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From a now-dead comment: > He’s a bigoted right-wing conservative who doesn’t want to hear about interesting scientific developments that he views as benefitin

From a now-dead comment: > He’s a bigoted right-wing conservative who doesn’t want to hear about interesting scientific developments that he views as benefiting people with lifestyles that he condemns. Perhaps not here, but I think this is a view worth discussing. I'm moderately conservative, and some of that comment's criticism resonates with my own thoughts. With cases like HIV/AIDS, I find myself pulled between several competing virtues: One one side there's mercy and compassion; I'd like to minimize the suffering of hurting people. Even if someone is in dire straights because of actions that I view as unwise (extramarital sex, recreational drug use, etc.), I still want to want what's best for that person. On the other side, there's justice. I live in a society where everyone pays, to some degree, for individuals' unwise behavior. E.g., Medicare/Medicaid for smokers' lung cancer or HIV treatment for persons who chose to indulge in risky behavior. I'm not okay with forcing the community at large to cover the costs of (what I view as) individuals' selfish actions. I don't know what the right balance to this is. More generally, I'm not sure if there are any good principles for finding the right tradeoff between two virtues. I wish I knew. I want to do good, but the path is often obscure.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
foldr 6y ago
There's an easy way to resolve that conflict that ought to appeal to religious conservatives: charity. If you donate to charities that help pay for people's HIV treatment, then no-one is being forced to pay and yet no-one is suffering unnecessarily either. Oddly enough, despite being so deeply concerned with mercy and justice, religious conservatives do not appear to be among the leading donors to HIV-related charities. That said, I don't see any kind of ethical dilemma here at all. It would clearly be a moral obscenity to systematically allow people to die of treatable diseases because they can't afford treatment. And if it's a question of 'blame' or 'risky behavior', then we should be refusing treatment to anyone who's ever eaten a donut.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  Thanks very much for engaging the content of my post. I was disheartened to have shared my inner conflict on the issue, only to be downvoted into oblivion.
  - gibrown 6y ago
    Just in case it adds clarification. I think the downvotes are due to equating HIV to justice. Smoking once it is well understood I guess kinda is, but HIV is really just a matter of luck like all infectious diseases. You can reduce your risk (eg masks for stopping flu or COVID), but to call it “justice” feels very callous to me.
    - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
      Thanks for that. It sounds like I did a terrible job of expressing my thoughts. Perhaps one of my mistakes was using HIV as an example. If someone only skimmed my post, they may have pattern-matched on the whole "AIDS is punishment from God" trope, which is 100% not what I was trying to say.
  - amznthrwaway 6y ago
    Dude, you positioned HIV as justice. I was disheartened that you posted that vile opinion, and more so that you’re _sad_ that people downvoted it. I hope that some day you find the light of the Lord, and come back from this wicked hateful bullshit morality that you’ve embraced.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  "religious conservatives do not appear to be among the leading donors to HIV-related charities." Cite your sources please, because I've seen the opposite in my (limited) charity dealings.
- Rule35 6y ago
  > If you donate to charities that help pay for people's HIV treatment, then no-one is being forced to pay If I feel you brought something on yourself why would I help you and not an innocent victim? And how would charity help resolve the issue of you dumping the cost on others, it would just be me instead of all of us, but still subsidizing. > It would clearly be a moral obscenity to systematically allow people to die of treatable diseases because they can't afford treatment. No, only if that money couldn't do greater good elsewhere. > And if it's a question of 'blame' or 'risky behavior', then we should be refusing treatment to anyone who's ever eaten a donut. In some proportion to the number of donuts, yes. Of course. Or at least they should go to the back of the line after we've helped people who didn't self-inflict.
FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
You can flip peoples' tribal affiliations on this topic by changing the disease to COVID. Do red-state antimaskers deserve treatment? Should responsible Americans pay for their reckless lifestyle?
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > You can flip peoples' tribal affiliations on this topic by changing the disease to COVID. Do red-state antimaskers deserve treatment? Should responsible Americans pay for their reckless lifestyle? Personally, I'm not sure. As I said above, I'm conflicted on the issue. Regarding anti-maskers, I think it depends on the particular reason a person is anti-mask. I'm working on the assumption that a lifelong smoker or someone who intentionally eschews safe-sex practices is generally aware of the risk they're courting. In my mind, this is "privatization of reward, socialization of risk" is similar to what we on HN often complain about regarding corporate bailouts. In contrast, I could believe that at least some anti-maskers are genuinely misinformed about the risk posted by their behavior. I have less trouble feeling empathy for someone who's working from wrong beliefs, than someone who's knowingly being selfish.
  - foldr 6y ago
    You must be thinking about this in a weird way if you describe as selfish those people who have unsafe sex and contract HIV and who were fully aware of the risk. What do you think that they hoped to gain by becoming HIV positive? And if they thought it was an acceptable trade-in for some momentary pleasure, can they really have been fully informed in the first place? It seems that what you’re saying here is rooted in some kind of stereotype of crazy hedonism, rather than a more realistic understanding of the psychology of unsafe sex. Believe me, there are idiots in all walks of life. There are plenty of people who are simply too dumb to practice safe sex, just as there are plenty of people too dumb to take trivial precautions against spreading COVID. I don’t think you’ll have much luck trying to formulate a coherent reason to regard the two groups in a fundamentally different light. Conservatives just have a bee in their collective bonnet about sex as compared to other comparably risky activities. For some reason, any time there is any good news relating to HIV on HN, we have to have a thread where we seriously moot the question of whether HIV positive people deserve to die (or to put it in your bloodless terms, whether mercy is outweighed by justice). Have you considered just giving this a rest? Everyone already knows that many religious conservatives are in favor of denying treatment to HIV positive people belonging to social groups that they don’t like.
IAmEveryone 6y ago
Wow, this is the worst misinterpretation of conservatism I've seen... (let's say 'today') Sex isn't wrong. It just so happens that it can lead to HIV infection. If you wish people get infected, you've created a moral loop that just punishes people because you enjoy watching people suffer. Congratulations, maybe you do have a handle of conservatism-as-practiced, after all. It'd make just as much sense to threaten to kill anyone found in public without a blue towel: you'd get the satisfaction of righteousness indignation and the honour of killing lots of people for completely arbitrary reasons.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  FWIW, I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. I apologize for my post's confusing wording.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > It'd make just as much sense to threaten to kill anyone found in public without a blue towel: But they knew what would happen if they went out in public without a blue towel /s
amznthrwaway 6y ago
Great idea, lets also cut care for people who sit too much. Office workers, especially programmers, have a lot of expensive diseases associated with their sedentary lifestyles, and we should just cut the whole lot. It was their choice to take the risks associated with a sedentary profession, and they do not deserve care.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

foldr 6y ago

There's an easy way to resolve that conflict that ought to appeal to religious conservatives: charity. If you donate to charities that help pay for people's HIV treatment, then no-one is being forced to pay and yet no-one is suffering unnecessarily either. Oddly enough, despite being so deeply concerned with mercy and justice, religious conservatives do not appear to be among the leading donors to HIV-related charities. That said, I don't see any kind of ethical dilemma here at all. It would clearly be a moral obscenity to systematically allow people to die of treatable diseases because they can't afford treatment. And if it's a question of 'blame' or 'risky behavior', then we should be refusing treatment to anyone who's ever eaten a donut.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
Thanks very much for engaging the content of my post. I was disheartened to have shared my inner conflict on the issue, only to be downvoted into oblivion.
- gibrown 6y ago
  Just in case it adds clarification. I think the downvotes are due to equating HIV to justice. Smoking once it is well understood I guess kinda is, but HIV is really just a matter of luck like all infectious diseases. You can reduce your risk (eg masks for stopping flu or COVID), but to call it “justice” feels very callous to me.
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    Thanks for that. It sounds like I did a terrible job of expressing my thoughts. Perhaps one of my mistakes was using HIV as an example. If someone only skimmed my post, they may have pattern-matched on the whole "AIDS is punishment from God" trope, which is 100% not what I was trying to say.
- amznthrwaway 6y ago
  Dude, you positioned HIV as justice. I was disheartened that you posted that vile opinion, and more so that you’re _sad_ that people downvoted it. I hope that some day you find the light of the Lord, and come back from this wicked hateful bullshit morality that you’ve embraced.
imwillofficial 6y ago
"religious conservatives do not appear to be among the leading donors to HIV-related charities." Cite your sources please, because I've seen the opposite in my (limited) charity dealings.
Rule35 6y ago
> If you donate to charities that help pay for people's HIV treatment, then no-one is being forced to pay If I feel you brought something on yourself why would I help you and not an innocent victim? And how would charity help resolve the issue of you dumping the cost on others, it would just be me instead of all of us, but still subsidizing. > It would clearly be a moral obscenity to systematically allow people to die of treatable diseases because they can't afford treatment. No, only if that money couldn't do greater good elsewhere. > And if it's a question of 'blame' or 'risky behavior', then we should be refusing treatment to anyone who's ever eaten a donut. In some proportion to the number of donuts, yes. Of course. Or at least they should go to the back of the line after we've helped people who didn't self-inflict.

FooBarBizBazz 6y ago

You can flip peoples' tribal affiliations on this topic by changing the disease to COVID. Do red-state antimaskers deserve treatment? Should responsible Americans pay for their reckless lifestyle?

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
> You can flip peoples' tribal affiliations on this topic by changing the disease to COVID. Do red-state antimaskers deserve treatment? Should responsible Americans pay for their reckless lifestyle? Personally, I'm not sure. As I said above, I'm conflicted on the issue. Regarding anti-maskers, I think it depends on the particular reason a person is anti-mask. I'm working on the assumption that a lifelong smoker or someone who intentionally eschews safe-sex practices is generally aware of the risk they're courting. In my mind, this is "privatization of reward, socialization of risk" is similar to what we on HN often complain about regarding corporate bailouts. In contrast, I could believe that at least some anti-maskers are genuinely misinformed about the risk posted by their behavior. I have less trouble feeling empathy for someone who's working from wrong beliefs, than someone who's knowingly being selfish.
- foldr 6y ago
  You must be thinking about this in a weird way if you describe as selfish those people who have unsafe sex and contract HIV and who were fully aware of the risk. What do you think that they hoped to gain by becoming HIV positive? And if they thought it was an acceptable trade-in for some momentary pleasure, can they really have been fully informed in the first place? It seems that what you’re saying here is rooted in some kind of stereotype of crazy hedonism, rather than a more realistic understanding of the psychology of unsafe sex. Believe me, there are idiots in all walks of life. There are plenty of people who are simply too dumb to practice safe sex, just as there are plenty of people too dumb to take trivial precautions against spreading COVID. I don’t think you’ll have much luck trying to formulate a coherent reason to regard the two groups in a fundamentally different light. Conservatives just have a bee in their collective bonnet about sex as compared to other comparably risky activities. For some reason, any time there is any good news relating to HIV on HN, we have to have a thread where we seriously moot the question of whether HIV positive people deserve to die (or to put it in your bloodless terms, whether mercy is outweighed by justice). Have you considered just giving this a rest? Everyone already knows that many religious conservatives are in favor of denying treatment to HIV positive people belonging to social groups that they don’t like.

IAmEveryone 6y ago

Wow, this is the worst misinterpretation of conservatism I've seen... (let's say 'today') Sex isn't wrong. It just so happens that it can lead to HIV infection. If you wish people get infected, you've created a moral loop that just punishes people because you enjoy watching people suffer. Congratulations, maybe you do have a handle of conservatism-as-practiced, after all. It'd make just as much sense to threaten to kill anyone found in public without a blue towel: you'd get the satisfaction of righteousness indignation and the honour of killing lots of people for completely arbitrary reasons.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
FWIW, I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. I apologize for my post's confusing wording.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> It'd make just as much sense to threaten to kill anyone found in public without a blue towel: But they knew what would happen if they went out in public without a blue towel /s

amznthrwaway 6y ago

Great idea, lets also cut care for people who sit too much. Office workers, especially programmers, have a lot of expensive diseases associated with their sedentary lifestyles, and we should just cut the whole lot. It was their choice to take the risks associated with a sedentary profession, and they do not deserve care.