Comment by shadowlight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shadowlight | Hacker News Reader

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> Yes they fought through the means of consumer choice, the least oppressive means in history. And they lost.

They lied and deliberately used biased scientific research. These execs even swore on oath IN a congressional hearing before congress that tobacco was healthy even when internal documents leaked by a whistleblower told the exact opposite. This is the new way to oppress people. Lies, deception, omission and obfuscation. It's insidious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJBaBJawnSY

>Nuclear waste doesn't have fallout. Coal today is causing more radiation deaths than nuclear.

I should correct myself, Radiation. Not Fallout. Either way this is the current mantra followed by a minority of educated people who harp this endlessly. You're not wrong and you're more informed than most but you're not looking at the full picture.

There's no numbers on what this waste will do 24,000 from now. There's literally no data and no science on building structures that can encase that stuff for that long or even longer. Nobody knows. So in essence you don't know what will happen in the future. You have no clue yet you support it blindly, why?

That is my point. You don't know and you don't give a shit. The long term effects are irrelevant to you. 24,000 years in the future is not something anyone gives a shit about. Just like how the long term effects of making plastic are irrelevant to the owner of the plastic factory.

Additionally I would like to know your background. Sorry for getting personal, but background influences bias. You seem to be a guy who's super rich and an owner or shareholder of big business.

Hi, shadowlight! Your comment here is a bit out of place. HN is a nice place where folks come for interesting news and conversation. In order to keep this place civil there are guidelines in place, which you can find at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and review at your leisure.

I've included some here for your reference:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

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

Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

Except I'm not doing ANY of that. Your comment is deceptively insulting and your tone is overly polite and fake. Case in point: "Hi shadowlight!".

Look, I remained impartial and neutral and civil in my comment. Read it carefully there is no violation of the rules, I've been here longer than you for sure so I know the rules and I know what constitutes a violation. This is NOT it.

No seriously, it's like a murderer accusing a nun of killing somebody. There is absolutely NONE of what you are claiming is going on here. It's almost an outright lie, I'm curious if you're just biased or if you're a liar.

Additionally who are you? Are you impersonating an admin? You're obviously NOT dang.

It's not written in the law nor is it in the the HN rules but walking around and pretending you're a cop is sketchy and strange. Especially when you're not even remotely qualified to do the job AND you're executing the directive incorrectly.

I'll help you differentiate between snark and no snark. This reply has a bit of snark because I'm talking to a vigilante HN cop, the OTHER reply was completely impartial and civil. That is the difference.

EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25162954

Look in the link above, another example of this guy trying and failing (he literally got scolded by dang) to enforce the rules when he's not even part of authority. I suggest you back off and use the tools given to you to moderate. Use the karma. Get to 800 and you can vote me down if you disagree.

This is not civil, FYI:

> So in essence you don't know what will happen in the future. You have no clue yet you support it blindly, why?

>

> That is my point. You don't know and you don't give a shit. The long term effects are irrelevant to you.

That is completely civil. It is just to the point and adamant rather than fake and simpish and overly polite. Whether what I stated is true or untrue, the nature of what I said was not derogatory or insulting.

I specifically stated that the person supports something, and in my opinion, blindly. I also stated he doesn't care about something and I ALSO implied most of the population of the world doesn't care EITHER. Those are words that are forceful But civil.

You are totally not comprehending the difference between civility and servitude. Learn to put force, power and truth behind your conviction while being civil and not being afraid to harm the other persons precious feelings.

> Learn to put force, power and truth behind your conviction while being civil and not being afraid to harm the other persons precious feelings.

Calling them "precious" feelings sort of belies the idea that you're just talking facts in a forceful way.

If you struggle to separate your disdain for people who disagree with you then that's a chance to grow, or a chance to dig your heels in.

Seems you've made your choice; hopefully one day you'll reverse it.

>Calling them "precious" feelings sort of belies the idea that you're just talking facts in a forceful way.

Feelings shouldn't be precious. They should be disregarded. When communicating a point, if disdain is felt it should be presented. If it is not felt then it shouldn't be presented.

>If you struggle to separate your disdain for people who disagree with you then that's a chance to grow, or a chance to dig your heels in.

I hold disdain for certain people. But not for all people who disagree with me. Clearly what you're saying is completely false.

Growth to me is not the ability to separate disdain from disagreement. Growth is the ability to not hide your disdain. To express it when it's required.

To you I am not expressing disdain. You only perceive it as such because you disdain what I am saying. The reality is, I'm the same as you. I'm quite well off. The difference between us, is that I don't twist reality or morality to justify my sins.

I knew you were rich and well off, because I am rich and well off. Why would I disdain someone like me? The only difference between us is that I don't lie to myself.

> Sorry for getting personal, but background influences bias. You seem to be a guy who's super rich and an owner or shareholder of big business.

I'm not any of those things; my family grew up with our Dad maintaining 2 30-year-old cars to keep costs down. I would advise a) keeping any biases in check and b) realising that even if I were wealthy, that would in no way affect the relative safety issues between different power generation methods.

> I would advise a) keeping any biases in check

They are in check. I said you seem like a rich person. I didn't say you ARE rich. I would still wager a guess that although you grew up poor you currently are quite well off compared with your past.

What is influencing my reasoning is not bias. You support free market policies that encourage wealth inequality. This benefits those who are rich. Hence my guess is you must be rich because than this would benefit you.

It had nothing to do with power generation but more to do with how you're stating the corporate interests of companies like big tobacco/oil were fair because of "consumer choice."

That is a logical deduction of the situation to formulate hypothesis. It is not a hypothesis derived from bias.

> They are in check. I said you seem like a rich person. I didn't say you ARE rich. I would still wager a guess that although you grew up poor you currently are quite well off compared with your past.

>

> What is influencing my reasoning is not bias. You support free market policies that encourage wealth inequality.

The fact that your first guess is that free markets allowed me to lift myself out of poverty may mean you're more pro free market economies than you realise :)

I'm not against the free market. That's the problem with people like you. It's an either/or thing and you completely fail to see the nuance behind the issue. The free market is an example of a system with many upsides and many downsides. If I call out the many downsides you assume I'm against the free market.

Any normal person can literally see both. It's completely obvious that capitalism has upsides and downsides and currently the upsides out weigh the downsides. However normal people know that we have to keep the downsides in check.

The people who tend to be unaware of all of this are people how are rich because the policies that seek to temper the bad side of capitalism disproportionately effect rich people. That's the main issue with capitalism. Wealth is not distributed fairly, it concentrates in the hands of the few and those few using the money they gained use it to create lies about tobacco/oil and manipulate the public in ways a normal person never would. Hence policies are directed to temper the bad sides of capitalism; but it has limited affect because rich people themselves can influence public option and use their money to perpetuate policy in their favor as well.

How do men justify such evilness? Well of course he lies to himself saying he does no evil and that everything was a consumer choice. Hitler like all other evil men are unaware of how evil they are, these people need to rationalize their actions with excuses.

I'm willing to wager a second guess, in that whatever made you rationalize and justify the actions of Big Tobacco and Big Oil started in an action of your own doing that benefited you majorly. You needed to justify an action that you took of your own free will and that justification changed your view of the world such that it also validated the actions of Big Tobacco and Big Oil. That action or actions(s) is likely responsible for how well off you are today.

Whether the justification itself is valid is besides the point as our biases will likely never agree on that fact. But I'm sure we can agree that the event I mentioned above has happened to you, as no normal person supports this aspect of Big Tobacco or big oil, it literally takes some heavy introspection to reverse this logic and create an alternative world view.

> That's the problem with people like you.

Please don't pretend you're a serious, rational debater when you say things like this. You keep inventing things I must be and insulting them. You should be addressing the points made instead.

The topic of this conversation is two things. Free markets, and your background in relation to your opinion on free markets. If predictions I make about your character are wrong then just say it's wrong and tell me why.

Instead one of the first things you did was deflect. I said you were well off, you said when you were a kid you were not well off. I stayed on course and said that your past has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. You are currently well off and that's why you have such opinions about the free market.

I highly doubt you'd support the free market policies you do now when you were poor. Likely you never thought about these policies until you became rich. That is my point. The whole point is that your wrong about the free market and evidence is that your foundations for supporting such a thing have more to do with your circumstance than it does with reality.

Defeating your argument involves getting personal because personal reasons are the foundations of your argument.

If I'm wrong it's easy to point out that I'm wrong. All you gotta do is tell me exactly the inflection point in which you developed this free market logic. Was it when you were poor or when you were rich? I'm simply saying they came about when you were rich.

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