Ask HN: What is something you believe that nearly no one agrees with you on?

19 points by cyberaleck 12 years ago | 31 comments

krapp 12 years ago |

Self-driving cars are potentially the greatest threat to human freedom since the advent of the internet.

mrfusion 12 years ago | |

Why do you say that?

krapp 12 years ago | | |

The temptation for abuse seems too great to me. You have to tell a third party (or multiple - the government, law enforcement, your employer, your insurer possibly, or anyone who signs up for the inevitable Google app which plots your driving history) where you want to go and now they not only know who you are, but where you're going and where you've been. Someone else has complete control over the software which determines whether or not you get there (assuming these cars don't have some sort of manual override).

Yes, currently large aircraft operate more or less the same way (and everything is fine until something happens and the pilot realizes they don't actually know how to fly a plane because they've never had to). But people won't be taking planes to the store, or to work (for the most part) or the voting booth or to the hospital or police station or an AA meeting. The intersection of surveillance with physical restriction seems too much. I've got nothing against the technology, I just don't want to see it in widespread adoption. I don't want people in general to become trained to ask permission from black boxes to take them where they want to go.

Though I readily concede I probably seem like someone railing against the evils of the Web in the 90s, since a lot of people on HN think they're brilliant and probably a few actually work on them. It just seems very Orwellian to me.

lgieron 12 years ago |

Ultra-high taxation of the rich will be the only way for the society to survive in the world where most work will be performed by machines.

Myrmornis 12 years ago |

Humans have no right to exclude others from areas of land larger than their house and a small garden.

aegiso 12 years ago |

The only meaningful measure of skill is the amount of pain experienced acquiring it.

wturner 12 years ago |

The only belief that unites all religions as well as "non believers' is a general agreement that their is always something 'more' to life. In short the only thing anyone agrees on is their is always something 'more' regardless if you believe in god, aliens ... or whatever. The paradox is many people will disagree....and insist on their own religious or ideological box as being the 'only' rendition of "more"...IE Jesus, Allah, YHWH, or even science and any of its practitioners ideological and philosophical leanings (which do exist...ouch!) etc. ha!

A_COMPUTER 12 years ago |

Science has convincingly shown that consciousness and perception of "self" is an illusion, and thus acting as if "you" are real, or matter to the universe, is as fallacious and irrational as believing in a supernatural creator or ghosts. "You" are a short-lived perturbation in the block-universe. This reality, in combination with the nevertheless undeniable subjective experience of my own self, narrowly privileges selfish pleasure-seeking over all other moral codes, which themselves are utterly devoid of rational justification.

punkghetto 12 years ago | |

very interesting.

I would like to see this 'science', that's not voiced argumentatively, just would be of interest. However I posit that consciousness is more than an illusion. I won't type my spaghetti argument here but it is essentially the famous 'I think, therefore I am'. I would agree with you on the irrationality of religion and faith. I choose to be a 'believer' not on purely logical grounds but because of the other benefits it provides to me. Unlike you I feel that intrinsically my 'self' and other people's 'selves' are important and equal. My faith based beliefs provide a foundation for principles that support that conjecture. Essentially my beliefs are not based on the scientific method or on the physical properties of the universe. They are not however 'utterly devoid' of meaning, significance, or benefit.

btw, this s/b a reply to a previous comment as this doesn't answer the question posed.

RRWagner 12 years ago |

That people should care that their children's required Google-docs stored (and other methods) essays written in school are also being scooped up and subject to government algorithmic analysis with unknown present and future consequences. This isn't paranoid, it's the current state of things, and no one in either teachers' organizations or parents (or grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc.) seems to care at all about their own children. Apparently no one agrees that it's a problem, since the subject is never brought up or discussed.

sixQuarks 12 years ago |

when you die, nothing happens. You cease to exist and there is no soul, heaven, hell, - nothing is revealed, you do not become one with consciousness, etc.

But I hope I'm wrong

shahzad_76 12 years ago |

Peter Thiel loves asking this question to startups. What's funny is that writer Sarah Lacy posed it to him once (and uses it regularly at Pando Monthly events), and his answer was apparently, "That's a really hard question to answer."

http://pando.com/2012/04/19/peter-thiels-pointed-questions-t...

JoeAltmaier 12 years ago |

Wow, really? Ok, I believed up until now that nobody on Hacker News would post a naked invitation to trolling...

pvdm 12 years ago |

official story of 9/11 is fabricated lie.

jakeogh 12 years ago | |

[1] http://nate.flach.s3.amazonaws.com/Pretext.ISO

rainmaking 12 years ago |

Reincarnation is the most likely explanation for differing talents.

chrisbennet 12 years ago |

I believe a happy person would be made poorer (in the ways that matter) by winning the lottery. I'm the only person I know who doesn't want to win the lottery.

marcoherbst 12 years ago |

The great war of the future will not be between nations or religions, but between city folk and rural folk.

rman666 12 years ago |

Aliens seeded or significantly influenced the development of the human race, a la 'Prometheus'.

punkghetto 12 years ago | |

Ha, made me smirk. I personally believe in creation. anyways I think it is easy to feel like there is some sort of 'cosmic' intervention beyond evolution, to help people feel a sense of purpose and place in our world and universe.

workaholic 12 years ago | |

"...nearly no one agrees with you on"

But at least you have Giorgio Tsoukalos.

ris 12 years ago | |

So who created the aliens?

bonemachine 12 years ago |

That love really does exist, and will save us all.

fsk 12 years ago |

Taxation is theft!

thinkscrappy 12 years ago |

Morality is mostly an allusion of circumstance

user_235711 12 years ago |

Humankind is not the end of evolution.

softwareman 12 years ago |

There is no free will.

contextual 12 years ago |

Morality matters, and the lack of it is destroying the planet, the economy, and our families.

jayhuang 12 years ago | |

I agree very much with this. I'm not sure many people would disagree either...