North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#121

Post by tablespoon » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

Swenrekcah wrote: post #63

dotancohen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s like the 10’s of thousands of people jaywalking without > issue and then the homeless guy that gets arrested for jaw walking. I'll take the opportunity to branch OT. This selective enforcement has always been such a problem, has there ever been any attempt - anywhere - to address it? Such that if a citizen can demonstrate selective enforcement he can also be absolved of the same crimes that the rest of the pop…

Just the concept of “jaywalking” as a punishable offense is revolting to me.

> Just the concept of “jaywalking” as a punishable offense is revolting to me.

It's a required compromise to allow pedestrians and high-speed automobile traffic to coexist. This unfairly-dead comment has a good discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27561530

Get rid of it, and you'll either have more pedestrians getting run over (e.g. some distracted guy on his cell phone accidentially rushing out in front of some car, getting killed in the process and traumatizing some driver) or you'll have to lower speed limits, which would make longer-distance travel more inefficient and inconvenient.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#122

Post by nobodyandproud » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #68

I see here a huge imbalance. On one hand, there's a board that can order an expert in a certain field to shut up and not even talk about his field of expertise, and now said expert has to go to the court. On the other hand, the internet has become this fucking enormous megaphone of people who have no idea what they're talking about, they are also completely free to put up fucking billboards IRL about, say, how the pa…

The early days of consumer internet—up to the early 2000s—didn’t exhibit the same scale of misinformation as what we see today.

The problem of today is that misinformation scales far more easily than quality information, and it’s because we don’t have the tools to filter out well-written (grammar and tone) misinformation.

I’m not sure credentialism alone is the answer though.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#123

Post by systemvoltage » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

travisjungroth wrote: post #73

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #33

Texas may do a lot of crazy things when it comes to state government, but one thing I think we definitely got right is the Texas Sunset Commission ( https://www.sunset.texas.gov/ ). Basically, all boards set up by the state government are automatically abolished every 10 years I believe unless the state legislature passes a law to continue the board. So every 10 years the Sunset Commission evaluates agencies/boards a…

The worst example of this is Oregon has their own version of the FAA. It’s grandfathered in because it was established before the FAA. You pay $12 a year for an Oregon pilot’s registration. And in return for this bureaucracy, society gets... nothing.

Oregon’s gas pumping laws has some hilarious justifications.

> “The dangers of crime and slick surfaces described in subsection (3) of this section are enhanced because Oregon’s weather is uniquely adverse, causing wet pavement and reduced visibility”

More here: https://medium.com/policy-northwest/the-insanity-of-oregons-...

Safety is important but wet pavements are also a hazard when you leave your house or literally do anything outside. Laws that try to masquerade for progressive causes for the sake of your “safety” are rampant in Oregon. There are so many of these insane laws piled up over the years. A friend of mine who was an licensed Architect in the state of Oregon recently moved to Phoenix. Reason? Unbelievable mess of laws and regulations that make it impossible to construct anything but a bog standard house.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#124

Post by mindslight » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

teorema wrote: post #74

erikerikson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly in advertising providing medical advice and what can be said is highly regulated. For good reason too. Intravenous bleach suggested by someone we trusted may have caused some real harm. It would seem reasonable to remove a doctor's license to practice medicine for giving such advice. Of course broad scale communication is different than specific testimony in court, especially from a seasoned practitioner…

I'm probably in the minority with this, but I think all licensing laws should be abolished. Even with cases like the one you describe, other mechanisms could be used to handle the problem and those individuals likely at are risk for doing things on their own anyway. I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit. The past year…

> I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit.

So if someone posts an article on Faceboot about the benefits of injecting bleach, and their friend does it, then they get criminally charged? How about our comments right here for mentioning it and thereby validating it as something to consider doing?

One of the aspects of licensing is making it so that certain people's opinions can be considered trusted, with corresponding liability. Your suggestions would seem to create more restrictions on speech, rather than less.

I'm sympathetic to the goal of making licensing more fine grained, but there would have to be a lot more competition and dynamicness on the part of those requiring most licenses (eg planning boards) for this to possibly make sense.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#125

Post by treeman79 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

finalis wrote: post #64

erikerikson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly in advertising providing medical advice and what can be said is highly regulated. For good reason too. Intravenous bleach suggested by someone we trusted may have caused some real harm. It would seem reasonable to remove a doctor's license to practice medicine for giving such advice. Of course broad scale communication is different than specific testimony in court, especially from a seasoned practitioner…

I wish providing medical advice was highly regulated across the board. Crisis pregnancy centers certainly aren't: https://columbialawreview.org/content/pregnancy-centers-and-...

And support forums. Having a chronic illness eventually you discover your best source of medical knowledge is other people going through the same ordeals. Doctors become a borderline obstacle to treatment.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#126

Post by tablespoon » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:13 PM UTC

teorema wrote: post #74

erikerikson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly in advertising providing medical advice and what can be said is highly regulated. For good reason too. Intravenous bleach suggested by someone we trusted may have caused some real harm. It would seem reasonable to remove a doctor's license to practice medicine for giving such advice. Of course broad scale communication is different than specific testimony in court, especially from a seasoned practitioner…

I'm probably in the minority with this, but I think all licensing laws should be abolished. Even with cases like the one you describe, other mechanisms could be used to handle the problem and those individuals likely at are risk for doing things on their own anyway. I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit. The past year…

> I'm probably in the minority with this, but I think all licensing laws should be abolished. Even with cases like the one you describe, other mechanisms could be used to handle the problem and those individuals likely at are risk for doing things on their own anyway.

> I'd say if someone took IV bleach and it caused harm, the appropriate response isn't license revocation, it's a civil or criminal lawsuit.

The obvious problem with that is that it won't work: people harmed by some rando who decided to play doctor may not have the resources to sue, or may turn to some other incompetent rando lawyer who will lose their case. It would also likely to be hard to get a (now even more overworked) DA to take up such a case as a criminal prosecution unless there was a death or grievous bodily harm involved.

A lot of libertarian solutions seem to want to replace a workable but imperfect systems with unworkable awkward alternatives.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#127

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

"North Carolina tells non-professional engineer that he can't present expert witness testimony because he isn't an expert by either legal or professional standards" isn't as catchy, I guess.

I wonder if this org is just fine with non-CPAs handling their finances.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#128

Post by musingsole » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #42

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #33

Texas may do a lot of crazy things when it comes to state government, but one thing I think we definitely got right is the Texas Sunset Commission ( https://www.sunset.texas.gov/ ). Basically, all boards set up by the state government are automatically abolished every 10 years I believe unless the state legislature passes a law to continue the board. So every 10 years the Sunset Commission evaluates agencies/boards a…

The US was actually founded with the idea that this should be done to the entire constitution every couple of decades.

I believe Jefferson abandoned the idea after seeing how hard passing the first one was, too much overhead. I've always fantasized about the idea as a way to guarantee continuous buy-in from the living population of a community.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#129

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

ivan_gammel wrote: post #32

morelisp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a court decides HN gets mad and wonders why judges get to determine engineering matters. If an engineering board decides HN gets mad and wonders why engineers have a say in legal matters. You can waffle with "it's not the same part of HN" or something, but honestly it sounds more like a lot of HN just doesn't like anything which might prevent them from offering their opinion in inappropriate contexts, and their me…

The „HN gets mad“ generalization is a logical fallacy. Maybe somewhere on some subreddit there is a uniform crowd for which generalization and such meta-comments are ok, but here we have plenty of people who have different opinions, express them and may have disagreements: you cannot put a common label and blame for inconsistency, because you do not have a target for it.

It isn't a logical fallacy. HN has a long history of being against any sort of credentialism. Tell a programmer that he isn't a real engineer in any sense of the word and watch the downvotes flow. Plenty here want titles without effort.

Re: North Carolina tells retired engineer he can't talk about engineering

#130

Post by musingsole » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #119

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US was actually founded with the idea that this should be done to the entire constitution every couple of decades.

That's utterly incompatible with Common Law, unfortunately.

How so?

Every so often the foundations of common law get to be re-evaluated which could be disastrous. But in practice it's likely the foundations would be similar cycle to cycle. Further, to the degree that the roots of rulings change due to a new constitution, don't those ruling trees need to change? The constitution changing is a signal that the people, their needs and their values have changed and so should all rulings based on those ideas.

--As an aside, I'm biased against common law. I appreciate my ancestors but I question accepting all of their prior decisions as taken until proven otherwise.