I wonder what will be the equivalent a hundred years down the line.
In other words - do we do something today which will seem as hare-brained to our descendants as irradiating one's genitals does to us? (We probably do - but what will it be...)
I really wish there was a law that forbids using the Homeopathic label on a product that isn't really homeopathic, but just non-medicinal. For example, there are some teas or cough drops that are soothing when you have a bad cold (in a similar way to how lemon or honey helps you feel better). Often these are labeled as homeopathic, even though they contain no homeopathic poisons. I don't mind getting non-medicinal remedies, but when I see the homeopathic label I tend to shy away.
Hahnemann advocated 30C dilutions for most purposes (that is, dilution by a factor of 1060).
...
Dilution advocated by Hahnemann for most purposes: on average, this would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient.
I think the parent's point was that things marketed as "homeopathic" usually have their active ingredient diluted into non-existence, so they're pointless to take for relief of the claimed symptom. Slapping the label "homeopathic" on something that actually does something is really annoying, then, because it'd make you assume it did nothing.
Or, things get the homeopathic label when they really aren't homeopathic at all -- they use it as a synonym for natural, or non-medicinal. Which is what I want sometimes. But I never want anything that is homeopathic, because to me that means fake.
Haha, or the opposite -- "homeopathic" cough drops with significant zinc in them, which is actually therapeutic according to solid research that somehow hasn't registered with the popular consciousness. Maybe zinc's problem is that it got claimed as homeopathic, discrediting it in most people's eyes?
That practice dates back thousands of years, and it's still largely normal in many parts of the world. I don't think it's very analogous to this example.
The idea that circumcision has substantive positive health effects has been thoroughly debunked in the presence of semi-regular washing, and the jury is out in third-world countries without sanitation. However, when you factor in the risk of infant mortality from infection or botched procedure in those same third-world countries, any (minor) health benefit that might exist disappears and goes negative.
Hygiene also doesn't seem to be an accepted excuse for clitoral hood removal, even though it's anatomically identical (mutatis mutandis) to male circumcision and presumably has similar (minor) health benefits (dryer environments are harsher on bacteria).
The one non-negligible semi-legitimate medical justification is in the case of severe phimosis, but that can almost always be treated with topical creams rather than surgery and doesn't manifest until adolescence anyway, so it's not an excuse to circumcise babies.
Supplements. Even the ones that seem to have some scientific validity for their intended purpose aren't dosed correctly and are often mixed with all kinds of unhealthy filler material depending on the source.
Ehh, "supplements" are just the operationalization (assembly-line-ization) of people consuming herbs for medicinal purposes. People have always done that, and I expect will always do that. Inconsistent dosing and random side-products are inevitable consequences, but nobody seems to mind.
Though, I'm surprised there isn't a small movement of "home pharmacologists" who buy herbs (or supplement pills/powders) and then distill/reflux/recrystallize out the active ingredients and re-portion them into dosing media for their own use.
The shit we breath and drink and surround ourselves with... the particulates, the nanoparticles of soot, the hundreds and thousands of chemicals in various concentrations and interactions we don't even pretend to understand. People will look back at that in the same way we do at people bathing in filthy rivers.
Human beings driving cars. The activity that for years maimed and killed millions of people, but we did it anyway while worrying about terrorist attacks.
I would suspect that at some point the notion of carrying a firearm is going to be pretty laughable, given what they'll be capable of then.
Human doctors and the current standard of medical errors and deaths due to lack of cleanliness... which is a lot of death and suffering by the way. We do it now, like driving, because we have no choice, but as soon as we do humans doctors will look like barbers.
So so much more. It takes time to start to see your own time from a future point of view, but once you start you can't stop. Then again, an alternative and perhaps more realistic view is that in a hundred years civilization will be collapsing, and these will be the last "good" days. Who knows?
> The shit we breath and drink and surround ourselves with...
Humans are healthier than ever. While nutrition will probably improve in the future, it's actually quite good right now.
> Human beings driving cars. The activity that for years maimed and killed millions of people, but we did it anyway while worrying about terrorist attacks.
That's because the utility of car usage is undeniably positive. Despite millions of deaths over the decades, humanity would be a lot worse off without cars to get around and transport goods.
If you just mean humans as opposed to computers, then you're probably right. I do think it would be a net negative to society if humans were forced to stop driving, however. That would just be one more way to dull the human experience and go from living to surviving.
> the notion of carrying a firearm is going to be pretty laughable, given what they'll be capable of then
Do you mean to say that they'll be too powerful in the future? I'm not sure I understand the argument; presumably, there'll be some sort of limitation on what kind of weapons people are allowed to use. The restrictions are usually pretty silly and arbitrary right now (e.g. "no barrel shroud"), but I could imagine a future where there are laws like "no carrying around a weapon capable of putting out more than 10kW averaged over a minute".
>While nutrition will probably improve in the future, it's actually quite good right now.
If we get rid of fast food and excessive sugar and salt, there will be a vast improvement regardless of how much better 2017 is compared to earlier times. Therefore they would still shake their heads at 2017 food in the future.
What you're forgetting is radioactive underpants were considered kooky even in their time - these were the homeopaths and creationists of their time. I don't think our common-sense beliefs as humans haven't changed as radically as you might think over the past thousand years. I'd bathe in a filthy river if the alternative was just not bathing ever. I can see why people did it. I'd tolerate streets full of manure if it'd mean we didn't have to walk for days between towns. These things aren't ideal, but not crazy, just humans living in difficult circumstances.
"Kooky" is a matter of perspective... the fact is that the use of various radioactive elements in a number of consumer products was a common and pervasive issue.
Hell even dentures had uranium in them until relatively recently, for a 'more natural glow', don't you know. Homeopathy is kooky, but that doesn't stop more people from using it now than were alive just a few hundred years ago. It's kooky, but it's also very popular.
probably our entire conception of psychology and psychiatry will go a radical change. To think we still do electroshock therapy (lets induce a seizure in the brain and hope for the best!), have no idea how it works, and this is still considered by professionals as one of the most effective therapies for chronic depression is just evidence of how little we know about the brain.
38 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 84.2 ms ] threadIn other words - do we do something today which will seem as hare-brained to our descendants as irradiating one's genitals does to us? (We probably do - but what will it be...)
Barbarism is bad behaviour when the better alternative is already known.
We need to be careful when we judge the past to judge it on the facts known at the time.
So, I agree that they will look barbaric once a pill free of side effects can cure cancer but it will only look barbaric, not have been barbaric.
Something that is genuinely homoeopathic doesn't contain any of the poisons either. Or at least at such a low concentration that it is insignificant.
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions):
Hahnemann advocated 30C dilutions for most purposes (that is, dilution by a factor of 1060).
...
Dilution advocated by Hahnemann for most purposes: on average, this would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillococcinum
The idea that circumcision has substantive positive health effects has been thoroughly debunked in the presence of semi-regular washing, and the jury is out in third-world countries without sanitation. However, when you factor in the risk of infant mortality from infection or botched procedure in those same third-world countries, any (minor) health benefit that might exist disappears and goes negative.
Hygiene also doesn't seem to be an accepted excuse for clitoral hood removal, even though it's anatomically identical (mutatis mutandis) to male circumcision and presumably has similar (minor) health benefits (dryer environments are harsher on bacteria).
The one non-negligible semi-legitimate medical justification is in the case of severe phimosis, but that can almost always be treated with topical creams rather than surgery and doesn't manifest until adolescence anyway, so it's not an excuse to circumcise babies.
Though, I'm surprised there isn't a small movement of "home pharmacologists" who buy herbs (or supplement pills/powders) and then distill/reflux/recrystallize out the active ingredients and re-portion them into dosing media for their own use.
Human beings driving cars. The activity that for years maimed and killed millions of people, but we did it anyway while worrying about terrorist attacks.
I would suspect that at some point the notion of carrying a firearm is going to be pretty laughable, given what they'll be capable of then.
Human doctors and the current standard of medical errors and deaths due to lack of cleanliness... which is a lot of death and suffering by the way. We do it now, like driving, because we have no choice, but as soon as we do humans doctors will look like barbers.
So so much more. It takes time to start to see your own time from a future point of view, but once you start you can't stop. Then again, an alternative and perhaps more realistic view is that in a hundred years civilization will be collapsing, and these will be the last "good" days. Who knows?
Humans are healthier than ever. While nutrition will probably improve in the future, it's actually quite good right now.
> Human beings driving cars. The activity that for years maimed and killed millions of people, but we did it anyway while worrying about terrorist attacks.
That's because the utility of car usage is undeniably positive. Despite millions of deaths over the decades, humanity would be a lot worse off without cars to get around and transport goods.
If you just mean humans as opposed to computers, then you're probably right. I do think it would be a net negative to society if humans were forced to stop driving, however. That would just be one more way to dull the human experience and go from living to surviving.
> the notion of carrying a firearm is going to be pretty laughable, given what they'll be capable of then
Do you mean to say that they'll be too powerful in the future? I'm not sure I understand the argument; presumably, there'll be some sort of limitation on what kind of weapons people are allowed to use. The restrictions are usually pretty silly and arbitrary right now (e.g. "no barrel shroud"), but I could imagine a future where there are laws like "no carrying around a weapon capable of putting out more than 10kW averaged over a minute".
Probably
>While nutrition will probably improve in the future, it's actually quite good right now.
If we get rid of fast food and excessive sugar and salt, there will be a vast improvement regardless of how much better 2017 is compared to earlier times. Therefore they would still shake their heads at 2017 food in the future.
Hell even dentures had uranium in them until relatively recently, for a 'more natural glow', don't you know. Homeopathy is kooky, but that doesn't stop more people from using it now than were alive just a few hundred years ago. It's kooky, but it's also very popular.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13616574