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Comment by enknamel | Hacker News Reader

As an average citizen I bunch events into the categories of 1 "Things I Can Prevent" and 2 "Things I Cannot Prevent". Opioids fall into category 1. I refuse to take any opioids even when prescribed because I do not want to go near such dangerous substances. However terrorist attacks, mass shootings, crazy people, etc fall into category 2. Category 2 frightens me quite a bit more than category 1. I'm willing to bet that a ton of people feel the same way as me. And that's probably why issues like terrorism get a ton of air time and issues like opioids get very little.

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Many people who end up taking opioids say the same thing you say, and swear them off. It's easy to say that you won't take them until you're in pain that makes you feel as if you're dying, then it's a different story.

yeah but not all the people taking them are in that sort of pain. most are just ordinary drug addicted people

Source? From what I have read the major cause of the opioid crisis is doctors prescribing opioids for pain [0]. Even 2 week prescriptions have 25% chance of creating an addict [1]. Remember originally these were marketed to doctors as non-addictive.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_crisis

[1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/with-a-10-day-supply...

And the major cause of doctors prescribing opioids for pain is: Purdue Pharma propaganda and bribes. [0][1]

[0]http://theweek.com/articles/541564/how-american-opiate-epide...

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/ title: "The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health Tragedy"

Opoid issues get quite a bit of press in midwestern newspapers. In my experience it gets more press than terrorism.

How can you prevent crazy people?

I'm asking because I often wonder what price we're willing to pay to make to make the chances of killed by another person 0%. Is there anyway to acheive that without creating a police state with zero privacy and zero possibility of dissent? If we start editing people's genes so they aren't "crazy" who decides what the legalized normative behaviour is?

I'm not sure labeling as "crazy" is fair or helpful. These substances are addictive and many people got them prescribed by their doctor whom they trusted.

Lab experiments with rats might be pointing is towards what we have to do to mitigate this at least somewhat. Experiments showed that rats in a healthy social environment are much less prone to opioid addiction than ones living in isolation or having lived in isolation. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park. I finds it easy to imagine that the same is true to some degree for humans. I wouldn't be surprised if the effect was even stronger on humans. We are very social animals after all.

"My life was great before I got addicted" said no drug addict ever.

You don't know many addicts right?

Especially in the US the opioid addiction epidemic is caused mostly by doctor.

Last year less than 1% of the population tried heroin or opium poppy. A bit more than 5% of the population tried opioids.

Especially in the US the opioid addiction epidemic is caused mostly by doctor.

And doctor prescription is caused mainly by drug company.

WTF?

'Opioids' are the prototype solution to human pain.

Have you never had surgery, a massive fever, or a broken bone?

Morphine and its analogs are probably up there with HVAC, internal combustion engines, and carbohydrates with respect to human progress.

I don't know any opiod addicts, but I know several alcoholics who would definitely say that.

Prince. That shit killed Prince.

> I'm not sure labeling as "crazy" is fair or helpful. These substances are addictive and many people got them prescribed by their doctor whom they trusted.

I'm pretty sure the person you're replying to was using the word "crazy" in reference to terrorists, specifically the ones of a suicide variety, not your garden variety person who ends up addicted to prescription drugs.

Whoops. I was only using the word crazy as a quote from the person I was responding too. I think the word crazy only exists in a perjorative sense and is used to do discredit a set of individuals.

Most people have a broader conception of the word "crazy".

In your hypothetical example where personality editing is possible, the consequences would be much more wide-ranging. Much of human suffering is due to human shortcomings and weaknesses. Therefore, if it becomes possible to edit minds, the incentive to make everyone resilient, jovial, agreeable, patient, extroverted... etc. would be strong enough that a natural normative standard would put itself into place by the action of market forces. Having a diverse set of personalities helps society but every parent would want to give their kid the traits most conducive to fitting in and being happy.

And then begins the real beginning of homo financus.

I have a hard time imagining anything except a real monoculture of individuals would emerge from such a possibility.

Where do road accidents fall? Do you just avoid being on roads?

Living in a large dense city where cars move slowly and most people use rapid transit goes a long way towards this. (And also costs you.)

If you don't need a lot of space, i.e. you don't have kids and you can handle having roommates, then it doesn't really cost more to live in a big city. Sure, the rent is more, but not having to pay for an auto loan/gasoline/insurance saves a good amount too.

Source: I moved from the suburbs of DC in MD to Manhattan, I track my spending pretty religiously on Mint, and my spending only went up a few $K per year -- which is way, way less than my salary did from the move.

Are you saying the engineering / dev salaries in NYC are outpacing DC?

I see DC creeping up to $160K-$170K or so for senior devs that can negotiate.

What are you seeing in Manhattan?

I'm earning over double that in Manhattan as a senior SWE (at the big G). We have no real eng presence in DC.

I work on Manhattan and live in Brooklyn, with family and kids. I still reap most of the benefits of a dense city (subway, nearly everything within walking distance, variety of options in food, etc), while spending < 20% of my income on rent.

Personally I feel the majority of road accidents fall into category 1. As long as you are very careful and aware of your surroundings you can avoid a huge number of accidents. This is probably why experienced drivers get huge discounts on car insurance. I've managed to actively avoid many more accidents than I have been involved in and I've never caused an accident (beyond giving a car a scrape while parking just after getting my permit). Sometimes there's no winning though. Like waiting at a stop sign and someone rear ends the truck behind you (so you can't see anything behind the large truck) hard enough to send the truck into your car and almost send you into speeding cross traffic. When that happened it really freaked me out. That was definitely a category 2 event.

Maintaining situational awareness is the difference between an accident and a close call the vast majority of the time, not just when driving.

I'm sure you already know, but it's completely irrational to fear the things out of your control. There's literally nothing to be accomplished by doing so.

A: Most things are not completely out of our control so it is possible to mitigate those risks.

B: People are not perfectly rational.

However, I totally agree with your main point.

But terror attacks aren't out of your control.

For example, on a policy level, Japan never has them. They just don't immigrate any of the religious group who might commit terrorist attacks. So it's a non-issue.

And on a personal level, you can mitigate terror attack risks. Just avoid gatherings of people, basically. You can go as far as you want with this - living off-grid in the forest makes you pretty much fully insulated from terrorist attacks.

So the only question remaining on a personal and policy level is what the cost/benefit is for various things you could do to prevent terrorist attacks.

This is a common mistake. People like to think that some options are impossible, or some gains are free. Thinking this way makes decisions easier; it makes you feel more secure in your opinions. In reality, everything is possible, and everything costs.

I wonder if the reason Japan doesn't have terror attacks is because their military does not deploy outside of their own country (other than UN peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts) and therefore doesn't create terrorist level animosity towards their country and people?

Lack of immigration. But that didn't prevent a Sarin attack either.

There is still significant animosity towards Japan by several other Asian nations due to atrocities committed during WWII.

This is regularly triggered by various disputes about commonly claimed territory and things such as politicians visiting shrines that house the Japanese war dead (including war criminals). It often leads to rioting and destruction of perceived Japanese things (cars, restaurants, etc) in China.

Still no terrorist attacks in Japan committed by Chinese though despite Japan allowing in large numbers of Chinese visitors, students and workers.

Japanese people live in abject fear of terrorism outside Japan. There have been a few attacks in southeast Asia against venues that Japanese frequent and, owning that the country is extremely safe, it has been completely blown out of proportion.

I have a Japanese friend that has been road-tripping Europe for some time in his vacations and has been unable to convince any (Japanese) friend to go with him. In the last one, he was almost coming with a guy, but at the last moment, that guys mother convinced him to cancel the trip, and this was before the Paris attacks.

A number of countries have been hit by terrorist attacks despite having no intervention in the Middle East, Sweden and Spain for example.

I wouldn't say they never happen in Japan - after all, one of the most sophisticated terror groups/cults in modern history was from Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo). They were even able to synthesize VX and sarin gas.

I remember being a kid living in Japan, and watching the subway attacks on TV. It was scary.

But to your point, I agree, statistically, Japan is about the safest country there is in terms of human on human violence.

Japan has absolutely had terror attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack

> Japan never has them

cough

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack

> it's completely irrational to fear the things out of your control.

Fear is the foreknowledge of (or of the risk of) something unpleasant happening to you. Foreknowledge of our inevitable death, over which we have no control (sure, we can try to prolong life a bit, or end it early, but the ultimate result is the same), induces fear, ranging from anxiety to terror, in large numbers of people - perhaps even the majority.

To me, it's irrational to fear events that are highly improbable, but in view of our survival instinct as humans, it's quite rational to fear something horrible that is absolutely going to happen to you, and there's nothing you can do about it - for example, being scheduled for judicial execution the next day.

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