To what end? The severity of capital punishment barely effects civilian crime numbers.
Instead - and i have spent all of 10 seconds thinking this through - what about we just pay people to snitch on a business/employer if its knowingly doing such things. Perhaps in % of the settlement and/or potential fall out costs.
That'd change behavior as well as catch issues soon enough to prevent them.
The "interview" format is a bit difficult to read.
Assuming they did keep it a secret, we had so many other hazards that were (and still are) in common use: lead, mercury, tobacco, chlordane, asbestos, etc... So even if true; even if you accept this as some conspiracy, it would seem to pale in comparison to the list I just gave. We seemingly survived and thrived with with substances far worse than a little plastic running around in our bloodstream, yet this remains the topic of the day and it makes me wonder how real the outrage is (proportionate to other hazards) or if this is just liberal minded "see the big companies are out to get us and this is just the current example". It would be far more persuasive imho to just argue the later point independently, because the plastic (using the term loosely) topic comes up so frequently that to some of us it is just repetitive and not really constructive.
It seems you and I now have something in common inside our bodies: PFOS. I've finally found a point of connection between us.
Out of curiosity as to why 3M would insert this commonality into me to help us share a sense of solidarity, I looked up some safety-related research papers. I came across a 3M technical paper by Seacat et al. (2002)[1], which claims that under their experimental conditions, no harmful effects were observed up to a certain dose.
Seeing this perfectly illustrates just how much science and technology are dictated by the institutions they are affiliated with.
No, these are really fucked up people, to leap from that to "the species" and from that to "evolution" which humans had no clue about even hundreds of years ago... is just avoiding confronting that and them. It's half of the the reason for why these things happen and get worse, a sort of global bystander effect. We feel okay to in public dismiss this.
If you were one in a group of 4 people, and one of them fed poison to a child to remove a stain from their shoe, or just for a laugh, or for 2 cents, and someone got upset, would you talk about the species or evolution first thing? What habit did we normalise here?
No, we as a civilization are ultimately responsible for giving bad actors power, and indeed often glorifying those actors. There are evolutionary reasons why it is so, but that's absolutely not to say that these things just happen and a species with a very different psychology couldn't avoid the same trap.
As a society we tend to reward sociopaths with power, which leads to stuff like forever chemicals. But society providing neither checks-and-balances nor even a credible thread of punishment after the fact is also part of the issue. Even sociopaths are influenced by the threat of punishment
Exactly. It's a pretty small number of people who are this terrible. Thinking of it in evolutionary terms creates a sense of fatalism. If you look globally since the invention of agriculture, it's very clear that a) humans are extremely flexible, and b) culture matters hugely to how societies turn out.
Culture is something we inherit, but it's something we can change. If we want things to be less fucked up for the next generation, we can do that. As many before us have.
No previous era of cruelty has threatened the existence of life itself. Corporate greed is the most hideous, horrific, inhumane era of human culture that has ever been.
In the real world, two out of these four people vote to protect the poisoner because poison is a conspiracy against the freedom to feed children anything you want.
It took decades for the science to finally flow freely since both of these industries heavily targeted the scientific institutions themselves. Who knows what other pesticides and chemical companies are following the same playbook that we won't get to know about for decades.
"Better", as in, capable as a civilization of avoiding doing things that are incredibly harmful according to their own morals. Capable of defeating their own Moloch, if you will.
Even looking only at different cultures, saying nothing of nature, the degree to which people are willing to cooperate or defect against the group varies widely. The level of trust varies widely.
People aren't motivated solely by the risk of being caught. Some people tell themselves that everyone else must be trying to cheat, so it's okay for them to cheat. But this type of thinking isn't a law of nature, it's just a human flaw.
The amount of cheating is not a fundamental constant. Given that people are social animals and that we tend to be stronger as a group, in fact you'd expect that prosocial behavior is good for the species. If fucked up is to mean anything, poisoning the environment with forever chemicals ought to make the fucking cut, if you'll pardon my French.
If there's more than enough grapes for everyone and one person takes more than their fair share, then, on the whole, it's fine. There's enough to go round.
If everyone tries to take more than their fair share, then the whole system falls apart.
When there are this many people, and this much visibility of the hustle, just seeing others prosper by cheating means a not insubstantial number of people will be in the "well I want grapes, and likely need to cheat to make sure I get my fair share" camp.
Crimes on this scale warrant capital punishment.
To what end? The severity of capital punishment barely effects civilian crime numbers.
Instead - and i have spent all of 10 seconds thinking this through - what about we just pay people to snitch on a business/employer if its knowingly doing such things. Perhaps in % of the settlement and/or potential fall out costs.
That'd change behavior as well as catch issues soon enough to prevent them.
You mean like whistleblowers?
> To what end?
The satisfaction of revenge and the entertainment value of watching it televised.
And where does that end?
Public stonings, where you can bid on the rocks? Cut a thief’s hand off?
Imagine if we policed white collar crime anywhere near as much as blue collar crime
That, alas, would violate Wilhoit's law.
https://www.propublica.org/article/3m-forever-chemicals-pfas...
The "interview" format is a bit difficult to read.
Assuming they did keep it a secret, we had so many other hazards that were (and still are) in common use: lead, mercury, tobacco, chlordane, asbestos, etc... So even if true; even if you accept this as some conspiracy, it would seem to pale in comparison to the list I just gave. We seemingly survived and thrived with with substances far worse than a little plastic running around in our bloodstream, yet this remains the topic of the day and it makes me wonder how real the outrage is (proportionate to other hazards) or if this is just liberal minded "see the big companies are out to get us and this is just the current example". It would be far more persuasive imho to just argue the later point independently, because the plastic (using the term loosely) topic comes up so frequently that to some of us it is just repetitive and not really constructive.
Obviously the big companies look after us.
It seems you and I now have something in common inside our bodies: PFOS. I've finally found a point of connection between us.
Out of curiosity as to why 3M would insert this commonality into me to help us share a sense of solidarity, I looked up some safety-related research papers. I came across a 3M technical paper by Seacat et al. (2002)[1], which claims that under their experimental conditions, no harmful effects were observed up to a certain dose.
Seeing this perfectly illustrates just how much science and technology are dictated by the institutions they are affiliated with.
[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12075127/
So like with climate change the ones responsible knew for decades but preferred the profit.
And tobacco. And leaded gasoline. And...
We really are one fucked up species. But can evolution even produce anything better? Anything that's not so prone to coordination problems?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
No, these are really fucked up people, to leap from that to "the species" and from that to "evolution" which humans had no clue about even hundreds of years ago... is just avoiding confronting that and them. It's half of the the reason for why these things happen and get worse, a sort of global bystander effect. We feel okay to in public dismiss this.
If you were one in a group of 4 people, and one of them fed poison to a child to remove a stain from their shoe, or just for a laugh, or for 2 cents, and someone got upset, would you talk about the species or evolution first thing? What habit did we normalise here?
No, we as a civilization are ultimately responsible for giving bad actors power, and indeed often glorifying those actors. There are evolutionary reasons why it is so, but that's absolutely not to say that these things just happen and a species with a very different psychology couldn't avoid the same trap.
As a society we tend to reward sociopaths with power, which leads to stuff like forever chemicals. But society providing neither checks-and-balances nor even a credible thread of punishment after the fact is also part of the issue. Even sociopaths are influenced by the threat of punishment
Exactly. It's a pretty small number of people who are this terrible. Thinking of it in evolutionary terms creates a sense of fatalism. If you look globally since the invention of agriculture, it's very clear that a) humans are extremely flexible, and b) culture matters hugely to how societies turn out.
Culture is something we inherit, but it's something we can change. If we want things to be less fucked up for the next generation, we can do that. As many before us have.
Nah, it's the species. Corporate greed is near the bottom of the list among the accolades of human cruelty.
No previous era of cruelty has threatened the existence of life itself. Corporate greed is the most hideous, horrific, inhumane era of human culture that has ever been.
In the real world, two out of these four people vote to protect the poisoner because poison is a conspiracy against the freedom to feed children anything you want.
I’ve long suspected it’ll take us _almost_ going extinct to actually take this stuff seriously.
There are too few of us who understand asymmetric risk, and too many in power who are willing to roll the dice for the entire species for profit.
Realistically, it will have to get much, much, worse before it gets any better.
IMO this is part of the natural evolutionary cycle.
Asbestos too. And glyphosates which have devastated insect populations. Veritasium did great documentaries on both of those crises
glyphosate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxVXvFOPIyQ
asbestos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMx139eTxoc
It took decades for the science to finally flow freely since both of these industries heavily targeted the scientific institutions themselves. Who knows what other pesticides and chemical companies are following the same playbook that we won't get to know about for decades.
The only species I can think of that coordinate better than humans do are ants, bees, and naked mole rats.
We're our own moral judges. Biology doesn't have an ethical opinion.
"Better", as in, capable as a civilization of avoiding doing things that are incredibly harmful according to their own morals. Capable of defeating their own Moloch, if you will.
cheater detection and self-correction is important in systems. i am not sure "fucked-up" is a meaningful way to look at species-level things.
Even looking only at different cultures, saying nothing of nature, the degree to which people are willing to cooperate or defect against the group varies widely. The level of trust varies widely.
People aren't motivated solely by the risk of being caught. Some people tell themselves that everyone else must be trying to cheat, so it's okay for them to cheat. But this type of thinking isn't a law of nature, it's just a human flaw.
The amount of cheating is not a fundamental constant. Given that people are social animals and that we tend to be stronger as a group, in fact you'd expect that prosocial behavior is good for the species. If fucked up is to mean anything, poisoning the environment with forever chemicals ought to make the fucking cut, if you'll pardon my French.
Yes, and our cheater detection is entirely broken, given that we prefer to give power to cheaters, as long as the cheater is smart enough.
yeah, sometimes cheaters winning is a net benefit or at least acceptable. although, i don't think those cases above are, heh.
It's just a bunch of grapes.
If there's more than enough grapes for everyone and one person takes more than their fair share, then, on the whole, it's fine. There's enough to go round.
If everyone tries to take more than their fair share, then the whole system falls apart.
When there are this many people, and this much visibility of the hustle, just seeing others prosper by cheating means a not insubstantial number of people will be in the "well I want grapes, and likely need to cheat to make sure I get my fair share" camp.
Oh, evolution certainly can. The bad ones always get killed off.
Bad's a matter of perspective, as a quick review of Wikipedia's parasite articles will reveal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymothoa_exigua
…gambling, social media…
there is reason why every civilization rise and fails.
I don't understand it though. These chemicals poison their own families right?
But money
Buckle up, the second Trump administration / Lee Zeldin's EPA approved 5 new PFAS / "forever chemicals" for use as pesticides to be sprayed on crops
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/10/health/pfas-pesticides-indust...
And yet, here we are just pouring glyphosate on public lands by the tons…
Nothing changes even if we know about these chemicals
Glyphosate isn't a forever chemical, is it?