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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

Some lessons that will come with age.

1. There is no magic that will change human nature.

2. Rules that keep people from harming others are very important.

3. Don't expect to live a "special" or "great" or "revolutionary" life. Aspire to something extraordinary if you see an opportunity, but ordinary things like health, moderate wealth, and family are also good enough, and will have to be good enough for most people. And there is something very special in simply living a very good ordinary life.

4. Try not to be pushed into doing things that corrode the moral goodness within you. You will not regret spurning material rewards to live in accordance with your values, but you will regret the opposite.

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Let's start by making revolving doors illegal.

Even if this is trolling, I don't understand? who doesn't like revolving doors?

I guess it refers to this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)

Revolving doors -- when people work for companies and then that industry's regulators, and back -- are a symptom of the problem. The problem is the government is too large and engages in too many activities that pick winners and losers. The government should be a neutral referee. End corporate subsidies (including regulatory cross-subsidies) and flatten the tax code to reform this area.

Also a ban is plainly unconstitutional, people have a right to free speech, free association, and to work for whom they choose.

Certainly they do, but the public also has a right to insist that its servants (regulators, in this case, but also the other branches of government) be free of conflict of interest. In the particular case, they should not hire directly from the very industry they regulate. Ensuring that the regulators have expertise will be a problem, but at least no conflict of interest

> In the particular case, they should not hire directly from the very industry they regulate. Ensuring that the regulators have expertise will be a problem, but at least no conflict of interest

That feels like trading a problem for an even bigger problem. Everyone has greed but not everyone has competence. The world is in desperate need of more competence. Greed isn't necessarily a problem as long as it's regulated e.g., most people want nice stuff but don't burglarize their neighbors.

We all have conflicts of interest.

You don't need to be part of an industry to say if their product is safe for humans.

Profoundly disagree. If you have worked in an industry for a few years, you have internalized its rules and logic. An outside perspective is valuable. Technicalities rarely stops people from achieving a goal and it is the second step.

You want competence for strategically sound decisions to achieve a goal, but setting it should be done with input of people that have not been groomed that advertising is a human necessity.

We might be talking about different things then. Or maybe not.

You want people in government making long term strategic decisions that steer society. They should be listening to the will of the people as to what direction to steer it. I hope we can agree on that much.

I think people forget that "regulators" though are really just large organizations that enforce/interpret laws. The obvious example is the SEC; it has 4200 employees and none of them create laws, their rules are an effort to enforce the laws created by congress using their technical competence in finance.

> You want competence for strategically sound decisions to achieve a goal, but setting it should be done with input of people that have not been groomed that advertising is a human necessity.

That's the world we live in. Congress has been completely incompetent when it comes to regulating finance and I'd expect them to be even worse when it comes to technology.

There absolutely has to be a layer of industry specific competence (from "insiders") to make any sense of industry specific laws. I don't want insiders choosing direction though; I want congress to be less reprehensible idiots.

The idea of making the government smaller is pretty much dead politically. The idea of choosing to inflict even small amounts of economic pain in order to correct gross social and political ills is too much for people.

That boat has sailed. Those who aren't financially incentivized to push for ever more monetary easing are politically incentivized to push for it. We were one vote away from another $2 trillion of government spending and tomorrow the Fed is having an emergency meeting to address inflation. Like pouring gas on the fire while the fire department sets up the hoses.

So instead of banning revolving doors we should have fewer regulations on them? That somehow fixes the problem?

Maybe allowing private money and politics to mix at all is the problem.

That's what actually happened with the FDA literally. The oxycodon debacle happened because the funding of the FDA went from being public to private. Companies wanting a permit for some drugs have to pay fees which end up holding huge power over the FDA.

Behind the Bastards had 2 good episodes about it.[0][1]

[0]: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

[1]: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

I support revolving door regulations, but I agree with you that a big cause of the problem is the extent and complexity of government regulation.

At the same time, certain areas of regulation seem inevitably complex. Environmental regulations come to mind. There is an endless variety of environmental hazards and regulations must balance costs and benefits in light of the best available scientific evidence.

It's hard to imagine how this can be anything but the province of elite experts. Politicians or the private sector handling it seems like a guaranteed nightmare (and was historically, that's why we have these agencies).

> The government should be a neutral referee

Has this ever worked in any place on earth ?

Also your very notion of having a referee means applying rules made by a higher entity, which is the gov itself ? Even assuming your vision of the gov just makes fewer simpler rules and don’t change them, we fall into what we are seeing right now with the Olympics: outdated rules that are as arbitrary as it can, and fall short at every corner of reality, gamed through every nook and cranny , with everything staying in place only because the main actors have never been the participants but the countries and corporations.

> Also a ban is plainly unconstitutional, people have a right to free speech, free association, and to work for whom they choose.

You mean like a company who force an NDA on you or force you to not work with the competition? Also working at the FDA and be the one to approve a drug and then leave and work for the same company that made said drug, is just pure corruption.

You can negotiate the terms of your contract or choose to work elsewhere - even if a lot of companies do this saying that they're forcing you is wrong

Their tactic is worse than being compelled by the government. If you want the money you worked hard for you better sign, it's more akin to blackmail than anything else.

No competes are thing. That wouldn't be so different from a no work in the industry you are regulating agreement to be signed on becoming a regulator.

You'd rather appoint regulators with no industry experience?

Of course. You don't need to be part of the industry to know if some food is safe for consumption.

You sure? There have been a lot of misconceptions by laypeople about what is "safe for human consumption" through the years

3a) However, most interviews and opportunities are full of themselves, so make sure you can spin a tale of how extraordinary you are and how your whole life has led to this job interview on an as-needed basis.

This is excellent advice.

5. Resist empty generalizations

You'd be surprised at how vehemently people can disagree with seemingly innocuous platitudes.

When there’s no meaningful content then the only message is the feeling they arrive with.

I wonder why statements that are devoid of meaning would stimulate vehement disagreement.

Feeling isn’t meaningless

A bit glib don't you think? I thought you disliked meaningless statements.

I dislike smarmy self certainty, present company included

We agree on that much!

Self-awareness is another quality that may come with age.

2. Rules that keep people from harming others are very important.

u mean mandatory vaccination?

In our current context with COVID? I don't really think so.

But keep in mind we've had mandatory childhood immunizations for decades and almost everyone supports them.

In the U.K we don't have mandatory childhood immunization, only recommendations.

You can get out of it in the US too but it's a condition of entry to public schools that isn't easily evaded.

Sometimes. They were required for smallpox in the army in the 1700s. They're required for measles, mumps, and rubella in most US schools today.

Which diseases and how wide the requirement tends to be context-dependent. MMR in school, for example, is generally justified because school attendance is mandatory, so forcing people to be in an environment where a preventable disease will spread is inhumane if the spread can be stopped.

but i heard covid-19 vaccination doesnt stop spread.

That's true but inaccurate (in the same sense as "wearing a seatbelt doesn't guarantee you'll survive a car crash").

COVID-19 vaccination doesn't guarantee a person cannot become infected or infectious. It significantly diminishes spread (a person stricken with the virus and extremely symptomatic is more contagious than a person who is carrying the virus but asymptomatic; mechanically, coughing, sneezing, and gasping for air with fluid-filled lungs sprays more virus-laden particles into the air; it also seems likely that a vaccinated person who picks up an infection throws fewer virus particles in regular breathing, though the studies that I've seen seem to have mixed results on that).

The other reason to vaccinate people is load on medical services; even if someone who is vaccinated is infected, the odds they'll get so symptomatic they wind up in the hospital go way down. Hospitals filled with COVID-19 patients have far fewer resources to dedicate to "everyday" emergencies (heart attacks, car crashes, etc.)... The result being that COVID-19, left unmitigated, can cause systemic collapse of a country's health infrastructure and resulting death due to preventable conditions (because there's nobody available to prevent them).

It's easy to forget (now that most people are vaccinated) how virulent this virus is, and how severe the symptoms are, unmitigated. There's a good reason the world medical community snapped into action on this one.

fauci once said the amount of virus is same in both vaxxed and unvaxxed. guess they'd spread out the same way too.

They worked fairly well on covid original, not very well on Omicron.

First, very condescending to assume a certain wisdom comes with age. Downvoted just for that.

I think you're completely wrong, especially about 1. Human nature doesn't shape our technological reality, it is becoming more and more obvious that technological reality shapes human culture. And people mistake culture as "nature".

Human nature is very plastic, trying to fit any one thing into "human nature" is (this is my humble opinion, please don't be offended) very bigoted.

Why is it condescending to state that certain wisdom comes with age?

For the same reason it would be condescending to say that a person is too old to understand something.

If you are young you surely expect to acquire more knowledge and experience over time. So you should expect to make better decisions in the future. You cannot say that every old person is wiser than every young person, but you can certainly say that older people (before dementure kicks in) are wiser on average.

Of course, I didn't believe this when I was young either.

The appreciation and nuanced interpretation of simplified general principles is also a skill that comes with age.

There is no conversation we can have if all you say will be "you'll learn with age" especially without knowing other commenters age. You sound nothing other than like a religious zealot.

After all that's been said in these comments to explain and nuance this idea, you seem awfully confident in an interpretation that ignores all of it. Instead you assert an extreme, black-and-white, overgeneralized interpretation that has already been repudiated multiple times.

I agree that zealotry is best avoided.

Although you mentioned the word "nuance" in your comments, I don't find your world view particularly nuanced, especially since it's an extremely common one (in US culture I'm aware of it's the standard world view), also one I grew out of throughout my life. As you might agree, it's particularly hard to agree with someone when you used to agree with them and changed your view later with conviction. I imagine this is also why you think my view is un-nuanced.

However, please note that cutting people out of discussion "because this is something you'll learn as you age" is not a great way to convince them of something (which may not be your goal).

I'm not excluding you from the discussion in the slightest. You've made assertions and I've engaged with those assertions. Because, despite whatever little wisdom I've gained from age, I'm still curious and interested in learning from different perspectives.

You've ignored the majority of what I've said, including everything about how age is not a bright dividing line between the wise and the foolish.

Evidently you want to keep believing what you believe. So, go ahead and do that. I really can't stop you and don't wish to.

It's okay to me if you disagree with the concept that you'll learn these things with age. I don't think it's condescending for me to think this. I am sure there are people of all ages who are wiser than me, and that I could be wrong in what I am confident about today. If you are confident in your beliefs, go ahead and believe that you're right and I'm wrong. But if you're offended by my statements, I think you're not that confident in your beliefs.

On the plasticity of human nature, here are a few of the many unfortunate things that will never be excised from human nature: self-absorption, self-deception, groupthink, dehumanization of the outgroup.

Culture can modulate the expression of these things, and if we're lucky, mitigate them somewhat. But they never quite go away. They always find a way to manifest themselves. And it is the people who think they've transcended these things who are most at risk of indulging in their worst excesses.

If you don't recognize the durable aspects of human nature, you're setting yourself up to be at best a dupe and a mark, and at worst a monster.

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