Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Completely agree - in fact I am starting to look at fats and sugar as drugs at least as harmful long term as some "real" drugs. When you look at coca cola adverts and big supermarkets as pushers, things start to become much clearer and the scale of the struggle on obesity really is startling.

So yes, I am in favour of democratic nanny states.

View on HN

You don't need a nanny state as a solution. In fact that's bad as it leaves people to believe they don't need to critically think about things because 'nanny' has them covered.

They need better regulation, education (not the systemic industrial kind currently provided) and discussion. Marketplace of ideas and all that.

7 billion people are not going to think in a critical way. It didn't happen when we had 1 billion, nor 2, 3... And the difficult is growing. To deal with it is the only reason politics was created.

PS: we are asking the same: better regulation and education (and more boards of discussion) is the foundation of a great state.

Indeed, but is non-critical thinking a default, or the outcome of systems put in place? I.e. Which root cause is being assumed?

I think non-critical thinking for the modern society is the default of the human being, and the critical thinking we have by default might not be always suitable (adrenaline, rage, lies/plots, violence, store calories/overeat, etc).

Both are true, depending on the individual. One one end you'll find people who insist on thinking for themselves no matter their environment. On the other end of the scale you'll find people who never think, even when placed in an environment that encourages them to think. In the middle, were probably most people exist, you find the impressionable people. People who would think for themselves if the environment was conducive for it, but stop thinking for themselves when given the right encouragement. They drink coca cola because they see advertisements for it everywhere, but if those advertisements were banned they might choose to drink something else instead.

That's the way I see it anyway; one big gradient. I don't believe the world is so black or white that the entire population exists on one extreme or the other.

Late to reply but thanks for the comments

The UK at the moment seems to have a bad case of regulation == nanny == bad

Whenever I hear someone saying thing s are over regulated, it means they have a great wheeze to scam someone out of cash if only it was allowed.

I fully believe that education is great and sensible regulation to the benefit of all but my core assumption about designing a society is to have sane defaults

The simplest would be something like SAYE (Save As You Earn) where your employer pushes 10% of your paycheck into a index isa each month from the age of 18.

Basically if you do nothing but accept the default, you arrive at 55 years old with a pension.

(effectively that's what is happening now in UK with pensions)

The defaults for society should leave us with a decent floor - and it's up to us to raise the ceiling.

Call it a nanny state, sensible regulation, or the only way to release a distro

Sugar, absolutely. Which fats do you have in mind?

Sugar and fats are both compounds present in nature, and evolution hardwired us to search them out as high calorie sources. Modern food processing has drastically lowered the cost/increased availability of those substances, allowing individuals and companies to increase the amount included in prepared/processed food. Oils are necessary to life and sugars aren't, is the only difference really. Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

Trans fats perhaps, which we still allow in foods, and don't even need to be included on the nutritional label %'s if the amount is low.

They're still everywhere, despite the fact we're pretty sure they are unhealthy at any dose.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com