Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by richo 4861 days ago
Alcohol is bad for you. So is going outside and waking up every morning.

I enjoy doing these things in moderation though, do we need more nanny stating to tell me what I can enjoy doing?

1 comments

@_@ how is going outside and waking up every morning bad for you like alcohol?
You can get hit by a car. Or fall from the stairs. Also, air outside is unhealthy in big cities. And then there're the UV rays.
This line of logic could be used as a justification for doing anything. "Meth is bad for you? So is going outside, cos pollution or something."
The logic does not prove that something is worth doing, it proves that the one particular argument for something being not worth doing is invalid. "This can lead to hypothetical bad result x" isn't a valid argument by itself, meth is only bad because the badness is sufficiently bad enough, not simply because it is not the healthiest possible choice.

It is a fallacy to assume that if a particular argument is wrong that the opposite of its conclusions must be true. You can easily think everything the blog post says is incorrect and also think hackathons are bad.