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Comment by efilife | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Hopefully after living a long and fulfilling life? Geez

Edgy! No one has ever considered the mortality of their children ever, or contemplated the difference between death before and after the realization of potential. Wow!

Genuinely don't know why this is edgy. I was trying to understand his logic

Having a child predecease you is one of the worst things that can happen to a person in general. This is a common sentiment in humans. The strange thing is that you mentioned you're trying to follow "logic." This is not logic. These are emotions.

I understand this. My question arose from the fact that it seems like he only cares about the child dying before him, not the child's death overall. It was

> the idea of being told my 1 week old baby is going to die

not

> the idea of my child dying

It’s less of

> my baby is going to die, woe is me

and more of

> have I failed my baby so much as a parent that he won’t even grow to adulthood (much less have a wonderful, happy life)

It’s not exactly a rational feeling; it’s not like this baby was going to die through lack of parental effort or care or anything else that the parents have any real control over, so it’s not like they could have done anything differently.

Nonetheless, it can make you feel like an utter failure of a parent. To some people (I admit, not everybody), that is absolutely crushing.

>It’s not exactly a rational feeling

It only looks irrational if you don't understand what people and feelings are.

"I am simply a machine. I do not experience death as humans do. It is just a cessation of function." - Data in Star Trek The Next Generation,

If you're being pedantic, babies usually never die - they transform into an adult which is the form that dies.

Not only a hurtful question, but a stupid one as well. Well done.

Care to explain why it is stupid? And what's hurtful about it, too? Deciding on a child, you KNOW it's going to day at some point

I don't really know what you're going on about? We're all going to die, we all know that that's going to happen, but none of us want to suffer and most of us would like to live relatively long lives.

I am not a parent but I think if I did have a kid I would try everything I could to keep my child alive and minimize pain in my child's life.

Typically yes? But surviving infancy is the first step on the road to immortality (but that will require more than CRISPR... probably?)

Immortality? (rolleyes)

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43998721 and marked it off topic.

Please observe the guidelines, especially these ones:

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Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

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can you tell me which rule the comment broke?

I suggested a few that covered your multiple comments in the subthread, and also people who are sincere about using HN in accordance with the guidelines and the site's intended purpose have a way of demonstrating it through their actions. If you want to contribute here, please make an effort to be a positive contributor.

> I suggested a few that covered your multiple comments in the subthread

I genuinely can't link any of these to any of my comments, that's why I'm asking. I reread those a couple of times. I really think I've been polite, and I really tried to be, even when called "beteft of humanity", "earnest" and accused of trolling. I did not insult anybody, didn't want to and I certainly didn't want to bring anyone down. I just asked a question that seemed (and still seems) logical to me, only to get shutdown by mass flagging, now by removal of the comment with no real explanation what rules I broke and why I was negative

OK, maybe there's a cultural or language disconnect here, so, if you're genuinely confused as to why this came across as offensive, I believe you.

Please just understand that it can be upsetting to many people in the HN audience, as evidenced by the votes and comments, when the topic of death is addressed in this way: i.e., in a way that seems hyper-rationalist and diminishing of the way premature death – especially of infants and children – is particularly devastating to parents and loved ones.

[delayed]

> OK, maybe there's a cultural or language disconnect here

I might be just shit at expressing my thoughts in English

> when the topic of death is addressed in this way: i.e., in a way that seems hyper-rationalist

This is why I kept pushing and asking - I thought that HN is all about logical thinking and not letting your emotions go through and think for you.

I don't know if you are still insisting that I broke the rules - you don't have to explain in which way I broke them, I understand that I don't understand. A simple yes or no would suffice, if I could ask you.

And thank you for taking the time for discussing this with me. Regardless of the answer for the above question I will refrain from talki

[flagged]

Please don't comment like this, no matter how bad the comment you're replying to. The guidelines apply to everyone equally:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My bad. I had been reading about how there's a frustration in the community that allistic people refuse to explain why such statements are wrong, and instead just repeat "you know what you did!" to people who genuinely don't.

I tried to be the one who didn't do that, but missed the mark. I'd delete it if I could.

Only 1% of the population has autism. Presenting autism as a considerable possibility for trollish behavior isn't much different than what the parent commenter did.

[flagged]

now, confirmed.

What was the question? The rampant flagging here is quite annoying.

My original comment said:

> But your child will die and that's a fact. Is it only ok for it to die after you?

Is there more context to this question? I couldn't read the article because of the pay wall. But in isolation, this is a dumb question. All decent parents want their child to live as long as possible and be as healthy as possible. Is there something deeper you were trying to get at?

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