DoofusOfDeath (u/DoofusOfDeath)

DoofusOfDeath commented on New HIV vaccine with a 97% antibody response rate in phase I human trials europeanpharmaceuticalrev... · Posted by u/MKais

foldr · 4 years ago

I’m trying to look at this form the perspective of a religious conservative (presumably Christian, though I don’t know). “Only help others if you think they deserve it” is rather obviously not a precept that’s the basis of Christian charity. That is in fact why the OP says (quite despicably, in my view) that there is a conflict between justice and mercy in this case.

> how would charity help resolve the issue of you dumping the cost on others

OP objected to others being forced to pay. Charity is voluntary.

> Or at least they should go to the back of the line

What would this even mean in the case of the US. About 35% of adults are obese, and in almost all instances that’s due to their behavioral choices. Do we send a third of the population “to the back of the line”, or refuse to pay for their medical treatment?

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

I made my original post as an invitation to discuss my current views (which I admitted weren't settled). I was hoping to find any faults in my views' logic so I could replace them with something more logically consistent and, hopefully, loving.

The fact that you call my initial exposition "despicable" reminds me that HN isn't a good forum for this kind of discussion.

I regret posting a comment that elicited this kind of discussion.

DoofusOfDeath commented on New HIV vaccine with a 97% antibody response rate in phase I human trials europeanpharmaceuticalrev... · Posted by u/MKais

IAmEveryone · 4 years ago

Wow, this is the worst misinterpretation of conservatism I've seen... (let's say 'today')

Sex isn't wrong. It just so happens that it can lead to HIV infection. If you wish people get infected, you've created a moral loop that just punishes people because you enjoy watching people suffer. Congratulations, maybe you do have a handle of conservatism-as-practiced, after all.

It'd make just as much sense to threaten to kill anyone found in public without a blue towel: you'd get the satisfaction of righteousness indignation and the honour of killing lots of people for completely arbitrary reasons.

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

FWIW, I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. I apologize for my post's confusing wording.

DoofusOfDeath commented on New HIV vaccine with a 97% antibody response rate in phase I human trials europeanpharmaceuticalrev... · Posted by u/MKais

gibrown · 4 years ago

Just in case it adds clarification. I think the downvotes are due to equating HIV to justice. Smoking once it is well understood I guess kinda is, but HIV is really just a matter of luck like all infectious diseases. You can reduce your risk (eg masks for stopping flu or COVID), but to call it “justice” feels very callous to me.

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

Thanks for that. It sounds like I did a terrible job of expressing my thoughts.

Perhaps one of my mistakes was using HIV as an example. If someone only skimmed my post, they may have pattern-matched on the whole "AIDS is punishment from God" trope, which is 100% not what I was trying to say.

DoofusOfDeath commented on New HIV vaccine with a 97% antibody response rate in phase I human trials europeanpharmaceuticalrev... · Posted by u/MKais

FooBarBizBazz · 4 years ago

You can flip peoples' tribal affiliations on this topic by changing the disease to COVID. Do red-state antimaskers deserve treatment? Should responsible Americans pay for their reckless lifestyle?

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

> You can flip peoples' tribal affiliations on this topic by changing the disease to COVID. Do red-state antimaskers deserve treatment? Should responsible Americans pay for their reckless lifestyle?

Personally, I'm not sure. As I said above, I'm conflicted on the issue.

Regarding anti-maskers, I think it depends on the particular reason a person is anti-mask.

I'm working on the assumption that a lifelong smoker or someone who intentionally eschews safe-sex practices is generally aware of the risk they're courting. In my mind, this is "privatization of reward, socialization of risk" is similar to what we on HN often complain about regarding corporate bailouts.

In contrast, I could believe that at least some anti-maskers are genuinely misinformed about the risk posted by their behavior. I have less trouble feeling empathy for someone who's working from wrong beliefs, than someone who's knowingly being selfish.

DoofusOfDeath commented on New HIV vaccine with a 97% antibody response rate in phase I human trials europeanpharmaceuticalrev... · Posted by u/MKais

foldr · 4 years ago

There's an easy way to resolve that conflict that ought to appeal to religious conservatives: charity. If you donate to charities that help pay for people's HIV treatment, then no-one is being forced to pay and yet no-one is suffering unnecessarily either.

Oddly enough, despite being so deeply concerned with mercy and justice, religious conservatives do not appear to be among the leading donors to HIV-related charities.

That said, I don't see any kind of ethical dilemma here at all. It would clearly be a moral obscenity to systematically allow people to die of treatable diseases because they can't afford treatment. And if it's a question of 'blame' or 'risky behavior', then we should be refusing treatment to anyone who's ever eaten a donut.

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

Thanks very much for engaging the content of my post.

I was disheartened to have shared my inner conflict on the issue, only to be downvoted into oblivion.

DoofusOfDeath commented on New HIV vaccine with a 97% antibody response rate in phase I human trials europeanpharmaceuticalrev... · Posted by u/MKais

imwillofficial · 4 years ago

Because as a member of the community, He is trying to shape the discourse and culture here. We all should be doing that, to maintain the high quality content.

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

From a now-dead comment:

> He’s a bigoted right-wing conservative who doesn’t want to hear about interesting scientific developments that he views as benefiting people with lifestyles that he condemns.

Perhaps not here, but I think this is a view worth discussing. I'm moderately conservative, and some of that comment's criticism resonates with my own thoughts.

With cases like HIV/AIDS, I find myself pulled between several competing virtues:

One one side there's mercy and compassion; I'd like to minimize the suffering of hurting people. Even if someone is in dire straights because of actions that I view as unwise (extramarital sex, recreational drug use, etc.), I still want to want what's best for that person.

On the other side, there's justice. I live in a society where everyone pays, to some degree, for individuals' unwise behavior. E.g., Medicare/Medicaid for smokers' lung cancer or HIV treatment for persons who chose to indulge in risky behavior. I'm not okay with forcing the community at large to cover the costs of (what I view as) individuals' selfish actions.

I don't know what the right balance to this is. More generally, I'm not sure if there are any good principles for finding the right tradeoff between two virtues. I wish I knew. I want to do good, but the path is often obscure.

DoofusOfDeath commented on The Norway Problem hitchdev.com/strictyaml/w... · Posted by u/dedalus

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

Funny coincidence. Around 2000, I worked for a company that coined the term "Norway problem" for a different software problem.

Their product used an MVCC database (I think ObjectStore). One of their customers in Norway had a problem where updates to the database seemed to not show up. IIRC the problem was a bug in this company's software that caused MVCC to show an older version of the database content than expected.

DoofusOfDeath commented on The Sad Truth About C++ Copy Elision wolchok.org/posts/sad-tru... · Posted by u/chmaynard

roblabla · 4 years ago

Bigger ASM means you can fit less code in cache, which makes your code slower. If this happens in a hot loop, it may be the difference between "my code fits entirely in L1 cache" and "my code needs to be fetched from L2/L3".

This matters in high-performance scenarios. The fact that you can introduce a performance issue simply by creating a temporary is absolutely bonkers, and makes writing high-performance code more complicated than it needs to be (and god knows it's already very complicated).

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

Depending on the processor, it can also be the difference between instructions in a tight loop only needing to be decoded once (because of micro-op caching) vs. decoded each loop iteration.

DoofusOfDeath commented on Security Breach at US Universities dorper.me/articles/unilea... · Posted by u/babelfish

merb · 4 years ago

that is a stupid comment. the techies inside unversities are horrendously underfunded. m365 at least will bring consistency and will probably also make your date more secure to third party actors.

it also comes with a5 licenses with a special and cheap deal so it's basically ridicolous that all other customers are paying for this.

> but today we already have some Universities that don't even have their own datacenter anymore, everything is hosted elsewhere and maintained by contractors. Students access SaaS via a Browser. Walled gardens everywhere

tons of software was already from external contractors. I'm not sure but some people like you are living in bubbles.

of course it would be possible to have everything open source. BUT with our current governement M365 is the best solution. the cdu sleeped for over 20 years to have a great open source solution. so it would be impossible to have something integrated ready within a short window, it would also blow a huge budget. the only thing you can be mad about is our government, the m365 is the best thing that could happen.

btw. I hate the strange bashing against american companies, as if german companies are any better (they are not).

btw. I'm german and everytime I see something like that I'm mad, we do everything to even have a SaaS vendor, with ridiculous data privacy (only if you are an american company, for german company's the authoritis are looking away or making special rules) and than our governement fucks every citizen by making rules that don't even work together with the privacy rules. time to relocate. everything starts to be stupid and the wrong questions are asked.

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

> that is a stupid comment.

It's possible to strongly disagree with a comment without inflammatory language. E.g.: "I really disagree with that comment."

It helps keep the conversation productive.

DoofusOfDeath commented on GNU Kind Communications Guidelines gnu.org/philosophy/kind-c... · Posted by u/chippy

notwedtm · 4 years ago

I feel like anyone other than Stallman should have written this.

DoofusOfDeath · 4 years ago

I don't understand why the identity of the guidelines' author matters.

I would think their suitability is independent of that.