Hacker News: HedonicEscal8r

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Why are we even doing all this?"

HedonicEscal8r — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:24:14 +0000

Why object to my comment and not Ikey's?

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Why are we even doing all this?"

HedonicEscal8r — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:16:16 +0000

Usefulness and efficiency should serve all humans, rather than privileging the feelings of elites accustomed to receiving accolades for their intellectual capabilities.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Why are we even doing all this?"

HedonicEscal8r — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:04:23 +0000

The author made a stupid argument and the choice of comparison is part of that stupidity.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "U.S. may have overthrown Venezuela due to chat with Grok"

HedonicEscal8r — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:26:24 +0000

vibewar

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Nobody Asked for a Crab Chair"

HedonicEscal8r — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 19:03:44 +0000

If you read the article, you'd know the author is in favor of tech innovation.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Nobody Asked for a Crab Chair"

HedonicEscal8r — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 19:02:09 +0000

I think the author is understandably frustrated about seeing a lot of fanfare for sexy prototypes years or decades from the market, when he struggles every day with flaws in his actual mobility devices that could be improved in months if the manufacturers cared enough to do it.

The author is misguided in blaming the crab chair engineers for this state of affairs. The crab chair engineers aren't responsible for the myriad socioeconomic inefficiencies that make wheelchairs suck today. If they didn't work on crab chairs, they'd work on some other artsy project, and we still wouldn't have better wheelchairs. But everyone in this thread needs to chill out and stop being so personally offended that this writer is holding back human progress by not ass-kissing the crab chair.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Nobody Asked for a Crab Chair"

HedonicEscal8r — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 18:53:25 +0000

You try to sit down on a chair and it walks away, leaving you to fall on your butt. Laugh track plays.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Nobody Asked for a Crab Chair"

HedonicEscal8r — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 18:52:29 +0000

Pretty weird to blame "this demographic" for a single disabled guy writing a mildly critical article!

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Creatine uptake enhances antitumor immunity"

HedonicEscal8r — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 18:43:41 +0000

This is false, it's only B12 you need to supplement (and meat-eaters also get B12 through supplements, just indirectly).

Most people are not deficient in vitamins and minerals - the benefits of supplementing are highly exaggerated. Evidence is not good.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

HedonicEscal8r — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 22:02:52 +0000

I had sex I didn't like, which means it must be objectively bad. Boom, rationalists owned.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

HedonicEscal8r — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 21:50:17 +0000

AI safety advocates do not typically demand to be given personal political power, only for a set of preferred policies to be enacted, like anyone advocating for any political cause.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Creatine uptake enhances antitumor immunity"

HedonicEscal8r — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:51:02 +0000

"Immunity" = "immune system activity." "Anti-tumor immunity" = "immune system activity against tumors."

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Creatine uptake enhances antitumor immunity"

HedonicEscal8r — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:50:05 +0000

Essentially none. Creatine supplementation is a good idea for most people, especially vegans/vegetarians.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Making the case for Ed Zitron as the last of the great bloggers"

HedonicEscal8r — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:11:36 +0000

No, it's actually very easy to consistently make wrong predictions. You're imagining a scenario where the incorrect and correct options are symmetric in some way, such as predicting whether a stock will go up or down.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "Everybody's Lost Their Minds"

HedonicEscal8r — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 20:59:42 +0000

Is that supposed be a lot? That article states that all US data centers combined consume 450 million gallons a day, equivalent to 90 towns, which does not sound like very much.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "After Math"

HedonicEscal8r — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 07:04:29 +0000

I appreciate the wordplay in the title.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "De-Brainrot Vacations"

HedonicEscal8r — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 17:07:19 +0000

As a young person, I have no idea what you guys are talking about, and recommend not overgeneralizing from anecdotes.

Don't be the Vitamin B guy: towards scientific rigor for decentralized science

HedonicEscal8r — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:30:17 +0000

Article URL: https://hedonicescalator.substack.com/p/dont-be-the-vitamin-b-guy

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49534727

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul"

HedonicEscal8r — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:40:40 +0000

> Anarchist

> Name is John Law

Makes sense.

New comment by HedonicEscal8r in "FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer"

HedonicEscal8r — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 03:23:38 +0000

mRNA vaccines are being studied for pancreatic cancer. To quote a post I wrote in April:

> First, the personalized mRNA vaccine autogene cevumeran, developed by BioNTech and Genentech, just reported 6-year follow-up results from their Phase 1 clinical trial. 16 patients were treated, 8 were responders (showed signs of immune reaction to vaccine), 8 were non-responders.

> 7/8 responders (87.5%) survived 6 years after surgery, 2/8 nonresponders survived (25%).

> AACR meeting notes https://www.aacr.org/blog/2026/04/20/live-updates-from-the-a...

> The most important result in this small trial is that vaccine response is strongly correlated with better outcomes. But for context, the trial was restricted to patients with operable pancreatic cancer. Patients diagnosed with stage 1 or 2 pancreatic cancer have a 5-year survival rate of 12%. Patients who get their pancreatic cancer surgically removed have a 5-year post-surgery survival rate of 20%. This makes the overall 6-year post-surgery survival rate of 56% among the 16 trial patients pretty impressive. Keep in mind that the trial patients may have been healthier than average for other reasons, and small n is small n, so we shouldn't be too hasty until we see Phase 2 and 3 data.

> Source on survival rates https://www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk/information/just-diagnos...

Still early, unfortunately, so it will be a while before we see more updates.