Hacker News: ksdale

New comment by ksdale in "What would a “good” WebMD look like?"

ksdale — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 18:04:48 +0000

I don't really get it either. My biggest complaint is that they tell you to go see the doctor for everything and 9/10 of the time the doctor will tell you to go home and take ibuprofen and see what happens.

I think it's generally possible to tell, based on what's provided on WebMD, what symptoms would cause a doctor to recommend an immediate trip to the ER or surgery or pharmaceuticals. It's required learning more than I would otherwise know about how my organs function, but I also don't think I know like... an exceptional amount about the human body.

New comment by ksdale in "TikTok videos leave teens thinking they have rare mental disorders (2021)"

ksdale — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 15:43:18 +0000

This. Patriarchy sort of collectively defines the "emotion" out of the ways that men act out. When women cry, they're being emotional, when men get angry, it's a rational response to people acting the wrong way. (Not to mention the fact that the idea of being "emotional" is itself, considered bad somehow!) When you start to notice the ways that men act out emotionally for what they are, it becomes apparent that men are easily as emotional as women (I'd argue much more so), it just manifests in ways that society has deemed manly.

New comment by ksdale in "A weird epic ramble about Etsy homepages from the middle 2000’s"

ksdale — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 18:53:29 +0000

I played some sports growing up, but I also really strongly disliked a lot of sports that I didn't play (which I now don't mind watching at all), and I think if you like anything competitive, it's possible to at least get interested enough in some sports to use them as a conversation starter.

One thing that helps me get interested in sports I don't otherwise care about is to think of them like a board-game, thinking through the math of various possibilities and optimal strategies.

Another thing, if you live in a state that's amenable, is to bet small amounts on the outcomes of games. Betting $20 on a game makes it way more entertaining (for me anyway), and when I lose, it was worth the money just to enjoy the game more.

The last thing that helps is to think of it as a purely physical performance. Going to watch live sports can help with this - but for people who haven't spent much time in the sporting world, it's hard to understand how big, how fast, how strong, how coordinated, professional athletes are, and it's possible to just enjoy watching people running and jumping and throwing the same way you'd enjoy watching people dance or play music or esports or whatever, just people with exceptional skills doing exceptional things.

At this point in my life, I emphatically do not enjoy sports for their own sake, I pay attention to them for the social aspect and for the reasons mentioned above, but I couldn't care less about the outcomes of anything. It's a far cry from how I felt about them as a young person, but it's evidence, perhaps, that not being interested in them doesn't mean I can't still connect with people over them.

New comment by ksdale in "We haven’t killed 90% of all plankton"

ksdale — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 19:35:37 +0000

Definitely what I said

New comment by ksdale in "You can‘t take the Bar exam if your laptop is too modern"

ksdale — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 19:35:13 +0000

This is exactly how I feel as well. There is a ton of stuff that lawyers do that is basically rote, there are a handful of questions you need to ask, and then you do the thing, and there's no reason someone with an associate's degree and a six week training course couldn't do it, with a strict rule to refer more complicated stuff to the attorneys.

New comment by ksdale in "You can‘t take the Bar exam if your laptop is too modern"

ksdale — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 19:33:16 +0000

I was under the impression that most attorneys are not litigators. You can easily spend a career writing wills or creating trusts or doing business formations, or helping people through real estate transactions without ever setting foot in a courtroom.

One of the first things they taught us in law school is that most lawyers won't actually spend much time at all in a courtroom, and I've found that to be true. There's so much else that lawyers do, and a lot of it is done preliminarily by paralegals, and in my opinion, a lot of it could go out the door at that point, having been done by the paralegal. I actually think a lot of work does go out the door at that point and there's just a grand performance happening where we all pretend that the lawyer did more than a cursory review.

Maybe that's not how law should be practiced, but judging by the wills and LLC agreements that come across my desk, it's how it is practiced and the world goes on without noticing.

New comment by ksdale in "We haven’t killed 90% of all plankton"

ksdale — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 17:08:55 +0000

I disagree that it's overblown. For every study that's utterly failed to replicate over the past however many decades, people have been "sure it is more likely to be correct than the alternative" and that's literally not the case. The word "science" has been invoked in a way that makes people believe that they have more information about the world than they do. Updating towards a study that wasn't properly conducted is worse than the study not existing, because it removes uncertainty that you should still possess, but it is touted as "science" in popular media all the same.

New comment by ksdale in "You can‘t take the Bar exam if your laptop is too modern"

ksdale — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 18:29:38 +0000

As a lawyer, there is so much more that falls under the umbrella of "practicing law" that is nowhere near as demanding as a trial or contract negotiations. I personally think the credentials that lawyers have are completely unnecessary for a large portion of the tasks that only lawyers are allowed to perform.

I think the bar exam is more like, sufficient but not necessary, anyone who can pass the bar is easily capable of being a lawyer, but I don't think the bar is necessary at all to prove that someone is capable.

New comment by ksdale in "The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction (2017)"

ksdale — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 19:51:23 +0000

I'm always complaining to my wife about movies with a detective/mystery component where the key to the whole thing is revealed after the mystery is solved and is is something that we, as viewers, could not possibly have known. It feels the same as using magic. It's always seemed to me that it should be possible for the viewer to solve the mystery at the same time as the protagonist, given only what the viewer knows so far. It's validating to see that this is considered a vital component of a detective story, at least by some.

New comment by ksdale in "A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem"

ksdale — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 18:12:20 +0000

I don't see any problem with that, I'm not the one who said it was ironic that a woman would marry an ambitious man and then have problems with moving to Asia. I don't see any conflict at all between loving someone's ambition and also wanting other things from the relationship.

New comment by ksdale in "Elon Musk makes $43B unsolicited bid to take Twitter private"

ksdale — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 19:12:49 +0000

It will be rather difficult for the board to argue that it's satisfying it's fiduciary duty by rejecting an offer with such a high premium so the current shareholders can continue to own a company that's losing money.

New comment by ksdale in "A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem"

ksdale — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 22:01:55 +0000

Haha the parent post literally said that it was ironic that a woman would marry an ambitious man and then complain about said ambition. The ambition, implicitly, being wanting to move to Asia for a job. It seems to me if a woman isn't allowed to complain about moving continents for a job, she's not allowed to complain about anything, and this is, therefore, not a strawman.

New comment by ksdale in "A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem"

ksdale — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 19:20:46 +0000

Marrying a successful, ambitious man does not, in any way, mean that a woman should defer completely to every single career decision a man makes. I'm sure this executive's schedule was already plenty demanding without the burden of moving to another country.

New comment by ksdale in "Kissing in the Middle Ages"

ksdale — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 22:15:17 +0000

Or perhaps a kiss on the cheek wouldn't even register as a kiss and would be recorded as a greeting instead?

New comment by ksdale in "Ask HN: If your SaaS was used to commit a financial crime, what should you do?"

ksdale — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 19:10:51 +0000

Lawyers say a lot of stupid things to be sure, but generally not when it pertains to their practice area. Some things they say that sound stupid are actually how the law works, and in my experience as an actual lawyer, people who are not lawyers vastly overestimate how much they know about the law, and are far more confident when giving opinions than a lawyer would be.

New comment by ksdale in "History's deadliest air raid happened in Tokyo during World War II (2020)"

ksdale — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 19:01:54 +0000

Haha yeah, I was reluctant just because I don't personally know much of that particular history and it was hard to imagine that the Japanese intended to commit genocide against all of China, but I agree that genocide is fair classification of their actions.

New comment by ksdale in "History's deadliest air raid happened in Tokyo during World War II (2020)"

ksdale — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 20:01:14 +0000

Good question! Genocide is not just another word for mass-murder. It is defined as killing with the intention to destroy the targeted ethnic group/culture/religion completely. That certainly wasn't the American plan anywhere during WW2. Germany's actions were obviously genocidal, and Japan's actions in China arguably were as well.

New comment by ksdale in "History's deadliest air raid happened in Tokyo during World War II (2020)"

ksdale — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 18:28:51 +0000

So you're trying to argue that the U.S. is actually the bad guys? Perhaps the good guy/bad guy dichotomy simply isn't that useful. The U.S. did terrible things during the war, and there is no excuse for that. The U.S. is also only directly responsible for a very small fraction of the total civilian deaths in the war, and for none of the genocidal deaths. The world today is a better place for the Allies having won the war, and the U.S. effort is a major reason that happened. It's silly for Americans to cling to the narrative that we're always making good choices, that's obviously untrue, but I think it's equally silly to argue that the totality of what the U.S. did during World War 2 was worse than anything any other country did, especially worse enough to make the U.S. the bad guys. But I don't think you need to call them the bad guys to acknowledge that they committed atrocities.

New comment by ksdale in "Rome: Decline and Fall? Part III: Things"

ksdale — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 21:04:30 +0000

I'm not sure that's the lesson, based on this post, it sounds like the institutions were vital to the prosperity more than the growth. In a sense, growth is prosperity, but both were the result of institutions, and I'm not sure that growth was necessary for the maintenance of the institutions. I think the big takeaway is that people thought of the institutions are sort of an immutable fact of the world, when in reality, they were very break-able. Though that is also a sobering thought exercise as well.

New comment by ksdale in "Theses on Sleep"

ksdale — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 21:36:40 +0000

I feel like a bunch of the points on this list actually have an analog in Guzey's argument? Brushing teeth, for example - we do it to have a "clean" mouth, but a lot of people use mouthwash until the bacterial environment in their mouth is a barren wasteland, which is also unhealthy. Moderation is good.

Antibiotics are the same - they can also kill the flora in our intestines, and they can also lead to the creation of much more deadly microbes. Moderation is good.

Painkillers - Literally an opioid epidemic in the US right, not to mention all of the people taking OTC pain medication rather than addressing the cause of the pain, be it an underlying injury or lack of physical fitness, etc. The pain medication allows them to ignore a problem in a way that ultimately makes it worse. Moderation is good.

Harder to find analogs for the other things, and obviously I think all of these things are good on net, but just like food, excessive consumption isn't necessarily good.