Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | matz1's commentslogin

Society is a collection of individuals.

>But as a society, we could value reparability

Only if there is large enough individuals who value reparability.

>And laws are there to enforce what the society values

That laws exist when there is enough individuals to support it.


>Wearing masks is usually only a minor inconvenience

Maybe it is minor inconvenience for you but for me its a huge inconvenience.


Why is your experience so different to mine?


Because not everyone the same, do you expect everyone to have same experience ?


I have to confess I suspect our experiences aren't that different. In the same way people can choose to be offended, people seem to have chosen to find this a huge imposition.

I actually really dislike wearing a mask and sometimes have a mild panicky feeling of suffocating and have to move to a window. (I get a similar thing snorkeling).

But it's no big deal. I'm a grown up and I deal with it because it's a good thing to do for other people. I understand some people might have really strong psychological reactions and that's why we have mask exemptions.

But I don't think that applies to the majority of the people that are claiming wearing a mask is a massive problem for them. I really don't.


>But it's no big deal.

It's no big deal for you, fine. I acknowledge that but It is a big deal for me.

>I'm a grown up and I deal with it because it's a good thing to do for other people.

well not to me, when you wearing mask when interacting with me you are not doing a good thing for me.

I'm much prefer for you to not wear mask when you interact with me but still I wouldn't force you.

Its also one of the reason for me to not wear mask when interacting with other people, its a good thing to do for other people.


> well not to me, when you wearing mask when interacting with me you are not doing a good thing for me.

Yes I am. I am reducing the chance of infection passing between us. The degree to which I'm reducing the chance is uncertain (which is the original point under discussion).

I think we probably won't get any further benefit from this discussion. I've lost patience with a lot of people over this. I find it slightly depressing that this has become the identity issue it has.


Sounds to me like you're the one who has made it an identity issue.


Other than an off the cuff insult, what do you mean by that?


In this thread you've repeatedly demonstrated you're not willing to consider other peoples concerns about it then declared you're "running out of patience" with people who aren't on the same page as you.

That to me suggests you've made that position part and parcel of your identity.


There's a difference between not considering other people's concerns vs disagreeing with their rationalizations of them.

> That to me suggests you've made that position part and parcel of your identity.

I genuinely feel like I'm making a fairly sober, rational and considered point. (Of course everyone thinks that of themselves but hey)


>Yes I am. I am reducing the chance of infection passing between us.

No, you think you are doing good for me but reducing the chance of infection passing is not a concern for me at all so its not doing any good for me.

>I think we probably won't get any further benefit from this discussion. I've lost patience with a lot of people over this. I find it slightly depressing that this has become the identity issue it has.

Not surprising because you dismissing other people concern and treat it as 'not big deal'.


> but reducing the chance of infection passing is not a concern for me at all

You've lost me here. Really? Is this the part where I discover you have a completely different view on the whole topic and this discussion was pointless from the beginning?


>You've lost me here. Really?

Yes, among all other thing I concern about, reducing the chance of infection passing between us is the least of my concern.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against reducing the chance of infection. I support reducing the chance of infection but not with mask.

Because mask has more downside than its ability (if any) to reduce the chance of infection.

>Is this the part where I discover you have a completely different view on the whole topic and this discussion was pointless from the beginning?

I don't know about you but I do not found this discussion to be pointless


> Its also one of the reason for me to not wear mask when interacting with other people, its a good thing to do for other people.

How is increasing the odds of my infecting my immunocompromised mother doing me a favour?


Of course it's going to be not the same for everyone.


I strongly against mask mandate.

The problem with N95 mask :

- communication barrier, it destroy ability to use facial expression to aid communication.

- uncomfortable

- inconvenience

- not free

- environmental waste

But if someone want to wear mask, I wouldn't stop you as long as you don't force it to other people.


>making the government too powerful and not accountable. If only activists and journalists will try to have the privacy,

Then I much rather for everyone to have no privacy so it level the playing field.

I don't have to worry about having to hide stuff.


You're onto the right idea I think. But the only way for everyone to have the same level of privacy, is to everyone have their privacy. Because since you can achieve privacy, in a world where it would be mandated to have no privacy, the powerful would still have ways to achieve it, while the less powerful wouldn't - and thereby making the world unjust. No level playing field.

It's also not you who should be worrying about hiding stuff. That would be the job of everything you use; making sure that they don't get sued or worse for violating your privacy. In the world where privacy is a properly enforced human right, of course.


As technology getting better and better, it becoming more and more difficult to hide information. Imagine smaller and smaller device that can record more and more information and transmit it faster and faster.

Information wants to be free.

Its simply more pragmatic approach to embrace and adapt to transparency.

> the powerful would still have ways to achieve it, while the less powerful wouldn't

The imbalance of power come from information asymmetry. e.g The government has more information then the citizen thus they are more powerful but if we strive for transparency for both side then the playing field is leveled.

Sure you can do that by privacy for both side but then you are fighting against the progress of technology.


I think I could say similar arguments, but for supporting privacy, instead of transparency. The imbalance of power absolutely arises from the information asymmetry, but we can't really design a system where everyone is equally watched, because some will have ways to hide some of their information, and therefore increase their power, and by that power hide even more information. Until you deny humans every form of autonomy, they'll have ways to achieve this, and will strive for this, and so transparency not just doesn't work, but in fact makes the power imbalance even worse.

Also, I don't think you can embrace transparency, no matter how much you'd like to, because of how humans work. How they work is of course not objectively described (yet), but the importance of privacy is recognized in places like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which describes individual privacy not less than a basic human right. Or, looking at the opposite, constant exposure can lead to things like the Chilling Effect, which, in layman terms, means always-on self-censoring due to constantly being watched, and therefore exposed to consequences. Which would indicate of the failure of the people embracing transparency.


>I think I could say similar arguments, but for supporting privacy, instead of transparency. The imbalance of power absolutely arises from the information asymmetry, but we can't really design a system where everyone is equally watched, because some will have ways to hide some of their information, and therefore increase their power, and by that power hide even more information. Until you deny humans every form of autonomy, they'll have ways to achieve this, and will strive for this, and so transparency not just doesn't work, but in fact makes the power imbalance even worse

Embracing and learning on how to adapt on transparency is the only feasible way. Technology is always progressing. As technology progresses information becoming easier, cheaper, faster to transmit.

Good luck trying to stop the progress of technology.

Yes someone will always try to hide they can try but its going to be come more and more difficult and increasingly costly.

>Also, I don't think you can embrace transparency, no matter how much you'd like to, because of how humans work

what do you mean by this ? How human works in this context according to you ?

>but the importance of privacy is recognized in places like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights,

Just because its written there doesn't mean its set in stone.

I certainly disagree that privacy is a rights.

>Or, looking at the opposite, constant exposure can lead to things like the Chilling Effect,

It can lead to that but then we should fix those thing instead of privacy

I'm not saying that transparency can solve everything. I'm saying that we learn/adapt on living with transparency.

>which, in layman terms, means always-on self-censoring due to constantly being watched,

When the root of the issue is fixed, the need of self-censoring is disappear.


Re "How humans work": My underlying argument is that humans are and behave in a certain way, and you can't change that. Humans, just live everything else, cannot be molded into anything you can imagine. There are certain constraints, certain effects that will happen no matter what, desires that always manifest themselves. Trying to break this, get over it, circumvent it or pretend that they don't exist won't work on the long run. We know this because many have tried, and failed.

But, what you can do is build on the collective experience of humanity. And that's what I was trying to do, when I picked the human rights declaration and the chilling effect, as two examples of the relationship of humans and their privacy.

You also write that some underlying issues need to be fixed. What issues do you mean by this? What is the root cause that you'd like to fix?


>Re "How humans work": My underlying argument is that humans are and behave in a certain way, and you can't change that. Humans, just live everything else, cannot be molded into anything you can imagine.

Disagree, if anything its the contrary, human as like any other living organism always evolve, always changing. Its language, its culture is constantly evolving/changing, even its physique.

>You also write that some underlying issues need to be fixed. What issues do you mean by this? What is the root cause that you'd like to fix?

Lets take one example, assume I'm gay. Let say If people know I'm gay I will be discriminated. There is 2 way to solve this issue: Hide that I'm gay or fix the discrimination issue. I would much prefer the later approach.

When the underlying issue is fixed, I would not need for self-censoring.


>Or, what if something harmless becomes illegal

So this is the actual issue then ?

Instead of resorting to hiding, should instead fix the root issue: change the law.


Does surveillance make it easier, or harder, to change unjust law, or an unjust government? Or even learn there are injustices being carried out in the first place?

Suppose the people of Hong Kong followed your advice, and had allowed surveillance infrastructure to spread through their city, mapping out everyone's social graphs and political affiliations.

Now that a hostile government is in charge of their city, there is no reason to worry the govt. has inherited all the gathered information and knows exactly who to target - if they don't like it, they should fix the root issue and change the law.


The difference with hong kong is the surveillance is one sided, goverment can surveil their citizen but the citizen can't surveil the goverment.

The surveillance/transparency has to be on both side.

Government can't just do whatever they want if they also being surveilled.


> Government can't just do whatever they want if they also being surveilled.

No? Because it seems to me if you're the one with power, you have a lot less to fear from surveillance, than if you're without. Say there's only one political party allowed (officially or unofficially) - that means it is free to organize and act as a political party, while if you were to try and start your own, you'd be jailed.


>Because it seems to me if you're the one with power,

So where does their power come from ?

Information advantage ? No, if both side has the same information

Strength in number? there are more citizen then the government people.


From organization. They can rely on the police to arrest you, you cannot rely that your arrest will be what sparks the revolution that overthrows them. Assuming many people even learn about your arrest - they might be able to find out in theory, but it's probably not going to be on the front page of major newspapers.


Citizen can organize too. Government can try to prevent that but there are much more citizen then government people. Citizens has strength in number.

>Assuming many people even learn about your arrest -

Thats why I argue for citizen to surveil the government too to level the playing field.


>Now maybe they did spend some time learning it and looking into, but there is no way to know for sure

Why are you so concerned on this ? Isn't the goal of a paper is to communicate information?

>It only proves that they have copy and paste.

Yes they copy paste but it doesn't prove that they don't really understand it.

They may very well found your definition is the best way to describe it.

As long as the reader of the paper understand what being communicated, imo it should be fine?

I can understand if its a school assignment where the goal is specifically to prove that the author know their stuff.

For a scientific paper, requiring a concept to be described in different way for the sake of it seem to be inefficient and wasting time.


"We thank the anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback that we used to improve the article." Standard phrase, credit where credit is due, no need to make some definition worse just to not trip off a plagiarism filter.

Unless this very phrase does the tripping off. Having to rephrase it would be pretty ridiculous though (and illustrates your point).


No, it's important to gauge how competent the researchers are, i.e. how trustworthy the remainder of the paper is. The problem with review process is that the reviewers typically cannot reproduce the work itself -- take a physics experiment for example. So they can only do a smell test, and getting basic concepts wrong is a rather bad smell.


plus now they have to do all kind of new ridiculous covid protocol

testing tests all patients being admitted to the hospital

no wonder they are overworked


Those are not contradiction. He is the CEO of tesla because he feel like he has to otherwise tesla will die.


This is why zoning is really bad. Those company could have converted some of those space into housing. Provide it to the employee as benefit for cheap/free. I believe quite significant number of employee would happily live on campus.


One step closer to a company town. And makes the prospect of a job change that much more painful.


Yes, it can be painful but not necessarily have to. Its not like there is no way to mitigate the pain.


How does one mitigate the pain of having to move out of company housing because of a job change?


One way, the company could maybe give some amount of money to help with the moving out cost or maybe allow for the employee to stay for a bit longer while they looking for new place to live.


Still that's a lot of hassle compared to just not having to move, such as from independent housing.


It maybe but independent housing has it downside: commute time and high cost.


Lots of office space is simply not suitable for conversion into living space.


What I mean by conversion including demolishing the office building and building apartment instead not just retrofit existing office building to be a living space.


How is zoning really bad ?


Because they can't just convert some of the space in their campus to housing because of zoning.


There is but I'm glad that there is not enough support for it. It sucks if sugary drink is banned.

In the end its always battle between two sides. The winer get to decide the rules.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: