Silent Spring

[Elliot]

@alanforr

This is a quote from page 209 of Silent Spring:

The individual exposed to DDT, for example, is almost certain to be exposed to other liver-damaging hydrocarbons, which are so widely used as solvents, paint removers, degreasing agents, dry-cleaning fluids, and anaesthetics. What then can be a ‘safe dose’ of DDT?

What edition are you quoting from? Did you copy/paste or type the quote?

My book spells it “anesthetics” and I failed to find anything with your spelling on the web. Is there a British edition with changes? My book also has double quotes around “safe dose”, not single quotes.

[alanforr]

I copied and pasted it from this edition:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B084HGF63N/

[alanforr]

@Elliot

@alanforr

Carson is saying no dose is safe, so dose is irrelevant to safety.

That doesn’t logically follow. Her statement (paraphrased as “no dose is safe”) doesn’t imply that dose is irrelevant to safety. Logically, it could be true that there’s no safe, harmless dose of DDT, and also true that larger doses are more dangerous, harmful and unsafe than smaller doses (so people concerned with safety should be concerned with the amount of DDT being put into the environment that people are being exposed to).

The dose may be relevant to the degree of unsafety. But the dose is irrelevant to the qualitative issue of whether DDT is safe or not.

[Elliot]

I disagree with you, but let’s step back and look at the bigger picture because I’m not sure why you picked this sub-issue to focus discussion on, I’m not sure that it’s a bottleneck, I don’t know what your thesis is, and so I don’t know if resolving this sub-issue is important.

Why did you want to discuss? What is your goal in the discussion? Is there something you want to learn? Did you want to share your point of view and hear about mine? Do you have a specific claim you want to argue, like that Alex Epstein is good and there’s nothing wrong with promoting him?

Have you read Silent Spring? If so, when? What is your opinion of it? Of Epstein? Did you change your mind about any of this stuff at some point recently? Did you like some of my arguments or writing? What do you disagree with me about, and what do you agree with me about?