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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like that's taking the commenter's quote out of context, or at least missing the point. They aren't arguing that PFAS aren't everywhere, or even that they aren't harmful. They're arguing that, in the grand scheme of things, the harm produced by PFAS to humans is relatively inconsequential, especially when you consider all the improvements that technology, broadly, has brought to the human condition.

To emphasize, I think that point is very debatable, but I don't know enough about the real harms of PFAS to comment. But I do think it's valid to have a substantive debate on the true harms of PFAS, even if the other side of that debate is that comparing ourselves now to a time when the majority of kids died is the wrong yardstick.

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I went and did some research, and have a friend who's a material scientist. The harms of PFAS are pretty substantial. Teflon is nasty; if you can do without it in your cookware, you probably should.

However, statistically the things that are most likely to prevent you from passing on your genes are:

  1. Not making enough money.
  2. Anxiety/depression
  3. Drug overdoses
  4. Car accidents
  5. An unhappy family life
  6. Swimming pools

And on that list of offspring averted, PFAS basically don't register. You are much better off making sure you get into a good career, talking to your kids about drugs, being very careful when you drive, and otherwise not sweating the small things than obsessing about forever-chemicals in the atmosphere.

What is remarkable here is that every single thing you say is correct.

Everything on your statistical list looks right, and can probably be proven by a stack of peer-reviewed scientific studies from medicine, sociology, psychology...

And yet as an argument, it's worthless. Worse... it's dangerous.

Because in your schema, the impact of climate change, pollution and other threats that will end this species each rank as zero! You get to "pass on your genes" merely to consign a few hundred of your descendents to a miserable death.

This is the tyranny of instrumental reason that you so cleverly use against the goal (reproduction of genes) that you purport to champion.

1, 2, 5 is my best guess.

Wait, neither climate change nor pollution are in the category of threats that are expected to literally end this species.

Within our lifetime we’re safe.

I think the point is 100-300 years (maybe longer?) from now things might reach a tipping point.

None of the above are actually expected to end the species. Not in anyone's lifetime, given the range of climates humans survive in. We might end up with a 90% reduction in population but Short of a massive asteroid impact or massive solar event it's pretty hard to imagine wiping out the entirety of humanity.

I agree. But anything causing even a 10% population decline over a short period of time would have insane second order effects (e.g. nuclear war) as we fight over control of resources.

> it's pretty hard to imagine wiping out the entirety of humanity.

That's kinda my complaint here. Imagination is more important than knowledge. If we started much earlier in education explaining to kids how remarkable and fragile our existence is, how intricately interconnected we are with nature, birds, bees, mushrooms and microbes, then maybe Hollywood disaster movie plots wouldn't seem like the only route to the end of humanity.

With only 10% of the population, we might find so much institutional knowledge lost that the remaining just can't feed themselves. We'd have to relearn hunting and gathering, and that just might not happen.

If we have to relearn hunting and gathering, that's not even closely compatible with feeding 10% of current human population, that's consistent with <1%, probably 0.1% or less of current population surviving. Feeding even 0.8 billion people still requires intensive mass agriculture.

Arguably climate change risk comes under #1 (not making enough money), because in the most likely climate change scenario, people above a certain wealth threshold will probably survive.

Not saying this will be a pleasant experience. Billions may starve. But that still leaves billions, and the purely mercenary reality is that money is what puts you on one side of that dividing line or the other.

From a certain perspective maybe. But I think that would be one coloured by a narrow mentality [0]

In a "purely mercenary reality", what you need to survive is not wealth, but peace, and that is something you cannot buy with many of the futures we're now looking at.

In a funny way, PFAS is a great metaphor. Forever chemicals have now been found in places nobody would ever have predicted. Bad things have a way of spreading in ways you won't see until they're at the gate. It might not be a good idea to bet the farm on isolationism and exceptionalism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_mentality

Swimming pools because of drowning or chemical exposure?

Drowning is the leading cause of death for 1-4 year olds and 2nd after car accidents for 5-14 year olds

https://www.cdc.gov/drowning/facts/index.html

> being very careful when you drive

That helps, but there are more participants in traffic than just you.

Are actually there any studies that say Teflon is harmful? Not the fumes when it is heated, I mean Teflon itself.

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