Well, that's up to voters to decide. Maybe Brusellians don't mind some trash on the streets as much as new tech's potential hazards. It's not too long ago since establishing a link between cancer and EM Radiation[0].

You say that it's fashionable moral panic but some people may say that an increase in cancer is not worth fashionable network tech investment.

Just as you might think that this 5G thingy is a must have and totally safe, some people might think that 4G works just fine so let's not risk it.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18355680

People say a lot of things and people are not perfect, they are susceptible to bias and manipulation. So until someone provides some peer reviewed evidence showing that there is a causal link between radio waves emitted by cellular equipment and cancer diagnosis then I'm going to call it a moral panic.

On another note, I would be open to the possibility that Satan is real and is the cause behind cancer if and only if the proper evidence is provided.

The history of environmental illness epidemics is chock full of people in power with this attitude. A new technology is poorly understood technology. The lack of peer reviewed research does not prove that it's safe, either.

I'm going to need some citations there, you're saying the effects of radio waves on the human body is a subject that hasn't received much attention despite being heavily scrutinized since radio communications become a thing. The cancer scare from radio waves has being going on for significantly longer than you seem to realise and yet has yielded no evidence to suggest there is a casual link between radio wave exposure and cancer.

How much longer will you bash your head against the wall hoping it will get results?

I have no problem studying the effects of new products and technologies before being released to the general public. After all, I like knowing my drugs aren't likely to harm me. The difference here is radio wave exposure has being a subject studied to death and nothing of note has being found. Simply because you believe something to be true or could be true does not award you the right to make the assertion that it's true. Go get the evidence and bring something new to the table instead of torturing everyone involved with this nonsense.

Just saw this comment.

I think radio communications have been heavily scrutinized, but there is a lack of peer-reviewed well-funded research regarding more controversial hypotheses, like their effect on Voltage Gated Calcium Channels. There's also been research that suggests DNA strand breaks do occur from non-ionizing radiation that has been suppressed, and other hypotheses as well that have not been studied extensively.

Also, I'm not just talking about cancer.

There is research from both the "it's safe" and "it's dangerous" perspectives. However, the "it's dangerous" perspective gets almost no funding despite being scientifically sound and published by scientists who used to be respected before they dared question EMF safety.

I have no doubts that current levels of EMF do not cause major issues in the majority of people. Our bodies have several evolved mechanisms to handle it. But I think it is very plausible that a minority of the population with other toxic burdens could be sensitive to it. There is an entire population of people migrating to rural areas just to avoid EMF so they feel better. I don't think they are making this up. It's a HUGE life change to do that, and no one would do that unless they had no other options.

I find the VGCC work of Martin Pall very compelling, but I do not have links on hand, as EMF is not something a spend a lot of time focusing on. Googling him will bring up plenty of info, but you will probably have to dig a bit to find his published scientific work rather than just interviews on holistic websites.

That’s OK as long as you don’t stage a coup to install 5G network, launch a smear campaign to discredit public figures, create a violent terrorist organization, build a lair and orchestrate covert take over of the institutions that deal with the issue :)

> It's not too long ago since establishing a link between cancer and EM Radiation.

What's this a reference to? Last I read there was no established link between cancer and EM Radiation[0].

[0] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...

It was on HN front page some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18355680

The one that shows exposure to EM radiation lengthens rat's lives, and that the older rats got more cancers..?

And used about 1000x the exposure that humans get from phones etc.

I agree with you about the fallacy, but what I really want to see is good evidence on the alleged health effects. I don't want to rely on the average voter's perception of risk at all.

Well, then you need to size the governance of an undemocratic country.

No, I just need to separate questions of truth from questions of preference.

I am a proponent of representative democracy, of checks and balances, and of democratic institutions that carefully examine problems making good use of all the expertise available.

I think you should choose between not relying on average voters' perception of something and democracy because democracy is a popularity contest targeting the average voters who will choose their representatives according tho their perception of wildly diverse topics where even the best one cannot be well versed on more then few of those.

That's exactly why the role of democratic representatives cannot simply be to reflect people's feelings on individual issues.

Representing people is a two way street. It also means for politicians to tell people the truth and to convince them of supporting the right thing having considered all the evidence, trade-offs and shared goals.

Democratic institutions have a lot of resources available to them and a lot of time that the average voter does not have. They should make use of those resources, not lazily ape voters and exploit possibly irrational fears.

I don't disagree on "how it should be" but there are no mechanics to enforce anything other than popularity and you don't get popular by saying things that people don't want to hear. That's how we got our bubbles in social media anyway.

I guess if you still want to keep the democracy and have your 5G in Brussels you better convince enough Brusselians that the speed increase in networking is worth risking more cancer or that EM radiation definitely does not increase health risk.

Representative democracy, independent institutions (courts, central banks, etc), the rule of law, the constitution, international treaties, human rights, crime/rioting/revolution, and most of all the truth are all "mechanics" that put a break on making every single issue a simple popularity contest.

But when I said that I didn't want to rely on average voters' risk percpetion, I didn't actually mean any of that. I merely meant that I don't rely on it to form my own opinion (which is definitely not subject to a popularity contest).

I don't want to convince the people of Brussels of anything. I want to know the truth about the health effects of 5G, and I hope that our democracies are not too dysfunctional to let that truth inform any regulations.

You need to wait 30 or more years for the truth. Any effects if any will be highly non-linear and chronic exposure may be harmful only if one experience it for many years.

What you're talking about is uncertainty, not truth.

If we don't know anything about the effects of 5G, it could just as well be the cure for cancer.

But it's not a coin toss. We do know some things about how it works, we have decades of empirical data on similar technologies, and ultimately we always have to act in spite of uncertainty as even the effects of doing nothing are uncertain.

> "Well, that's up to voters to decide"

As I understand it, Brussels is governed by a parliamentary system, not a direct democracy. The advantage of such a system, in theory, is that these representatives can have cooler heads than the mob of common rabble outside.

Trash on the streets is fairly difficult to fix, without authoritarianism or major cultural change.

When I visited amsterdam I saw little or no trash. After watching a while, I noticed they have guys with little witches brooms cleaning everywhere (it was really interesting to watch, turns out they used to use more modern ones but they don't work as well), followed by street cleaners. The little brooms made all the difference, ferreting out all the half-cloaked garbage dropped by tourists. Seems completely routine and normal and not authoritarian.

In my experience a clean public space tends to stay clean even without outside input, while trash leads to more trash. Apparently people feel more guilty for making a clean place dirty than for making a dirty place a bit dirtier.

Thus a good way to fix trash on the streets is to pay people to clean it up, and after a short while you can get clean streets with a very moderate level of cleaning effort.

"fashionable moral panic"

Would you be able to share some scientific research that supports the idea that the proposed antennas are completely, without-a-doubt safe? (I assume that's what you're implying by your statment.)

Edit: ok, forget that I used the words 'completely' and 'without-a-doubt' which causes a knee-jerk reaction amongst the armchair epistomologists here. How about just evidence in general that suggests that they're safe?

edit edit: my apology if the phrase 'knee-jerk reaction amongst the armchair epistomologists' rubbed anyone the wrong way. just being snarky but perhaps wasn't helpful to the conversation.

Where are the studies proving anything is completely without-a-doubt 100% safe?

Painting a wall a novel color is a new, unstudied EM radiation exposure.

I'm open to the possibility they're not safe if and only if the proper evidence is provided. As it stands, no peer reviewed evidence has being provided to show that there is a casual link between radio waves emitted by cellular equipment and cancer diagnosis.

"Assume safety until shown otherwise" has not always been the best option in the past.

("Assume safety and viscously attack anyone who suggests otherwise" has some advantages, though.)

I'm not proposing our default position should be to assume safety until proven otherwise. I'm proposing that if one wishes to claim something is not safe which is counter to existing scientific literature then one needs to provide the proper evidence. I'm not willing to easily discard existing literature on the basis of what someone said.

Thanks. I have better understanding of where you're coming from now.

For 100 years there was no peer reviewed journals that stayed that trans fats was bad. Yet it turned out they were really bad.

Simply because there is examples of things that we thought to be safe but were in-fact harmful does not award you the right to make bold claims without the proper evidence. That would be a very slippery slope. If you believe something to be harmful, go and prove it.

Because we were wrong in the past about some things, I'm going to make the claim without evidence that visible light kills. Everyone who has ever died of cancer was exposed to visible light for very long periods of time. Don't expose yourself!

guaranteed complete safety is not a goal; it;'s not economic. All the matters is that it is shown to be Safe Enough for the Value it Provides, and nobody has demonstrated it is not safe enough.

> Would you be able to share some scientific research that supports the idea that the proposed antennas are completely, without-a-doubt safe?

Can you link to a scientific study that proves anything is completely safe? Ironically more money has been spent proving electromagnetic radiation and vaccines are safe than most naturally occurring substances, because the public is paranoid about those things/it is a "sexy" area of research.

They've literally put animals into cages and exposed them to 1000%+ levels of typical EM exposure, and still not witnessed this supposed cancer link. But science cannot say anything is "completely safe" because that isn't how logical reasoning or the scientific method work. All we can say is that a mechanism of unsafety has yet to be discovered.