[Lerc]

Do we laugh at Romans for using lead and mercury?

I'd say they did things that were harmful that they did not know they were harmful. Unless they did it in the face of clear evidence of the harm, what is there to mock?

I expect the people in 100 years from now will laugh at us for doing all of the things that we absolutely know are harming the environment right now. Perhaps they will even laugh at us for hand wringing about plastics on the possibility that they might be harmful while doing next to nothing about the things we do actually have evidence for,

[pegasus]

Apparently, the smarter or more informed ones did know, or at least suspect, that lead is bad for you. There are writings from the time which mention this. Also, led pipes were not as bad as some imagine, since they would, after a while, become protected from leaching by a layer of calcium deposits.

[swayvil]

And those smart ones got vilified and banned from every forum for speaking disinformation, just like today.

[Melonai]

Having your opinion rejected does not necessarily mean that your opinion is the correct one, sure there are many people shunned from discourse that are in some way correct, just as there are lots of people who are shunned for being quite in the wrong. Sadly we can't rely on public opinion, no matter which way, to judge the worth of an idea.

I have to add that I hear this premise expressed quite often from people peddling low-evidence medical advice and not-quite-believable conspiracy, who try to give credence to their theory by pointing out that the people-you-don't-like disagree with them, no matter what the grounds of disagreement actually are. (I've seen people refer to this thought pattern as the "Galileo fallacy", although we also shouldn't let these named fallacies turn us away from actual interesting ideas just because the public disagrees, too. It's a balance.)

[pessimizer]

That's strange. I usually hear this expressed by people who have personally had their views censored out of the public sphere by some authority who was actively marketing the opposite view.

I usually hear what you've expressed from people who are glad that other people were censored: a vague argument for the existence of the possibility of censorship that isn't meant as political suppression, one which usually relies on accusing any possibly censored hypothetical person of likely being crazy, stupid, or a foreign spy.

Rather than an argument, it's an encouragement to use those priors when calculating the odds of the next "conspiracy theory" being censored off the internet actually being true. Remember, arrested people are usually guilty, because most of the guilty people I know about were arrested...

[vladms]

It is optimistic to think they will "laugh" about the environments harm. That would mean they would not suffer a lot of the consequences of said harm. Let's hope it will not be that bad to become fanatical about it.

[reactordev]

Where there’s an engineer, there’s a way - it just may not be the solution you seek.

[nativeit]

I would be less inclined to laugh at Romans, since my grandparents still used lead in plenty of dangerous applications. Why do we need to go any further back than 100-years?

[lo_zamoyski]

And also "harmful compared to what?".

It is often the case that something with desired good effects also has undesirable bad side effects, but the good effects and their value outweigh the bad effects.

I don't know if the Romans made tradeoffs like this; they were well aware of its chronic toxicity which resulted in plumbism. But you have to remember that we're talking about a diverse ancient empire. People today know that stuffing your face with garbage food and in large amounts is bad for you, and the speed of communication and scope of regulation are might higher, but the "practice" is widespread anyway.

[cced]

What's interesting is, with the Internet, they will be looking back and seeing what we're saying we think they'll be saying about us.

Assuming archives are up, hello from the past! :wave:

[FugeDaws]

I mean laugh out of context I dont think anyones specifically laughing at something they didnt know but in the context of smuggness of what we know now

We wont do a damn thing about the dangers of micro plastic now until it gets incredibly bad that we cant ignore it.

Id say they would actually laugh at us for that though in the future

[Lerc]

What are the confirmed dangers of micro plastics?

I'll concede that they are everywhere, and they are detectable. What is the established consensus on the harm that they cause?

[Cthulhu_]

It remains underexplored, but there's many papers released and many studies being done to try and confirm. A big one is hormonal; BPA is a xenoestrogen, emulating the effects of estrogen on human bodies, with studies showing links between it and reduced fertility. There's been ~19000 studies on it so far, most since the 2000s (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=bisphenol+a).

Jump-off points:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics_and_human_health...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A#Human_safety

[Lerc]

It seems like there are issues with determining what harmful levels are.

The BPA wikipedia article says the primary source of human exposure is from canned food. That seems like it could be solved with a specific fix. It is not stated, but I would assume that the exposure from particles distributed in the environment would be insignificant if there is a known primary source that humans frequently interact with.

[EasyMark]

And there are so many alternatives and we don't know if they aren't even worse than BPA. Also unless you get bottle water/soda/etc in glass you are gonna get it there too, even aluminum cans are lined with the stuff.

[FugeDaws]

So... turning the frogs gay? God damn it Alex Jones

[gonzalohm]

Infertility, increased risk of cancer. There are a few research papers about those topics

[realo]

The environment? In 100 years? Laughing?

Come on ...