Gwern: belief

Transcript context

…When you look back at the Romans and you see how lead was constantly poisoning the entire city, what credence do you give to the possibility that something in our environment is having an effect on us on a similar magnitude of what lead was doing to the ancient Romans? I think the odds of there being something as bad as lead is almost 100%. We have so many things out there. Chemists are always cooking up new stuff. There are all sorts of things with microbiomes. Plastics are trendy, but maybe it's not plastics. Maybe it’s something else entirely. But there's almost no way that everything we have put out there is totally benign and safe and has no harmful effects at any concentration—that seems like a really strong claim to be making. I don't believe in any particular one, but I do believe in like, “1% here, 1% here, 1% here.” There's something out there. There's something out there where we're going to look back at and say, “Oh, wow, those people were really poisoning themselves just like with leaded gasoline. If only they had known x, y, and z. It’s so obvious now!” Do you think this would manifest itself most likely in cognitive impairments or obesity or something else?…

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