> are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?
Smokers aren't exactly known for their good judgement, manners and consideration for others in the first place, are they?
Smokers aren't exactly known for their good judgement, manners and consideration for others in the first place, are they?
I grew up in an environment where smoking was encouraged and I can understand a person that conforms to their buddies. I have personally never tasted it but when I was teen virtually everybody smoked and it took a lot of willpower to withstand the pressure.
I think these days, in western world, except for schools, low income neighborhoods and low income jobs to be smoking means you have not enough willpower to end it. I would say most middle class people and office workers do not encourage smoking or will actively discourage it and smoking is mostly treated as a disease.
There are definite short term advantages to smokers. There (_)used to be similar short term advantages for those who drank during work hours when it was socially acceptable.
(_ Used to might be wrong.. Startups with designated drinking times that seem to be mandatory are annoying but not irrational given their short term interests.)
https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#benefits
Tobacco also naturally contains, in addition to the nicotine, other compounds that act like MAOIs - ie, as antidepressants:
My small experiments with cannabis have made me wonder how tobacco possibly could have ever become more popular, the former's effects are much more noticeable with a vastly smaller amount of smoke and can be quite pleasant.
> The heaviest smokers, with everything else being equal, had about half the number of parasitic eggs in their stool, compared to everyone else
> Smoking kills. But if you’re a bird and if you want to kill parasites, that can be a good thing. City birds have taken to stuffing their nests with cigarette butts to poison potential parasites.
> 8 intestinal parasite species have been recovered singly or in combinations from 146 (61.8 %) samples. The prevalence in prison population (88/121 = 72.7%) was significantly higher than that in tobacco farm (58/115 = 50.4%).
(from https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2018/04/18/did-tobacco-b..., which is basically just a collection of these quotes)
The reason smoking gives you a lower parasite load is surprisingly intuitive: parasites often move through the body by using the circulatory system, which is, after all, a transportation network designed to reach every part of the body.
The circulatory system, for business logic reasons, is a star topology which connects every point to every other point through a single central hub, the lungs.
"The heaviest smokers" refers to THC smokers, not nicotine, which is the topic at hand. It may be that nicotine smoking does the same, but your reference does not show that that has been demonstrated outside of a Petri dish.
The "no benefits" refers to human health, not birds. Even with humans, smoking benefits the wealth of the cigarette manufacturer, which may lead to better health. But that also was not the point.
The prison/tobacco leaf development farm comparison cannot be used to judge the effect of nicotine smoking on one's health. For one, the paper does not mention which population smoked more, nor does it report nicotine levels in the stool samples. For all we know, the prison population may smoke 4x more than the farm workers. Or 1/4th as much.
The "In vitro anthelmintic effect of Tobacco" paper described in your link refers to study in a Petri dish of aqueous and alcoholic extracts of tobacco. It describes how "Dried leaves, stalks and the whole herb of tobacco are widely used as an anti inflammatory, antirheumatic and anthelmintic agent" and cites other papers which use nicotine extracts. This paper therefore cannot be used to conclude there is a beneficial in vivo effect of smoking tobacco.
Lastly, while the blood does indeed go through the lungs, it is wrong to say "a single central hub", as the heart is also a central hub.
- The claim is that smoking cigarettes has benefits, not that smoking nicotine does.
- The idea of calling the lungs a single central hub is, as you acknowledge, that in order to move through the circulatory system it is necessary to pass through the lungs. There is no alternative route which offers the chance to bypass the lungs. If the heart were also a central hub, it would be possible for blood to move from an extremity to the heart and back out to another extremity without passing through the lungs, but of course in reality it isn't. Drawing the blood flow network, if you wanted to distinguish the heart from the lungs, you'd need to place the lungs node between a node for the right heart and another node for the left heart.
As I pointed out, with the prisoner/tobacco farmer case you must know the rate of smoking in both populations in order to make any sort of preliminary statement, because 4x vs. 1/4x gives you totally different interpretation, yes? But that information wasn't given. Therefore you cannot draw a conclusion either way from that study.
There may be other reasons for a difference between inhaled vs. ingested nicotine.
It may be that nicotine, when processed by stomach acid, results in a compound which causes the effects seen, and that inhalation does not produce the same results.
Or, since we are talking about parasites in the digestive system, it may be that the nicotine must reach the parasites directly. As you point out, the nicotine which goes through the lungs can enter the bloodstream directly. However, does that nicotine then get released to where the parasites are? The intestines usually work the other way.
I could probably come up with a few more differences if I thought about it. That's why those paper do not support the conjecture.
You wrote "The claim is that smoking cigarettes has benefits, not that smoking nicotine does". However, 1) this post is specifically about tobacco cigarette butts ("Those discarded filters usually contain synthetic fibers and hundreds of chemicals used to treat tobacco"), 2) this thread of the post seems specifically directed to tobacco smokers (woodruffw asked "smokers on HN" why so many smokers "flick their cigarettes into gutters and on streets" - observed events are much more due to tobacco smokers), and 3) you replied to lmilcin, who wrote "Smoking is addiction that is demonstrably bad for your health and has no benefits. ... I grew up in an environment where smoking was encouraged ... when I was teen virtually everybody smoked ...".
It is clear that lmilcin specifically means tobacco smoking. There are very few places/cultures in the "western world" (quoting lmilcim) where 'virtually everybody' smokes marijuana, clove cigarettes, or other herbal cigarettes. A quick check of lmilcin's history finds https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18440363 saying "I am Pole", so lmilcin is almost certainly talking about Poland. Therefore, it's definitely a comment about tobacco cigarette smoking.
If you really believed the thread was about any sort of smoking, then you could have simply pointed out that some herbal cigarettes are not addictive as your counter-example.
If you don't believe that the separate showings that
- smoking marijuana lowers parasite load
- workers on a tobacco plantation have lower parasite loads than prisoners
- tobacco has strong antiparasitic effects
do not constitute support for the idea that smoking tobacco lowers parasite load, then all I can say is that you're being intentionally obtuse. They are strong evidence that (1) Tobacco has antiparasitic effects (this is just the third result), and (2) smoking is an effective delivery method for antiparasitic treatments. That's what support looks like.
They don't conclusively establish that smoking is an effective delivery method for the antiparasitic effect of tobacco in specific. But that's a much stronger showing than "support" requires.
How am I supposed to know that? Vaping wasn't brought up on any of the g'parents of this thread, and I don't see the relevance. Nor did the papers you referenced discuss vaping.
"smoking marijuana lowers parasite load" - I pointed out that the person you were responding to (lmilcin) was specifically talking about smoking tobacco. I wrote that the study "refers to THC smokers, not nicotine, which is the topic at hand".
If we broaden the topic to THC then I am fully in agreement with the statement that there are benefits to smoking marijuana. However, as the source NPR article says: "Of course, this result is a simple correlation. Hagen doesn't know if the THC in the men's system is actually keeping the parasitic worms at bay. And taking a few pills is a much easier way to get rid of intestinal worms." If the research scientist on the project doesn't know if it's true, why do you think it's true?
I am in agreement with the statement "workers on a tobacco plantation have lower parasite loads than prisoners". But lmilcin's posting was specifically about the effect of smoking. What if none of the tobacco farm workers smoked, while 100% of the prisoners smoked? Wouldn't that show that tobacco smoking does not have a beneficial effect on intestinal parasites? So you tell me, what percentage of each population smoked?
I am in agreement with the statement "tobacco has ... antiparasitic effects". However, the papers you indirectly referenced specifically concerned ingesting liquid solutions of tobacco. They did not mention smoking. As I pointed out, there are several mechanisms where ingestion might work while inhaling does not. Therefore those papers cannot be used to contradict the assertion that tobacco smoking has no health benefits.
You write "smoking is an effective delivery method for antiparasitic treatments".
Which of the papers described smoking as an effective delivery method for antiparasitic treatments? I have read the original publications and not found the conclusion you describe, nor do they support evolutionistx's hypothesis.
Since it's so clear to you, could you quote the relevant text from those publications which supports your conclusion?
Problem is, you need to demonstrate that your claim is true, otherwise you're begging the question.
I agree that 1) if you widen the topic beyond the original claim, which was specifically about tobacco smoking, and 2) if you assume the correlation implies causation, then sure, you're right.
Except as I've now pointed out several times:
1) the comment you replied to was specifically about tobacco smoking, and trivially disproved if you (mistakenly) expand it to all types of smoking; and
2) neither the lead scientist quoted in the NPR piece nor the actual paper make the claim that smoking marijuana lowers parasite load, only that there is a correlation. Again, quoting the NPR piece, the lead scientist "doesn't know if the THC in the men's system is actually keeping the parasitic worms at bay".
Therefore, how do you know that smoking marijuana lowers parasite load? Please quote the relevant study.
Is this really the hill you want to die on?
Any nobody said it was infringing on any rights - we said it was inconsiderate.
I didn’t use the word “right” to imply that any rights were being violated. I used it to claim what I believe to be reasonable expectations for other people’s behavior, which seems like a natural definition for what behavior is “inconsiderate.”
Smokers are inconsiderate because they thoughtlessly cause harm or inconvenience to others by smelling offensive. They brush off the objections of all non-smokers and tell the rest of the world to fuck off because they selfishly prefer smoking to not causing olfactory offense.
It’s very difficult to explain to people that their scents are making you ill and forcing you to leave the room, rinse your sinuses or stay 5+ feet away from them. Mercifully some workplaces have no-fragrance policies. Elsewhere, my health-driven preferences get absolutely no attention or respect. People get offended and embarrassed especially since they think they are doing this to make themselves more presentable. It is far better to not say anything.
Oddly, cigarette smells and body odor do not bother me at all.
So, given that attitude, hope you don’t use dryer sheets.
People who wear perfume have the excuse of believing they were being considerate, their fault is ignorance not selfishness. No smoker can earnestly claim they made themselves smell like an ash tray because they believed other people would appreciate it.
As for camp fires, if somebody fails to bath before coming into the office after spending the weekend camping, that is a very clear cut case of poor hygiene, which of course is very inconsiderate.
Are you happy now? Do you think the reputation of smokers has been rehabilitated thanks to your digressions? That smokers are notorious for liter is a consequence of their notorious personality defect of being inconsiderate. They don't care about how their actions impact those around them. That's why they liter. That's why they picked up a habit that makes them smell like an ash tray.
Let go of your hate, please. And please stop conflating odor with pollution, it is not becoming of you.
On the contrary, I defended the moral character of people who wear perfume, not the stench of perfume, since they do not categorically possess the same moral defect as smokers. (And I didn't defend in any way people who smell like campfires. People who go camping should bath before presenting themselves in public, they have absolutely no excuse.) Did you even read my post or did you assume the contents of it?
Which each passing year, as cigarette smoking becomes less and less popular, the portion of the population who hate for the stench of people who smoke will only rise. A majority of the public in first world nations agrees with me, and that's not going to diminish. Smokers are left with a choice, either they change or they weather the hate they rightfully get from the rest of us.
I don't like tobacco smoke either, but I think you're judging a lot of people way more harshly than is healthy for public discourse.
That's not what I was saying, but actually that's also true. Good point. Smelling like a smoker is itself inconsiderate behavior.
What I was actually saying is that smokers are generally inconsiderate people. This can be generally observed by interacting with the general public and noticing that people who smell like smokers are almost always inconsiderate people. You don't need to witness an inconsiderate person smoking to know they're a smoker, because the human nose can detect smokers easily. And just so we're clear, not all inconsiderate people are smokers, but very nearly all smokers are inconsiderate.
Now that I think about this more, there is a plausible relationship here: everybody knows that smoking makes you smell awful, so only people who are inclined towards being inconsiderate will pick up the habit.
> "right"
In most free countries, it is your right to be inconsiderate. It's not the right of any smoker to be free of criticism.
I will straight up disagree with you there, and we can probably avoid a semantic argument over what “inconsiderate” means and just call it a day. In summary, I think “inconsiderate” ought only apply to behaviors that sufficiently violate the expectations of society, or in other words, just because you don’t like a behavior does not mean that behavior is inconsiderate.
The rest of your comment is fairly ridiculous. Surely you haven’t actually counted every smoker you have met. It’s much more likely that you are simply disproportionately noticing smokers who are bothering you.