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Comment by Fifer82 | Hacker News Reader

Let me die in peace. For some reason, it is always assumed that everyone wants to live as long as possible. If you don't have a cola each day, you can dribble into a towel for another 3 years when you are older.... No thanks, Ill take the coke. put it on the reapers tab.

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It's so strange to me how people in this country seem to share a common expectation that an adult should be a productive member of society, but have no expectations about being a healthy member of society. The amount of taxpayer money spent on providing treatment for type II diabetes alone is staggering, and even the amount that isn't paid by the government is paid by insurance, so still amortized across the population: "The total estimated cost of diagnosed diabetes in 2012 is $245 billion" "Most of the cost for diabetes care in the U.S., 62.4%, is provided by government insurance"

http://www.diabetes.org/advocacy/news-events/cost-of-diabete...

The cost is so high precisely because our healthcare toolkit is so poor.

If we could restore our systems to full functionality, our healthcare cost will drop like a rock.

Though we will be faced with new questions. If everyone are fully healthy, then our mortality rate will also drop like a rock, destroying social security as it currently exists.

Solution: Extreme sports.

Our society pays people to be 'productive members of society,' but not to exercise.

There are better ways to die young than deliberately harming your health. Take on riskier hobbies (while still remaining physically active). Refuse to wear safety gear while riding a motorcycle or never wear a seatbelt while in a car.

A coke a day, probably not a huge problem if you're moderately active. But, smoking, excessive drinking, excessive time spent physically idle, etc, will all reduce your health. They may also reduce your lifespan, but that's not guaranteed. My great-grandfather made it to 90 (or very near, maybe 88) smoking cigarettes almost daily from age 12 on. He may have shortened his life, but he also significantly reduced his quality of life. His last 5-10 years were spent in the living room during the day sitting and watching TV because he couldn't get around well anymore. Similar for a grandfather who made it to 83, but the last 3-5 years he was senile due to (it turned out) brain tumors, consequences of lung and colon cancer, which were (most likely) consequences of his drinking and smoking habits.

And living a healthy lifestyle offers no guarantee of longevity. But it offers a greater guarantee on quality.

> Refuse to wear safety gear while riding a motorcycle or never wear a seatbelt while in a car.

Not wearing a seatbelt somehow doesn't compare to a juicy burger, fries and Coke.

Try it you might like it. I find I'm a more aware, more relaxed, slower driver. I find myself less determined to pass all the clueless bumpkins.

You won't like the $100 fines for not wearing your seatbelt, thanks to laws that were passed dishonestly (many states got seatbelt laws on the books by promising they would only be enforced with another violation such as speeding).

You are simultaneously more relaxed while being more afraid of collision risk?

Like every other human driver, I drive so as to maintain a collision risk equilibrium (c.f. "risk compensation"). So no I am not more afraid of collision. However I am driving more sanely, which is incidentally more relaxing than driving less sanely. YMMV.

Your "every other human driver" must exclude people who think it's a good idea to ride motorcycles at 1.5x the speed limit on the freeway. Needless to say, without seatbelts.

Anyway, this thread is about embracing some other risk as an alternative to unhealthy eating.

I posited that driving without a seatbelt is a poor substitute for a burger, fries and Coke. What I mean is that driving without a seatbelt is not a risk that provides am amount of thrill or pleasure in comparison to a meal.

So, that argument applies in triplicate to driving like a wussy without a seatbelt, don't you think?

Whatever thrill is derived from not wearing a seatbelt, it is attenuated by driving slowly to reduce the risk of injury.

Be sure to uninstall that airbag, too, by the way.

> If you don't have a cola each day, you can dribble into a towel for another 3 years when you are older.... No thanks, Ill take the coke. put it on the reapers tab.

But fit people have better quality of life.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3567315/

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/PhysicalActivity...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22249758

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/11/051110215438.h...

If anything, an unfit person is slowly dribbling in a towel throughout his relatively shorter life.

You live a shorter, low quality life. I don't see how you see that a positive over living a longer, healthier life with may be a bit of suffering at the end compared to suffering throughout your life(out of breath, joint pains, clogged arteries...)

I can't blame you for thinking this way at all. However the reality is that it's not so much a clean subtraction where you lose X amount of time at the end of the tally,but rather a gradual decline where bad habits end up harming the quality of your prime "temporal real estate" even if the actual last gasp comes much later.

That's why to me a Coke is also a poor investment in the present, all things considered. Not to mention that the craving for one is quite situational.

I think your point is good, why prolong the end of life as much as possible? Instead focus should be on extending the quality of life. But I don't think binging coke with all health problems it entails is a good choice.

When living healthy, you don't dribble into a towel for another 3 years, you live 3 years longer before you dribble into a towel.

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