[BoiledCabbage]

I mean, do people no longer have any concept of ethics? And I don't mean this in the abstract sense, I mean literal practical everyday ethics. Understanding the concept of tradeoffs and consequences of actions and the rest.

I feel like we've built a church (or possibly cult) that had mantras of "Innovation at all cost. Liquidity at all costs...." among a few others. With no view whatsoever as to what the implications

And I seriously am starting to think that HN and general SV culture. Specifically here on HN, the number of times I've seen a justification end in one is those thought terminating cliches is legitimately concerning. The amount of reasoning that boils down to "this is good because it improves innovation. And because it improves innovation it is good." And not only zero thought on the implications of taking the action suggested - what seems like an unawareness that one should even consider the consequences of taking the action. It's as if "we've reached the 'innovation is good' stage of the thought state machine so the state machine should terminate and return success".

It's absolutely mind-boggling to me that anyone could post a comment on saying yes we should give up medical privacy and not even have a single sentence on the negative consequences of doing that. "Why would one need to think about the negative consequences? It has a positive consequence so clearly we should do it."

Is it a gap in CS education? General education? Is it the personality type of us engineers? Is it nature? Nurture? Both? Is it social? Others don't step in to provide that feedback when it happens? How do we even approach it?

[sdenton4]

I didn't say that we should give up medical privacy at all. Simply that there is, in fact, a trade off, and that the current regime looks to me both overly restrictive and poorly implemented.

Wholly getting rid of medical privacy is obviously a bad idea. But perhaps we could agree that there are research purposes where greater access to data would be helpful, and that creating exemptions under certain circumstances could help on the research side. (Eg, the data is securely silo'ed and access restricted, and stays inside the research org only.)

(It's mind boggling to me that people have such poor ability to think in anything but stark binaries. It's a total failure of critical thought which degrades the quality of policy discussion. How do we even approach it?)

[nradov]

There is no real trade off between medical privacy and research. That's a total red herring. Researchers can already ask patients for consent to use their data. Many patients will agree, especially if researchers explain the potential benefits and take responsible steps to safeguard the data.

HIPAA regulations also allow researchers to use de-identified data.

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/special-...

[floydnoel]

I think this question boils down to individualism vs collectivism. If you think it is ok to override individual rights in order to "benefit the many" then you will be in favor of your proposal. If you view individual rights as _unalienable_ then you won’t value collective benefits over the individual rights to privacy & self-determination.

I don’t see how your particular viewpoint is any less "binary" than the other one. Collectivism or individualism is the binary option, where you land on the collectivist side of the coin.

It's mind boggling to me that people still resort to ad-hominem attacks when discussing viewpoints here on HN, when it's clearly against the rules. How do we even approach it?

[j7ake]

We are at a “prestige, glam, and attention” at all costs phase of society.

[flangola7]

These people genuinely terrify me because they obviously don't have have the faintest idea of what consent means or what FRIES looks like. They don't see other people as equals, but mere tools to use and manipulate in any way they desire.