Hacker News: TreeRingCounter

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 00:17:49 +0000

This has nothing to do with expectations - it's an inquiry into why something is worse now, without a clear justification.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 18:28:21 +0000

If your reaction is personal outrage at me rather than considering the issue at hand, you are probably too emotionally involved to form a useful opinion.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 18:02:48 +0000

You're making things up about me (all untrue, incidentally) so you can write off my argument as heartless or something instead of actually addressing it.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:59:47 +0000

Why would I want to talk to someone about an issue I couldn't possibly expect them to have a rational opinion on?

> One of the frustrating aspects of arguments like this

Is people insisting on making a society-scale issue into a personal, emotional issue?

> is that proponents of "social efficiency" aren't personally impacted their proposed policies

Oh. Well funny enough, I actually do have a couple serious dietary intolerances - but I don't insist on externalizing my costs onto others against their will.

It may be alien to you, but in fact I am perfectly capable of considering policy decisions that are bad for me but good for society. Some people can't do it, I guess.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:56:36 +0000

Very sad stuff, but nonetheless I have zero interest in subsidizing your social preferences (either through regulation or litigation costs). Lots of people live good lives without going to restaurants all the time. Have a barbecue or something.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:25:01 +0000

> Schools started doing so because it became a serious liability issue with kids weaponizing it for bullying and leading to death

This sounds completely absurd and hyperbolic, but let's say I took it at face value - why is this an issue now and not an issue when I was in school?

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:22:45 +0000

"Free speech" is not the notion of "say whatever you want regardless of if it's helpful"; it's "don't prevent people from saying things that are subjectively unhelpful".

Free speech "pragmatism" is essentially completely meaningless - if the belief isn't extremely hard-line, it rapidly degenerates to something that has zero moral consequence.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:20:39 +0000

I guarantee you that schools were not throwing out peanut butter sandwiches when I was a kid, and many of the schools I went to are doing so now.

I'm sure you can find an article about peanut allergies at any point in recorded history where they had peanuts.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:16:51 +0000

> it is not "socially efficient" to make any accommodations to disability

More or less. The overwhelming majority of legally mandated disability subsidies in the US are horrendously anti-utilitarian.

> It would be "socially efficient" to euthanize our elderly

This type of absurd claim is a crystal clear indicator of someone who's stuck on a zeroth-order approximation of utilitarianism and isn't factoring in any higher-order terms like people's responses to incentives.

If we started killing old people, would that result in a net decrease in pro-social behavior? Obviously.

If we stopped wasting huge quantities of marginal resources on infrastructure due to e.g. ADA requirements, would that result in a net decrease in pro-social behavior? It would not.

> We have, as a society, decided that we value human life and dignity more than any of that kind of "social efficiency"

Another common refrain of the economically illiterate - claiming to "value human life" while simultaneously working against policies that would actually improve human flourishing. It's also very generous to describe the outcome of selectorate mechanics and lobbying as "we, as a society, decided..."

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:10:52 +0000

> Soylent Green is “socially efficient.”

No it's not, but it's a good sniff test for people who have a zeroth-order model of utilitarianism and aren't thinking about things like incentives.

> It’s increasing, for some reason.

I agree - my suspicion is that accommodating the 0.1% of kids with peanut allergies means that another 0.5% of kids (or whatever, made up fractions) never get enough exposure to peanut allergens to develop a tolerance, so the problem is self-reinforcing.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 17:09:00 +0000

Federal laws mandating absurdly costly subsidies of very small minorities is not what "high-trust society" means.

You're right in one sense - living in a low-trust society is very socially inefficient. I just don't think you have a working model of why we're becoming low-trust. It certainly has nothing to do with accommodating rare allergies.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 16:30:29 +0000

We shouldn't be doing either of these things. It wasn't a serious problem 20 years ago when kids would bring whatever allergens to lunch. Throwing away peanut foods is an absurd overreaction and misdirection of food-safety resources.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 16:29:25 +0000

Why don't you just stop eating at restaurants and/or take appropriate steps to protect yourself?

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more foods"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 16:28:24 +0000

> The odds that a homemade food stand accidentally gives a stray peanut to a consumer with a deadly allergy are low

The odds per food item consumed are higher for small food businesses that aren't as easily forced into absurd clean-room manufacturing. This analysis makes no sense.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 11:25:08 +0000

What are you expecting, a post where you say "you're not allowed to talk about controversial topics"? No, the way this works is that a controversial topic comes up, an interesting conversation ensues, you see something you don't like, and the post gets removed or flagged or you come in with a vague comment like "please do not start flame wars ", "personal attacks are not allowed ", etc. Do this enough times and people obviously stop having these discussions. Most of the people I used to enjoy talking with on this site either no longer post here or treat HN as a sort of linkedin, as the ancestor post described.

You are not directly responsible for all of this - there is also a less tolerant culture among commenters, resulting in massively more echo-chamber-ish voting and flagging patterns, as well as a tendency to bother people off-site. I have started using nym accounts because in recent years, people have tried to harass me or my employer over posts that wouldn't have garnered any special attention whatsoever 5-10 years ago. This cultural shift is (I think) partially due to growth, but also partially due to the culture your moderation techniques encourage (intentionally or not). The culture of rigorous open discourse over novel/controversial topics has been almost completely destroyed here, in favor of a culture of facially polite business-friendly chatter (i.e. linkedin).

I think I understand the constraints you are operating under, and this outcome is a not-unreasonable compromise given those constraints, but it is not the one I would have picked. We already have linkedin for this. HN used to serve a different (and arguably more socially useful) function, and it still could, in theory.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays"

TreeRingCounter — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 01:08:20 +0000

> At least for me, the idea of HN being a place where people exercise free flowing polarizing ideas is pretty foreign

Precisely. HN used to be a lot more about discussing novel/controversial ideas freely. That kind of discussion is ruthlessly suppressed now.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays"

TreeRingCounter — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 18:00:25 +0000

While I really dislike the track of moderation policy on HN over the last 5+ years, I do have a lot of respect for dang being willing to engage in earnest discussion about moderation when prompted.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays"

TreeRingCounter — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 17:57:46 +0000

The guidelines are (I assume intentionally) vague enough that moderation can selectively object to basically anything, claim it's on the basis of tone/personal attack/flamewar risk/etc, link to the guidelines with no further explanation, and call it a day.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays"

TreeRingCounter — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 17:55:29 +0000

> it also gradually managed to cure me from free-speech absolutism

It's entirely unsurprising that people who appreciate current moderator behavior also have zero philosophical backbone.

New comment by TreeRingCounter in "Lionel Messi Is Impossible (2014)"

TreeRingCounter — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 17:20:04 +0000

This theorem is completely irrelevant - the equivalence relation described by the theorem does not imply an equivalence between ordinal relationships imposed by different choice of norm. Also, "tails" isn't the same as "at infinity".