Comment by tel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tel | Hacker News Reader

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I don't disagree that "we could make better products" when analyzing things from a human point of view — that's practically day 0 in any industrial design class — but I dispute the implicit comparison here. It's extremely important that the person who saves your life doesn't think of it human terms. They need to be thinking in absolute terms because those terms will give them the power to save your life.

It again brings to mind the (Canadian version of the) Iron Ring. Building things that abuse the forces of nature and exert power over the shape of our work, building these things and having them work, is distinctly beyond human terms. It's why you pair architects with structural engineers: a friend of mine always complains that his job is to remind architects about gravity. I wonder just how many lives have been secretly saved like that.

Of course, the best solution is to somehow hold on to both sides, but I think too much sentiment these days is reactionary against the dehumanized computer technology we're working our way past. I really liked the last slide of one of Job's recent keynotes where they put a signpost labeling the intersection of "technology" and "liberal arts". Always keep that intersection in mind even when you make a decision to walk in one of those directions looking for it.

> It's extremely important that the person who saves your life doesn't think of it human terms. They need to be thinking in absolute terms because those terms will give them the power to save your life.

I think you're right, because that reminds me of when I had to save Grandma. One day, I woke up to hear her screaming. She's very old and has weak bones. One day, her leg just snapped in half under her.

Maybe it is dehumanizing or something not to lose your mind just because your own Grandmother is on the floor screaming, lying in a huge pool of her own blood. But I had to do first aid. I had to get the paramedics.

I was the only person there and if I had gone to pieces, she would have died. She's fine now, though. We got her good care. She can even walk again.

>>It's extremely important that the person who saves your life doesn't think of it human terms. They need to be thinking in absolute terms because those terms will give them the power to save your life.

>I think you're right, because that reminds me of when I had to save Grandma. [...]

You didn't fail to think of your grandma in human terms. If you had assessed things logically you'd have realised that the world is overpopulated and that your grandma is going to take resources that could be used "better" elsewhere and simply allowed her to die screaming. Even if you don't buy the overpopulation argument you can ask if grandma is decreasing infant or juvenile mortality; if not then she's not aiding proliferation of the species but hindering it.

Acting calmly and collectedly in a first-aid situation doesn't mean your not acting as a human being first.

I've done life-saving first aid in 2 situations (in as much as if someone had failed to act both people would have died; I think someone would have acted eventually in both situations) in both cases I've helped to save those who's genes should logically be removed from the gene pool through them having "defects".

Don't get me wrong I'm not at all saying that you acted wrongly, you acted as a human.

When you say "absolute terms" from what axioms are you starting?

The grandparent post spoke of "absolute terms", not me. You'll have to ask them about that part.

If I think about things logically to that degree, entropy will screw us no matter what we do, so we might as well live as well as we can under whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. Everything we know about universe formation (which isn't much) indicates that we start from zero. After all, if a civilization before us started out with the tech to make new universes, you'd think we'd have seen evidence of them by now.

And now that we're done with that tangent, I do think that people who make life-or-death decisions need to do it based on facts, not anecdotes. And that's hard, because the tendency is to hear this story about how someone's kid fell out of a bus and want to fix it.

Because, hey, anybody can make up statistics and studies to say whatever they want and most people don't know if they're lying, so even the legitimate studies are given a credibility rating of zero and they listen to whoever they trust the most. Who might well be some idiot on TV that they happen to agree with on other issues, even if they don't know anything about anything. But that goes down another long tangent, if you get into it, because there are so many strategies for evaluating the information you get from other people and they all have some flaw or another in that you can get bad information if you're not careful. But nobody really has the time to get all the information they need and that leads to problems.

Most statements are contextual and taken out of that context they become nonsense. Any statement that isn't must be a full description of the world.

The dichotomy I spoke of is more plain in the architect v. structural engineer example. The human terms the architect considers are building usage, energy distribution, flows of traffic, aesthetics, color, material, use of glass. By given each one and many others due consideration the architect attempts to build a useful, beautiful structure for humans.

The structural engineer attempts to decide if it's going to implode after its first earthquake (or even before). He doesn't care whether humans enjoy it. He cares whether the architects' dream has a right to exist in reality.

In the bus example, this is meant to suggest that just because we can humanly fear for the safety of our children it is wise to design with precision and care for reality otherwise we might make something comforting but ineffectual.

To do this pretty near requires switching your mind into a mode that abstractly considers the forces of impact a child's body might undergo during a bus crash. I simply want to reiterate that the voice of reason may be cold, but you should be unafraid to keep it in your toolbox, so to speak.

The hole argument is stupid - there are plenty of money in Washington tied up to things that doesn't matter (bridge to nowhere comes to mind) which could be used to buy these damn safety belts. They don't hinder anything really, the price is trivial and 6 kids would not die.

But no, we got to be all "rational" about it (which is code for not do a damn thing).

Having spent most of my schooled life riding one of these busses (with safety belts), I can assure you that no children will wear them.

Thats just a question about raising the punishment - which schools seems to have no problem with.

I challenge you to come up with a punishment that would work not just to keep kids in their seats, but also to get them to buckle their belts. At six kids per year I'm against punishing kids for being kids. I imagine there is some other program imaginable that will save more children's lives per dollar than seatbelts in school busses. It isn't like the government has the money to spare.

When your injury rate is 6 out of 37.9 million [1], there's not much of a policy change you can enact to make something safer. You're thinking "seat belts are more safe, therefore they are better." The rational argument is more along the lines of "Adding a drop of water to the ocean makes it more wet, but not in any way that matters."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States

I agree. This would be more of a burden than is necessary. Helmets and seat belts are some of the very few laws that exist to protect an adult from themselves. The social aspect of this being that we decrease the cost of healthcare from people flying through the windshield of a car. Nonetheless, all children in America should not be punished by forcing them to wear seat belts for negligible benefit. By doing this, other safety factors would probably be removed, and it would cause distractions for the driver to check if all kids are buckled at all times. "Suzy, put your seatbelt on! Suzy? Suzy, put it on now!" I can see this scenario, and it would likely cause more accidents than it would prevent.

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