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Comment by pibaker | Hacker News Reader

> Would you choose to live as someones slave if that ensures a boring life of a hundred years?

There were more slaves and serfs 250 years ago than today. It takes some tremendous mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you are actually a slave when you are not, in fact, being shipped off to a foreign land in shackles just to pick cotton and get whipped because your owner got bored.

I wish your kids the best. Living under parents with this level of delusional paranoia can do some incredible damage to the minds of young people.

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So using your perfectly working and well adjusted mind, you can only imagine a single kind of "slavery"?

Would it have helped if I said "bondage" instead of "slavery"? I think so, because you seemed to have latched on to some imagery strongly associated with that word, without trying to understand the point that is being made.

If you have to stretch the meaning of words in order to try to paint the present as comparable to the past, you've already lost the argument.

I'm sorry but an statement like:

>There is nothing that I can feed my children without worrying how many poisons and microplastics or some endocrine disrupting shit it contains.

Is an obscene display of ignorance. Do you know what dysentery is? Do you have any idea of the immense amount of pain and suffering caused through the ages by famine? Sickness? Have you in your life taken a history course?

You worry about your children, how afraid were you of their mother dying when giving birth? Because that happened constantly.

I mean the word. It's obscene. That people like you can be so utterly detached from the harsh realities of nature is the greatest testament imaginable that by God yes, we do have it easy.

What? we don't have sickness now? Or an ever increasing amount of sickness? We now have kids with diabetes now! Childhood cancer anyone? We don't have Dysentry for kids, but we have diabetes, and cancer for them now. They can now happily live a 100 years in a hospital!

Congratulations! What a win!

What's your point? The fact that we still have sickness means things are worse? What I find fascinating is how people like you, who reference a "pure" and "analog" world, have very "binary" views. Nature is complex, everything is continuous and lives on a spectrum, nothing is binary (not even death). Things can be way better, slightly better, worse etc. There's no such thing as "good" or "bad", everything exists somewhere in between. But your thinking is so simple and naive, it's a travesty of the nature you appeal to.

Grab a coin right now, try to call the result. If you fail, your child dies before age 10.

That was REALITY in the XII century. If you like that better by all means, contact a therapist as soon as possible.

>Grab a coin right now, try to call the result. If you fail, your child dies before age 10.

And today's reality is that the child would not die, but with a similar chance (may be not right now but in the near future) will have some disease that would make the child's and the families life hell until they run out of resources...and then child dies anyway....

Do you like that better?

You think *half of children* are going to have life-ending diseases that will "make the child's and the families life hell until they run out of resources"???

I think we are on that trajectory, yes.

And a huge contributor is the perception that it is OK, because we have advanced medical procedures for them...for who can afford them.

So capitalism/consumerism makes them sick (indiscriminately) and then sells them cure (when they can). Progress!

Then I'm just going to reiterate the "Talk to your therapist" and end this conversation.

Yea, I hope she has the reality denying drugs that you appear to be on...

You are still stretching, nobody is claiming suffering doesn't exist.

But to compare modern medical care and nutrition to even 100-200 years ago and say it was better in the past is quite... insane.

You can't cherrypick specific problems now and then compare to the entire existence in whatever before times you think were better.

To put it another way... I would easily trade being below average income/class now, to top 1% 200 years ago every single time.

>But to compare modern medical care and nutrition to even 100-200 years ago and say it was better in the past is quite... insane.

No one is saying that though. I am saying that if the price for that is that everyone is more sick, then it is not a better thing.

Ok, I agree if that is your hypothetical. But we have t define "if its happening" and what "everyone is more sick" means relative to before microplastics, or whatever your argument is.

I get your point, just disagree that more people are sick now (depending on the definition of sick). If you die, you're not sick anymore.

>just disagree that more people are sick now..

There are more sickness inducing things in air, water and food. And it is not slowing down. We are adding more and more of it..Look up "Regrettable substitution", and that is exactly as hopeless as it sounds...

So regulations are not doing shit.

So given that, and the basic implication that consuming more sickness inducing stuff would make more people sick, why do you need additional proof that people will get more and more sick going forward?

>There are more sickness inducing things in air, water and food.

I mean, just no. Unfortunately I don't have a time machine to kick your ass back 300 years ago to a city like London so you get to experience it for yourself.

>I mean, just no.

What exactly are you claiming? Environmental pollution was more 300 years ago than it is now?

The claim is twofold, that London, a major capital city, arguably the largest most important city at that time, had little to no functional sewerage, turds floating down the Thames, people drinking cholera straight from the pump, etc.

Which was true at that time.

The second part of the claim is that is no longer the case for London, and somewhat implied is that few other large capitals of the world have such extreme issues now as London has had in the past.

London may have cleaned up, but that'd be a stretch for several large modern cities in India, South America, Indonesia, etc. that are straining their civic infrastructure or applying unevenly.

Globally, in total mass (or other measures) environmental pollution is "worse" now - just largely less visible (pushed from the G20 out to other countries) or dismissed (carbon dioxide is good for plants!! (etc.)).

>turds floating down the Thames

Dude, what are you saying? Just boil the water and you are golden.

But you cannot remove the poisons in the industrial waste dumped into rivers by boiling or filtering. People are totally helpless now.

> you cannot remove the poisons in the industrial waste dumped into rivers by boiling or filtering.

That's why those methods aren't used.

> People are totally helpless now.

Depends on the country, some will regulate industry and insist on properly constructed separation ponds and heavy metal bioremediation.

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