What Dreams May Come • Hacker News Board

Re: What Dreams May Come

#51

Post by bad_user » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:17 AM UTC

theknown99 wrote: post #28

melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much? Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners... e…

Don't know if you noticed, but in western countries the population is aging, due to a decrease in birth rate/fertility, a decrease in mortality rate and a higher life expectancy, all leading to a sharp decline in population growth. Europe has a Wikipedia page about it, check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Europe

Population growth is not really exponential, it's rather an S-curve. As soon as the quality of life reaches a certain threshold, that growth stagnates. And btw, we have long surpassed the need to be healthy in order to reproduce. Assuming somebody that dies at 35 for various reasons, by then that person could have given birth to 10 children already, something which happens quite often in the impoverished populations of third-world countries.

At this point, what we really need to do in order to survive as a species is in fact to eliminate premature death, to raise the quality of life for everybody and to find ways to drop the cost of energy and food to zero - a long shot, but in such a future money wouldn't be needed anymore to simply live, the economy wouldn't depend anymore on birth rate and maybe we would stop feeling the need to destroy our environment for profit. And maybe we won't feel the need to give birth to children in order to survive.

Besides, unless you're a selfish jerk (and selfish jerks don't contribute much to our species btw), you should agree with me that nothing is more valuable than human life.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#52

Post by unclebucknasty » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:18 AM UTC

theknown99 wrote: post #28

melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much? Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners... e…

I'm not part of your downvote brigade, but I don't think letting people die of cancer is the solution. Aside from the very salient fact that there's usually suffering involved, I believe we have a responsibility to one another to advocate opportunities for full, rich lives.

Your comment is also unfeeling (as you suspected), especially in the context of this thread. I think that if you or a loved one were dying of cancer, it's unlikely that your overwhelming emotion would be gratitude that you/he/she are doing your/his/her part to help with the overpopulation problem. That may, in fact, be one point that's earning you the downvotes.

Would a subsequent increase in the population present challenges? Perhaps. But, there are other, more humane ways to deal with the problem than just letting people die of cancer. I mean, where does the logic end? Should we let known carcinogens stay in the food supply? Encourage people to smoke again?

And, the issues you cited (housing, jobs, pensions) are all fixable immediately. That is, we are not suffering from a lack of wealth or resources in these regards, but rather the distribution thereof. So, you happened to pick some really bad examples that nod to implications of economic injustice. That may be another point that is earning you downvotes.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#53

Post by chii » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:19 AM UTC

mcv wrote: post #29

jaggederest wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debts are generally not something you can leave to your family. They're generally expunged, barring joint debts and things like that. So run it all onto credit cards, by all means.

In Netherland, you can choose to refuse an inheritance. If you accept it, you get everything, including the debts; if you refuse it, you get nothing, not even small trinkets with sentimental value. Though in the case of a mortgage, losing the debt also means losing the house. I totally understand wanting your family to be able to keep the house. Losing your dad/husband and also having to leave the house with all the…

> you can choose to refuse an inheritance...accept [...] and get everything, including the debts...refuse [...] and get nothing, not even small trinkets

why couldn't you (as the inheritee?) "throw away" all assets prior to dying, then let your benifactors refuse the debts (which is all that's left)? Who actually enforces that you can't dispose of your assets (in a way that benefits your son/daughter/spouse), then refuse the debt?

Re: What Dreams May Come

#54

Post by timr » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:20 AM UTC

not_paul_graham wrote: post #25

bherms wrote: post #2

It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. Nobody deserves this sort of thing happening to them, and when it does happen, it hurts me to think they can't spend their last months on earth focused on enjoying time with their loved ones and instead have to live in fear that their family is going to be a…

No one deserves this, especially not at 35. That is far too young. I've had more than a couple of people close to me pass away from cancer and other causes and it all seems very depressing that in some cases you can't really do anything at all. Forgive me for asking but doesn't health insurance cover costs of cancer treatment even in the USA? I really don't want to sound like a narcissist and I'm not trying to judge…

If you're insured in the US (sadly, this is still a fairly big "if"...) the costs of cancer treatment will be covered, but unlike most of the rest of the developed world there are still a lot of caveats: depending on the quality of your coverage, you could end up paying very little, or quite a bit of money. It's not a simple question, unfortunately.

That said, it sounds like he's not looking for money for treatment, but for things like paying down the mortgage and car before his income is lost. This is what life insurance is meant to cover, but again, there's a wide range of coverage options and many people don't think about how much to buy, especially when they're young.

If you've just bought a house and a car and had a kid you're probably in a lot of recent debt, with the assumption that you'll have a lifetime to pay it down. All it takes is one bad accident to turn that assumption upside down. Get life insurance, folks.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#55

Post by fasteo » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:21 AM UTC

Blahah wrote: post #15

melling wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. A day doesn't go by without a story like this. We just don't hear about most of them. Someday a person like this will simply go to his doctor, get a prescription, and go on to live a normal life. Rather than dwelling on sadness, maybe we should ask if there isn't something we can do, as a group, to make that day arrive sooner. What would it take to cure, or at least trea…

Really quite a huge number of people are asking that question already. And a massively disproportionate amount of science funding goes towards cancer research. Far more people in the world die of communicable and vector-borne diseases or illness related to malnourishment. These issues get much less research attention and funding because so many people in the western world are focussed on cancer. So while my heart goe…

You are right for the wrong reason. The problem with cancer research is that we are trying to solve an unsolvable problem, wasting disproportionate amounts of money. In some sense, cancer is a symptom of a body gone havoc. Research should be targeted upstream, to really tackle the root cause. It is like trying to fix a hardware issue by patching software. Yes, you can get some results by implementing better error correction, retrying I/O operations, etc, but at the end, you just need to change the fucking RAM module.

BTW, same thing with researching "illness related to malnourishment": Avoid malnourishment and then, there is no need to cure anything.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#56

Post by bananas » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:23 AM UTC

bherms wrote: post #2

It's sad that when we find out something this devastating (you're dying), that we have to spend our last weeks/months/years worrying about, of all things, money. Nobody deserves this sort of thing happening to them, and when it does happen, it hurts me to think they can't spend their last months on earth focused on enjoying time with their loved ones and instead have to live in fear that their family is going to be a…

Perhaps we should look more towards the Marxism thread yesterday for inspiration on how to resolve this utterly horrible issue.

If you have to spend the last of your days worrying about money, society is broken.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#57

Post by adventured » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:23 AM UTC

pdpi wrote: post #24

jaggederest wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debts are generally not something you can leave to your family. They're generally expunged, barring joint debts and things like that. So run it all onto credit cards, by all means.

Not sure what the US reality on that is. In Portugal, you can and do inherit debt, though the monetary value of the inherited debt can never exceed that of the inherited assets.

In the US, debt is generally tied to an entity called your estate (your financial entity post death, basically). Debt - for example let's say you have a big credit card debt - will be paid by the assets of your estate. Different types of debt often have different priorities (when it comes time for the executor or court to decide what gets paid first or last). As your estate is settled, the debts usually get taken care of from the assets (basically a simple subtraction matter). If there aren't enough assets in the estate to pay the debts, then the creditor is almost always out of luck.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#58

Post by scottjad » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:23 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #50

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #30

So the house you purchased and the van you upgraded to are not yours, disposing of your body costs more than a car, visiting family means you have to stay in a hotel, the basic survival needs of your wife and four children are not guaranteed and you want to visit Disneyland and meet celebrities before you die? Capitalism is beautiful.

> visiting family means you have to stay in a hotel That part did seem odd to me. If they're true family (ie. worth visiting), why isn't he staying with them?

Maybe they don't have room for 6 visitors (for a month in one case, assuming he's not going to spend a month away from his immediate family).

Re: What Dreams May Come

#59

Post by chii » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:25 AM UTC

boothead wrote: post #18

noonespecial wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the medical costs for someone with terminal cancer in the USA? From the limited sample size I've gathered with sadness thus far: For serious cancer, terminal or not, the system seems designed for the cost to be "everything you have" whatever that happens to be.

That is the most fucked up thing I've read for a long time. For a "health" system to be designed to suck everything out of a person of someone who's already dying is vile.

that's what it means to have a "free market" capitalist system. The demand for health is essentially infinite - the person dying of thirst in a desert will pay their entire fortune for just one cup of water.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#60

Post by ryanjshaw » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 10:27 AM UTC

pbateman wrote: post #44

theknown99 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without sounding unfeeling, do we really want to add to the overcrowding and population explosion problem that much? Earth is full. Our population has doubled in the short time I've been alive. Doesn't that scare the shit out of anyone else? Imagine what would happen if you suddenly cured all forms of cancer. People would live even longer. Population would shoot up. Lack of housing, lack of jobs. More pensioners... e…

You're getting downvoted because: 1) Despite your disclaimer you are sounding unfeeling. 2) It seems convenient for a (presumably) relatively healthy and youthful person to be advocating large sacrifices that will hit others first. 3) Many of us don't share your pessimistic view of human progress. If we can figure out how to thwart death from disease, we can probably figure out how to deal with overpopulation. 4) And…

5) He hasn't offered a sensible and complete policy - what counts as saving lives? Cancer treatment? What about transplant surgery? What about amputations? What about medicines that prevent many conditions from becoming serious? Or lets make things really fun - what about mental illness? How about a person who's solving overpopulation in some way who suddenly contracts cancer? Where does one draw the line and who gets to draw it?

This is a slippery slope and the only solution is not to go down it.