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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand. Literally all of Hawaii is built on top of lava flows. Are Hawaiians dumb idiots for building roads and other infrastructure on top of lava flows?

At least they're smart for putting most of their population on the inactive islands like Oahu.

> And then you have idiots that build train tracks and highways right through lava

I was disappointed to see no active lava flows in your linked image. What you show is simply a road and train tracks built on top of rocks.

Lava will likely flow there again the next time Shasta erupts.

True, but we were dumb enough to build a civilization on this planet and lava will flow everywhere the next time we have something like what caused the K-T event so I suppose it runs in the family.

Its eruption history is on the order of once every hundreds of years. By the time its next eruption comes around, it's very possible that infrastructure will be long gone for other reasons.

In most cases, infrastructure existence and placement is barely a blip on geologic time.

you could make your point without being derisive and ableist, especially considering the people involved have credentials and are trained in their fields.

I'm assuming you meant to write ableist, in which case, how is the above comment ableist?

I had to read it several times to get it, but I think they’re referring to “dumb” which could also refer to people who can’t speak.

The funny thing about this is that I simply read “dumb” as “stupid” and didn’t make any connection to being mute - but thanks to the earlier comment I’ve now made the association. So, well done policing the discourse, I guess?

edited, thank you.

To answer your question, adjectives related to intelligence are ableist in origin. I don't think this needs to be explained and it's not my job to educate you or anyone else on this forum.

There should be a word for the driveby condemnation (ooh we could call it that) that is "what you said is unethical but it's not my job to tell you how".

I doubt driveby condemnation will convince many people.

I mean, that's a fair point. I just feel this sort of dialogue is disrespectful to the engineers who actually build the stuff the grandparent commenter is complaining about.

moot since the comment itself is dead/flagged but if you're calling people idiots, show me your credentials.

Yeah, I agree with you on that, I've just heard the "it's not my job to educate you" point (you're right, it's not) before, and I've noticed it only tends to make the conversation worse.

I think that's because without the explanation it's more or less name-calling, since the accused doesn't know what they did wrong.

If you are going to call someone out, why not try to make it educational?

It's offensive to idiots.

Hmm, the problem with the parent is that it's derisive and also just wrong, not that it is 'ableist'.

But it creates "engagement" which is rewarded these days apparently.

Also, I thought the trained people should have learned a thing or two from Pompei not to build near volcanoes. I'll cut some slack for the people who designed Pompei, they didn't know, but everyone after that should have learned.

What are the chances that the volcano erupts with a train on/near that portion of track? How often would you likely have to fix it? How much does it cost to go around? I am sure these questions are being asked and the risks being weighed. They may not be right and you might not agree with them but unless they did this without any forethought I would not call them dumb. Also you are comparing them to Pompei even though this is a train track not a city.

It would disrupt critical supply chains. That train line is part of a key freight artery between Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, and SD.

Railroads and highways also invite towns and cities to be built around them, so if you want to be responsible toward future generations of human lives, you should direct those major arteries through less geologically-active regions.

Hugging an active volcano never was a good idea in history and it still isn't.

Pompeii was a Pyroclastic flow not lava.

OK, I meant more like "dangerous hot shit that wipes out everything in its path" in a general sense.

If someone gave me a contract to build something in modern-day Herculaneum I would say no. I think it's irresponsible to build there. In terms of lives lost it's tantamount to knowingly shipping a hundred 777s with loose screws that cause them to crash.

The number of downvotes on this thread is also exactly why we have disasters with volcanic eruptions. This is like the geological equivalent of a bunch of antivaxxers.

This reasoning cannot lead to a practical policy directive. Volcanoes often lay dormant for thousands of years and their eruptions can deny huge amounts of land, which is not a reasonable tradeoff compared to "just rebuilding the railroad every 5000 years", since its service life is probably shorter than that anyway.

Maybe, but building a railroad invites towns and cities to be built around it.

Only if you build a stop there.

> I mean, how fucking dumb do you need to be to look at a lava flow and cut a road or train track through it? Do they not realize that lava means "run"? Build infrastructure elsewhere.

Right, and nobody should build cities on rivers or coasts, because rivers flood[1] and coasts get hurricanes that cause floods, nobody should build anything in valleys[1], because they flood, nobody should ever build anything in mountains, because they get avalanches and mudslides[1], nobody should build anything on the Ring of Fire, because earthquakes, and the midwest should be uninhabited because tornadoes.

If someone built a two-lane road that cuts through an old lava flow, maybe those people aren't the idiots. Maybe they've done the math, and determined that the cost of going around it is going to be greater than the risk of eruption * cost of dealing with the consequences.

[1] Stupid Canadians[2], building a highway through a valley, and some mountains. If only someone with some common sense would have come in and told them that this was a bad idea! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2021_Pacific_Northwes...

[2] Now they don't have a highway! https://www.nanaimobulletin.com/news/aerial-video-of-coquiha...

> Right, and nobody should build cities on rivers or coasts,

Many ancient civilizations knew not to build on coasts. Beijing, Xi'an, Cairo, Rome, Paris, Mexico City, Madrid, London, Moscow, Kyoto, most of these cities of critical governmental and strategic importance were not built on coasts for very good reasons.

And then you have some modern hipsters after the 17th century who decided not to take a history lesson and started to build NYC, Shanghai, LA, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Singapore, Washington DC, and other cities on the coasts. Note that none of these cities have much history to them, for a reason. Not a good plan. Humans are pretty dumb.

You've cherry-picked a bunch of non-coastal cities, but completely missed that nearly all of them were built on rivers.

Which have all of the same problems with flooding as coasts, but much worse. Coasts flood when you get a major storm causing a surge, or a major earthquake. Rivers flood when the seasons change, when it rains upstream, when you get a mudslide upstream, when there's a major earthquake sending a tsunami upriver...

Why do you think cities built on coasts and rivers on the whole grew, and out-competed cities that were built inland?

Ancient civilizations did build on coasts, you're cherry picking a handful of cities that weren't, but most (if not all, going off memory) of the cities you listed were built along rivers. Building on the coast gave (and gives) access to trade and fishing which are of great utility to most societies.

Besides, avoiding the coast itself doesn't do you much good. Earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding (from rivers or rain), drought, fire, tornadoes can hit in many different areas even away from the coast. Hell, hurricanes can go pretty far inland and do quite a bit of damage (more from the flooding than the winds, but also the winds, at that point). You'd be hard pressed to find a totally safe place on this planet that could support the entire human population. You'll still need the hazardous areas for agricultural and mining purposes if nothing else, and unless people can handle a 1000 mile commute, you'll end up with communities and cities growing in those places.

You seem to have a lot of anger. You might want to consider letting some of it go - it's a heavy load. Speaking from experience.

I'm pretty happy living in a coastal city though. Which by the way was founded in the middle ages :)

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