SCOTUS
as highlighted by the harvard business review:
HTML [1]: https://hbr.org/2024/09/the-end-of-the-chevron-doctrine-is-b...
somenameforme wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
That's a rather rose colored way of framing what Chevron was. It
essentially removed the role of the judiciary in settling disputes.
In cases where a regulator's action was deemed at least
"reasonable", the judiciary was obligated to simply defer to the
regulator's interpretation.
And due to widespread regulatory capture, this is hardly some
social benefit. The original case Chevron Doctrine was based on [1]
essentially came down to the EPA interpreting anti-pollution laws
in a way enabling companies to expand pollution-causing
constructions with no oversight. The EPA was then sued, and
defeated, by an environmental activist group, but then that
decision was overturned by the Supreme Court and Chevron Deference
was born.
Other examples are the FCC deeming broadband internet as a
"information service" instead of a "telecommunications service"
(which would have meant common-carrier obligations would have
applied), and so on. Another one [3] - Congress passed legislation
deeming that power plants must use the "best technology available"
to "minimize the adverse environmental impact" of their water
intakes/processing. The EPA interpretation instead allowed
companies to use a cost-benefit analysis and pick cheaper techs.
And I could go on. Chevron Deference was an abomination. [1] - [1]
. [2] - [2] [3] - [3] .
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natu...
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cable_&_Telecommuni...
HTML [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entergy_Corp._v._Riverkeeper...
LPisGood wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
> In cases where a regulator's action was deemed at least
"reasonable", the judiciary was obligated to simply defer to the
regulator's interpretation.
That is the way it _should_ be. Judges are not subject matter
experts in all of human endeavors, but they are expected to make
rulings over that domain. Relying on experts and career civil
servants advice is generally good, unless theyâre being
unreasonable.
somenameforme wrote 11 hours 37 min ago:
The role of a judge is not to give his own personal opinion on
a topic. It's to listen to arguments between two different
sides, who each may call upon experts, witnesses, present
evidence, and so on. And they will then also argue how the
other side's take is invalid or misleading. The role of the
judge is to work to objectively determine which side has the
law and evidence most on their side.
In cases where a judge is a domain expert, he may well end up
even needing to recuse himself as that would generally entail
opining on debatable topics one way or the other, which makes
him unlikely to be able to effectively perform his role.
bluGill wrote 19 hours 36 min ago:
unfortunately civil servants are not perfect and not elected.
If they 'take bribes' I don't want a judge to accept their
word. They should have to justify their ruling before the
court. The judge should defer to them only after finding their
decision was good in the first place.
somenameforme wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
They don't overtly take bribes. It's a mixture of two things.
The first is a corporate revolving door. Look at the head of
a regulatory agency and he's often a corporate insider -
regulatory capture. For instance many regulations that
greatly expanded the reach and reduced requirements for GMOs
passed under Michael R Taylor [1] as the head of the FDA.
He was a Vice President at Monsanto (and worked as part of
their contracted legal team for 7 years prior) and some of
his most well known publications involved arguing for an
interpretation of a 1958 law, that forbid companies using
carcinogens in products, to mean that they could only
knowingly allow a 'small amount' of carcinogens. His Wiki
page looks like it's been hit by a PR firm. Here [1] is an
older version.
So you essentially have Monsanto, by proxy, in charge of the
FDA. And this sort of stuff is much more the rule than the
exception. Taylor was appointed by Obama. That's not to be
partisan and suggest Obama was particularly bad here, but on
the contrary I think many people have a positive view of him
relative to more recent presidents, yet he continued on with
these practices just like literally every other
administration in modern history.
-------
The second thing is indirect payoffs. Massive companies like
Monsanto have their tentacles in just about everything in any
way remotely related to their domain. If you play ball with
them, you're going to find doors and opportunities open for
you everywhere. On the other hand if you turn against them
they will similarly use all their resources to destroy you so
much as possible.
A recent article on here discussed how key research published
regarding the safety of Monsanto products was ghostwritten by
Monsanto themselves and then handed off to some other
'scientists' to sign their name to it and publish. [2] Once
that was indisputably revealed in court (only thanks to the
really smart guys doing this literally talking about it,
verbatim, in emails), it took some 8 years for the article to
be retracted. People just don't want to go against Monsanto.
[1] - [1] [2] -
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_R...
HTML [2]: https://retractionwatch.com/2025/12/04/glyphosate-sa...
vel0city wrote 19 hours 11 min ago:
> If they 'take bribes' I don't want a judge to accept their
word. They should have to justify their ruling before the
court.
If they're taking bribes they should be tried under
corruption laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 201
Meanwhile our SC justices can accept all kinds of gifts from
industry and make whatever ruling they want without any
repercussions. They're in charge of determining their own
conflicts of interests and their own ethics violations. Which
surprise, they never seem to have any!
Its far easier to remove a regulator, even one of a
supposedly independent agency (we'll see how that goes), for
doing something obviously corrupt than a Supreme Court judge,
as evidenced by the current court.
LPisGood wrote 19 hours 23 min ago:
> They should have to justify their ruling before the court
How familiar are you with admin law? That is what already
happened before this precedent was discarded.
stuffn wrote 1 day ago:
Chevron didnât establish clearer guidelines.
It was weaponized by both parties to create defacto laws without
proper legal procedure. It shouldâve been unconstitutional from
the beginning as only Congress can make laws. Regulatory agencies
are far easier to control, generally contain
administration-friendly plants, and are not expected to provide any
justification for their decisions. The result is laws that change
as the wind blows, confusions, and rights restrictions done by
people who should have no business doing so. The âreasonable
interpretationâ rule allowed Congress to completely defer to them
and force citizens to spend tremendous capital getting a case to
the Supreme Court.
Chevronâs overturn was objectively a huge win and hardly a
ârogueâ decision. That editorialization is not a fair
representation of the problems it has caused when regulatory
agencies begin attempting to regulate constitutional rights. It was
overly vague and gave far too much power to people who cannot be
trusted with it.
We shouldnât need Chevron Deference to make laws that protect
people from harm done by corporations. Period. If we do, itâs a
failure of Congress to do their jobs and a mechanism should be in
place to have a âreset buttonâ (like many other countries when
they form a government).
LPisGood wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
Itâs pretty clear that rule making and adjudication are in the
preview of the executive branch. Congress and courts canât
possibly make laws and hold trials for every possible minor
situation.
monknomo wrote 22 hours 39 min ago:
hang on, in what way are regulatory agencies not expected to
provide justification.
That is very nearly the lion's share of the work these agency do,
is to justify the regulations and the decisions
stuffn wrote 22 hours 6 min ago:
Some agencies lean towards proper justification (the EPA, for
example, has been generally okay at best about this) other
regulatory bodies don't.
While it is not a popular topic here, gun laws, and I am taking
a risk with my karma even talking about it, have been subject
to some of the most vague and dangerous interpretations by the
ATF. In this case we provided congress a way to bypass
constitutional scrutiny (pre-bruen) by deferring to the ATF.
Two examples are bump stocks, and FRTs, both of which the ATF
interpreted as "machine guns", defying their own regulatory
definition, and creating felons out of innocent people quite
literally overnight. Honest people had their doors literally
kicked in. This is a terrifying level of power. It is not the
first time the ATF has done this. I would recommend spending
time reading the writings of GOA and FPC if you'd like to see
how confusing it is for a law abiding gun owner to stay within
the lines of the law when Chevron Deference existed. At any
point something you lawfully buy, fill out the correct forms,
and lawfully own, could be suddenly interpreted with no
notification as criminal and thus you INSTANTLY become a felon.
There are violations of ex-post-facto, denial of constitutional
rights, etc.
Justification is highly subjective and in many cases these
regulatory agencies are handed the pen to write and sign their
laws.
There is no difference between a regulatory agency writing and
passing law, and congress completely deferring all
responsibility to them. This is the problem. "Justification" is
not held to any standard.
My personal opinion is opinion from a regulatory agency should
be held to a higher standard than even the most prestigious
academic journal given the consequences. Chevron Deference
being used to regulate companies is one thing. Chevron
Deference being used to regulate constitutional rights is a
consequence, and thus, it is a good thing it is eliminated.
Perhaps congress can actually do it's job and demand a higher
level of scrutiny, care, and precision from our regulatory
agencies.
riversflow wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
Expecting Congress to directly regulate the minutia of industry,
medicine or technology is absurd, these are giant categories with
their own subfields that need specialized technocratic
leadership.
stuffn wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
Chevron Deference is used to bypass congressional and court
scrutiny. I'm getting downvoted, particularly, because I do not
believe people understand the extent of what Chevron Deference
provides. I am not surprised. It's not mentioned often, it's
often editorialized particularly by leftist media as a great
boon to our society, and most people are unaffected by it.
Congress is expected to make laws. End of story. Chevron
Deference allows them to reduce their own liability and burden
by rubberstamping opinion into law. That is a tremendous
problem. Congress' core directive is to protect our rights. Not
restrict them. Industry plants have a much easier time
infesting regulatory bodies through revolving door policies,
regulatory bodies change with every administration, and
regulatory bodies are not held to a standard of rigor that
approaches 1/10th of the worst quality scientific journal. That
is a major problem. The first thing any true tactical
politician will do is move his or her favorite industry plants
into regulatory bodies. Then, they can give "opinion" that
aligns with the view of that person, which is then
rubberstamped into law.
If we cannot expect congress to do their job our government has
failed it's absolute simplest purpose. There are then much
greater problems than whether turtles are choking on can
holders.
atmavatar wrote 20 hours 50 min ago:
I trust the scientific expertise of a career bureaucrat
holding a PhD more than a congresscritter that brings a
snowball onto the Senate floor as "proof" climate change
isn't real[1].
1.
HTML [1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-jim-inhofe-climate-...
riversflow wrote 21 hours 36 min ago:
My position is simple and has 2 parts:
To expect anyone to create meaningful regulation on every
sector of the economy is absurd, our system is far too
complex.
We need regulation if we want to live in a safe & healthy
modern society.
Unless you just disagree with the second proposition, it
seems your implication is that every congress person should
be an expert on every sector of the economy and fiscal
policy, and be able to craft meaningful laws, or at least
have strong opinions about them. Otherwise, they would just
be accepting laws written by other people, just like
delegating to the regulator.
Corruption exists in every system. I grew up with clean air
and water thanks to the current regulatory system, and have
benefited from a safe work culture my whole life. Best I can
tell the only guy who has really done anything to stop that
is the current President, so kinda a crude characterization
to say that they change with every admin.
stuffn wrote 19 hours 37 min ago:
I never implied congress is expected to be experts on
everything. What I do expect is a level of scrutiny much
higher than what is considered rigorous by academic
standards.
It should not be a hard ask that regulatory bodies produce
meaningful, thoughtful, and extensive uneditorialized
reports on a subject. These are then given in summary to
congress who can use this information to inform regulation.
This strategy is superior for a few reasons:
1. It keeps regulatory bodies honest and when held to the
highest possible standard of scrutiny works to prevent a
lot of trivial gaming of the system
2. It separates the powers appropriately. Congress can ask
anyone to do research and return results. This is not the
same as providing an unelected body defacto law writing
power.
And on the final point regulation can be good. I think it's
dishonest to interpret my position as anti-regulation.
Rather, I think regulation is trivially corruptable.
Regulatory capture is the mechanism by which the largest
wealth-having class maintains their power. Regulatory
capture is trivialized through the use of Chevron Deference
(see my post above). By cleanly separating the two we
reduce the probability of corruption. If a corrupt
politician can't inject their stooges to defer to then we
have an extra mechanism by which to protect our rights, and
protect our health. It then falls on congress to do the
right thing. Then it's OUR responsibility to elect people
who will do that.
If we allow for the assumption congressmen are not idiots,
are capable of reading and referring to experts, and act
accordingly then there should be no meaningful difference
modulo preventing unelected officials from writing law. If
we cannot guarantee that, then it's not corruption, it's a
complete failure of the legislative branch of government
and the election system. Which I think we both agree here
in one way or another that the system has completely
failed.
mistrial9 wrote 1 day ago:
"Under Chevron, if a judge found that the agency had made a
reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous congressional directive,
they were obliged to defer to the agencyâs interpretation of the
law, effectively ending any substantive review of a challenged
rule. The repeal of Chevron is a huge blow to regulators, evidenced
by the fact that the decision had been cited more than 18,000 times
over 40 years."
the Chevron Doctrine is new to me; it appears that the parent
comment was not answering "why was it banned internationally" but
rather emphasizing weakness in US procedures
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
Did we have a regulation banning paraquat that was overturned
when Chevron was overturned? If not, itâs irrelevant.
blibble wrote 1 day ago:
in most civilised countries: chemicals added to food are banned until
proven safe
... then you have the USA
Aloisius wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
What civilized countries are we talking about?
Because paraquat was approved for use over much of the world at one
point, including countries people claim require substances be
"proven safe."
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
> chemicals added to food are banned until proven safe
Is that the case here? Paraquat wasnât banned for any reason, it
just hasnât been approved yet?
That doesnât comport with how the word âbannedâ is usually
used.
finghin wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
that means it could not be sold as fertiliser since that term is
presumably regulated.
blibble wrote 1 day ago:
yes, the companies producing it tried getting it approved, and it
was for a bit
and then the approval was overturned as the evidence was crap
so, back to the original state: banned until proven safe
JumpCrisscross wrote 1 day ago:
> then the approval was overturned as the evidence was crap
Source? Iâm curious for this context.
cess11 wrote 1 day ago:
I think they might refer to the EU approving of paraquat,
which was appealed by Sweden and other countries and it was a
legal process churning on until 2007 when the presumed link
with Parkinson's and other factors led to the decision to ban
it.
JumpCrisscross wrote 23 hours 43 min ago:
> when the presumed link with Parkinson's and other factors
led to the decision to ban it
Do you have a link to this decision? I'm having trouble
finding it on my own.
cess11 wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
First instance: [1] ECJ:
HTML [1]: https://curia.europa.eu/en/actu/communiques/cp07...
HTML [2]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/P...
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