[permo-w]

It's the eternal hacker news debate:

"let's regulate x"

"but surely we can't regulate x because defining x is complicated"

"plenty of things are complex and are regulated, also here is a definition that covers almost all cases and the rest can be left to judicial nous"

"but people will just evade the law anyway"

Honestly pick a post about the EU at random and you'll be able to find some variety of this chain of conversation. It's so general an argument that it could be made about literally any law that's ever existed, making it entirely null if you believe in any regulation whatsoever

[throwup238]

I once had the idea to create a HackerNews equivalent to tvtropes called hntropes that crowd sources all of these patterns.

[Teever]

My personal favourite hntrope is how any conversation about a geological feature outside of the US will inevitable turn into one about American geological features and then shortly after it will just descend generic American discussion.

I conceptualize this as something like the Hamming Distance, where you can measure the number of replies the conversation will have before an inevitable pivot to generic American stuff.

So the conversation could start with "Why back in 2013 I had a lovely time fishing in Scotland. The lakes there are remarkable."

"Boy me too that fishing was just great caught such and such fish blah blah blah love those lakes"

"Why that reminds me of the time I went fishing in Kentucky, boy the lakes there let me tell you..."

"Kentucky you say? Why I was just in Kentucky the other day! Boy they sure have < difference in real estate prices | difference in crime rates | differnce in minimum wage... >

and now it's a conversation about Kentucky real estate instead of a conversation about fishing in Scotland.

[rickydroll]

do it

[permo-w]

Do it