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Comment by otikik | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

If you've read the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), it should be clear that comments like this one—indignant, generic, and fulminant—violate the intended use of the site. Please don't do this here.

Thoughtful critique is fine, of course.

It’s not “generic”. It refers to, like, 100 people or less.

There’s a comment down below that says “most young people would do it”. Why don’t you say anything to that person?

Generic has to do with categories, not quantity. But this was not a borderline call—it's the kind of comment the guidelines are trying to persuade, cajole, and/or coax you into not posting here!

Not that you owe the rich and powerful better, necessarily, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

> Why don’t you say anything to that person?

Purely because I didn't see it. It's flagkilled now.

We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted to HN—there's far too much. When you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, that's the likeliest explanation. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Fair enough. Thank you for your work, I know it can be quite demanding to deal with people like this all the time.

Thanks for the kind reply :)

Reminiscent of Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

It's kind of the opposite in most ways.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely" always seemed to assume all people were the same. Psychopaths are quite different from non-psychopaths. What if increasing lifespan 24 hours required doubling the number of people killed each day?

Very few wouldn't, unless very much driven by their religion to fetish death.

Who wouldn't select a part of the population they find unsaveable, say evil genocidal billionaires, and sacrifice them for extending their own lifespan + improving how they believe the world should be? Win-win.

I would not because it’s evil.

Standard fare to excuse powerful people who do actual harm with something about human nature.

So who am I to judge? I have impurities in my heart because I dislike people who cause harm. Best wait for the saints to weigh in.

> Very few wouldn't, unless very much driven by their religion to fetish death.

I feel sad that you seemingly have met more people who lack compassion and empathy than ones who have it. Personally, I don't know (or "hang out" rather maybe) many people who'd sacrifice anyone's life just to live a day longer, and I don't think that's a useful default view to have of people, most people I've met don't want to hurt others. Most people will hurt others if they can avoid getting hurt themselves by doing so, but that doesn't mean those same people would sacrifice someone's life to get another day.

Though many would sacrifice an intelligent animals like a pig or dolphin and they’d do this optionally

In the West, most will happily slaughter a cow but never a dog (and by slaughter, I mean allow someone else to slaughter it for you, but never be OK with doing it yourself). In many Indian states, cow slaughter is a crime. Many places in China traditionally ate dog meat. People all over the world make more-or-less arbitrary decisions about which animals are OK to kill, and that's before even talking about their fellow humans.

I'm not a nihilist and I do eat meat. I think we should minimize suffering to others. But I can see how anybody could be conditioned to think otherwise. It's not some inherent human instinct to want to preserve others' lives. We've had to develop that instinct culturally.

The evil genocidal billionaires will be the ones killing to extend their lifespan. Not the other way around.

Friend, I would shorten my life by a day to moderately improve the convenience of someone I barely know. I've spent enough time in this meat grinder.

Well that is a sad, sad, world view. I think very few people would. Precisely that lack of scruples is a prerequisite and a consequence of becoming rich and powerful.

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