[deleted]
Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
51–60 of 69 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#52Pretty much all of us are massive hypocrites when it comes to Eugenics: it is a taboo subject when applied to populations, yet everyone apart from the insane is looking for a genetically fit partner.
Some people have no plans to reproduce. Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money. Your hypothesis doesn't hold any water on the face of it, even before getting into much more complicated edge cases. I once saw a comment on a cystic fibrosis forum by a woman with CF who had a previous boyfriend with CF. CF causes significant reproductive problems, incl…
> Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money.
Resources are arguably a proxy for genetic fitness, in that those resources must have been acquired somehow, and discounting luck that would indicate success in the acquisition of resources - on its own a useful trait to pass on to your offspring. Apart from that, it's perfectly possible for women to marry the ugly old geezer and be promiscuous with attractive young men, and this is backed up by statistics on the number of children unknowingly raised by men that are not the biological father.
I never said that Eugenics is desirable or that I support it. All I said is that I think there is a discrepancy - if we took the same approach to personal attraction as we do at a societal level towards Eugenics we would forbid attraction based on physical factors, which would be a very different world from what we have now.
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> private organizations (which could include non-profits, worker owned co-ops, etc.) can (and should) fill most of the roles which are currently filled by "government" I completely agree - I'm all for (for example) healthcare that's free at the point of provision and looking after the vulnerable, and think our economies throw off more than enough surplus for us to fund this type of programme without disincentivising…
I think most old people goto the doctor because they are old and dying and need a doctor, not because they want a chat with a stranger in a sterile environment. I also fail to see how charging people for nothing will help solve the problem of the NHS being expensive and not very effective. Considering we have had a conservative government for the past 8 years I fail to see how this is Labours fault, the only reform c…
Part of the problem is too much demand, and when something is free people do not respect it - bring in a small charge and it discourages frivolous use. I don't think this is a particularly earth-shattering extreme right wing observation.
I don't want anyone making huge sums out of healthcare either, though lets be honest, Labour didn't exactly do a good job in controlling doctors' salaries, did they?
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#54Genetics and Evolution is way overestimated. Environment and individual decisions play a much bigger role in someone's life than "thought to be" born features.
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people have no plans to reproduce. Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money. Your hypothesis doesn't hold any water on the face of it, even before getting into much more complicated edge cases. I once saw a comment on a cystic fibrosis forum by a woman with CF who had a previous boyfriend with CF. CF causes significant reproductive problems, incl…
> Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money. Resources are arguably a proxy for genetic fitness, in that those resources must have been acquired somehow, and discounting luck that would indicate success in the acquisition of resources - on its own a useful trait to pass on to your offspring. Apart from that, it's perfectly possible for women to marry t…
This is the same as capitalism vs communism: capitalism is good at individual level, not so good at society level. Communism is good at society level, not so good at individual level.
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#56[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#57The "old" web wasn't as great as you remember, and it wasn't better than the modern web.
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#58Nobody really deserves to suffer or die. In some situations it may be that inflicting suffering or death on someone is the best way to minimize it for others, but people are rarely good at figuring out when this is the case.
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#59Pretty much all of us are massive hypocrites when it comes to Eugenics: it is a taboo subject when applied to populations, yet everyone apart from the insane is looking for a genetically fit partner.
Some people have no plans to reproduce. Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money. Your hypothesis doesn't hold any water on the face of it, even before getting into much more complicated edge cases. I once saw a comment on a cystic fibrosis forum by a woman with CF who had a previous boyfriend with CF. CF causes significant reproductive problems, incl…
What does the CF gene protect against?
Re: Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people have no plans to reproduce. Many women are quite willing to get with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money. Your hypothesis doesn't hold any water on the face of it, even before getting into much more complicated edge cases. I once saw a comment on a cystic fibrosis forum by a woman with CF who had a previous boyfriend with CF. CF causes significant reproductive problems, incl…
What does the CF gene protect against?
Cholera
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/07/us/clue-to-why-cystic-fib...
Tuberculosis
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10013-cystic-fibrosis...
Anecdotally:
Winter Vomiting