Who needs democracy when you have data? - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611815/who-needs-democracy-when-you-have-data/ <comment><USER2> There is nothing in the world right now that I fear more than the creep of Chinese surveillance/authoritarian practices into the rest of the world's society. They are a rapidly growing superpower, and while I hold no fantasies of U.S. supremacy, this specific trend in the use of digital technology terrifies me.

There won't be a war, by the way. I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke it out in such a literal fashion. It's just bad for business. (Military might today is usually directed from superpowers to third-world countries, but that's a topic for another day).

China's influence and dominance will happen through the private sector, ironically. They have their own versions of Google and Facebook: Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. These are the tech giants through which the Chinese government gets most of its data on citizens. They are even more ubiquitous than ours - people do everything from getting loans to scheduling medical appointments through them - and they've begun trying to break into the western markets. Tencent in particular has been investing billions in everything from Blizzard to Tesla. At the same time, Google, Facebook, and Apple are also trying to break into the Chinese market. Those companies have already compromised their values for the sake of that opportunity by blocking VPN apps on app stores, censoring content, etc. For now those policy adjustments only apply in China itself, but once it becomes an established (and massive) market - they have four times the population of the U.S. - do you really think the companies would stand up against pressure from the Chinese government to apply those policies elsewhere?

Between the spread of the companies it effectively owns, and the deals being made with the rest of the world's most powerful tech companies, China will soon wield more influence than the U.S. I don't think it'll be long before surveillance-states are the norm.

<comment><USER3> > I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke it > out in such a literal fashion. It's just bad for business.

It's bad for business until it's not. Isolationist economic policies will over time make war more likely.

> Between the spread of the companies it effectively owns, and the deals being > made with the rest of the world's most powerful tech companies, China will > soon wield more influence than the U.S. I don't think it'll be long before > surveillance-states are the norm.

I'm not sure about China wielding more influence than the U.S. That sort of thing is really hard to predict accurately, especially from the perspective of someone who isn't a world leader privy to all available information.

I do agree that surveillance states will be the norm, though, at least everywhere that doesn't currently have a democracy functioning well enough to prevent it.

<comment><USER2> "I'm not sure about China wielding more influence than the U.S. That sort of thing is really hard to predict accurately, especially from the perspective of someone who isn't a world leader privy to all available information."

I think at the end of the day it just comes down to the numbers. With four times the population, they have four times the market of consumers and four times the workforce to create value. The U.S. is still in the lead for now, somehow, but China has recently taken up a very potent type of hybrid economic development, where free-market startup-culture is encouraged, but guided and pruned by the government.

<comment><USER4> _> but China has recently taken up a very potent type of hybrid economic development, where free-market startup-culture is encouraged, but guided and pruned by the government._

I don't think the USA gets enough credit for _inventing_ this hybrid economic development system. Good examples include:

* Military computing -> Intel, IBM, etc. -> Moore's law

* DARPA cash -> early networking/PC projects at universities -> hacker/hobbyist culture -> Microsoft and Apple

* Gov't really emphasized "finding information" in CS the 1990's -> NSF grants at Stanford -> Google.

* The Human Genome Project -> Illumina, Solexa, etc. -> Moore's law-shaped cost curve for sequencing

And less R&D heavy examples like the national railways and the interstate highway system.

This pattern continues today. Self-driving cars started as several decades of NSF-funded research projects that turned into a DARPA-funded competition a decade-ish ago that turned into an industry-funded goal rush today.

<comment><USER5> Google and Apple and Microsoft and Facebook and Amazon are each American companies who do business in Europe. I, as European, get very little out of that though because they dodge taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> Uighurs are required to install government-designed tracking apps on their smartphones, which monitor their online contacts and the web pages they've visited._

Appalling as this is, I'm surprised the government needs to do this at all, given the assumption that WeChat or Tencent would already have all this information and be required to make it readily available. Then again, maybe the visible intrusiveness is the point: Han get spied on invisibly through social media and mobile carriers; Uighurs have mandatory app installs to constantly remind them who's in charge.

<comment><USER7> It may be simple expediency: there are many stories of Uighur people being stopped by police and having to show them their phones.

The app may be a pragmatic way to facilitate that interaction without need for central monitoring (which is probably also used).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Democracy is good because it basically allows for a peaceful revolution if a populace is dissatisfied with its government. Democracy is bad because the government risks enduring endless bickering and nothing getting done.

Etc, etc. I don't know what the right answer is anymore.

<comment><USER9> I've always thought that deadlock was a feature instead of a bug. If half the population is for it and half is against it then nothing should happen legislatively.

<comment><USER10> Federalist paper #10 contains a lot of thought on this topic, and it's worth reading. Like all documents of this type, it should be read as a kind of argument between two competing sides. [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Data is nothing; interpretation is everything. That's why democracy is needed even in the presence of data: the people still have a need to choose how the data is interpreted and who will do the interpreting.

<comment><USER12> It's particularly easy to mislead by only collecting data that supports a given position. This is why heterodoxy is so important in the academy, and why it's so concerning that certain fields are so hostile toward unorthodox points of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A more apt story would be "Who needs democracy when you have economic growth". It's strange how the exceptional economic circumstances of China are glossed over in such social analyses.

China has had average 10% growth rates for 3 decades, it's economy has grown by a factor of 40 since 1988. It's hard to explain just how powerful this positive economic shock has been. The Chinese people have seen, during their recent lifetimes, the country transitioning from abject poverty into a world superpower in the medium income range. Their quality of life and paychecks have grown every year and the political leadership is addicted to this growth, it's how they stay in power and easily quench all discontent.

As soon as this incredible growth cycle is exhausted we will start to see the first chinks in the armor of the Party State, we will see the public demand democracy and official accountability. Look for example to Hong Kong, where the growth has been much slower (they already had a high level of development) and the dissenting voices are multiplying. And that's exactly what will happen in the rest of China in the next 10-20 years; growth becomes much harder once you have picked the low hanging fruits and you get closer to the advanced countries.

</comment><comment><USER14> Appropriate background for any claims of unbiased decision making based on statistics:

[https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/LieStat/](https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/LieStat/)

The numbers can be completely accurate, but the interpretation will always be biased. Also - "USA Temperature: can I sucker you":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17744886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17744886)

</comment><comment><USER15> << systematic falsification of data on everything from GDP growth to hydropower use pervades Chinese government statistics.

So what's the use of all this fancy data if they can't have accurate statistics? That should have been the basis of scientific management?

<comment><USER16> Columbus kept two logbooks, one with his ships' real positions, and another with falsified positions to show his men so they wouldn't become discouraged.

<comment><USER15> Columbus was one man, here you have an enormous organization: Are you sure that all decision-makers know the correct statistics and not the falsified one? Are there more than two levels of truth here - does the academy of sciences have the same figures as the central committee? What about the ministries and regional authorities? This madness must be creating its own challenges, so to speak. You never know if the numbers that one is looking at are correct - the job of Mandarin is not an easy one.

<comment><USER17> The Soviet Union kept two sets of historical archives, allowing only the most reliable and/or senior people inside the "real" one (for example, accurate data on Stalin's purges). They also kept two sets of economic statistics. As you suggest, it caused a lot of confusion. And, yeah, no one knew who had the correct information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This might be slightly off topic, and I'm really all for democracy, but I do worry that the system is losing its competitive edge in the age of reputation. It's just way too easy for an organized party to spread maliciously fake information and sow discord among the populace. We saw this at work with Russia's Twitter accounts that claim to be from Texas, England, and other Western worlds, writing subtle hate tweets against refugees, Muslims, BREXIT proponents/opponents, etc. Thing is, it's not just Russia that's doing this. There is a German study that found social/political bots that root for Japan's nationalist agenda [1]. South Korea has been having similar issues on their biggest websites. And I'm willing to bet there are organized parties within America that benefit from social division as well.

A non-democratic society is probably better equipped to move forward amidst all the chaos (and in preventing chaos in the first place), whereas a democratic one may be much more likely to tear itself apart from inside out.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29182493](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29182493)

</comment><comment><USER19> An interesting perspective. I would like to understand more in depth the history in China of how influence has been gained and how ordinary people were able to affect the local politics. In the English/Germanic tradition, we might have a parley-ment, or a town hall, or a Thing.

I wonder what the comparable system in China was? Does anyone have some in depth knowledge here? (happy to rtfm if one is available)

<comment><USER16> All governments need some method of contact with the governed to assert their legitimacy. It's telling that in North Europe we had _parliaments_ \- places to speak your mind - because speaking your mind was how we did that. Oratory was, and is, seen as a necessary quality in a good governor, since at least ancient Greece and certainly since the days of Rome.

In China, on the other hand, there is no major oratory tradition. The way Chinese government contacted the people was by being everywhere and nowhere - omnipresent, through the imperial civil service, and yet unseen. If you wanted to gain influence in the government, you took the imperial examination, became a bureaucrat, rose through the Nine Ranks, and hopefully, by the time you reached the top, you had enough governing experience to see merit in the old way of doing things.

<comment><USER19> > The way Chinese government contacted the people was by being everywhere and > nowhere - omnipresent, through the imperial civil service, and yet unseen.

What does everywhere and nowhere, mean, specifically, in the context of a society without telephony and electronic surveillance? What were the means for a local official to adapt policy in the face of pressures and demands from his local stakeholders? How were these pressures transmitted?

Again, happy to read scholarly works well versed in the way of Chinese governing here, this is probably "Basic Chinese government history 101" stuff. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The people inside the democracy. They need democracy.

<comment><USER21> Do they? Can you really establish a rational need for democracy, or are you just running on cultural reflex?

If you take this question as me saying we shouldn't have democracy, maybe it's reflex.

It's an interesting question. Democracy isn't an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. What is that end (or those ends)? How else can those ends be achieved?

<comment><USER22> A rational need for democracy for you would be so that I don't govern you according to my wishes.

A rational need for democracy for me would be that you don't govern me according to your wishes.

A rational need for democracy for the uyghurs would be that Xi Jumping doesn't govern them according to his wishes.

I've always understood this to be what is meant by democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all the others.

<comment><USER23> But ... we currently (in the US) have a direct example of the rulers in power governing the populace in a way which is "not according to the wishes" of roughly half the population. (I think this is a direct result of our 2 party system, as compared to Britain's multiple parties, but I've no idea how to fix it.)

Any time you vote on the losing side of an election (whether it's for who to elect, or approve a tax, or legalize (or ban) certain acts, you end up being governed by _every one else's_ wishes. On the bright side, at least in a democracy I mostly have the trust that such changes CAN happen, over time, if enough people come to believe similarly as I do about things.

<comment><USER24> I was always taught that representative democracy is the rule of the majority, with respect for minority rights. This is where a rational court system comes into play, and why not all questions of rights are left to a referendum.

It's what distinguishes it from populism, which is also a rule of the majority, but is a tyranny in that it scapegoats the losing side rather than tries to establish a peaceful way of life for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> people who's data has noise seems like a compelling group.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Politics is an art by which politicians get money from the rich and votes from the poor in the pretext of protecting each from the other" \--Oscar

</comment><comment><USER27> > _It helps that a tumultuous couple of years in the world's democracies have > made the Chinese political elite feel increasingly justified in shutting out > voters. Developments such as Donald Trump's election, Brexit, the rise of > far-right parties across Europe, and Rodrigo Duterte's reign of terror in > the Philippines underscore what many critics see as the problems inherent in > democracy, especially populism, instability, and precariously personalized > leadership._

In other words, that a democracy might actually function as one -- oh, the horror -- reflecting what people want, instead of what the elites and the well off 10% wants them to want, or present as TINA.

<comment><USER28> If Trump, Brexit and Duterte are what the people want, perhaps we live in societies that are incapable of self-governance. I'm no fan of centrist neoliberal politics, but regimes and decisions which destabilize economies, marginalize minorities and villainize immigrants are clearly not a better alternative.

<comment><USER29> > clearly not a better alternative.

To what, though? What's the choice here? Give a few people even more power without having to be voted in? Who decides which people get all the power? What if they're worse? How do we get rid of them? Is a bloody revolution or decades of dictatorship really the same as having elections where the votes don't always make the best choices?

<comment><USER28> I don't know. I didn't offer an alternative, and I'm not sure that there is one. I only pointed out that from the GP's viewpoint, these examples of democracy reflecting the will of the people (Trump, Duterte, Brexit) are not having positive impacts on society. I don't believe they should be held up as examples of democracy at work, but rather as unfortunate failures of democratic systems.

<comment><USER30> Failure only because you disagree with the outcomes. Many of us supported Brexit and Trump. Democracy does not guarantee the outcome you want, and to believe that democracy has failed when it does not go your way means that you have a wrong idea of what democracy is and perhaps are anti-democratic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is heavily reminiscent of Project Cybersyn, a project of the Chilean government in the early 1970's.

</comment><comment><USER32> The gov't has already been so difficult to get with. With algorithms, doubly so.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why does MIT Tech Review insist on an incognito-hostile and tor-hostile mechanism to try to limit free views (to 3/month)?

<comment><USER34> What extensions/privacy settings do you use? (Chrome or another browser?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> _The northern city of Rongcheng, for example, assigns a score to each of its 740,000 residents, Foreign Policy reported. Everyone begins with 1,000 points. If you donate to a charity or win a government award, you gain points; if you violate a traffic law, such as by driving drunk or speeding through a crosswalk, you lose points. People with good scores can earn discounts on winter heating supplies or get better terms on mortgages; those with bad scores may lose access to bank loans or promotions in government jobs._

Some parts of this seem analogous to USA's Credit Score system. A total surveillance state isn't a great idea but this small part of it seems reasonable, no?

<comment><USER36> $deity forbid, no.

The problem with this is that once you get beneath a certain threshold, you find yourself on a self-reinforcing spiral which it's hard to get yourself out of; a spiral not unlike that of homelessness.

Watch Black Mirror's S03E01 for a glimpse of where this can take us.

<comment><USER37> Additionally, what someone considers positive, someone else may consider negative. If I attend an anti-gun rally, who gets to decide if that makes me gain, or lose points?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I remember watching an anime, around 3 or so years ago, called "psychopass". It was about a dystopian country that was governed by technology.

The system would decide what would be the best position for somebody in the government if they desired to go there. It'd also monitor people and evaluate in real time their psyche. People who were predisposed to psychopathic and/or sociopathic behaviour were flagged and monitored. The police would use guns that tranquilized flagged people and disintegrated people deemed public danger.

This article painted China as a predecessor of the country presented in the anime.

As for the ranking / credit system. I don't believe that such an idea is feasible, as it resembles elo. We know from online games such as League of Legends that elo is not an appropriate metric as it's often governed by multiple variables out of the individual player's control. While in the 'long run' it evens out, it often creates the illusion that a player stuck because of their environment and not themselves, which while may be true in a few cases, in most cases is false.</comment>


Ask HN: Free and Open Source clone of a Web App. you wish existed? - <AUTHOR> There are lot of great Open Source Web. Apps out there. A lot are free, some aren't. Do you ever wish for a FOSS version of a web app. that you use a lot but doesn't have an open source version or clone ? <comment><USER2> A modern crowdfunding platform. I've been searching for one but only found several abandoned work-in-progress packages or old/slow/insecure stuff. Wish I had the time to start a project :(

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see a FOSS service that's functionally identical to Google Drive. Like, I could use my own server (or pay for hosting) to get the same functionality and hold all my stuff. Of course, stuff like this exists, but I don't think any of it is as good (yet).

The main things I would need:

\- Great spreadsheets

\- Simultaneous editing (can send a link to someone and immediately have them edit without needing to log in)

\- Cloud-based (I can log in with two-step from any public computer)

\- Shared folders

I love G Suite but kind of hate having to rely on Google, and it would be nice to host my own.

</comment><comment><USER4> A good and simple Hacker news clone / forum. All options out there are just full of useless options that will take me longer to remove than code my own simple forum from the scratch. I know there is HN code available but I want it in php or Python, so more mainstream developers can work with it.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried out lobsters?

[https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters)</comment></comment>


WTF happened to software? - <AUTHOR> http://doppnet.com/2011/12/wtf-happened-to-software/

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty silly article in my opinion. What happened to software? The future happened. Yes, you need firewalls and permissioning now because technology has evolved past a purely trust-based system. Why is this a bad thing?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you don't participate in something, it's unlikely you'll get what you want. That's what happened to this guy; "I'm too lazy to make my own tools" and now all the tools suck. Well, yeah.

</comment><comment><USER4> Switch to Mac? That would solve about half of the problems...

<comment><USER5> Switch to Ubuntu. That would substitute all the problems mentioned in the article by another set of problems :)</comment></comment>


Show HN - We just built a site that saves lives - <AUTHOR> http://watsi.org/ Watsi is the first global crowdfunding platform for medical care. We'd love your feedback on the site. We just launched it today! <comment><USER5> The one thing you need to focus on above all else is transparency and preventing scams. Video of the actual person who needs the treatment would go a long way, as would video updates along the way. I'm thinking an Android app that the locals could use to document the process.

If you solve that properly, this will really take off and do a lot of good.

Also, you're going to eventually need to take a very small cut of the donations to pay living expenses for your volunteers. 100% to the patient sounds great, but for _my_ donation, I'd prefer to know that there is someone dedicated full-time to the cause and overseeing the process, and receiving a _reasonable_ salary for it. Of course, be 100% transparent about those salaries as well.

<comment><USER6> I don't think we need video of the process. If the people want to do it fine, but making them put on a show of themselves I think is a bit much. As a person, not only are you sick and need help from others but you need to be a documentary just to prove to people you aren't a scam, little much -- it's one thing to have a photo and story so it makes it real but as long as there is some trusted third party verification, I think that's enough. There are actually charities that have been doing this sort of thing longer than most of us have been alive that have figured this out, good idea to learn from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like that you brought up third-party verification. We think that's the most efficient and responsible way to scale our due-diligence process. Currently, in addition to being verified by us, all of our partners have been verified by multiple third parties (Partners in Health, Givewell, CNN, ABC, HBO, etc.) and they are all 501(c)(3) organizations which means that they are also overseen by the US Gov.

I agree that learning from other charities is the best way to evolve. Kiva has a pretty awesome due diligence process that we would like to pick and choose elements from as we grow: <http://www.kiva.org/about/risk/kiva-role>

<comment><USER7> Like Kiva, it would be good to also list the "sponsor" (read: 501(c)(3) name) on the patient's profile/donation page. If that sponsor name also included a link to a basic sponsor profile page showing further sponsor information, that would be a step in the transparency direction for me. I'm hesitant to donate until I see which charity is sponsoring the person who needs treatment.

EDIT: I dug through the pages and found a link to a Google Spreadsheet doc with basic information regarding the sponsor for each patient. This is one area I would definitely improve into a sponsor link on each patient's donations page. But all-in-all, great stuff!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The Google Doc could definitely use some improvement, but for now it seems to do the job.

Did you get a chance to click on the Medical Partner link on the patient profiles? It opens a lightbox with some info on the partner.

But we'd love to have more robust pages with tons of awesome info (map, financials, photos, data, etc.) for each Medical Partner. We just need to raise the money to pay for the quality dev time we need!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm typically against organizations that need to live off donations. I think it's an impractical and unsustainable model. Your cause is very close to my heart and I would love to support it, but I'm a creature of convenience. I could make one donation now, but would fail to continue making donations. The two solutions I have seen that are successful at solving this problem are:

1) Automation. E.g. in the movie Office Space they take shavings off transactions (amounting to a few cents or less at a time) and pool them together. Another example: Auto-rounding up my grocery receipt, etc.

2) Recycling funds. I don't see how this would work in a donation based system where cash-flow is one directional, but it works really well for something like Kiva where funds are returned and the option to recycle is extremely easy.

If any non-profit is to be sustainable, they must put in a HUGE amount of effort to obtain large enough recurring funds or make it really easy to provide funds. Since you are targeting individuals, it's going to be difficult to do the former. The latter will take a little more thought.

All this said, I wish you the best of luck.

<comment><USER9> They could offer a subscription model, and then make it a monthly "game" of deciding where your money's going to go. Lots of people are willing to become sustaining members of charities.

Or, I'm a member of a meta-charity called Foundation Beyond Belief, in which my contribution is distributed to various nonreligious charities based on priorities I set (e.g. 25% of funds to environmental causes, 50% human rights, 25% poverty, or whatever). So for Watsi, maybe I could predefine, say, types of medical treatment, country/region, etc. and then the system heuristically determines where to disburse.

And now that I think about it, Kiva optionally does something similar, so that loan repayments don't just sit stagnant in people's accounts because they haven't gotten around to manually distributing them.

<comment><USER10> We (Kiva) are also adding monthly donation subscriptions as well, or at least I'm trying to this week for my innovation iteration project.

<comment><USER11> Is Kiva still growing? Haven't heard much about them recently.

<comment><USER12> Yep, still growing. In fact they have a pretty cool "free trial" program running right now, where you can assign the funds of a single large lender. (It's a little bit like matching, but you don't even need to put up anything to be matched)

Check it out: <http://www.kiva.org/invitedby/giblfiz>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is "Death panels" in a fancy suit. Bid on life saving medical treatment from a thumbnail? By someones looks? and a possibly fabricated story?

So now we the internet get to decide who lives and dies? Who has a healthy fulfilling life and who lives with disease and disability? Idk about this idea. Its well intentioned, but oh so wrong all at the same time.

This type of charity should be first come first serve to be fair. Not some bidding war over who's the most sickly (but still cute) looking child, or who has the most compelling story. A human is a human.

The good intentions are there, but something about the way this website presents itself is twisted. Why should any of these people receive preferential funding over any other of them? Why should I get to choose? I'm not an expert on their medical conditions, or who needs more help than others. If this gets people to give money to a good cause, thats fine. But Idk. Still seems odd.

Sorry if this is the kind of "negativity" hacker news is trying to avoid these days, but this is genuinely what I feel.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are bummed out that the site makes you feel this way, but we genuinely appreciate you voicing your opinion. We're here to listen to the public, and if people disagree with what we are doing, we will shut down immediately. That said, I'd like to point out a few things.

1) This is not a bidding war. We won't remove a profile until it is fully funded. This is why we only post a few profiles at a time (and not hundreds) - to ensure they are all funded in a reasonable amount of time. If the patient needs treatment before the profile is funded, we will front the cost of care.

2) Humanity has always decided who lives and who dies, and it sucks. It makes me angry, but it's a reality. The only difference is now, because of how connected the world is becoming, this reality is a little harder for those of us that are the most fortunate, to ignore.

3) We aren't first come first serve. That wouldn't make sense, because our Doctors identify patients, they don't identify us (that would lead to fraud). Instead, we are lowest-cost, highest-impact first. Every profile is reviewed by at least two independent doctors (usually more) to determine which cases are the best ones to fund (and I assure you that "cuteness" is not a criteria these Doctors use to make a decision). See our FAQ for more info on treatment guidelines.

We feel terrible that our site presents itself in a way that you think is twisted, and we would love to make whatever changes we can to improve it. Feel free to reach out to me directly at chase (at) watsi (dot) org with any other thoughts. We've spent a lot of time thinking about this (and even consulted with a medical ethicist), but we always have a lot more to learn.

But perhaps the most important thing - the internet funded 11 medical treatments today for people that wouldn't have had access to them otherwise. You guys literally changed (and saved) 11 lives. I don't know how that can be a bad thing.

<comment><USER14> Alexanderh's main concern is he doesn't want to choose who gets treatment:

 _> This type of charity should be first come first serve to be fair. Not some bidding war over who's the most sickly (but still cute) looking child, or who has the most compelling story. A human is a human. The good intentions are there, but something about the way this website presents itself is twisted. Why should any of these people receive preferential funding over any other of them? Why should I get to choose? I'm not an expert on their medical conditions, or who needs more help than others. If this gets people to give money to a good cause, thats fine. But Idk. Still seems odd._

Can't you also provide a way to pay to a common pool? People who are uncomfortable with choosing can contribute to this pool. You can take money from that pool and forward that to patients who _urgently_ want money for treatment? And people who contributed can see where their money got used (if they want).

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely! That's a great suggestion rkwz. There is a new crowdfunding site called Wishbone that actually has a "profile" that serves as a general fund. Would something like that be a good solution? <http://wishbone.org/students>

<comment><USER14> Yes, that's exactly what I had in mind!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just got an email - "Thanks to you, Sushil's medical treatment has been funded!"

Now that's CRM! I can't think of a single possible better way of making a customer happy. I'm telling everybody I know about this.

The payment process was seamless, the design is lovely and the cause, well, of course.

You guys are amazing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Thank you~!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome site, congrats on making the world a better place.

I would suggest that you integrate directly with reputable organizations - <USER2> will place an abstraction between you and potential backlash for scamming. Also allows you to provide aid where you don't have direct reach already.

Another idea would be to integrate with hospitals/care givers directly, so you know the money is being spent properly. Hospitals/care givers will be less likely to scam you, as they can benefit in the long term and do have something to lose if caught scamming.

<comment><USER16> Also, the feedback cycle you have in place is also very exciting. I don't want to downplay what you are doing by likening it to gamification, but positive feedback is key for repeat donations.

From a consumer standpoint, my main qualms when it comes to donations are (1) Control over where my money is spent, and (2) Knowing that my money spent is being put to good use. You guys have the opportunity to knock both those problems out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed! The update loop is going to be really big for us. We are also considering some other features that would add to the gamification of the site (karma points for donating/sharing, becoming an ambassador for a particular profile, etc.) but those are still all in the brainstorming phase.

Like I said above, transparency is the single most important thing to us, and we spent more than a year establishing our partnerships. If you have any specific questions about transparency and accountability, I am more than happy to field them here. We also have a ton of info on our FAQ: <http://watsi.org/faq>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the most powerful "About" pages I've seen:

 _> >The instant she opened the folder everything came together. There was a full-sized photograph paper clipped to the inside left cover and a document stapled to the right. The photograph showed a young boy with an incision across the width of his iodine-stained chest. The document to the right outlined the patient's medical condition. The young boy was her son._

<comment><USER18> Not as powerful if you have seen that same scene performed by a scammer before :(

Thinking of it, it would be just as amazing (and ironic) if the woman's story was a scam too. Something about fate/karma or nature balancing itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> May i suggest a "I just funded <person>'s medical treatment with XYZ$ on <http://watsi.org> Facebook-share option?

Or "<Person> just got new medical treatment from watsi.org", with a name and picture of that person..

Something like that to encourage people more to do the same as their friends do :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a share option, we just don't have the pre-populated copy. We will work on that!

<comment><USER19> Yes, i was just thinking.. what instantly got me was the personal link/story/background/picture to the people you fund on the website. That get's lost with the normal sharing, doesn't it? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a bit uncomfortable with this. Who picks the people that get our help? Is it better to pick a few and fix their lives, or should we aim to slightly improve the lives of many?

<comment><USER6> Well, I can sort of understand what you're saying. But, it's like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, which actually is a common theme in many of the criticisms. There are people with real problems that need help now or they could perish; I don't see how providing ways to help them could ever be a bad thing. The other alternative is to fund nebulous water projects that might get off the ground in 1-5 years or something like that -- no that there's anything wrong with that but I don't think it is a mutually exclusive thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is excellent. The funding process is fast and seamless. It took me literally less than 30 seconds to fund a treatment. Kudos for an amazing idea and excellent execution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Adrian, you rock. Thank you so much! If you are ever in San Francisco PM me and I'd love to buy you a beer (or a tea or a juice or whatever)!

<comment><USER21> I really appreciate the offer, but just to be clear, I didn't fund the whole treatment! (I'm a beer drinker, but I live near Toronto and won't be near San Francisco any time soon - but if plans change, will do.)

I know you've had a ton of ideas thrown at you in this thread, but I've been thinking about your site since donating and I think what would be really amazing, if you can accomplish it somehow, is a way to encourage people to donate regularly.

There are probably many ways you could do this, but here's one: allow people to donate a sum of money, up front, that is not assigned to a particular person who needs treatment. Periodically prompt this person to fund treatments using some portion of this sum. Alternatively, support subscription billing where each time the money is withdrawn, the person is notified and asked to assign the money that was withdrawn to a particular person who needs it.

I really feel that a recurring process of some kind could both vastly increase the amount of money you raise, and also benefit donors by giving them a periodic uplift in their mood and level of happiness. It could become, if this word is not too misplaced, addictive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are awesome ideas! We had never thought of loading up on Watsi Credit (with a large, one-time donation) and I think that's a super cool option to offer donors. No doubt we are going to see a major decrease in traffic after this HN post, and working on ways to retain donors is going to be our next big challenge. Thanks again for the feedback and support, we all really appreciate it! (And if you do come to SF, the beer offer still stands :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On the 'location' section I'd love to have a link that says 'Learn more about health care in this country.' Or something like that.

I have a fairly good handle on how these situations could occur in the US but in Canada they would be unthinkable! Why, in this specific country, is this person not being taken care of?

As many other have said, best of luck. This is a truly Good endeavor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. We'd love to have a lightbox that describes the country with a map, some info, and all that fun stuff. A quick note: there are approximately 200 countries in the world, and only 40 have a formal healthcare system. Pretty crazy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Awesome guys, really nice and fast funding process (though if payment fails you are stuck with plain red message in blank page, you could improve on that one). The advice I can give you - steal best parts from Kiva, they have great and successful site. One of the things I missed was "tip" donation along with the treatment donation.

<comment><AUTHOR> We love Kiva, and we hope to implement a "tip" option very soon. We just need to head out into the real world and raise some cash from grants, philanthropists, whatever, so we can pay to build all the features we want!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In case anyone couldn't get to the site for a bit, our hosting provider Heroku was seeing some issues with apex/naked domains: <https://status.heroku.com/incidents/421> Hopefully it's resolved now. I cranked up another dyno just in case.

Thanks for all the love!

<comment><AUTHOR> You ROCK Jesse!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great idea, seems like well executed as well.

It might worth trying to get in touch with give well (<http://www.givewell.org/>) to get a review, so transparency aspect of it will be much better documented.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! We plan to. They recently rated our Medical Partner, Nyaya Health, as being in the top 1% of all non-profits for accountability and transparency. <http://blog.nyayahealth.org/2011/12/10/nyayahealth1/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great idea!

Questions: how do you select who gets on the site? What protections are in place to prevent scammers listing fake illnesses? What proof is required before funding is handed over? Is funding handed to patient or doctor or someone else??

<comment><AUTHOR> All great questions brador.

1) We work very closely with our Medical Partners to identify the lowest-cost, highest-impact profiles possible. Their Doctors identify the patients based on our criteria, and then we verify and accept the profiles as we receive them. 2) We only deal with our Medical Partners. Funds are sent directly to the partner to pay for the cost of treatment, and NEVER sent to the patient. The patients don't even know we exist until the Doctor tells them that they have been selected as a candidate for Watsi funding. 3) We require a full written profile from our Medical Partner's doctor, a photo, and a signed release waiver. After the treatment is provided our Medical Partners send us proof of the cost of treatment for our records. 4) We never deal with patients, only with our Medical Partners. As you can tell, a lot of trust is placed on our partners, and that is why we only partner with the best. You can read about the partners on our site, but currently they are:

a) Dr. Rick Hodes (CNN Hero Finalist) <http://rickhodes.org/> b) Nyaya Health / Partners in Health (Givewell rated them as top 1% of all non-profits) <http://www.nyayahealth.org/> c) Wuqu' Kawoq (featured on ABC) <http://www.wuqukawoq.org/>

Beyond just partnering with the best, we have personal relationships with each one of our MP's. Feel free to learn more in our FAQ: <http://watsi.org/faq> and on our transparency document: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZSaEF1X1JsRm1yZ251d0RQZ0VmRGc&output=html)

<comment><USER27> This breakdown needs to advertised more on the site. i browsed around a little and didn't know this is how it works. youre going to have a challenge of people trusting you... and this breakdown really helps get past that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love this, I use Kiva and the rewards are wonderful as is their way of keeping my money in circulation. But I'm not a U.S. citizen so I only donate a small amount because it's not tax-deductable in my country. You know what I would love? Some one to build a global non-profit money distribution center, so I can donate a lot more in my country and the money can go where I choose. Right now I keep my donations limited in price unless it's a local charity to my tax country and I'd like to see that change.

</comment><comment><USER29> > 100% of your donation directly funds treatment!

ITYM 98.6% - 96.6% - £0.20 GBP of your donation directly funds treatment!

Or is there some awesome charitable PayPal fee structure that you are using?

<comment><USER14> I think PayPal does take a cut. Look at their transparency doc: [https://docs.google.com/a/cordys.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah...](https://docs.google.com/a/cordys.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ah3wJ9CRQzyHdDZSaEF1X1JsRm1yZ251d0RQZ0VmRGc&output=html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. PayPal takes 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. This usually amounts to about 5% because of the low average donation amount. We hope to lower this. If anyone knows someone at PayPal, hook it up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think that it may be the case by law that the donor cannot select the individual recipient of a donation if the organization wants to retain tax exemption.

</comment><comment><USER31> Beautiful. This site works on the same principle as ChildFund (Christian Children's Fund), but actually delivers the money where it implies it does. When faced with actual real people that are in need, it is difficult not to donate, especially that the donation process is so smooth and seamless.

Not only made me reach for my wallet, it made me register on HH and comment, and that's much harder.

Bravo! Keep on making this world a better place for all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'd love to find a way for Gittip (<http://gittip.com/about>) to help you fund Watsi.org. The "public benefit corporation" sounds like what I was aiming at with open companies:

[http://blog.gittip.com/post/26350459746/the-first-open- compa...](http://blog.gittip.com/post/26350459746/the-first-open-company)

</comment><comment><USER33> Great work! Landing looks clean and within 15 seconds I know exactly what the core message and values are. I appreciate the work you guys have done to make it as transparent as possible as I know that is a major point of contention when it comes to crowdfunding.

Small nit: Is it just me or is the "email" button on the profile page actually popping up the share modal on hover?

<comment><USER34> not just you - it definitely pops up the share modal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is. We need to change this. We just added those social features last night, and we still have some work to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Definitely get the 501c3 info up as well. Some employers will match employee charitable donations. Mine does and I love to use it to "stick it to the man". I would be interested in giving and registering you as a charity eligible for donation matching. Donations can be money, time, software, etc... It can be a great way to "leverage up" your giving.

</comment><comment><USER36> I once developed a similar application for a large charity which included the ability to place a widget to donate to the 'current charity' on your site/blog and had an associated leader board of who collected the most donations.

That project was never launched due to the cost of integrating with their ERP, but the idea might be worth considering for Watsi as well.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is brilliant idea and one that is perfectly executed. I would love to contribute whichever way I can and the way it brings down the barrier to contribute is remarkable. I would love to contribute in a personalized way than to donate to an organization where I don't have any clue what happened to the money. Wish you all the success!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I imagine a lot of people will be reading the FAQ page, so you might want to correct this typo:

In order to be eligible for Watsi funding, patients must be inflicted with an illness that meets the treatment criteria and subsequently be unable to afford the required medical treatment as a result of poverty.

You surely mean "afflicted" rather than "inflicted"

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch. We are going to change that ASAP. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> A very successful launch with an incredible objective (one profile already funded today). This is exciting stuff!

</comment><comment><USER40> Does adding a "monthly subscription" type option make sense? It does add another level of complexity(user accounts and whatnot), but I think people would like the convenience of automatically donating.

Maybe having the option to split their donation as they see fit(1/3, half and half, 100% to just one, etc).

Good luck with the site. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We can't wait to enable recurring donations. It's at the top of our list!

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wow, thanks for making this!

I just shared this on Facebook but the FB auto summary thing didn't pull up an image as it usually does for links. You should look into fixing that because having a powerful image (as you do on the homepage) will definitely increase visibility and click-through rates.

</comment><comment><USER42> This made me really misty eyed. It's a really good idea that will change peoples lives. I'm going to share this to everyone I know.

Please share this on Reddit as well and make it viral.

Nothing brings me down like seeing children with medical conditions and parents that can't afford treatment. It's so sad.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suck at Reddit and I apparently shared in the wrong subreddit and got downvoted. We would love help from any Reddit experts out there. Feel free to post!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Glad to see you guys take part in GSVC. Really miss this competition, and the social enterprise community at UC Berkeley. Being a non-profit I bet it was pretty tough to survive with competitors who focus on for profit or non/for profit hybrids that scale.

</comment><comment><USER44> brilliant idea, specially with the update on the outcome of the treatment. hope this succeeds

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you bezaorj! We've all donated our time to build this, and its been a year in the making. We're excited to see how it goes!

<comment><USER44> I think this has a lot of potential, you just need a good catalyst to accelerate this beginning process would be a retweet by a person with lots of followers... an indie musician that I know got retweeted by howard stern (5+ million followers) and his song (that was really good) went viral. The idea of the website is really good as well, people just need to discover your website. I would look for any musician, actor that has 500k+ followers and try to get a retweet from him and then move to bigger fishes...

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally! We need to get a few big names to help jump start our growth. We're going to start reaching out to people today. We'd love to fund all these treatments our first day live!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It would be even better if you integrated some way to fund sustainable projects related to the health and wellbeing of these people.

Saving someone's life is an amazing thing. Helping a community develop programs to saves lives into the future is on another level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent point. I am so glad you brought this up. One thing we want to do is partner with microfinance organizations and enroll all of our patients in financial literacy courses, as well as have them open up savings accounts, so they can better prepare for medical emergencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> One suggestion: please get a copywriter to write your headlines and subject headings. The current "we just built a site that saves lives" is epically bad. You are leaving money on the table when you make ambiguous, poorly written copy.

<comment><USER46> That said, it's a beautiful website and a beautiful idea. Sincerely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, that's awesome.

I felt bad having to decide between them and funded all 3 that still need funding :)

p.s.: unfortunately i still have a "bad feeling" because the internet is full of scams, i guess that will be your hardest fight, convincing people you are not a scam

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Buster - Gaining trust is our single greatest challenge, as well as our top priority. We really appreciate your support, and I'd love to hop on the phone with you and answer any/all questions you have. Feel free to email me at Chase (at) watsi (dot) org and I will send you my number. Or, if you are in San Francisco, I'd be happy to meet in person!

Thanks for your support!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is really cool. I would love an option for a repeating monthly donation. Maybe send me an email with candidates either based on random draw, treatments which just need a bit more to get over the top, or something similar.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is awesome, So glad people are out there doing good deeds like this. I immediately thought to myself, wow this is really cool.

If you guys do nothing else in your careers you'll still be able to say you've made a difference. That is truly awesome.

Congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Absolutely amazing, love the idea, love the way you implemented it.

I'll definitely be signing up and making some donations.

My main concern though is as this scales (which I'm sure it will because it's awesome) you will run into the scammers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Scale will be tough, but our goal is to partner with a few large organizations (Doctors Without Borders for example) that can provide a lot of patients. That will help alleviate a lot of risk as opposed to working with 1,000 smaller clinics.

</comment></comment><comment> dan-g Any way you could add a brief synopsis of your organization to your "site unavailable" page? I (and I'm sure others) would be much more likely to keep the tab open/check back soon if that were the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> We got rid of that page ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> All in all this is a really great idea! Keep going and keep improving!

<comment><AUTHOR> Gracias!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Hi, I just tried to donate and logged in through Paypal but I get "Something went wrong": <http://cl.ly/image/0Z0H0n3i1f0q>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for supporting us, and I apologize about that. We are going to look into it ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is brilliant! What a great cause. I have a few questions for you on the technical side:

\- What did you code this in?

\- How many developers did you have?

\- How long did it take you?

\- What kinds of problems did you encounter on the way?

Congrats on the launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words.

\- Ruby/Rails/HTML5 \- 1 dev + some freelance assistance on the front-end \- Took a while since we are all working part-time as volunteers. About a year total. Probably a few months of solid dev time. Setting up operations took a lot of time. \- Hardest part is working as volunteers. Everything takes 5x longer when people aren't being paid.

Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm in love with the idea, but the frequency that payments get bounced via Kickstarter bothers me when the funds are applied directly do medical procedures like this.

</comment><comment><USER54> Awesome site! One point of feedback: the PayPal workflow is so bad it almost made me stop my donation. It would be much easier with a standard CC payment option.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> We hope to switch away from PayPal asap. Trust us, that's the first update we're going to make. Braintree is looking pretty good right about now.

<comment><USER5> Look at Stripe also -- very easy API to work with. I hear good things.

<comment><USER54> Having had a little experience with both, I'd concur that Stripe is probably going to be easier to integrate. (Although my Braintree experience is more limited and dates back 2 years or so.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Amazing non-profit and website! Truly for a great cause.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Great work. I would suggest tweaking the <title> text when there are zero or one fundings going on to encourage me to donate still.

</comment><comment><USER57> And...looks like everything's fully funded now.

Between this and the Tesla museum crowdfunding has given me optimism about the world we live in these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been a little crazy. Way more traffic than we anticipated!

We are working on loading our reserve profiles now!

<comment><USER58> RSS feed of profiles should be high on your priority list. Easy to implement, and bound to be very effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Looks good. Minor minor minor nit-pick: Twitter logo needs to be updated :)

<https://twitter.com/logo>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! You are totally right. We will get on that. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Nice! Totally awesome that you might literally save lives. I agree with the others that the transparency thing is the most important.

</comment><comment><USER61> You guys are fantastic! Thank you for finding a way to save those that are sometimes overlooked!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> All treatments are fully funded. Wow, that's an awesome job folks (both Watsi and Hacker News)

</comment><comment><USER62> <http://hopemob.org/> clone?

</comment><comment><USER63> This is absolutely great. Spread the love on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER64> Bravo

You are doing a great thing, and I applaud you

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we really appreciate the love!

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Does it get any better than this?

<comment><AUTHOR> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> So awesome! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Nick!

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Does it bother you that you are subsidizing defective genetics and thus making humanity less fit and thus increasing the average level of suffering? You might think you are being nice by decreasing the suffering of an individual, but you are also dooming consciousness to suffer being born into a defective host that otherwise would not have happened if not for your subsidization of defective genetics.

I am curious as to what the higher than average enlightened readership of HN thinks on this?

Of course it is very taboo to say what I did as the medical industrial complex is on the side of causing this problem as they are then guaranteed not just one more customer, but a new lineage of customers.

<comment><USER68> I have never commented before, but I had to reply to this. I assume you are being serious, but hope you just have a twisted sense of humor, or perhaps you have just read too much Schopenhauer recently.

I believe that just because someone is born with a disadvantage or have health issues does not mean they are defective. Everyone has as much a right to life as anyone else.

In support of your beliefs, I would be interested to know your responses to the following questions:

At what point does a person's suffering cause a sufficient decline in the global "average level of suffering" to imply they should not be allowed to reproduce or continue living? Should all sick people be left to die?

Should we serve the depressed arsenic instead of offering counselling and medication?

Should we just execute people of higher than average IQ, since ignorance is bliss?

We all have defects, should we all die to spare the planet?

How do you calculate average suffering? What is the unit of measure?

Does the momentary joy of seeing the birth of a child outweigh years of chronic pain?

<comment><USER67> No, I am not joking at all. This is a serious mater. Unless you want humanity to eventually degenerate to beyond even the point where everyone is dependent on multiple surgeries simply to live past just being born, then this is something that needs to be though about, discussed, and rectified - no mater how difficult a subject.

Some of your questions appear to me to be purposely absurd in order to make the topic seem absurd. To answer your first question though, which is a reasonable one: It may not be a simple answer of some point is too defective, but the answer there must obviously be something other than the current idea that no level of defectiveness is too defective to be aided to breed more unfortunate burdened souls. My personal feeling is that the line has to be somewhere around being too defective to live without medical intervention beyond childhood or perhaps better is the point before one is otherwise able to have children and raise and support them to the age where they are self supportive.

Your pointing out that the issue is a complex one with no easy answer does not justify the continued destructive course that humanity is treading down.

Regardless of how hard an issue it is to solve, it must be recognized that the current setup of unlimited medical intervention to keep people alive and breeding, no mater how defective, in fact results in a degenerating gene pool, a downward spiral of suffering. This is the true reason why medicare costs keep increasing to the point now where it is the majority expenditure of any western nation (even in America, it is greater there than how much is spent on the military). Again you can see why the medical industrial complex is set on continuing this trend. If not for the limits of economics, this would eventually consume all resources of the world just to keep itself alive with medicine.

In some countries this has led to the talk of not providing medical intervention for some groups of people who need it to survive. Unfortunately the talk is always around not giving it to the old people in order to save money. While they may seem less important to save, it is actually the wrong group to withhold intervention from, as saving old people is not destructive to the gene pool. They need to start talking about withholding it from the opposite end of the age spectrum.

<comment><USER69> The issue is only complex because you believe that some people have inferior DNA than other people, and you posit that there exists some people who are "defective", and who should not pass on their genes through reproduction.

Your reasoning is absurd, and has been demonstrated as such by the questions asked of you. Such questioning is part of a valid form of argument known as _reductio ad absurdum_. It has the unfortunate (some would argue fortunate!) side effect of making the one putting forwarded the invalid argument look ridiculous.

Of course, sometimes reducing to the absurd occurs in reality. It wasn't that long ago that sterilisation of those deemed "defective" was being done in first world countries such as the U.S. Your ideas are a branch of eugenics, which has been widely discredited for some time now.

So before you tell the readership of HN that the idea should be taken seriously, I regret to inform you that not only have people done so, but the majority categorically reject it for extremely good reasons.

<comment><USER67> If a program's code (DNA) has bugs that cause the system to fail when running without expensive workarounds (medical intervention), would that not be called bugs in the code? Also called defects? Thus it is defective code that cannot run without expensive workarounds.

Your understanding of what is eugenics is flawed. What I am talking about is not eugenics. Eugenics is artificial selection for attempted good. What is happening is artificial selection that results in degeneration, which is bad. That is called dysgenics. I am against that, and thus you can only call my argument anti-dysgenic.

Anyways, it is your comment that is absurd, as demonstrated by the majority of it being an insult. Try to remain civil - it better facilitates enlightenment of all parties to the discussion.

<comment><USER69> You are seeing insults where there are none.

I don't believe that comparing humanity with computer code is particularly wise. However, to use your analogy - if there is a bug in the code you fix it, and you correct any problems that the bug causes. That would be the ideal of modern science, but we aren't there yet.

To be able to implement your ideas of genetic purity (which is basically your argument!) we would need to either a. Stop those with genetic "defects" from breeding, or b. withdraw treatment from them and hope they die before they have offspring, or c. end the life of those people to take away strain from the medical system and prevent them from reproducing. Regardless, to know this there would need to be mandatory mass screening of the population to make these determinations. Go work out the moral objections and monetary costs that would result from THAT, if you will!

Furthermore, your original argument is that those with congenital defects cause excessive strain on health systems. Yet where do you get your figures from? I would be very interested.

Yet there is more that you haven't considered. Using your own argument - <USER3> I find to be so terribly wrong - you haven't considered that not assisting those with a genetic defect may remove positive genetic attributes from the gene pool. Now you have the problem of judging whether one aspect of their genetics should cause them to propagate their genes. But if you do let that propagate, then you are exhibiting anti-dysgenics, which you abhore.

What makes your argument particularly specious is that you never consider the intrinsic worth of the person receiving the treatment. On top of this, you think that it is moral to refuse treatment for those suffering from illnesses because they are defective. And yet they are not defective, they have a particular defect that is causing them medical problems.

In short, I consider your ideas cruel, inequitable, poorly reasoned and ill- considered. That's not an insult: it's a reasoned opinion.

<comment><USER67> It is actually quite wise to consider DNA like any other programming language. It is a much more complicated language, being a spatial programming language, but it is a programming language none the less. Such a perspective provides great insight.

Anyways, you are correct that we are not there yet with actually fixing the bugs in code. We are not even remotely close to that point unfortunately.

The ideas of not subsidizing excessive defectiveness are a far cry from anything to do with genetic purity. It seems that you are in clear bias with a motive to shut down any discussion on the topic by poisoning the well of these truths by injecting labels such as 'genetic purity' and 'eugenics'. Any enlightened reader can see that your only arguments are appeals to emotion and guilt by association. A fallacious association as I have proved.

My original argument is simply that subsidizing excessive defectiveness is increasing the amount of suffering in the world, not helping to reduce it as one might intuitively believe. You are correct however that it also causes an excessive burden. An ever increasing burden. Medicare costs are spiraling out of control in all nations with socialized medicine, that includes America (Medicare and Medicaid, de facto free emergency care, and so on). In fact, the American federal budget allocates more to socialized medicine than to the military. A military known for its expansive cost. It will only become worse with the new full blown explicit socialized medicare system recently affirmed by the supreme court. This dysgenic path humanity is taking is the primary reason for the ever increasing medicare costs of countries with socialist medicare. This is off-topic from my original point, however, I share it with you as you asked and said you were very interested.

Your next paragraph is flawed in saying that somehow being anti-dysgenic is being dysgenic. I am advocating the lack of action. You are saying that requires selection? There is no selection I am calling for. I am advocating to let nature do the selection. I am calling for less artificial intervention. Not more.

Your next point is also defective in saying that someone who has a defect is not defective. I refer you to my programming analogy from my previous comment. A system with such grave defects that it cannot operate without expensive workarounds is certainly worthy of being called defective.

To your conclusion: you may feel such emotions regarding the harsh realities of the problem at hand, but emotions are not logic, and do not a reasoned opinion make.

<comment><USER69> Oh dear. A rebuttal looks to be in order:

 _It is actually quite wise to consider DNA like any other programming language. It is a much more complicated language, being a spatial programming language, but it is a programming language none the less. Such a perspective provides great insight._

I said, actually, "I don't believe that comparing humanity with computer code is particularly wise". However, you haven't proven anything in your sentence - you have made an assertion, but you haven't explained why this is a great insight.

 _Anyways, you are correct that we are not there yet with actually fixing the bugs in code. We are not even remotely close to that point unfortunately._

Indeed - to compare DNA to computer code, with computer code we can make changes to fix the problem. With DNA, we cannot do that as of yet.

 _The ideas of not subsidizing excessive defectiveness are a far cry from anything to do with genetic purity. It seems that you are in clear bias with a motive to shut down any discussion on the topic by poisoning the well of these truths by injecting labels such as 'genetic purity' and 'eugenics'. Any enlightened reader can see that your only arguments are appeals to emotion and guilt by association. A fallacious association as I have proved._

The ideas of not subsidizing "excessive defectiveness" are not a far cry at all. By discriminating against those who have congenital defects when it comes to providing health care, you are essentially labelling them as not fit to be supported by society. Furthermore, you have not explained what is exactly meant by "excessive defectiveness".

For someone who doesn't like the term "genetic purity", you have a way of bandying about terms such as "excessive defectiveness" with abandon. This makes your protestations that I use appeals to emotion all the more interesting, given that you are currently doing this via ad hominem attacks (e.g. accusing me of poisoning the well of discourse and that my arguments are guilt by association, etc.).

 _My original argument is simply that subsidizing excessive defectiveness is increasing the amount of suffering in the world, not helping to reduce it as one might intuitively believe. You are correct however that it also causes an excessive burden. An ever increasing burden. Medicare costs are spiraling out of control in all nations with socialized medicine, that includes America (Medicare and Medicaid, de facto free emergency care, and so on). In fact, the American federal budget allocates more to socialized medicine than to the military. A military known for its expansive cost. It will only become worse with the new full blown explicit socialized medicare system recently affirmed by the supreme court. This dysgenic path humanity is taking is the primary reason for the ever increasing medicare costs of countries with socialist medicare. This is off-topic from my original point, however, I share it with you as you asked and said you were very interested._

Thank you for the attempt at information, but I haven't seen a single figure other than an assertion that medicine costs more than military spending in the U.S. Also, to put it finely, the United States does not equate to the entire world. You are, in fact, wrong when you say that medical costs are spiralling out of control in _all_ nations with socialized medicine (what a wonderfully emotive term, by the way!). I live in Australia, which has a fantastic health system funded by the Federal and State Governments, with a parallel private health care system. Free health care for most medical conditions is given to all. Medical costs over here do indeed increase over time, but they have not been "spiralling out of control". In fact, costs have been increasing not because of congenital defects, but rather because of lifestyle issues such as overeating and lack of exercise.

Quoting only the American Federal budget when making an assertion that "all nations with socialized medicine" is not only showing a very distorted world view, but one that is very easy to disprove - which I did above!

I love the term "socialist medicare", incidentally. Well played - <USER4> quite like using a vague and emotive term that certain others find concerning.

 _Your next paragraph is flawed in saying that somehow being anti-dysgenic is being dysgenic. I am advocating the lack of action. You are saying that requires selection? There is no selection I am calling for. I am advocating to let nature do the selection. I am calling for less artificial intervention. Not more._

In that case, I apologize as I misunderstood your original assertion which is even more absurd than that which I thought you were saying! Next time you are sick, or if your eyesight starts failing due to a family traight, or if you have a congenital heart condition I strongly advise you to follow through your convictions and don't attempt to go to hospital. In fact, this must be a substantial cost saving as you don't have to fork out money for health insurance. I suppose those are the upsides to doing nothing.

 _Your next point is also defective in saying that someone who has a defect is not defective. I refer you to my programming analogy from my previous comment. A system with such grave defects that it cannot operate without expensive workarounds is certainly worthy of being called defective._

This point is defective in saying that someone with genetic strengths is not strong. I am, of course, being facetious. I would love to be a fly on the wall if you were to discuss your opinions with Steven Hawking. Though I'm not sure he would give you the time of day...

 _To your conclusion: you may feel such emotions regarding the harsh realities of the problem at hand, but emotions are not logic, and do not a reasoned opinion make._

"excessive defectiveness", "you are in clear bias with a motive to shut down any discussion on the topic by poisoning the well of these truths", "an enlightened reader", "socialized medicine", "Medicare costs are spiraling out of control".

You are so sure of your argument that you have ignored all the opposing views and questions (I notice that you have not answered many of them) and do not even recognize your own emotive language!

<comment><USER67> You are welcome for the information regarding the United States. There is plenty more if you look yourself, but it does seem that you are not yet interested in considering other sides of the argument. Of course I never said America is the whole world, I don't even live there. It was simply the example I gave.

America is a great example, as many people believe that their deficit problems are solely the cost of their wars. To open minded people it is usually an eye opener to see that they spend more on medicine. Australia has the same problem as every other western nation: <http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication- detail/?id=10737420435>. It is hard to argue that Australia's decades of health care spending growing at almost twice the rate of GDP growth to be anything other than spiraling out of control. You ultimately admit the trend I speak of, but then without evidence try to blame it on incidentals such as unhealthy eating and exercise.

It certainly is a far cry. Think about what you are claiming: That my ideas are of genetic purity. That is an extreme that is a far cry from simply not wanting excessive defectiveness - being the opposite extreme. By claiming my belief that one extreme is bad is somehow advocating for the other extreme is looking at it in black and white, completely ignoring the fact that there is a gradient of options and I am talking about some middle ground being better than either of the extremes.

As for appeals to emotion and the like, I see: You use them your whole argument up until now, but after I point out your tactic of relying on them, you try to claim it is instead I who have been relying on them, simply for calling a spade a spade. Socialized medicare is simply socialized medicare. There is perhaps no simpler term for it. Medical welfare? The government forcing you to divert your resources from your own offspring to subsidize others defective genetics at the barrel of a gun? What term would you prefer I use? If you really feel that ashamed of the fact your country has socialized medicare, that still does not make my assertion of you having it an intended insult or any kind of appeal to any emotion of such disgust.

I certainly have not used ad hominem attacks simply by pointing out your continued obvious attempts to inject labels such as 'genetic purity' and 'eugenics' into the discussion. Again, simply calling a spade a spade. You are doing better now, but it is undeniable that the meat of your earlier responses was to simply dismiss my argument because to you it sounds like 'eugenics' or 'ideas of genetic purity'.

I wish my stance were saving me money as you assume it does. But unfortunately my government takes my money at gun point to fund subsidized medicare. There are some defects that if I came down with I do truly feel in my heart that I would resist the natural urge of self preservation and accept my fate for the good of humanity. For example, cancer. So yes, I truly wish I could opt out of the injustice of socialized medicare. I also inherited the traits of being smart enough and having enough fortitude to save my money and thus I could afford to fix myself after almost anything like broken limbs and other accidents that are not my fault. However, if I tried to opt out of the dysgenic system, men with guns would come and take my wealth by force, and throw me in jail. Meanwhile, my government just announced they wouldn't fund the best (not even expensive) treatment for prostate cancer, whilst they continue to fund sex changes. Ah, the freedom of choice that socialism gives you.

Your using the Stephen Hawking argument is nothing more than an anecdote. It is the common argument: what if the person you save invented the cure for cancer. I always laughed at that one hearing it over my life. It essentially argues that the expense of spending unlimited resources to keep every possible soul alive is worth the off chance that one of the people you save will be worth it. Too bad it dooms future generations to more dependence and suffering than that one person is ever going to make up for.

That is the essential fact here. The current course of humanity is to do what we feel is good to do in this area, but it is entirely short sighted. In the medium and long term we are increasing the amount of inherent suffering, increasing the inherent dependence of man on medical intervention and thus the state and industry. We are becoming sicker, and less free. That cute little kid you saved by donating money to their medical procedure might make you feel good about yourself since you have lessened their immediate suffering, however, their lesser suffering does not offset the essentially unlimited suffering of the lineage of defectives that you have just created with your selfish desire to feel better about yourself. I do not intend that as an insult, as it is simply a vulnerability in human nature that the average person has which has been exploited to justify the dysgenic medical system by the medical industrial complex and those who have in their interest increasing the dependence of the people on the state. It is a human nature, and a system, that must be examined - instead of dismissed with emotive labels such as 'ideas of genetic purity'.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>