Hacker News Reader

Comment by nindalf | Hacker News Reader

The difference is hyperbole. You make it sound like you’re being personally harassed by a minimum of 10 children, possibly taking shift coverage to make sure to infect you 24x7.

And you’re comparing that with actual smokers who would actually light up at every opportunity.

Oh it’s “just one cigarette” that you would smoke right? Just one. Why are these unreasonable people persecuting you unreasonably for just one. Of course you wouldn’t smoke a second. Of course no one else would smoke one after seeing you.

View on HN

Children light up at every opportunity. If you've ever been in a row with a few of them, they have no control over the contents of their lungs. Smokers do, actually, ask in most cases.

In terms ten second-hand cigarettes damaging you on a flight, or ten coughing children, I don't understand how you think the smoke would be more dangerous. Cancer risk from smoke is cumulative, whereas risk from contagious diseases is immediate.

> Smokers do, actually, ask in most cases.

I take it you didn't live through the era of unrestricted tobacco smoking then. Smokers absolutely do not ask whether they can smoke unless they know they really shouldn't, but hope they'll be allowed to anyway.

Aside from that, it is obviously ridiculous to compare disease (which is rarely something one gets willingly, and cannot be stopped at will) with smoking (a wilful decision, and something that can be stopped at will).

I'm sorry that you may have encountered smokers who didn't ask your permission. But I have never encountered a parent who asked my permission before their child coughed in my face. I'm comparing the thoughtless spreading of diseases with the, relatively, under the circumstances, thoughtful manner in which most smokers exhale their poison. And, relative to the immediate toxicity of the poisons in question, there's no doubt that the parents of children should be asking permission.

How far removed from real life must you be to complain that parents aren't asking you for permission before... allowing their children to be sick? Allowing their sick children to cough?

Disease is an unavoidable fact of human life and children are a necessary piece of society, but tobacco is entirely unneeded.

I'm just saying that it's hardly more of a burden on society for someone to burn some dry leaves than for someone to create a new human or several of them, with all the burden that places on our ecosystem and our society. Having children is a wildly antisocial and narcissistic act in the modern world. It's hilarious and ironic that the people who defend it are the same ones who care whether I smoke a cigarette from time to time, or who whinge about global warming. The worst thing you can possibly do to the planet is to have a child. It outweighs every personal measure you might take against carbon emissions, tenfold, for reasons that are too obvious to explain. Yet this, and the imposition of said children on me, is somehow justifiable whereas my having a cigarette on an airplane would be unimaginable. I think the modern word for the perspective of parents who believe they have a natural right to take up more resources than their own bodies require, solely because they did something any animal can do - ie. reproduced - is "privilege".

This line of reasoning troubles me. Calling swaths of people narcissistic and antisocial isn’t productive and comes off as really hateful and bitter. IDK. Maybe hacker news isn’t a healthy place for me to be. Perhaps I need to take a break from the Internet.

I think it's important to point out that I didn't "call" any swath of people anything; I flipped the accusation of engaging in antisocial behavior that's routinely leveled at childless, hedonistic smokers on its head, and made the counter-argument that our impact is relatively small compared to people who willingly have children. That is definitely an unpopular view, and I'm proud to state it. You can totally consider it unproductive and debate it on the merits. As to the feelings my point of view engenders, 1. my comments don't really matter and you are free to ignore them; 2. you're free to discuss or debate them; 3. you don't need to take them personally, because I'm just one person with my own opinion. As unpopular as it is. You can't expect everyone to only write things you love and agree with, especially those who aren't directly responding to you or didn't know you existed until moments ago. I'm sorry if my thoughts hurt your feelings.

[edit] Taking a break from the internet is never a bad idea, though. I could probably use one myself. I could use another trip. I do wish the alternative to staying home wasn't getting on a plane with everyone else's children... only slightly kidding.

> Smokers do, actually, ask in most cases.

That's not my experience, at all. In places where they are allowed to smoke, which used to be everywhere, they either take it for granted that they can smoke and just do it; or they 'ask' with something like "surely you don't mind" while already lighting their cigarette. And some of them do the same even in places where they're not allowed to, but fortunately that's a shrinking minority.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com