I made this connection a month ago - that a couple of generations of humans grew up breathing exhaust from leaded gasoline and dust from lead paint and had a bit of an epiphany about the state of the world.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Dude. As a whole the world is stupider by several tens of IQ points solely in specifically due to lead poisoning.
Lead poisoning is the single most detrimental effect ever experienced by humanity so very few people even understand that!
Lead poisoning is the single most detrimental effect experienced by humanity, so far.
Wait til they find out what microplastics do to us, if we last long enough to get the results on that shit.
They've been poisoning people with lead since before Roman times. They used to make drinking glasses from lead
Makes me wonder if we're not undergoing something similar. I imagine that a lot of people didn't know the effects it'd have on them when those things were first introduced
Plastics are the modern lead.
Leaded fuel or leaded pipes didn't matter to that generation, so why do their bigoted, stuck-up views still matter now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
There's reason to believe the very real crime spike in the 80s/90s was people from the 60s/70s quite literally going insane due to their lead exposure.
The survivors are both traumatized by the experience and suffering from a lower but still harmful dose of brain damage. They express this through short tempers and irrational anxiety, which they then rationalize as justification for bigotry.
Ie, going into hysterics when you see black people because your brain is polluted, but then reinforcing the anxiety with a nightly dose of Tucker Carlson.
I believe the authors of the first Freakonomics book did delve into this phenomenon.
Freakonomics gave almost complete credit to abortion, with some wonky numbers, not really mentioning lead or other factors. That whole book is interesting, but very slipshod...
I like this analysis. Fun, but dangerous to take at face value.
I love that whenever something really awful happens to you, they try to justify it by saying, "God never gives you more than you can handle."
I know people who have been driven batsh*t insane by what God has given them.
If there is a god he is an asshole and doesn't deserve worship. I heard he's the bastard that lets all those children die all the time!
I mean, are we assholes because we let ants die? I agree if he exists he isn’t deserving of worship, but calling him an asshole for letting kids die is kinda rich from a species that mostly gives no fucks about creatures with lower intellect.
Do almost 1/8th of the ants worship humans as their saviour?
would anything change if they did?
Likely, I mean, humans are real, and if a few hundred billion ants started building temples to us, I suspect things would change.
Yep, but if you ask them why babies have cancer they suddenly don't have time to debate you.
They won't debate you but they will tell you that "God has a plan for you" or something like that. Even if that plan is living a super short life and dying and agonizing death.
Yep. Apparently babies deserve to suffer for...being born? I've been told I should see my horrible migraine as a gift from God that he thinks I'm strong enough to carry. 🤬 Ah yes, the "gift" of unending pain. That's not a gift, that's a curse.
It's all survivorship bias.
The only folks who cling to that belief are the ones who haven't been broken on the wheel of life
Presumably, people who say that have never read the Bible.
They hide their inhumanity behind some magical sky wizard with a greater plan and misconstrue their privilege as strength of character and confidence.
If they were assholes due to Lead poisoning theyd be sympathetic to a nonzero degree. But the reality is that they have no one to blame but themselves.
I mean, almost everyone who grew up in a large city from the 40s-80s was a victim to lead poisoning and other toxic chemicals (hell, lead in gasoline was officially banned in 96!). Doesn't absolve them of sin but you've got to feel a little sorry for how little emotional control it can leave someone with.
And then how long does it take for decades of lead from exhaust on basically every roadside and garage in the world to make its way through the ground, into the groundwater, into water supplies and crops, into people and animals, and ... back into the ground again.
"Everywhere" should be a superfund site.
You're so quick to blame lead poisoning when we all know poor mental health and Alzheimer's is doing all the heavy lifting.
Lead poisoning will lead to poor mental health, just FYI
And Alzheimer’s!
The Lord works in mysterious ways!