Hacker News Reader

Thanks very much for engaging the content of my post.

I was disheartened to have shared my inner conflict on the issue, only to be downvoted into oblivion.

Just in case it adds clarification. I think the downvotes are due to equating HIV to justice. Smoking once it is well understood I guess kinda is, but HIV is really just a matter of luck like all infectious diseases. You can reduce your risk (eg masks for stopping flu or COVID), but to call it “justice” feels very callous to me.

Thanks for that. It sounds like I did a terrible job of expressing my thoughts.

Perhaps one of my mistakes was using HIV as an example. If someone only skimmed my post, they may have pattern-matched on the whole "AIDS is punishment from God" trope, which is 100% not what I was trying to say.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com