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We are embarking on a population-level Darwin Award experiment. Once the stupid people die off the overall population's resistance to stupidity will increase a

We are embarking on a population-level Darwin Award experiment. Once the stupid people die off the overall population's resistance to stupidity will increase a little bit. But getting there means a huge number of innocent, non-stupid people will die.

Gud 11mo ago
What makes you think the stupid people will die off? Seems to me they're the ones breeding.
FrustratedMonky 11mo ago
Not even a joke. States with lower Covid Vaccine coverage had more deaths. Technically, are Red States correct that they will achieve herd immunity, by letting their weak die off?
- Esophagus4 11mo ago
  Early in COVID, someone said to me, “survival rates are good - it’s only going to affect the weak.” …without realizing the irony that he was mid-40s, overweight, and had had an acute heart problem. The funny thing about the “natural immunity” crowd is that they don’t seem to grasp their own comorbidities. Yet of the unvaccinated COVID patients admitted to hospital, 2/3 admitted they regretted not getting vaccinated. I guess everybody’s brave until they’re in a hospital bed with a low pulse ox.
  - venturecruelty 11mo ago
    I mean, even the idea of "it's only going to affect the weak" is disgusting and horrible. "The weak" is someone's grandmother, or their dad with a heart transplant, or their newborn baby. There is some pretty filthy, wretched ideology in the world that says very similar things about people it perceives as not worthy of being alive. And someday, for any of us who are blessed to live that long, we will be weak, too. We will be infirm. We will arrive at the end of our lives deserving protection, too, just like all of those people who were wantonly discarded during the pandemic. Every life lost is a tragedy, especially when it is, to an extent, preventable. Not perfectly, and not without mistakes, but we could've done better than we did. It's heartbreaking that so many people are so willing to sacrifice the very people society should be trying to protect.
epistasis 11mo ago
What I find fascinating is the voting is this thread. What I find to be reasonable comments from me are getting downvoting in a way that never usually happens on HN! Is it me? I didn't think that the HN community would turn so hard against the CDC and basic infectious disease research.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  I was shocked by this during COVID. There's a huge anti-expertise, anti-institutions, anti-government-anything strain here, and they're very active on the various comment hiding buttons.
- snowwrestler 11mo ago
  It is the weekend HN effect. Conspiracy theories and low-information complaints thrive here on the weekends, presumably because of a weekly shift in audience demographics based on white collar working hours.
  - krapp 11mo ago
    Sadly, no. Hacker News has hosted a large and vociferous contingent of anti-vaxxers ever since COVID, and their numbers have only grown over time. And they don't just post on the weekends.
    - snowwrestler 11mo ago
      There are fewer countering votes on the weekends.
- add-sub-mul-div 11mo ago
  A main point about this era is that it's not about infectious disease research. It's been transformed into a culture war that supersedes anything having to do with science. It's become right-wing-coded to object to the science of infectious disease. Not all people who identify on the right succumb to this, but obviously many do, and those people are seen here in the comments section daily.
- 11mo ago
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tim333 11mo ago
I think the Idiocracy effect may win though.
robocat 11mo ago
> Darwin Award > die What matters is reproduction so unfortunately the Darwin Awards are often misleading (even Idiocracy is better at highlighting that reproductive success is what matters). Death is often irrelevant. Covid deaths were mostly people past reproductive age, so you really can't generalize much about evolution from the deaths.
- zeristor 10mo ago
  There’s the theory about grandparents presence helping their grand children, with wisdom. Having watch the TV series it was pretty sobering that many were only being brought up by grandmothers. Not that Wire is society, but it was deeply rooted in it. I’ve never been to Baltimore mind you.

Gud 11mo ago

What makes you think the stupid people will die off? Seems to me they're the ones breeding.

FrustratedMonky 11mo ago

Not even a joke. States with lower Covid Vaccine coverage had more deaths. Technically, are Red States correct that they will achieve herd immunity, by letting their weak die off?

Esophagus4 11mo ago
Early in COVID, someone said to me, “survival rates are good - it’s only going to affect the weak.” …without realizing the irony that he was mid-40s, overweight, and had had an acute heart problem. The funny thing about the “natural immunity” crowd is that they don’t seem to grasp their own comorbidities. Yet of the unvaccinated COVID patients admitted to hospital, 2/3 admitted they regretted not getting vaccinated. I guess everybody’s brave until they’re in a hospital bed with a low pulse ox.
- venturecruelty 11mo ago
  I mean, even the idea of "it's only going to affect the weak" is disgusting and horrible. "The weak" is someone's grandmother, or their dad with a heart transplant, or their newborn baby. There is some pretty filthy, wretched ideology in the world that says very similar things about people it perceives as not worthy of being alive. And someday, for any of us who are blessed to live that long, we will be weak, too. We will be infirm. We will arrive at the end of our lives deserving protection, too, just like all of those people who were wantonly discarded during the pandemic. Every life lost is a tragedy, especially when it is, to an extent, preventable. Not perfectly, and not without mistakes, but we could've done better than we did. It's heartbreaking that so many people are so willing to sacrifice the very people society should be trying to protect.

epistasis 11mo ago

What I find fascinating is the voting is this thread. What I find to be reasonable comments from me are getting downvoting in a way that never usually happens on HN! Is it me? I didn't think that the HN community would turn so hard against the CDC and basic infectious disease research.

ryandrake 11mo ago
I was shocked by this during COVID. There's a huge anti-expertise, anti-institutions, anti-government-anything strain here, and they're very active on the various comment hiding buttons.
snowwrestler 11mo ago
It is the weekend HN effect. Conspiracy theories and low-information complaints thrive here on the weekends, presumably because of a weekly shift in audience demographics based on white collar working hours.
- krapp 11mo ago
  Sadly, no. Hacker News has hosted a large and vociferous contingent of anti-vaxxers ever since COVID, and their numbers have only grown over time. And they don't just post on the weekends.
  - snowwrestler 11mo ago
    There are fewer countering votes on the weekends.
add-sub-mul-div 11mo ago
A main point about this era is that it's not about infectious disease research. It's been transformed into a culture war that supersedes anything having to do with science. It's become right-wing-coded to object to the science of infectious disease. Not all people who identify on the right succumb to this, but obviously many do, and those people are seen here in the comments section daily.
11mo ago

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tim333 11mo ago

I think the Idiocracy effect may win though.

robocat 11mo ago

> Darwin Award > die What matters is reproduction so unfortunately the Darwin Awards are often misleading (even Idiocracy is better at highlighting that reproductive success is what matters). Death is often irrelevant. Covid deaths were mostly people past reproductive age, so you really can't generalize much about evolution from the deaths.

zeristor 10mo ago
There’s the theory about grandparents presence helping their grand children, with wisdom. Having watch the TV series it was pretty sobering that many were only being brought up by grandmothers. Not that Wire is society, but it was deeply rooted in it. I’ve never been to Baltimore mind you.