211–220 of 247 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are compelling reasons to get one? Worst case scenario, you have baby.
I do not want to invest significant resources into progeny that is not my own. Doing a paternity test reduces the possibility of this.
You wanted a baby, you are there when your partner gives birth, you are both happy. What difference does it make where the DNA came from?
There are plenty of folks who have to rely on sperm donors or surrogate mothers to make a baby happen.
I love this story, even more so that my wife and I this very week are embarking on our 4th and final IVF cycle. Hopeful stories inspire.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> in this case it has something to do with who is billed by the service provider. What else could it even be? You started your gotcha with the truism that it's not free, so, yeah, nothing is free, and the whole discussion is meaningless. You're arguing in bad faith, but that just makes your argument meaningless. > no current Earth society comes close to that criteria. For example, if someone has a currently untreatab…
> What else could it even be? As I said, my usage is closer to calling a thing “free” if I consume it without paying for it, and importantly it doesn’t matter who receives the bill. If my wife buys a new couch for our home with a credit card that is nominally her’s, but for which I make the payments, I would not call the couch free despite the credit card bill being in her name. > You started your gotcha with the tru…
Well then that's exactly, word for word, what OP did. How are you confused if you use it the exact same way?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment. In that way, a society organizes that no one has the existential threat (financially or medically) of prohibitively high cost. It's so obvious that I don't understand how people still see it as this elevating 'gotcha' moment. It's the same when you drink free beer, breath free air, enjoy free time, etc: obvious…
> It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment. Actually I think that’s a pretty good example of what confuses me about this usage of “free”. Usually when I call something “free” I am making a claim about who pays for the thing, but as you pointed out, in this case it has something to do with who is billed by the service provider. > In that way, a society…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not want to invest significant resources into progeny that is not my own. Doing a paternity test reduces the possibility of this.
Although I realize there are people that think this way, this is totally removed from the way my mind works. You wanted a baby, you are there when your partner gives birth, you are both happy. What difference does it make where the DNA came from? There are plenty of folks who have to rely on sperm donors or surrogate mothers to make a baby happen.
Thinking about raising a baby from some other father activates my disgust reaction. But maybe it’s more related to the idea of the woman’s (hidden?) infidelity than the baby itself.
> There are plenty of folks who have to rely on sperm donors or surrogate mothers to make a baby happen.
I don’t see other people’s difficulties as relevant to my preferences.
For example, homeless people eating from trash cans doesn’t affect my dietary choices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What else could it even be? As I said, my usage is closer to calling a thing “free” if I consume it without paying for it, and importantly it doesn’t matter who receives the bill. If my wife buys a new couch for our home with a credit card that is nominally her’s, but for which I make the payments, I would not call the couch free despite the credit card bill being in her name. > You started your gotcha with the tru…
> As I said, my usage is closer to calling a thing “free” if I consume it without paying for it, and importantly it doesn’t matter who receives the bill. Well then that's exactly, word for word, what OP did. How are you confused if you use it the exact same way?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30788837
First OP says, “X is free for me.”, then she says, “My taxes pay for X.” It looks to me that says she both does and does not pay for it, that’s why I’m confused.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's pretty clear what 'free' means here, the person getting the treatment is not billed for the treatment. Actually I think that’s a pretty good example of what confuses me about this usage of “free”. Usually when I call something “free” I am making a claim about who pays for the thing, but as you pointed out, in this case it has something to do with who is billed by the service provider. > In that way, a society…
Do you also get confused by free food tastings in grocery stores?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As I said, my usage is closer to calling a thing “free” if I consume it without paying for it, and importantly it doesn’t matter who receives the bill. Well then that's exactly, word for word, what OP did. How are you confused if you use it the exact same way?
But I think OP does pay for it, as she suggests here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30788837 First OP says, “X is free for me.”, then she says, “My taxes pay for X.” It looks to me that says she both does and does not pay for it, that’s why I’m confused.
This is at the same level as finding a free penny on the street and going "No, but hang on, _someone_ paid to mint this penny so I am extremely confused as to why you would say this penny is free?!"
I hope the other posts in this subthread have made things explicit enough for you, and perhaps you can use this discussion as a heuristic for parsing these kinds of statements in the future.
Life finds a way. My wife had generalized tonic-clonic seizure for an entire year (non previous seizure history) without any cause being detected by multiple MRIs. She was taking increasing doses of Levetiracetam that somehow controlled the scope of the seizures but not avoid them completely. After a year of this, we go for another ER visit after the latest one and she ask, somehow randomly, to have a pregnancy test,…