Arsenic and old lace

My people are showing up in many places, far away from Silicon Valley.  Of course I am referring to people from India.

Today, it is another. Niranjana Krishnan, who has authored this Aeon essay.

Krishnan has a good argument there: How afraid should we be of the synthetic chemicals that permeate our world?

At one end, we might have people who reflexively are opposed to any synthetic chemical.  At the other end, there are those who are ready to embrace and ingest anything that is unnatural.

Most of us occupy the vast space in between these two ends.  How do we respond to synthetic chemicals, and how should we?

Consider water.  Natural, right?  But, As they say in my part of the old country, "அளவுக்கு மிஞ்சினால் அமிர்தமும் நஞ்சு" (the idea translates to "even the divine nectar can become a poison if one exceeds the limit.)  Even water can become toxic, which is what happened a few years ago to a contestant:

On January 12, 2007, KDND's morning show, the Morning Rave, held an on-air contest entitled Hold Your Wee for a Wii, in which contestants were asked to drink as much water as they could without urinating. The contestant able to hold the most water would win a Wii video game console; at the time, the Nintendo console was a very popular and sought-after item, but was nearly impossible to find in stores in North America. A 28-year-old contestant, Jennifer Strange, died of water intoxication hours after taking part in the contest.

Krishnan refers to "the adage ‘the dose makes the poison’."  An example  that she gives is this:

Take the example of botulinum, the most poisonous substance on Earth. Just 50 grammes of the toxin spread evenly worldwide would kill everyone. But, in very minute amounts, it is safely used for cosmetic purposes in Botox.

Eliminate Botox and the entire entertainment industry collapses!

When it comes to something new, something synthetic, one could always ban it out of an uber-precautionary principle.  But, that does not account for a fundamental fact of life--"risk exists in nearly everything."  Recall that old joke about a mother writing to her son that she and her husband moved residences because they read that most accidents happened near one's home?  Risk surrounds us everywhere.

We therefore need to understand probability: is the chemical exposure high enough for a high probability of adverse effects? We also need to know the risks of using an alternative chemical – or no chemical at all.

It is this risk and probability that tRump does not understand when he talks about most issues, especially when it comes to wind turbines. 

Or consider arsenic.  A natural chemical, right?  Not synthetic.  May I give you a glass of water spiked with only a dash of arsenic? ;)

Ultimately, though risk and uncertainty exist on all sides, people seem to be averse only to certain kinds of risks. And while we should undoubtedly work to reduce harmful chemical exposure and come up with safer alternatives, we also need to realise that our excessive phobia of chemicals, particularly synthetic ones, can often be unwarranted. 

Which is why we have the EPA and the FDA.  My worry is that the tRump administration has been rapidly gutting these agencies, and practically forcing the scientists out.  While we won't return to the bad old days of large-scale arsenic poisoning, the worry is real that synthetic chemicals might be allowed at doses that will be harmful.  This is a real risk that we should all worry about.

Oil spill, finance mess, and regulation

Ken Rogoff puts it so succinctly (ht):

The parallels between the oil spill and the recent financial crisis are all too painful: the promise of innovation, unfathomable complexity, and lack of transparency (scientists estimate that we know only a very small fraction of what goes on at the oceans’ depths.)  Wealthy and politically powerful lobbies put enormous pressure on even the most robust governance structures.

Well phrased, right?  Rogoff then writes:

If ever there were a wake-up call for Western society to rethink its dependence on ever-accelerating technological innovation for ever-expanding fuel consumption, surely the BP oil spill should be it. Even China, with its “boom now, deal with the environment later” strategy should be taking a hard look at the Gulf of Mexico.
Economics teaches us that when there is huge uncertainty about catastrophic risks, it is dangerous to rely too much on the price mechanism to get incentives right. Unfortunately, economists know much less about how to adapt regulation over time to complex systems with constantly evolving risks, much less how to design regulatory resilient institutions. Until these problems are better understood, we may be doomed to a world of regulation that perpetually overshoots or undershoots its goals.

I am not sure whether regulation will ever be able to get it right.  It is simply the nature of the beast, so to say.  But, here is the question: aren't the global economic crisis and the oil spill posters for it might be better to overshoot through regulation than to undershoot?  After all, Rogoff himself notes:

t is extremely difficult to strike a balance between managing “tail risk” – a very small risk of a very large disaster – and supporting innovation.

Overshooting means precluding that "tail risk" ... a tough call for society.  The recent announcement from Craig Venter is yet another example of how things will only get even more complex ....

We don’t want to be France!

The following I agree with:

Doug Schoen, a Democratic strategist and pollster who worked for President Bil Clintonfor six years, said that should Mr. Obama win next month, he should not mistake his electio for a mandate for sharply higher taxes on the wealthy or major government expansion. “The polling I’ve done shows that people are anti-Republican, not pro-left, not pro- redistribution,” he said. “They’re ever more skeptical of Washington.”

For example, in the poll by CBS News released earlier this week, 44 percent of Americans said businesses now faced “too much” or “the right amount” of regulation, compared to 43 percent who said they faced too little. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll in September, 42 percent said Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, should be made permanent, while 36 percent said they should be allowed to expire over the next several years.

Most strikingly, 34 percent described themselves as conservative, compared to only 20 percent as liberal. Those figures have hardly changed since September 2000, when 32 percent described themselves as conservative and 20 percent as liberal.

... Jeffrey Garten, a professor at the Yale School of Management who was an undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, said lawmakers are likely to impose stricter regulatory oversight on several industries — especially financial companies and markets. 

... “I’m scared about the next year but I’m very optimistic we’ll come out of this in good shape,” he said. “We very well may come out of this horrible situation with a better version of American capitalism — it’ll be a little tamer; it’ll be a little more regulated.”

“But this country is built on an appetite for risk,” he added. “We don’t want to be France.”