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Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

theguardian.com

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Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#501

Post by dang »

compcoffee wrote: post #265
the_spacebyte wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1015105500105412610 Yes it was not an official call for help, but someone asked. He even acknowledged that experts were already on the field, and his first reaction was to just send goods there before advancing with engineering ideas. Following your idea why were there so many civilian divers? Why not let the Thai military do the job? That's just PR. Those attention-seeking ba…

> yes that's the thing you're just a neckbeard who cares shit about others and feels smug about pointing fingers on the internet Not a hint of irony, huh? There it is, the crazy Musk fans going full out ad-hominem, just like they did on the BI journalist. Careful OP, these people are nuts.

Would you please stop posting obsessively about Musk? You're hardly the only one doing it, but you've been doing virtually nothing else. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN and we ban them, so please don't use the site this way.

These pro-and-anti-Musk flamewars are extremely low-quality discussion. You guys might as well be bickering about Spider-Man.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#502

Post by shardinator »

coryfklein wrote: post #401
triviatise wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except with the money spent they could have saved 50000 kids from dying from easily preventable diarrheal diseases with inexpensive vaccines.

It's not just the 12 kids. With the money spent Thailand is paying for a belief in the minds of its people: that the government would do the same for their kid. I'd argue that this kind of belief is extremely valuable for a country's economics as a whole. In order for the populace to be economically productive (and save 50000 kids from dying of diarrheal diseas) you need to create a safe, reliable, and predictable en…

Yep, same reason Private Ryan was saved (in the movie).

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#503

Post by InclinedPlane »

mancerayder wrote: post #256

It's very odd that this somehow made it to all the media headlines. Sure, a happy ending and so forth, but in a world of ~7.5B, including indescribable tragedies on a daily basis, it makes you wonder how they knew the daily drama would lead to such ad dollars.

How do we save x million children from poverty, disease, etc? Well, we need to mobilize huge trans-national organizations, we need to drive systemic changes, we need multi-year disease intervention programs, etc.

How do we save a dozen kids trapped in a cave? If we put together some resources we can save all their lives within a week or so.

Also, starving kids have traditionally motivated enormous outpourings of effort, so your hypothetical straw man comparison isn't very accurate.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#504

Post by smichel17 »

steeef wrote: post #437
bdz wrote: post #213

"If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost, just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature—a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price. Weakness? It might be the unique strength that w…

"If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do." (The Martian by And…

"The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life... But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong—for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane."

(Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card)

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#505

Post by LyndsySimon »

triviatise wrote: post #280
tomxor wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in this case one of the Thai divers died from running out of oxygen... but 12 - 1 is still a win if you want to reduce it to arithmetic.

Except with the money spent they could have saved 50000 kids from dying from easily preventable diarrheal diseases with inexpensive vaccines.

Your comment is fading, and I upvoted even though I don't really agree with your premise.

I do have a respectful question though - are you, personally, acting to save those 50,000 kids? Is there an effective organization out there that accepts donations for this kind of thing, and if so, are you giving to them?

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#506

Post by LyndsySimon »

cmurf wrote: post #402
theossuary wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a great book, just finished listening to it. Afterwards I heard a lot of people thought it had a pro military/war bent; I don't think they read the book

Ok well quite a few hundred reviewers have read the book and consider it virulently militaristic, and some go further considering it jingoistic, and fascist. I don't know enough about Heinlein, but I kinda rather doubt he was advocating fascism. But it would not surprise me if he thought civilian control of the military was backwards, because I've had this conversation with members of the military. And some of them h…

My takeaway from the book was that it wasn't so much about militarism as it was a critique of universal suffrage.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#507

Post by astine »

kadenshep wrote: post #487
astine wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The entire response is a really cheap, nonconstructive appeal to motive and is quite frankly full of vague personal attacks." You should be the last person to complain about this...

Why?

Because your entire series of posts in this thread thus far have been nothing but questioning the motives of Elon Musk and his fans. Even if you're correct you're a hypocrite to complain about someone doing the same to you.

And you're not really accomplishing your goal anyway. The only reason I knew that Musk was even involved in this whole mess was because of his detractors. You're basically signal boosting Musk without even meaning to. I don't personally see any reason to doubt Musk's stated motives but even if he is seeking publicity and attention the best way to deal with that sort of thing is to ignore it.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#508

Post by LyndsySimon »

Udik wrote: post #396
joejerryronnie wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I'll have to re-read as it's been several years. My original takeaway was that the surface level pro-military engagement aspect was meant as deep irony and that the user was encouraged to draw their own conclusions. Mine was that war is horrific, even if done for the right reasons.

"Yeah, war is horrible, but we have to do it. " That's militarism.

That reminds me of another quote: "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee, commenting on the Battle of Fredericksburg

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#509

Post by JBReefer »

freyir wrote: post #346
IpV8 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The man is a master of public relations.

In my discussions with people, it seems like he’s becoming increasingly polarizing. His fans are idolizing him, but others see his behavior as attention-seeking theatrics. Interesting to see how it plays out in the long run, in terms of company PR.

I like the guy, I'm pretty sick of his fans

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#510

Post by rainonmoon »

coryfklein wrote: post #384
csomar wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that Thailand wanted to be on the spotlight. There are kids dying of hunger, disease, sex-enslavement, violence or negligence (car/house accidents). But they are very unlikely to be on the spotlight. We don't want to be humanly. We want to be praised for being humanly.

> My guess is that Thailand wanted to be on the spotlight. I need to coin a term for this concept, I see it on every Hacker News thread once it reaches a certain size. It is the attribution of the topic to some nefarious intention of a dude in marketing. Once you start noticing it you can't unsee. Intel fires their CEO? It's a PR stunt. Startup abandons Europe due to GDPR? PR STUNT! AlphaZero beats professionals at D…

This is a corollary to the /r/HailCorporate mentality, where every discussion about/mention of a brand is astroturfing. Healthy skepticism is encouraged, but there's a point where it becomes FUD, and perhaps in some cases as destructive as any surreptitious marketing.
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