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Comment by davidjfelix | Hacker News Reader

That feeling when hacker news user endorses eugenics as long as its just stupid people.

I'm not even remotely suggesting eugenics. What I am saying, in a rather tongue in cheek manner, is that sooner or later your own judgement needs to come into play and driving into the water because the voice told you to is probably a self-inflicted injury. There's only so much hand holding you can do to protect people from themselves, and coddling isn't a long term solution for anything.

Eugenics is artificial selection. This would be natural selection. Clear difference.

What makes you think GP is talking about eugenics?

If anything, they're talking about natural selection which is not eugenics. Eugenics is when you select fitness at birth.

GP would be endorsing genocide, or maybe epigenetics if anything, based on the small out of context comment. I highly doubt either was the intention and wonder how you got to the eugenics conclusion.

It's not natural selection if you help it.

>This seems like a learning opportunity. Or a Darwinian opportunity. Either way, self-solving.

I took either as meaning a learning opportunity for one or all of the 1) GPS app makers, 2) the person who blindly followed the directions of a robot, or 3) the rest of us who learn about the event.

What interpretation did you have that suggests they were referring to eugenics?

I think you're selectively ignoring parts of the comment. "Darwinian opportunity ... [which is] self-solving" is clearly referring to the death of a person who blindly followed GPS directions for a mis-configured app. GP was saying that anyone who dies because an app told them wrong information was not "fit" (darwinian fitness) for survival. Expressing no remorse or desire to prevent preventable death with the justification that it's allowing the species to become more fit is eugenics.

There is a limit to the extent that functioning adults should be protected against themselves by the government. As long as the feature is designed with UX in mind, and explains what it does in plain text, I do not see the issue. Individual autonomy should be prioritised as long as third parties are not harmed. Anything else is infantilization, which is not a role the government should take.

Am I high right now? I think you're selectively ignoring parts of the comment. It's 13 words: "This seems like a learning opportunity. Or a Darwinian opportunity. Either way, self-solving."

You're turning the comment into 3 words: "Darwinian opportunity ... [which is] self-solving"

Small reminder that on HN you are supposed to steelman comments when you reply, not strawman. Clearly those 3 words refers to the death of the person, but you can't ignore the remaining 10 words and say the entire comment was about eugenics. So which of the 13 words am I ignoring that you aren't?

Also natural selection and killing off dumb people who are already alive is not eugenics. It's either epigenetics or genocide but like I said in a previous comment: eugenics is used to select fitness _before birth_ not after.

> As an applied science, thus, the practice of eugenics referred to everything from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia.

Spektorowski, Alberto; Ireni-Saban, Liza (2013). Politics of Eugenics: Productionism, Population, and National Welfare

https://web.archive.org/web/20211019203011/https://books.goo...

(emphasis mine)

After birth for non-sterile individuals is before birth for their progeny.

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