Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pdonis 3258 days ago
> it seems quite a reasonable argument that, while you have a young child, you shouldn't actively go around risking your life -- they're your dependents

That's an argument for having life insurance; it's not necessarily an argument for not taking risks.

3 comments

Money is not the only thing a father needs to be around to provide to his kids, at least not in a desirable case.

And yes, I know many cases are a lot less than desirable.

(When did people start to think money is a good substitute for everything?)

> Money is not the only thing a father needs to be around to provide to his kids

I didn't say it was. See my response to wfunction.

There is no argument for taking risk but for necessity and reward.
There are a lot of people that would disagree with that. You could say the same thing about a lot of things that enrich your life.
>> it seems quite a reasonable argument that, while you have a young child, you shouldn't actively go around risking your life -- they're your dependents

> That's an argument for having life insurance; it's not necessarily an argument for not taking risks.

Yeah, because fathers can be replaced with money and children wouldn't feel a thing.

That's a bit out of order.

You clearly have a belief system which is risk adverse and that's fine but i find it a little judgemental on other people's family lives to be saying what's reasonable and not reasonable to do as a father.

> You clearly have a belief system which is risk adverse and that's fine but i find it a little judgemental on other people's family lives to be saying what's reasonable and not reasonable to do as a father.

Well, I'm not the one who said what the father did was unreasonable, so you might have meant to reply to someone else. I merely said I thought the argument provided for that stance was reasonable. Happy to say the same about an argument for the opposite stance as well when I see it too. The fact that I might find an argument reasonable that doesn't mean I find it convincing and necessarily agree with the conclusion.

"You clearly have a belief system which is risk adverse"

No, the poster you're responding to does not 'clearly' have that. That's your opinion, and nothing more.

> because fathers can be replaced with money and children wouldn't feel a thing.

That's not what I said. What I said was that it's not necessarily an argument for not taking risks. You have to balance the risk against the potential cost. That is perfectly compatible with there being a cost that can't be made good with money. And it's also perfectly compatible with minimizing the cost--yes, you can't replace a father with money, but you can make the impact as bearable as possible by ensuring that money is not a problem.

> That's not what I said.

Says the guy who translated "actively go around risking your life" into "taking risks"?

What's the difference?
Your life being the thing on the line.
Since I talked about life insurance, obviously I'm talking about cases where your life is on the line. So does that mean you should never do anything that might get you killed if you have children? Even if you have life insurance?
That's more valuably left as an exercise for the reader.
In other words, you're unwilling to back up what you say.