It doesn't require overintellectualizing, the exceptions are really obvious, like lead pipes. Generally speaking public health knowledge was extremely low in the pre-industrial era, compared to what we have now, so I don't know why we would use this as a standard. I wouldn't use pre-industrial standards for dealing with sewage or prepping for surgery, either.
Except that we've had time to observe the effects of stuff between then and now. Which is why the I don't think the parent is lobbying for a return to lead pipes.
Don't try to pre-dodge by accusing anyone who replies and disagrees with you of overintellectualizing lol
As a proxy for "safety", look at average life expectancy. Even excluding infant mortality, life expectancy has increased by like 20-25% since the year 1900 (for people who reached age 20). We're doing something right in the modern age, and suggesting that we revert to how things were in the 1800s is not common sense, it's being a luddite (imo).
Something made in a factory is less likely to be good for you than something made by a tree and stone tools.
The industrial age has brought many good things and many bad things. To acknowledge the bad things is not to discredit the good things. It's quite simple.
Higher life expectancy is a good thing. Infertility, cancer, and obesity are bad things.
More of each was brought by the industrial age. I'm not saying the industrial age as a whole was bad.
Again, all of this is just overintellecualizing it.
I think you need to flesh that standard out a bit. Maybe something more like this:
> If the material has been in continual use since before the industrial age and we have yet to find any evidence of harm, it is far more likely to be safe than newer materials with which we have fewer centuries of experience.
Our ancestors used all kinds of things that were terrible for them and it doesn't require overintellectualizing to find exceptions, they're everywhere. But this late in the development of medicine it is fairly reasonable to suggest that if there's a long-standing tradition of using a material and we have yet to find that it causes harm, it is more likely to be safe than something new.
Just because I can: see pre-industrial Romans and their lead acetate. Or Egyptians with their kohl eyeliner (also lead). I prefer strong regulatory bodies that methodically analyze products available to general consumers.
I also want strong regulatory bodies doing those analyses, but I also would like to see them using reasonable Bayesian priors on safety. I think assuming the Bayesian prior that: compounds that occur naturally in our environment at concentrations and particle sizes similar to what we'd be exposed to in a proposed new product are likely safe to use. The opposite just is not a good Bayesian prior, and such compounds should require greater assurance of safety before being allowed to be used in novel ways.
The above is particularly true for organic compounds.
I'd also like to see regulation of analogs like they do with drugs. Swapping out BPA for other analog chemicals with very similar shape/composition is something most people with a decent background in biochemsitry would be extremely skeptical of. Let's say they banned BPA entirely. I'd like to then see regulators step in and ban analogs by default for the same use until proven otherwise.
I agree. I'm reminded of "the naturalistic fallacy" which asserts
> Things are not necessarily safe just because they're natural
Whatever "natural" means. It's not wrong exactly, but I think it distracts from some adjacent, non-fallacious inductive/anthropic reasoning:
> Things that have not harmed your ancestors are less likely to harm you than a novel thing which your ancestors did not come in contact with.
The former (safer) thing is more likely to end up with the label "natural" than the latter, newer thing. So "natural" ends up correlating with "safe" more often than chance would have it.
Because we exist. Admittedly, "healthy enough to procreate" is not a high bar, but it's pretty good in comparison with no bar at all.
Yeah, there are cases where they were unaware of the harm--like lead. We should absolutely be finding better ways to identify and mitigate harms of that sort. But in the absence of reliable information from such efforts, natural==safe is a viable heuristic.
And I'd say that our scientific establishment is not sufficiently hardened against attempts by companies to tamper with scientific consensus in cases where that consensus might be bad for business--so an absence of reliable information is indeed our reality.
I think natural==safe is a terrible heuristic for the exact reason you said.
Healthy enough to procreate is a low bar, and many natural things provide a benefit in terms of procreation but detrimental to health. Almost everything in nature is a trade-off between how much it'll harm you and how much it'll help you procreate.
This reminds me of how whales get the Bends from diving despite 50 million years of evolution. People question whether it causes them pain, and it stands to reason that it would cause them pain to prevent them from diving more than necessary. Nature isn't inherently kind, it is results oriented.
You can make a valid argument that avoiding something entirely is usually safer than something, as few things provide a protective effect. However, when you talk about substitutions, all bets are off.
> many natural things provide a benefit in terms of procreation but detrimental to health
Maybe... but many more either kill you or they don't. Lets take your whales-getting-the-bends example. That gives us a dimension: pressure. Suppose you're whale.
- Let x be a randomly chosen pressure
- Let y be a pressure that your parents lived through
You have to spend a few minutes at x or y, which pressure do you chose? y would be a safer choice.
The same goes for potentially hazardous chemicals: the safer bet is to pick the one that comes with evidence that things like you can survive contact with it, and that'll be the one that was in your environment when you were born. Otherwise you wouldn't have been born there.
If somebody wants to sell us something that our parents never came in contact with, the evidence that it is safe should be stronger than the effect described above. I'm not a statistician, so I can't quantify that effect, but it exists, and the naturalistic fallacy distracts from it.
Sure, there is a precautionary principle. Change nothing and you won't end up worse than before.
It depends on how risky you think the baseline factors are, and how risky you think the average new factor is. It also depends on how likely catastrophic risks are.
We know people don't drop dead from most things, so risk is generally at the fringe. Long lead times and low impact.
You then have to consider how many safe products you are missing out on to avoid the bad ones.
I think the the current paradigm is pretty reasonable. Screen for major known risks and then monitor and study
I think that breaks down when you compare Neolithic or pre-industrial man to now.