Hacker News Reader

Comment by dminor | Hacker News Reader

You keep saying "shameless" as if it's exceptional in some way. Why should he feel shame about trying to not die?

Indeed. I would "shamelessly" do damm well whatever I have to, in order to survive. Especially in a situation like this.

Plus, word is that Amit is a really great person. I wish I was south asian, so I could help...

shameless: 2. done without shame; without decency or modesty

modesty: 1. having or showing a moderate or humble estimate of one's merits, importance, etc.;

A) I think modesty no longer becomes a factor when you are desperately trying to save your own life.

B) Sure, the design is a little flashy (I think it looks great, by the way), but I don't think he is being terribly immodest. He's not bragging about his accomplishments, he's just trying to get people to sign up as bone marrow donors, and he's using his personal plight as motivation.

Designer of the site here. (Thank you for the kind words.) We wanted to do something upbeat and positive, a kind of join-the-movement and do-your-part vibe. If it were a story just about Amit, we might be more dire, but this is a much bigger cause and we wanted to express that.

He's not morally wrong, I'm saying the nature of what he's doing is shameless. Clearly this is an important issue to him, but he's vastly overestimating his importance to everyone else. That's fine. I'm just calling it like I see it.

I believe what's going on is that the choice of calling it "shameless" brings in a number of connotations that you may not have intended. In the adverbial form it ends up bringing upon social and moral connotation beyond what you seem to be intending[1]. What I wonder is if there's a better way to put this.

[1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/shameless

Adrew, really curious here, how would you go about if you were in his shoes?

If I was Amit, I would've included other sufferers in the campaign, instead of hoarding the attention all to myself. Many others could have benefited from this massive amount of exposure.

Everyone who gets swabbed is added to a national database and can be matched to anyone else who needs a donor.

The efforts happening on his behalf are, by and large, very consciously being done with this in mind. They are increasing awareness of underrepresented populations in the bone marrow database and making a much larger impact.

Also, these efforts are being coordinated and implemented by volunteers on Amit's behalf. Amit himself is not running this show. People who have better things to do than troll the internet are.

So self-preservation is shameless. Got it. Next time I'm dying, I'll remember not to try to help myself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com