5 ms·

Let old people die faster? It sounds callous to frame it in terms of dollars and cents, but allowing people to choose to end their own lives might lift some of

Let old people die faster? It sounds callous to frame it in terms of dollars and cents, but allowing people to choose to end their own lives might lift some of the burden on our healthcare systems. I'm still on the fence about the issue of euthanasia, but I think the Overton window is shifting. In time, I think that debate will make the debate on abortion look cordial.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII 9y ago
Logan's Run [0] (still a great movie even watching it today - especially the cats [1] :-) ) - that society sure had the lowest health care expenses on the entire planet in its fictional universe of a future earth (a statement even more true since it probably was the only one, haha). By the way, if we want to "cut costs" we could just blow up the planet and be done with it. No more "costs". What bizarre discussions we are having these days. "Cost cutting" makes sense in narrow(er) contexts, when the goal is clear and various paths to get there are explored, but for societal meaning-of-everything goal setting? If we didn't have health care we would not need to pay for it. That's true for everything ever made by humans. On this planet one person's cost is another persons's income, until we find aliens to trade with. People already exist (and in huge numbers!) - what do we do with them? They may as well work as doctors and nurses and in the many industries supplying the health care sector. Or they could just hang around and play games, produce meme videos for Youtube, or become insurance agents or financial advisers (but of course, without "costs" somewhere there is not much to invest in... unless we become more of a "virtual society" and just have "money" building and feeding on itself without actual real-world connection). [0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/ [1] https://youtu.be/sax6J8n1AiE https://youtu.be/sax6J8n1AiE . PS: Completely unrelated issue, just for fun search for "Logan's run" on Youtube, filter by "length > 20 minutes", and check out a few of the many results. You can do that for lots of movies, especially popular older ones. Does it seem like Youtube is overrun by millions (must be millions overall, for all kinds of movies) of fake "movies", hours-long fake movies? Doesn't that waste huge amounts of Youtube storage? Why does Google not do anything about it, ML algorithms should have an easy time finding most of those uploads?
- czep 9y ago
  > Does it seem like Youtube is overrun by millions (must be millions overall, for all kinds of movies) of fake "movies" This is done intentionally by studios and fully sanctioned by Google, the intention is to pollute search results of known titles so that users ultimately become frustrated enough to simply purchase the movie.
- DAllison 9y ago
  > PS: Completely unrelated issue, just for fun search for "Logan's run" on Youtube, filter by "length > 20 minutes", and check out a few of the many results. ... Doesn't that waste huge amounts of Youtube storage? Why does Google not do anything about it, ML algorithms should have an easy time finding most of those uploads? It's been prevalent for many years now. The files are typically a single image for the majority of the video, so compression should alleviate the storage issue. These videos are likely very profitable for YouTube if ad-supported, given that they'll take very little data to store and serve. I doubt the movie studios significantly care about removing them; the videos significantly frustrate pirates, likely causing a slight conversion to actual sales. To note: these results often appear on the ContentID dashboards (causing frustration for the studios), so this may be subject to change in future. [0] https://torrentfreak.com/fake-pirate-movies-annoy-pirates-anti-pirates-alike-160710/ https://torrentfreak.com/fake-pirate-movies-annoy-pirates-an... [1] http://www.voxindie.org/ywhy-is-youtube-such-a-garbage-dump/ http://www.voxindie.org/ywhy-is-youtube-such-a-garbage-dump/ [2] http://www.voxindie.org/why-doesnt-youtube-address-the-real-content-id-fail/ http://www.voxindie.org/why-doesnt-youtube-address-the-real-...
paulmd 9y ago
This is one of those topics that needs to be addressed but really cannot be because it's just so callous (and because the AARP is such a significant lobby in American politics). I think assisted suicide should be legal. But even setting that aside, we spend a massive amount of money on prolonging people's lives for a few more miserable weeks at the bitter end. That money would clearly be better used on patients with better long-term prognoses, but this is unfortunately the stuff that gets people screaming about death panels.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  Fun fact: AARP is the biggest lobbying entity in the USA. And it’ll only get bigger with baby boomers joining the club. Edit: GenX, not baby boomers.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > AARP is the biggest lobbying entity in the USA. And it’ll only get bigger with baby boomers joining the club. The youngest Boomer has been past the AARP full membership age for more than 20 years; newly eligible AARPers are in the younger half (nearly the youngest third) of GenX. Plus, AARP offers full membership for free for a spouse without age qualification, and associate memberships for under 50s. Which is to say, there's not a lot of reason to expect that Boomers interested in “joining the club” haven't all done so a long time ago, and are now exiting by death more than entering, while new members are coming from the relative baby bust of GenX.
BrandoElFollito 9y ago
The nature of the discussion is very different, though. On the one hand you have an entity which is not born yet and which cannot make a choice. On the other one, you have someone with vast experience deciding about himself (directly or indirectly via a will). For clarity, I am completely and strongly pro-choice in both cases. The first one is strongly faith based and weakly science based (when does life starts?) The second one is way more objective and somehow quantifiable.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII 9y ago

Logan's Run [0] (still a great movie even watching it today - especially the cats [1] :-) ) - that society sure had the lowest health care expenses on the entire planet in its fictional universe of a future earth (a statement even more true since it probably was the only one, haha). By the way, if we want to "cut costs" we could just blow up the planet and be done with it. No more "costs". What bizarre discussions we are having these days. "Cost cutting" makes sense in narrow(er) contexts, when the goal is clear and various paths to get there are explored, but for societal meaning-of-everything goal setting? If we didn't have health care we would not need to pay for it. That's true for everything ever made by humans. On this planet one person's cost is another persons's income, until we find aliens to trade with. People already exist (and in huge numbers!) - what do we do with them? They may as well work as doctors and nurses and in the many industries supplying the health care sector. Or they could just hang around and play games, produce meme videos for Youtube, or become insurance agents or financial advisers (but of course, without "costs" somewhere there is not much to invest in... unless we become more of a "virtual society" and just have "money" building and feeding on itself without actual real-world connection). [0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/ [1] https://youtu.be/sax6J8n1AiE https://youtu.be/sax6J8n1AiE . PS: Completely unrelated issue, just for fun search for "Logan's run" on Youtube, filter by "length > 20 minutes", and check out a few of the many results. You can do that for lots of movies, especially popular older ones. Does it seem like Youtube is overrun by millions (must be millions overall, for all kinds of movies) of fake "movies", hours-long fake movies? Doesn't that waste huge amounts of Youtube storage? Why does Google not do anything about it, ML algorithms should have an easy time finding most of those uploads?

czep 9y ago
> Does it seem like Youtube is overrun by millions (must be millions overall, for all kinds of movies) of fake "movies" This is done intentionally by studios and fully sanctioned by Google, the intention is to pollute search results of known titles so that users ultimately become frustrated enough to simply purchase the movie.
DAllison 9y ago
> PS: Completely unrelated issue, just for fun search for "Logan's run" on Youtube, filter by "length > 20 minutes", and check out a few of the many results. ... Doesn't that waste huge amounts of Youtube storage? Why does Google not do anything about it, ML algorithms should have an easy time finding most of those uploads? It's been prevalent for many years now. The files are typically a single image for the majority of the video, so compression should alleviate the storage issue. These videos are likely very profitable for YouTube if ad-supported, given that they'll take very little data to store and serve. I doubt the movie studios significantly care about removing them; the videos significantly frustrate pirates, likely causing a slight conversion to actual sales. To note: these results often appear on the ContentID dashboards (causing frustration for the studios), so this may be subject to change in future. [0] https://torrentfreak.com/fake-pirate-movies-annoy-pirates-anti-pirates-alike-160710/ https://torrentfreak.com/fake-pirate-movies-annoy-pirates-an... [1] http://www.voxindie.org/ywhy-is-youtube-such-a-garbage-dump/ http://www.voxindie.org/ywhy-is-youtube-such-a-garbage-dump/ [2] http://www.voxindie.org/why-doesnt-youtube-address-the-real-content-id-fail/ http://www.voxindie.org/why-doesnt-youtube-address-the-real-...

paulmd 9y ago

This is one of those topics that needs to be addressed but really cannot be because it's just so callous (and because the AARP is such a significant lobby in American politics). I think assisted suicide should be legal. But even setting that aside, we spend a massive amount of money on prolonging people's lives for a few more miserable weeks at the bitter end. That money would clearly be better used on patients with better long-term prognoses, but this is unfortunately the stuff that gets people screaming about death panels.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ComputerGuru 9y ago
Fun fact: AARP is the biggest lobbying entity in the USA. And it’ll only get bigger with baby boomers joining the club. Edit: GenX, not baby boomers.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > AARP is the biggest lobbying entity in the USA. And it’ll only get bigger with baby boomers joining the club. The youngest Boomer has been past the AARP full membership age for more than 20 years; newly eligible AARPers are in the younger half (nearly the youngest third) of GenX. Plus, AARP offers full membership for free for a spouse without age qualification, and associate memberships for under 50s. Which is to say, there's not a lot of reason to expect that Boomers interested in “joining the club” haven't all done so a long time ago, and are now exiting by death more than entering, while new members are coming from the relative baby bust of GenX.

BrandoElFollito 9y ago

The nature of the discussion is very different, though. On the one hand you have an entity which is not born yet and which cannot make a choice. On the other one, you have someone with vast experience deciding about himself (directly or indirectly via a will). For clarity, I am completely and strongly pro-choice in both cases. The first one is strongly faith based and weakly science based (when does life starts?) The second one is way more objective and somehow quantifiable.