Ask HN: What is your most unpopular idea/belief? - enjayz
======
Rainymood
(On average, in general) men and women are fundamentally and biologically
different making some of them more inclined towards one field or the other.

~~~
jrowley
How can you conclude this without controlling for environmental effects like
society?

~~~
spectrum1234
By looking at eye movements of babies days after birth.

------
growlist
Pretty much all of us are massive hypocrites when it comes to Eugenics: it is
a taboo subject when applied to populations, yet everyone apart from the
insane is looking for a genetically fit partner.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Some people have no plans to reproduce. Many women are quite willing to get
with some ugly old geezer with money in order to get a cut of his money.

Your hypothesis doesn't hold any water on the face of it, even before getting
into much more complicated edge cases.

I once saw a comment on a cystic fibrosis forum by a woman with CF who had a
previous boyfriend with CF. CF causes significant reproductive problems,
including that 97 percent of men with CF have vas deferens, so their ejaculate
contains no live sperm. On top of that it is a homozygous recessive disorder,
so it's very controversial for someone with CF to want biological children of
their own since you have no hope of not passing on a defective gene. Two
people with CF wanting a child together would be guaranteed to have a child
with CF and it would almost certainly require medical intervention to happen
at all.

The CF community frequently has heated, emotional discussions about the
morality of having more kids if your first child has CF, having biological
kids at all if you have CF, etc.

I also have read of people with certain disorders having intervention so they
could have a biological child and select out the ones that got the bad genes
because they knew how torturous the condition was and had no desire to do that
to their own child.

The ability to identify problematic genes via testing and the option to have
certain kinds of fertility intervention is creating a whole slew of new
questions. This complicated by the fact that genetic disorders profligate when
they offer a survival advantage.

This is the story behind Sickle Cell, which helps protect against malaria. It
is also the reason CF is so much more common in Caucasian populations of
European descent: Having only one of the genes doesn't give you a deadly
condition and protects against an infection that rampantly killed people in
Europe historically.

So it is entirely possible that after designer babies become a thing and we
remove too many "bad" genes from the gene pool, someday this will come back to
bite us for some reason.

~~~
magduf
>Having only one of the genes doesn't give you a deadly condition and protects
against an infection that rampantly killed people in Europe historically.

>So it is entirely possible that after designer babies become a thing and we
remove too many "bad" genes from the gene pool, someday this will come back to
bite us for some reason.

Maybe, but unlikely. Those infections were a problem back then because we
lived in huts and didn't have antibiotics or anything resembling modern
medicine. A comment below says that this gene helps protect against cholera,
for instance. Well cholera isn't a problem in places with proper sanitation,
so this gene isn't really a help for people living in rich, industrialized
nations. Sickle cell protecting against malaria might be useful to people
living in malaria-prone areas still, but we do have immunizations against
malaria these days, and in the future it's really not going to be a problem at
all.

Finally, with "designer babies", presumably we'll be at the point where we'll
just be able to genetically engineer ourselves to deal with any remaining
environmental problems/diseases directly, instead of relying on some
accidental mutation that gives us a little better resistance at a huge cost.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_we lived in huts and didn 't have antibiotics or anything resembling modern
medicine_

When antibiotics were discovered, the world announced the end of disease.
Today, there are endless articles about the rise of antibiotic resistant
infections, plus dystopian fiction about a post antibiotics world.

I'm not 100 percent convinced we are as clever as we imagine ourselves to be.

~~~
magduf
You've got to be kidding. Just because we haven't achieved perfection as far
as medical science, you think we're still just as well off as the days where
people routinely died young from various infections?

Antibiotics aren't going away, they're just having to get better to cope with
the evolution of bacteria.

------
Kagerjay
Everyone is inherently racist/biased but isn't willing to admit it

If you aren't, you probably make a lot of poor decisions or never lived/worked
around ghetto areas. You can be inherently biased and still give people
benefit of the doubt though.

------
magduf
People scoff at my idea that US state borders should be eliminated and redrawn
in a much more efficient and sensible manner, so that no metro areas cross
state borders and states are more equal in population.

------
S_Bear
Baby Boomers are going to die at a much faster clip than their parents (due to
sedentary lifestyles/fast food/general excess), and that will cause a lot of
unplanned destabilization. I'm willing to put $20 on both my parents
(currently 69 and 63) kicking it in the next 5 years.

~~~
jrowley
Modern medicine is remarkably good at keeping people alive, as long as the
person has decent coverage. But that's an interesting opinion - I'd be curious
to see some projects from experts.

------
cm2012
Monsanto and Roundup in the modern era are obviously good for the world.

Advertising and marketing are tools, not inherently good or bad.

Being cookied online for the purpose of tracking advertising effectiveness
doesn't hurt the end user.

It's so unlikely for obese people to permanently lose weight without extreme
surgical or therapeutic intervention that its unethical for doctors to
recommend diet and exercise alone as if that recommendation is efficacious.

That should do it.

~~~
bad_good_guy
Can we get a full disclosure on point 4, are you obese? It's very possible for
obese people to lose weight, it just needs to be treated like quitting smoking
is treated.

~~~
cm2012
I am overweight but not obese. But this is not an anecdotal issue, the
literature is crystal clear on this.

~~~
meiraleal
I know personally not one but some obese people that became fit only with diet
(mainly long fasting) and exercises. I myself had an obese BMI (32) and now it
is normal (24).

You can choose a better literature. It is all over the internet.

------
tmaly
States rights should be more powerful than the federal government, the
decentralization across states allows for greater freedom and experimentation.
The 10th amendment should be emphasized more.

Taleb, echos some of this in Antifragile.

------
meiraleal
Genetics and Evolution is way overestimated. Environment and individual
decisions play a much bigger role in someone's life than "thought to be" born
features.

------
mindcrime
Based on down-votes here, probably the idea that "taxation is theft".

I also generally disapprove of the idea of nation-states in general, don't
believe in borders, and think that private organizations (which could include
non-profits, worker owned co-ops, etc.) can (and should) fill most of the
roles which are currently filled by "government".

Basically, being a Market Anarchist / Voluntaryist puts me at odds which a lot
of people.

~~~
growlist
> private organizations (which could include non-profits, worker owned co-ops,
> etc.) can (and should) fill most of the roles which are currently filled by
> "government"

I completely agree - I'm all for (for example) healthcare that's free at the
point of provision and looking after the vulnerable, and think our economies
throw off more than enough surplus for us to fund this type of programme
without disincentivising ambition - but I don't think a vast monolithic
bureaucracy is necessarily the best way to do it. The tragic thing is that in
the example of the NHS here in the UK, the left have made the organisation so
bloody untouchable that even potentially beneficial reform is blocked - for
example I think if we had a nominal charge (£15?) for a GP visit it would go a
huge way towards discouraging e.g. the worried well and pensioners visiting
their GP for a weekly chat..

~~~
dangerface
I think most old people goto the doctor because they are old and dying and
need a doctor, not because they want a chat with a stranger in a sterile
environment.

I also fail to see how charging people for nothing will help solve the problem
of the NHS being expensive and not very effective.

Considering we have had a conservative government for the past 8 years I fail
to see how this is Labours fault, the only reform conservatives suggest is to
sell the NHS to their mate for a fiver, I fail to see how this could be
potentially beneficial.

~~~
growlist
Part of the problem is too much demand, and when something is free people do
not respect it - bring in a small charge and it discourages frivolous use. I
don't think this is a particularly earth-shattering extreme right wing
observation.

I don't want anyone making huge sums out of healthcare either, though lets be
honest, Labour didn't exactly do a good job in controlling doctors' salaries,
did they?

------
aalhour
Smaller self-managed groups (e.g. Tribes) are a better way for people to work
and group together than bigger groups (i.e. countries).

------
cdoxsey
Question 70: What is justification?

Answer: Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he
pardons all their sins, accepts and accounts their persons righteous in his
sight; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the
perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and
received by faith alone.

------
0xcde4c3db
Nobody really _deserves_ to suffer or die. In some situations it may be that
inflicting suffering or death on someone is the best way to minimize it for
others, but people are rarely good at figuring out when this is the case.

------
monotone666
Why is the continent with the most natural resources also the least developed?

~~~
kapilkaisare
That's a good question, but not necessarily a belief, is it? :)

~~~
monotone666
I’m a mercenary I don’t care how I get richer

------
theknarf
XML is a better format than JSON, and JSON is a better format than YAML.

~~~
NatW
>XML is a better format than JSON.

That's quite absolutist - I can see why you see it as an unpopular idea. For
me, the context where a tool is used is key.

XML is good if you have document-oriented data or want to use XML's
namespacing.

I personally prefer JSON to XML in most other circumstances - which are most
of them.

I happen to agree with you about YAML, but I don't think that's as
controversal.

------
DoreenMichele
That I'm actually getting myself well when doctors claim that cannot be done.
It routinely gets really, really ugly reactions of the "You are batshit
insane" variety.

------
throwaway3767b
That climate science isn't very advanced, as far as making reliable
predictions is concerned, and places far too much faith in complex and
incomplete simulation models.

------
krapp
The "old" web wasn't as great as you remember, and it wasn't better than the
modern web.

------
nasmorn
That people have agency and as such peoples life circumstances are at least
partially of their making.

~~~
Coll
This is a very popular belief and it's how we run the entire criminal justice
system.

------
CM30
Okay, this is a hard one to decide between. Probably one of the following:

1\. That populism and extremism was basically inevitable, and without a major
shake up, future equivalents of Trump and Brexit and what not are going to get
more and more common (and extreme).

2\. That the focus on identity politics over economic inequality came from the
left's shift in focus away from the working class to the middle/upper one.
Easier to blame a new scapegoat than look in the mirror at the source of your
own lifestyle.

3\. As well as that transhumanism and tech are the solution to issues like
global warming, not changing lifestyles. The latter just won't happen without
a planetary dictatorship of some kind, whereas the former may fix or reduce
the effects enough to be manageable.

------
monotone666
Free will does not exist; Fee will!

------
motiw
I am not right nor left wing. As am extreme center and practical I irritate
both sides of the political map.

------
dangerface
As a political centrist I feel like I'm surrounded by communists and fascists.

~~~
Coll
Except (at least in the U.S.) the field of political opinion is rotated 90
degrees. It should be Fascists vs Libertarians, but instead Republicans take
the social side of Fascism and fiscal side of Libertatianism, and vice versa
for Democrats. So IMO neither party takes a logical position.

~~~
dragonwriter
Oh, so Democrats more than Republicans prioritize spending on the military and
security state, and particularly on a corporatist engagement between industry
and the State both in general and particularly in those domains?

Seems to me that of you are viewing the world through a Fascism vs.
Libertarianism lens and trying to apply that to US party political the current
Republicans take the social side of Fascism and also the fiscal side of
Fascism.

------
jimijazz
sometimes I think that I'm a genius

~~~
Coll
I know that I'm not, but I think that I am.

