Who are you -- who is anyone for that matter -- to think they know best what everyone needs such that they would argue in favor of -- and potentially even act on -- poisoning the water supply?
"We'll just poison everyone to make them more likely to give their money to people they don't know - it'll be great for everyone!" What's next, taking family farms away from their heirs because it "isn't fair" or because "cows will fart and fart until the planet becomes uninhabitable"?
I don’t know if this is as extreme as poisoning the water supply…
The way I understood it, lithium would only be added to within levels of normal variation that could already be found in water supplies and would have no harm. While it is a big central planning thing, if it’s just small trace amounts, it should be entirely harmless. I see it as the same kind of thing as adding iodine to salt, which was a small but significant public health intervention meant to improve people’s general wellbeing.
If you’re still opposed to the idea of adding something to everyone’s water without consent, I can understand that, even though the benefits would be appealing. Perhaps starting with adding to bottled water and making it clear to people what this is and why it’s in there would be a better move?
Science is not omnipotent, and it really has no idea of what "safe amounts" ultimately amount to - lots of people would contend that the "safe amounts" of fluoride in tap water are anything but. How many times have scientists altered the food pyramid? Should we just run with whatever the current best guess is and play chemistry lab with the water supply?
Not only is it an issue of both best-guessing and disregarding consent, but even in the case of doing it to bottled water, it perpetuates the idea of putting a magic-mellow ingredient in water. Is that objectively good? Is it something that water does not naturally have enough of?
It comes back to hubris and the dangers thereof, and to what end? Is the modern west not already the most docile society in the history of the world? Should we chemically induce a greater degree of mellow? For what? Is that not potentially a huge problem waiting to blow up in our faces?
Scientists do not produce the “best” - in fact, they usually produce something subpar.
Farmers: “Eggs are good for you, eat the whole thing.”
Scientists: “Egg yolks are bad! They’re high in cholesterol which will lead to congested arteries! Only eat the egg whites!”
Scientists later: “No, wait - egg yolks are really good for you! Egg whites are just empty fat, and that’s bad. Only eat the egg yolks!”
Scientists yet even later: “No, wait - we were wrong again. Eggs are simply good for you. Go ahead and eat the whole thing.”
Farmers: “…”
Do you see how utterly stupid someone would look (and quite frankly, how stupid they would be) to have listened to scientists the entire time?
Scientists not only don’t have a monopoly on knowledge, they’re literally wrong more often than not - but they have more hubris than any other fields by a longshot.
Yeah, I agree. Adding anything into the public water supply especially if that addition was meant to be used experimentally, is entirely immoral and a great representation for what is wrong with people in power. No one is above another in such a way that they get to determine or decide what is best for the other person. This post was likely a thought provoker from the philosophy bear, but it is concerning that the idea is being put forth of adding something like lithium to a public water supply.
I get iodine from other sources, I’ve never seen anyone with a goiter in a first world country, but your argument that behavior is a medical issue is flawed as it assumes we’re robots. The larger argument is about harm reduction through CAUSING HARM. Lmfao try that on a captive population instead and see how you sleep at night. Also bottled water is not a choice for people in Southern California who don’t have a water softener, it’s either that or your kidneys fail.
> What's next, taking family farms away from their heirs because it "isn't fair" or because "cows will fart and fart until the planet becomes uninhabitable"?
I don't see how this is related at all, but yeah this seems like a good idea.
And what do you - or political theorists, especially the urban academic leftists - know about farming?
Central planning has no grasp of the particulars of various fields, nor does it have any expertise. Never has such a thing worked out well.
Again, the hubris that downplays the knowledge, importance, and rights of everyone other than oneself - whom oneself has appointed to the make-believe position of grand arbiter - is astounding and shameful.
…and what a coincidence: as time goes on, people are becoming more and more aware of tap water’s deleterious effects on health and the fact that it isn’t nearly as safe to drink as once thought.
But what is perfectly safe? God-given spring water.
Scientists try to “play God” to their own detriment, as well as the detriment of those weak enough in faith to trust them and their abominations over what is God-given.
Giardia happens in the rare instance where an animal has died in the water upstream - it doesn't occur in spring water, as spring water comes directly out of the ground.
In any case, giardia will give one diarrhea - which is far less detrimental than the effects of fluoride on one's brain function.
In any case, God has his reasons for the amount of lithium *naturally occurring* in this area as opposed to other areas. Reasons that we - including scientists - do not understand. And that's perfectly okay.
You see, the hubris involved in wanting to understand everything under the Sun is the same hubris that ultimately comes to *think it knows what is best* -- and if there's anything the history of science tells us, it's that such a perspective almost always ends in horrible effects unforeseen by scientists.
All of the spazzing out - from you, from others thinking we need to add this and that to water or force this or that upon society or that some sort of climate doom is just around the corner (based on scientific models that are repeatedly wrong; Hello? Al Gore? 2000 AD?) - really just betrays a total lack of faith.
With faith and reverence, it is clear that we already live in a perfectly designed and created realm, and that all the spazzing and hubris of scientists manages to do is worsen what was originally all well and good.
> And what do you - or political theorists, especially the urban academic leftists - know about farming?
Nothing, but luckily this question isn't about farming, and knowledge of farming would be fairly superfluous. We're talking about anthropogenic climate change and the fairness of grand inheritances, remember?
The point is that if you don’t have the people who know how to farm in their respective places, people will starve.
If you’re against “grand inheritances,” then you’re literally ass-ing out the people who know how to farm - and who grew up working that land day in and day out - from their farms. I.e., people will likely starve.
You’ll also be by-and-large saying goodbye to the hope for any great contributors in the arts and humanities. Wittgenstein? Kierkegaard? They - and most of humanity’s great thinkers - were only able to dedicate themselves to their philosophical pursuits because of the inheritances they received.
Why do you keep talking about farming? What has that got to do with the point? Do you think farming is dependent on intergenerational knowledge transfer in the 21st century?
And no, it's not true in the modern era that you only get great thinkers when you have massive inheritances. Many if not most of the 20th century's greater thinkers are middle or working class, such as Kripke, Heidegger, Lewis, Singer, Chalmers and Camus.
Farming is relevant because it is a prime example of the failures of central planning. Hayek completely dismantled the ideas of central planning, and history has shown him to be correct.
And yes, farming is very much dependent on both intergenerational knowledge *and* local expertise. One of the hallmarks of the hubris common to central planning advocates - a hubris which I keep hammering, and which is at the very heart of everything discussed here and most of the articles of this publication - is the dismissiveness and downplaying of local knowledge. It's an attitude of "I'm smarter than all of the local yokels, nothing they do is really all that difficult and they can be replaced no problem. I know better than all of them what's good for them and for everyone else." It's not only repulsive, but has been shown to be asinine and deadly to nations in both theory and in practice.
Were any of the thinkers you denoted denied their inheritance? Who was it that put them through school and supported their work? Did they go into crippling student loan debt, as is required today without sufficient funding?
Moreover, were any of those thinkers massively unpopular in their time? With the exception of Heidegger - who was first demoted by Hitler and then barred from teaching by the French - none of them faced the same sort of persecution that Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard did. Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard were monumental well beyond any of the thinkers you mentioned (frankly, unless by Lewis you mean C.S. Lewis, the only "great" thinker you list is Heidegger -- and he by-and-large plagiarized Kierkegaard all the way up until his famous Kehre, and then he leaned heavily on articulating what was in the works of Holderlin who was, of course, from the Dutchy of Wurttemberg) - and neither of them would have been able to do the work they did without their family wealth.
One funny thing about lithium is that it has been proposed as both a contributing cause of autism[1] and as a treatment for autism[2]. It's even possible both claims might be true.
This is either a joke or a setup, I just want to believe you’re not this stupid.
Oh! I know, this promotes engagement!
Hahaha, so like really, because a person can be drugged, their behavior is limited to the effects of that drug? I certainly wouldn’t become homicidal after I found out Pony de Sum was responsible for that time one of my buddies got lithium poison from drinking too much water at work. Nah, I’d be less likely to kill that dipshit because he drugged me too.
I mean, I use fluoride toothpaste, but I’d still be really pissed if I got Colorado brown.
Your water is already full of lithium. There's a reasonable chance you need it to be healthy. I don't think there's an ethical problem with giving volunteers an amount of lithium equal to the amount they would get if they drank the water in a mountainous area. Nor, if a series of experiments back it up, do I think there is a problem with giving someone who lives on the plains an equal amount to that they'd get on the mountains.
Who are you -- who is anyone for that matter -- to think they know best what everyone needs such that they would argue in favor of -- and potentially even act on -- poisoning the water supply?
"We'll just poison everyone to make them more likely to give their money to people they don't know - it'll be great for everyone!" What's next, taking family farms away from their heirs because it "isn't fair" or because "cows will fart and fart until the planet becomes uninhabitable"?
What hubris. Shame on you.
https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/short-postscript-on-lithium-experimentation
I don’t know if this is as extreme as poisoning the water supply…
The way I understood it, lithium would only be added to within levels of normal variation that could already be found in water supplies and would have no harm. While it is a big central planning thing, if it’s just small trace amounts, it should be entirely harmless. I see it as the same kind of thing as adding iodine to salt, which was a small but significant public health intervention meant to improve people’s general wellbeing.
If you’re still opposed to the idea of adding something to everyone’s water without consent, I can understand that, even though the benefits would be appealing. Perhaps starting with adding to bottled water and making it clear to people what this is and why it’s in there would be a better move?
Science is not omnipotent, and it really has no idea of what "safe amounts" ultimately amount to - lots of people would contend that the "safe amounts" of fluoride in tap water are anything but. How many times have scientists altered the food pyramid? Should we just run with whatever the current best guess is and play chemistry lab with the water supply?
Not only is it an issue of both best-guessing and disregarding consent, but even in the case of doing it to bottled water, it perpetuates the idea of putting a magic-mellow ingredient in water. Is that objectively good? Is it something that water does not naturally have enough of?
It comes back to hubris and the dangers thereof, and to what end? Is the modern west not already the most docile society in the history of the world? Should we chemically induce a greater degree of mellow? For what? Is that not potentially a huge problem waiting to blow up in our faces?
Well, yeah, unless you have a better idea; why wouldn't we do our best?
Scientists do not produce the “best” - in fact, they usually produce something subpar.
Farmers: “Eggs are good for you, eat the whole thing.”
Scientists: “Egg yolks are bad! They’re high in cholesterol which will lead to congested arteries! Only eat the egg whites!”
Scientists later: “No, wait - egg yolks are really good for you! Egg whites are just empty fat, and that’s bad. Only eat the egg yolks!”
Scientists yet even later: “No, wait - we were wrong again. Eggs are simply good for you. Go ahead and eat the whole thing.”
Farmers: “…”
Do you see how utterly stupid someone would look (and quite frankly, how stupid they would be) to have listened to scientists the entire time?
Scientists not only don’t have a monopoly on knowledge, they’re literally wrong more often than not - but they have more hubris than any other fields by a longshot.
lol I read that as magic yellow liquid in your water.
Yeah, I agree. Adding anything into the public water supply especially if that addition was meant to be used experimentally, is entirely immoral and a great representation for what is wrong with people in power. No one is above another in such a way that they get to determine or decide what is best for the other person. This post was likely a thought provoker from the philosophy bear, but it is concerning that the idea is being put forth of adding something like lithium to a public water supply.
I get iodine from other sources, I’ve never seen anyone with a goiter in a first world country, but your argument that behavior is a medical issue is flawed as it assumes we’re robots. The larger argument is about harm reduction through CAUSING HARM. Lmfao try that on a captive population instead and see how you sleep at night. Also bottled water is not a choice for people in Southern California who don’t have a water softener, it’s either that or your kidneys fail.
> What's next, taking family farms away from their heirs because it "isn't fair" or because "cows will fart and fart until the planet becomes uninhabitable"?
I don't see how this is related at all, but yeah this seems like a good idea.
And what do you - or political theorists, especially the urban academic leftists - know about farming?
Central planning has no grasp of the particulars of various fields, nor does it have any expertise. Never has such a thing worked out well.
Again, the hubris that downplays the knowledge, importance, and rights of everyone other than oneself - whom oneself has appointed to the make-believe position of grand arbiter - is astounding and shameful.
You know that the public water supply is *already* centrally planned, right?
…and what a coincidence: as time goes on, people are becoming more and more aware of tap water’s deleterious effects on health and the fact that it isn’t nearly as safe to drink as once thought.
But what is perfectly safe? God-given spring water.
Scientists try to “play God” to their own detriment, as well as the detriment of those weak enough in faith to trust them and their abominations over what is God-given.
Everyone should move to a spring? Springs should mostly be bottling plants? What exactly is your spring plan alternative?
Giardia's God-given...
Giardia happens in the rare instance where an animal has died in the water upstream - it doesn't occur in spring water, as spring water comes directly out of the ground.
In any case, giardia will give one diarrhea - which is far less detrimental than the effects of fluoride on one's brain function.
In any case, God has his reasons for the amount of lithium *naturally occurring* in this area as opposed to other areas. Reasons that we - including scientists - do not understand. And that's perfectly okay.
You see, the hubris involved in wanting to understand everything under the Sun is the same hubris that ultimately comes to *think it knows what is best* -- and if there's anything the history of science tells us, it's that such a perspective almost always ends in horrible effects unforeseen by scientists.
All of the spazzing out - from you, from others thinking we need to add this and that to water or force this or that upon society or that some sort of climate doom is just around the corner (based on scientific models that are repeatedly wrong; Hello? Al Gore? 2000 AD?) - really just betrays a total lack of faith.
With faith and reverence, it is clear that we already live in a perfectly designed and created realm, and that all the spazzing and hubris of scientists manages to do is worsen what was originally all well and good.
Mountain spring water high in lithium, even...
> And what do you - or political theorists, especially the urban academic leftists - know about farming?
Nothing, but luckily this question isn't about farming, and knowledge of farming would be fairly superfluous. We're talking about anthropogenic climate change and the fairness of grand inheritances, remember?
The point is that if you don’t have the people who know how to farm in their respective places, people will starve.
If you’re against “grand inheritances,” then you’re literally ass-ing out the people who know how to farm - and who grew up working that land day in and day out - from their farms. I.e., people will likely starve.
You’ll also be by-and-large saying goodbye to the hope for any great contributors in the arts and humanities. Wittgenstein? Kierkegaard? They - and most of humanity’s great thinkers - were only able to dedicate themselves to their philosophical pursuits because of the inheritances they received.
Why do you keep talking about farming? What has that got to do with the point? Do you think farming is dependent on intergenerational knowledge transfer in the 21st century?
And no, it's not true in the modern era that you only get great thinkers when you have massive inheritances. Many if not most of the 20th century's greater thinkers are middle or working class, such as Kripke, Heidegger, Lewis, Singer, Chalmers and Camus.
Farming is relevant because it is a prime example of the failures of central planning. Hayek completely dismantled the ideas of central planning, and history has shown him to be correct.
And yes, farming is very much dependent on both intergenerational knowledge *and* local expertise. One of the hallmarks of the hubris common to central planning advocates - a hubris which I keep hammering, and which is at the very heart of everything discussed here and most of the articles of this publication - is the dismissiveness and downplaying of local knowledge. It's an attitude of "I'm smarter than all of the local yokels, nothing they do is really all that difficult and they can be replaced no problem. I know better than all of them what's good for them and for everyone else." It's not only repulsive, but has been shown to be asinine and deadly to nations in both theory and in practice.
Were any of the thinkers you denoted denied their inheritance? Who was it that put them through school and supported their work? Did they go into crippling student loan debt, as is required today without sufficient funding?
Moreover, were any of those thinkers massively unpopular in their time? With the exception of Heidegger - who was first demoted by Hitler and then barred from teaching by the French - none of them faced the same sort of persecution that Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard did. Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard were monumental well beyond any of the thinkers you mentioned (frankly, unless by Lewis you mean C.S. Lewis, the only "great" thinker you list is Heidegger -- and he by-and-large plagiarized Kierkegaard all the way up until his famous Kehre, and then he leaned heavily on articulating what was in the works of Holderlin who was, of course, from the Dutchy of Wurttemberg) - and neither of them would have been able to do the work they did without their family wealth.
One funny thing about lithium is that it has been proposed as both a contributing cause of autism[1] and as a treatment for autism[2]. It's even possible both claims might be true.
1. https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/higher-lithium-levels-drinking-water-may-raise-autism-risk
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36535311/
This is either a joke or a setup, I just want to believe you’re not this stupid.
Oh! I know, this promotes engagement!
Hahaha, so like really, because a person can be drugged, their behavior is limited to the effects of that drug? I certainly wouldn’t become homicidal after I found out Pony de Sum was responsible for that time one of my buddies got lithium poison from drinking too much water at work. Nah, I’d be less likely to kill that dipshit because he drugged me too.
I mean, I use fluoride toothpaste, but I’d still be really pissed if I got Colorado brown.
lol, unless I was drugged of course.
Your water is already full of lithium. There's a reasonable chance you need it to be healthy. I don't think there's an ethical problem with giving volunteers an amount of lithium equal to the amount they would get if they drank the water in a mountainous area. Nor, if a series of experiments back it up, do I think there is a problem with giving someone who lives on the plains an equal amount to that they'd get on the mountains.
I'm pretty sure that if you tried to get lithium poisoning from drinking water, you'd die of hyponatremia first.