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Comment by ouid | Hacker News Reader

I think you might actually be underestimating the role of lower back pain in your future happiness.

My dad had devastating lower back pain that he described as being stabbed by a knife, and no history of heart disease. I understand that I need to make choices to minimize the possibility of this happening to me, and I nevertheless believe that heart disease is the more significant health threat.

My dad had the same thing, eventually turned out he had a gigantic blood clot in his back that'd been getting bigger every year

Might be worth checking into!

Is the upshot of this supposed to be that lower back pain is approximately equivalent to heart disease as a significant health risk?

I dunno about that.. I'd just say that if you're in good physical shape, have good insurance, and have persistent back pain, that might be something to check into

Run me through your back of the envelope calculation here. It seems to me like you have plugged in -infinity for the utility of heart disease which is an example of the scale insensitive reason you are currently accusing people of.

I find this a deeply confusing comment. You're strawmanning rather than steelmanning (also helpful concepts), because I think a much more reasonable interpretation of what I'm saying is just that I'm reading the two differently enough that I can differentiate them.

I asked you to run me through your calculation, followed by my best estimation of your argument. If you can't provide your reasoning, then I can't do any better than my guess.

You're the one who has taken the stance that people who say "standing is bad for your back" are universally failing to account for the relative scale of the two considerations. I think it's likely that you're making a number of errors yourself when coming to that conclusion, and I would appreciate it if you would share them.

I think sitting is a lot more likely to give you lower back pain, though.

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