If only there were some way that people could make choices for themselves. Perhaps in the future we can invent a political system where individuals have responsibility for their own fate. Then, well-informed people would be rightly be able to do as they thought best, and everyone else would learn to only take action with proper knowledge, making everyone better-informed.
Until such a mystical system of rights can be invented, we're just going to have to keep forcing people to die and suffer from disease. Such a conundrum! It seems to be a problem that no HN threads have a solution for.
> If only there were some way that people could make choices for themselves.
People are fucking idiots and need to be protected from themselves.
Don't you see the imbalance between a person dying of cancer, who may be easily persuaded to spend all their money on junk, and a multinational multi-billion dollar industry, which has been shown to hide adverse results, to manipulate research, to sell minimally effective medication for huge amounts of money, and to bribe doctors?
Since you're an authoritarian with bad philosophy, may I declare you a "fucking idiot" and "protect" you from yourself by e.g. discarding your opinion and promoting a free society anyway? Or maybe I should force it on you? You seem to be telling me to. A (more) free society would actually be good for you, even though you don't know it.
I'm almost entirely certain DanBC was being sarcastic. Hence the second paragraph of his comment, which makes no sense whatsoever if he was telling it straight.
I second this strongly. It's not a statement of political beliefs, it's the observable reality.
You can see this everywhere. I know some otherwise smart people that keep falling for homeopathy, anti-vaccination or weird MLM schemes. It is partially understandable - you can't be an expert in everything, you need to rely on trust in things you don't understand well. But in general, the level of rationality in people is quite low.
Sure, freedom and all. But then let's figure out how to get rid of the parasites who abuse human stupidity. How to kill homeopathy, how to shut down "financial consulting" MLM-cults, etc. because obviously, most people can not protect themselves from them.
Even with regulations, we have pharma companies behaving wantonly. Leave the markets unregulated and we will have worse behavior. Also, there is a lot of self regulation that the pharma companies are expected to do.
There are serious issues with the current models used by Corporations <> Science, and I'd expected HN to be a little more rational.
Bottom line: if $ is at stake, of course "rational actors" will fudge their lines to prevent losses. It's not rocket science.
Now - I've included a couple of decent links, to extremely well researched and honest analysis. If I get down-voted, I feel that HN has lost the spirit that drove most early coders.
A =! A is not an objectivist philosophy, it's Logic, and what code is based upon. Ideology can go take a flying leap, this is Science.
Don't horde information, share it with everybody in the most accessible way. Let experts from all sorts validate and approve the information. Volunteers or Companies, need to be differentiated. Transparent IDs are neccessary for participants, but anonymous contributions should also be allowed.
Wikipedia is just the beginning of that idea, but it's not working until you people share your knowledge instead of keeping it locked for your own profit.
Until such a mystical system of rights can be invented, we're just going to have to keep forcing people to die and suffer from disease. Such a conundrum! It seems to be a problem that no HN threads have a solution for.