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Comment by mberning | Hacker News Reader

Many people feel fine right up until the point they get diagnosed with a terminal illness. The point being, this would be like going to the doctor and having high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, etc. etc. The patient can be up, walking around, feeling OK, but in reality they are headed for a nightmare.

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So we agree we're not in an economic downturn then.

The economy is not a human body.

It's an analogy

A bad one. What's the insight here? If a body were a nation-state, it'd be a totalitarian hellscape where life is cheap, individuals exist only to support the collective and some populations are invaders to be exterminated.

I'd call it a complex system. It's entirely possible to have a component in a system that may disrupt the whole system in a whole new, unpredictable way. Just like some sort of asymptomatic tumor which breaks the whole body once it metastasizes.

Yes, and as I don’t want metaphorical chemotherapy for the country I’d prefer we chose a different metaphor. An analogy shouldn’t just be some strained parallels, it should lead us in useful and not destructive directions.

Oh, fair enough. Something surgical would be best :)

What is the relation between people's inability to notice having a brewing disease and business predicting turmoil in the future hence going for the diet?

Maybe not a human body; but it is /a/ body and it is true that those things are not a good condition to have for prolonged periods of time.

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