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Ask HN: What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
- techdog 12y agoThe idea that No One Is Coming. No one is coming to fix your problem, help you out, give you the magic "tip" you need, point you in the right direction, throw you a rope, help pay your bills, show you "the way," etc. "But if I just see the right specialist..." "If I could just hire the right consultant..." "If I could just..." Bullshit. No one is coming. You own your problems. Whatever your problem is -- raising money, finding the "right" therapist, quitting cigarets, finding the right partner, getting the right degree (if I just had an MBA...), learning the right skills -- whatever it is, it's your problem. It's okay to ask for help. But it's your problem. No one's going to fix it on your behalf, make you better on your behalf. No one is coming. "Yeah, but..." No. No one, is, coming.
- bikamonki 12y agoThe truth that security is a very expensive illusion.
- dmfdmf 12y agoAyn Rand was a brilliant thinker that most people are incapable of understanding today. Here are the essentials of Western thought; Plato => Kant (Primacy of Consciousness) Aristotle => Rand (Primacy of Existence) Kant took Plato's work and removed all Aristotelian influence. Rand took Aristotle's work and remove any Platonic influences. The future of Western Civilization depends on rejecting the Platonic line of thought (which is dominant today) for the Aristotelian line of thought.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoLet me guess: are you a young, idealistic intellectual? What position does fitness of the community occupy in that world view?
- dmfdmf 12y agoWhat important truth do very few people agree with you on? QED
- zaccus 12y agoThat's not an answer.
- joeclark77 12y agoAll you've shown is that people disagree with you. The question asks about truth.
- dmfdmf 12y agoWho's truth? Your interpretation of the question makes no sense.
- joeclark77 12y agoThe question is about truths, not about opinions. Just because you have an oddball notion that most people disagree with, doesn't mean you're the keeper of secret wisdom.
- dmfdmf 12y agoLOL
- dllthomas 12y agoI think this gets at a question of the purpose of this thread. Is it to catalogue rare-but-strongly-held opinions or to try and educate everyone about truths we're missing? If the former, demanding a vigorous defense is clearly counterproductive. Anything anyone posts would find more people leaping to object than affirm, unless it happens to be a point this crowd happens to hold that particular contrarian viewpoint. If the latter, the usefulness of such challenge likely depends on how well other readers are expected to do at assessing veracity themselves. Personally, I find it valuable to read clear statements of positions I disagree with, and would weakly rather this thread promote such - there are plenty of threads that are better places to argue the meat of things.
- SpecialAccount 12y agoI keep a few months of food/medical supplies in the house in case of emergency. People think I'm weird for it. And to be clear I'm not a doomsayer and believe I will not likely ever need it. But once I was looking at insurance and considered what I care about in the house. Two things I wouldn't want to lose, my photos and my family. So I got cloud backup for my photos and pulled together some suppliers that would keep the family going in case of emergency. While I don't think I will ever need it, on a long enough time scale there is bound to be some emergency be it my generation or following ones. I find it strange most people have contents insurance on their house, to protect tables/chairs/TV's and think I'm strange for this. The way I see it, is while I'm significantly likely more likely to lose my house contents via theft/fire etc, I don't care about these things. And there is nothing a few shopping trips wouldn't fix. However in the rare event food supplies were cut, then I really would care. Also its significantly cheaper than contents insurance actually saving money as I bulk buy food on special I already eat so a bunch of what we eat is on permanent special. As a side comment the crazy test for people to prep seems to be ask them how the world will end. If they think they know how or when, they're crazy. Otherwise its just being prepared.
- mkaziz 12y agoThat's interesting, I never looked at it that way. What exactly do you keep around the house, if you don't mind me asking? Do you also keep any arms to protect supplies in case of catastrophe? I imagine the neighbours wouldn't mind taking some by force if food was scarce.
- SpecialAccount 12y agoAsk away. I don't keep that much. I have food, water, some limited medicine and a bunch of household stuff like candles & matches. Some hygiene things like soaps and planning to add some bulk fishing equipment (lines and hooks) as I live close to a place this would be a food option. Also I'm looking at some wind up radio/torch/usb charger combos to buy. Between that and my gardening/camping equipment I think I'm reasonably placed to have a buffer against supply issues. I haven't planned anything for defending my property. If something did happen I would likely try and round up local family/friends for safety in numbers. And hopefully try to help people vs hoard.
- cyberjunkie 12y agoThat morals and what's right and wrong are not universal, and up to each individual. That you can do whatever you want to do, if you feel it's right. However, when the onslaught of someone else doing something that appears right to them affects you, then, suddenly they aren't doing the right thing.
- joeclark77 12y agoYou think moral relativism and "if it feels good, do it" are unpopular minority views? Where do you live? Saudi Arabia?
- cyberjunkie 12y agoOn the contrary, I'm saying they are popular views accepted in public and I'm told I'm wrong. I live in India.
- joeclark77 12y agoAre you saying "morals are not universal" or "morals are universal"?
- seanccox 12y agoI'm a generally disagreeable person, so I feel like this could be a long list. Here are my top five: 1) Democracy != voting 2) History is a science, with verifiable and repeatable results 3) Pacifist direct action (a la Ghandi or MLK Jr.) fails 4) History books that lack a 'methods' section shouldn't be taken seriously 5) Journalists are not qualified to report on the topics about which they are reporting
- bikamonki 12y agoDemocracy = voting if you take away propaganda, campaign funding, educate voters and design a fraud-proof voting system -- like maybe a 'blockchain' voting software?
- joeclark77 12y agoI would amend this to say "if voters educate themselves". If you (I guess meaning the government?) "educate" voters, the results are neither good for education nor good for government.
- dllthomas 12y agoI don't think it is actually an equality, even there.
- nicholas73 12y agoI agree with you here on democracy. On many issues the population neither has the knowledge nor time to make an informed decision. The vote would naturally be distributed except margin groups who block vote have the power to tip it one way or another. Thus power and favors -> anti-democracy.
- kapilkaisare 12y agoCan you elaborate more on what you mean by 'methods', and list any history books which, by your measure, should be taken seriously?
- brudgers 12y agoFIFA is better than the alternatives.
- motyar 12y agoControl is an illusion.
- jakeogh 12y agoIs it still controversial that all 3 NYC skyscrapers were CD's? I remember when someone first mentioned it to me... I chewed him out.
- smeyer 12y agoThis may be too late for you to see my reply, but what? First of all, there are far more than 3 skyscrapers in NYC. Also, what does CD stand for here? Obviously, I think I'm missing a lot here.
- dllthomas 12y agoMy guess, at substantial risk of being wrong: CD stands for "controlled demolition", and "all 3 NYC skyscrapers" are World Trade Center buildings 1, 2, and 7. And my understanding is that it is still controversial, and still the minority opinion, although I'm not sure what the thresholds are for "very few".
- penguindev 12y agoThat overpopulation isn't binary, it's qualitative, and having more than two kids/family is reducing the well being of the rest of us.
- lutusp 12y ago> What important truth do very few people agree with you on? That psychology isn't a science, although public perceptions are slowly catching up: http://arachnoid.com/science_of_mind http://arachnoid.com/science_of_mind
- dorfuss 12y agoExcellent one. I'd add economics, sociology and, although I am just 80% sure - medicine. There is a book out there called something like "Curing factors in psychoanalysis" which ends with a sentence: "Well, we know that talking to a person certainly has some impact, but what impact, how and why, we're not sure at all."
- pc2g4d 12y agoPsychiatric drugs are not effective in treating mental illness---at least not more effective than placebo.
- penguindev 12y agoI totally agree; many drugs are a racket these days, made only for profiteering "sick care", and the government is totally on board with it. Two examples I can personally testify to: treating people who don't yet know their life's purpose with mental drugs / electroshock, and treating people who are carbohydrate intolerant with.. more carbs.
- archagon 12y agoSarcasm in any form is harmful to discourse and ruins communities. I bristle whenever I see someone responding to a popular opinion on Reddit with a sarcastic "But... but...!" anti-comment.
- anonbanker 12y agoMicrosoft have turned multiple generations into the digital equivalent of abused spouses, constantly saying "this time is different" every time a new OS is released. They'll buy new PC's and downgrade to windows 7, or grit their teeth and use win 8.1. If you show them a shiny, modern KDE-based Linux distribution, their eyes glaze over while they proclaim "yeah, but Linux is hard." Even if you prove that it's easy as pie to use, they'll keep saying that, while they look uncomfortable from the cognitive dissonance they're experiencing.
- phaus 12y ago>Even if you prove that it's easy as pie to use, they'll keep saying that, while they look uncomfortable from the cognitive dissonance they're experiencing. I love Linux, and I think it has the potential to be the best operating system for end-users. Unfortunately, it is hard for the average person to use. Even the most user-friendly distro, Ubuntu, suffers from incompatibility issues and broken drivers after I update. It doesn't happen often, but the average person doesn't EVER want to spend hours fucking around with his / her computer just to get it working properly. The interface is user-friendly, but that won't matter if something breaks.
- dllthomas 12y agoMy dad installed Ubuntu for a friend of his - a non-computer-savvy poet - and she was quite happy with it. There's a distinction to be had between "use" and "administer" (I'm not sure how much administration of the box she did or didn't do).
- anonbanker 12y agoI'd say windows is similar in this regard. Using Terminal Services on a Server 2008R2 computer as an unprivileged user is still going to hide all the administration tasks required.
- anonbanker 12y agoThe most user-friendly distribution is now Chakra Linux, which is KDE-based. Rolling distributions experience none of the problems you mentioned. Further, as the kernel has everything (but AMD/NVidia drivers) built-in, I'm curious as to how an upgrade broke drivers.
- phaus 12y agoI believe that people who don't vote can be just as patriotic as those who do. When a person votes during a presidential election, all that is accomplished is the person is making a choice between 1 of 2 carbon copy shit-bags that have been hand-picked corporate lobbyists and other kinds of sociopaths. To make it even more ridiculous, its just a single vote out of ~40,000,000. I think it makes far more sense to vote in local elections and primaries, because, even though the effort is still futile, that's the closest you are going to get to making an actual difference.
- phaus 12y agoThe entire point of the thread was to discuss unpopular viewpoints. Apparently I won, because instead of intelligent discourse I just got down-voted.
- dllthomas 12y agoI would say local elections should be stressed not only for the reasons you say, but also because they often have a bigger effect on your life. And as it happens, in some local elections your vote matters a lot: http://www.co.washington.ar.us/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=7020 http://www.co.washington.ar.us/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?doc...
- dreamdu5t 12y ago- Facebook is an excellent product and has never violated anyone's privacy. - Democracy is as arbitrary as monarchy.
- dorfuss 12y agoCommon cold does not come from exposure to cold weather but from bacteria/viruses. That humans are immune to 99,99% germs out there and that you should not be so much afraid of infections. And that carbohydrates in your diet don't and cannot change into fat. Fat is fat, sugar is sugar, period.
- _random_ 12y agoThat web is a legacy platform that hinders innovation.