[__MatrixMan__]

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.

[s1artibartfast]

Why do we think our ancestors were not harmed? do we have any reason at all to think that?

[__MatrixMan__]

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.

[s1artibartfast]

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.

[__MatrixMan__]

> 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.

[s1artibartfast]

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.