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Comment by Nifty3929 | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit exhausting. I care about the environment. And I care about it's impact on humans. But I feel like it's a never-ending march of things to fret about. It really seems like folks are looking for thins to sound the alarm about.

Maybe PFAS really are a major problem, I don't know. But I'd love to see a bit more circumspection about this and other issues. Keeping people on red alert, all the time, about everything - does not seem like a recipe for human flourishing overall. Though it may be a good way to keep people under control.

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You are exhausted. That doesn't mean the concern isn't well considered by those who are presenting it. The problem is your emotional fatigue, not that people are insufficiently "circumspect".

And the solution is to not care? Seems like the same outcome either way.

> Keeping people on red alert, all the time, about everything - does not seem like a recipe for human flourishing overall.

It would help if we had some sort of mechanism to turn these "alerts" into action, which seems to be a sticking point for a globe dominated by society obsessed with corporate liberties to do nothing or double down on the problematic behavior.

That's why you vote in a government to worry about things for you. There's no reason why individuals should have to worry about stuff like this.

Isn't that the problem with democracy though, mass uneducated voting for worse education and killing us all.

and yet we want to align AI to general human values

PFAS is just the currently hyped and talked-about symptom of reactive regulation.

The problem is that there's no requirement for demonstration of safety for new products/chemicals, not even monitoring, nothing (in most parts of the world). Which seems obviously bad.

But we currently live in a particularly idiotic mass-communication by memes times, hence we have defund the police and PFAS, and so on.

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