[HN Gopher] Tell HN: DanBC has died
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: DanBC has died
I am sorry to announce that long-time HN contributor DanBC died
last month after a prolonged period of ill health. May his legacy
continue to inspire, and his contributions to this place and the
wider world be remembered. Rest in peace, Dan.
https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/media/53jhyy44/neurodiver...
"Sadly Dan Beale Cocks, the wonderful Co-Chair of the Mental Health
and Wellbeing Partnership Board died on 21 August 2024 after a long
illness. Dan made a fantastic contribution to improving mental
health and coproduction in Gloucestershire for many years and he
will be greatly missed. Before Dan died, we asked if we could plan
an annual Dan Beale Cocks Celebration of Best Practice in
Coproduction and he was delighted with the idea. It is intended to
take this forward in collaboration with the other Partnership
Boards." https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DanBC
https://medium.com/@dan.bealecocks
https://twitter.com/DanBealeCocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjiMvSJDa2g
Author : in_memoriam
Score : 456 points
Date : 2024-09-15 22:03 UTC (1 days ago)
| chris_wot wrote:
| I'm so sorry to hear about this.
| skybrian wrote:
| Also Tildes, I believe: https://tildes.net/user/DanBC
|
| RIP.
| hoggler wrote:
| Tildes has a remembrance post for Dan:
| https://tildes.net/~talk/1iv0/remembering_danbc
| xupybd wrote:
| I hate and fear cancer so much.
|
| Why does it seem like so many are dying of cancer :(
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Because if nothing else gets you, cancer risk rises as you get
| older. At some point it gets you, I guess.
| viraptor wrote:
| Yes, a few types are basically a numbers game. We're
| continuously successfully not getting them every day. But the
| longer we live and not die of other things, the higher chance
| there is of losing that game. And we're actually getting
| quite good and not dying of other things.
|
| Then again, cancer treatments and vaccines are progressing
| recently, so that's good news.
| guerrilla wrote:
| This sounds good, but it can't be right. There are animals
| that live centuries. Greenland sharks may live up to 500
| years, for example. There are trees that live millenia.
| viraptor wrote:
| Turns out they have lower mutation rate which helps them.
| Their chances are much lower, but still not zero.
| https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/sharks-cancer-
| secret-al...
| thfuran wrote:
| But they aren't human. We don't survive being dessicated
| and heavily irradiated like a tardigrade or regrow
| severed limbs like starfish, and we aren't as good at
| avoiding cancer as some other animals.
| cogman10 wrote:
| And some animals are worse. Dogs, for example, are most
| likely to die from cancer. They also get cataracts
| decades earlier than humans do.
| guerrilla wrote:
| You're supporting my point. The reason we suffer from
| this is not solely probabilistic. There are many other
| factors.
| kragen wrote:
| being warmblooded is a huge disadvantage for longevity
| AlphaCharlie wrote:
| Can you expand on that subject? What are the traits of
| warm blooded species that lead to higher cancer rates?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Probably constant generation of reactive oxidizing
| chemicals from the higher metabolism needed to maintain
| body temperature.
| kragen wrote:
| not just higher cancer rates, but higher rates of all
| kinds of aging-related deaths
|
| the advantage of being warm-blooded is that your
| metabolism is more precise and much faster, but, as james
| dean quoted willard motley saying, 'live fast, die young'
|
| most of the causes of aging are unwanted chemical
| reactions; https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-
| 8674%2813%2900... is a highly-cited paper reviewing what
| we knew about the causes of aging 11 years ago. chemical
| reactions of all kinds follow the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation which
| makes them happen about 2-3 times faster per 10deg
| temperature rise
|
| (being old is a more important risk factor for cancer
| than anything else i can think of, even smoking and
| radioactive fallout)
|
| small sharks around greenland, to take an extreme
| example, are at essentially the temperature of the
| seawater, about -1.8deg. larger sharks could conceivably
| raise their internal body temperature, but greenland
| sharks swim very slowly to avoid this even when they are
| large. so their metabolism is about 16x slower than yours
| is--both healing and aging processes happen slower. their
| gestational period is about 8-18 _years_
| guerrilla wrote:
| Thank you. This is the kind of thing I was looking for.
| After posting, I also found out that plants are even
| further in the other direction because their strong cell
| walls prevent metasticization.
| kragen wrote:
| happy to help! another weird thing is how rare cancers of
| the skeletal muscles are
| guerrilla wrote:
| That is interesting. I'm currently obsessed with exercise
| physiology. I might look into that.
| freedomben wrote:
| I don't think prolonging the life in a biological body is
| going to be the winning route. We will have to Star Trek it
| up and transfer our consciousness to computers. That, or
| replace parts, maybe even the entirety of our bodies with a
| machine that can be maintained and repaired rather than
| age.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I have two people in my direct circle get and have stage4
| lymphoma and adult leukemia this year at the time of their
| initial diagnosis. Does seem like it is on the rise from my
| perspective.
| danielvf wrote:
| Cancer (outside behavior related cancer like lung cancer) is on
| the rise.
|
| In spite of better treatments, a twenty year old today is more
| likely from cancer while in their twenties than at any time
| before. Each younger age cohort has an increase risk of cancer,
| and at younger ages.
|
| Cancer deaths overall are still going down though, as the
| smoking generation still alive goes out.
| layer8 wrote:
| To be a little more precise, roughly 1 in 6 deaths are due to
| cancer. It's the second leading cause after heart diseases,
| which are 1 in 3.
| tacon wrote:
| On some podcast a longevity doctor asked the host to estimate
| how much longer the average person would live if we
| eliminated/cured cancer.
|
| The answer was about three years. Eliminate heart disease?
| Another three years. Eliminate both? About five years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Was this a well-corroborated and fact-based opinion, or was
| it off-the-cuff and handwavey? Podcast answers aren't always
| totally reliable.
|
| But you mention "the average person," which is really the
| crux of the matter. Cancer strikes perfectly average people,
| oftentimes in their 30s or 40s, and hands down death
| sentences at random. A bad roll of the dice. A stray cosmic
| ray hit a dividing cell. Who knows? _That_ is what is scary.
|
| Eliminating cancer may perhaps only increase the average
| lifespan by three years -- though I have my doubts -- but
| what's much more important is that it would cut down
| tremendously the number of premature and random-seeming
| deaths in the prime of life.
| Theodores wrote:
| The thing is that we are led to believe that cancer just
| strikes at random, and anecdotally we know of someone that
| never smoked to get lung cancer that spread everywhere to
| strike them dead.
|
| Yet we also know it is not quite like that. If you smoke,
| drink, make sculptures out of asbestos dust, eat processed
| meats, shoot depleted uranium rounds down at the range and
| work with radium in a gun sight factory then you probably
| have stacked the odds.
|
| Now imagine you have an identical twin, maybe not cojoined,
| but living with the exact same stacked odds. However, you
| eat a strict diet of highly processed foods and only play
| tiddlywinks for physical activity. Meanwhile, your twin
| rides eats a strict diet that is mostly whole food, plant
| based and gets a lot of physical activity due to a passion
| for dancing.
|
| One of you is going to be likely to suffer a cardiovascular
| event before the other and that same person is going to run
| the risk of catching cancer first.
|
| Now we all know that eating processed foods, maybe with the
| exception of processed meat, isn't going to 'give you
| cancer' and neither is playing tiddlywinks. Equally, a few
| extra antioxidants and a bit of fibre from eating a few
| more carrots isn't going to spare you from cancer, neither
| is dancing for that matter. Nonetheless, cardiovascular and
| gut health is important for reducing cancer risks.
|
| I say this with anecdotal evidence provided by a car
| dependent relative that chose not to eat a fibre rich diet
| and now has cancers that I would not wish on anyone, with
| his digestive tract having to be trimmed from the far end
| due to cancer.
|
| Because he took the medical route with meaty pies and
| moderate alcohol levels, his life might only be cut short
| by three years. However, by then, there will be two decades
| of extreme medical interventions and a smorgasbord of
| medications that have to be taken daily. Lifespan is not as
| important as healthspan and there is much we can do through
| diet and physical activity to maximise healthspan.
|
| The trouble with my relative is that advice to go
| absolutely teetotal, stay off the processed meats and to
| eat fibre (as in vegetables) was not a message that was
| well received. This advice is in line with WHO
| recommendations but this can be simply ignored once
| lifestyle choices have been decided on.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| > _Yet we also know it is not quite like that._
|
| Oh, come on.
|
| Even if you're correct and cancer is not completely
| random but rather has clear causative factors, a lot of
| those factors -- perhaps the majority -- are
| uncontrollable.
|
| Radon exposure. Naturally occurring radioactive isotopes
| or beryllium in your vegetables or water. That virus you
| fought off a few years ago. That course of cyclosporine
| you once took. That cosmic ray from the Andromeda galaxy
| that happened to hit you and scramble some DNA. Many,
| many other factors. Cancer strikes in ways that _seem_
| truly random because many or most of its causative
| factors have absolutely nothing to do with lifestyle
| choices.
| freedomben wrote:
| Exactly. There are definitely people who lead higher risk
| lives by having exposure to carcinogens, but even that
| has some randomness to it. I had a family friend that
| smoked like a chimney his entire life, and died in his
| late '80s with tar-filled but cancer-free lungs. Another
| was an x-ray tech in the earlier days before they took
| nearly as many precautions as they do now to protect the
| technicians. No cancer.
|
| Contrast this with some aunts and uncles who lived
| relatively clean lives, and still ended up dying of
| different cancers. Sure, I don't doubt there is a cause
| if we dig deep into it, but there's still some
| randomness.
| commodoreboxer wrote:
| Eh, it's still a numbers game. Changing your chances of
| contracting terminal cancer in the next 5 years from 1%
| to 0.5% is still significant.
|
| In this case, the specific percentages are all the
| significance. When a lot of the factors are controllable
| and a lot of them are uncontrollable, the most reasonable
| question is "How much do the controllable factors
| actually change the odds?"
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| > _Changing your chances of contracting terminal cancer
| in the next 5 years from 1% to 0.5% is still
| significant._
|
| Short of quitting smoking, there's almost no way to do
| that, because you don't know what the factors are or how
| they're weighed & influenced by individual genetic,
| immune, and metabolic factors.
|
| > _" How much do the controllable factors actually change
| the odds?"_
|
| Not only does nobody know, nobody has the foggiest
| notion. I've never seen a relevant population-wide
| observational study that wasn't so full of methodological
| flaws that you could spend hours picking apart its
| defects.
|
| Of course we know that there's a set of factors
| associated with the development of cancer -- like, e.g.,
| long-term exposure to polonium in drinking water -- but
| there's also a large set of factors that nobody is aware
| of or which can never be controlled for. To use only the
| first set -- the set of what we know and can control for
| -- to accurately estimate the odds of contracting cancer
| within the next five years is impossible.
| Theodores wrote:
| I hear what you are saying, however, the vast majority of
| toxins that enter our bodies come through our mouths and
| out of choice. Some of these toxins, such as alcohol,
| cigarettes or processed meats are known to be
| carcinogens.
|
| There is a very different level of dosage involved, that
| one cosmic ray from outer space that one time is vastly
| outnumbered by the trillions upon trillions of atoms that
| could be carcinogenic that come through the mouth,
| typically on a daily basis, for decades.
|
| The body is pretty good at taking out the trash,
| including the mutant cells that did not reproduce
| properly. This goes on all the time. One cosmic ray from
| outer space might scramble some DNA but your body can
| deal with that as an isolated incident, the mutated
| cell(s) just get taken out with the trash.
|
| If you overwhelm this system with too much garbage for
| the body to deal with then that is a causative factor
| that was not controlled.
|
| It is helpful to see things this way because it enables a
| sense of perspective. It is not going to be 'forever
| chemicals', 'insecticides' or anything like that, you
| need to worry about. What goes in the mouth rather is
| what counts rather than these theoretical other things.
|
| This means taking seriously what research in cancer,
| diabetes and other disease has to say. For cancer there
| is clear advice on what to avoid, same with diabetes and
| much else nobody would wish on anyone. It is defeatist to
| be in denial about this to assume that random cosmic rays
| play as much a part as the garbage we willingly consume
| when it comes down to it.
| michh wrote:
| This is getting scarily close to "most people who get
| cancer only have themselves to blame" which can be a
| comforting thought if you're putting in a lot of effort
| to reduce your own risk of cancer but at the end of the
| day it's not true and kind of a shitty thing to say when
| we're commemorating someone who fell victim to this
| horrible disease.
|
| Reduce the odds it'll get you too as much as you want,
| you're wise to do so, but keep in mind it can still get
| you too and it is never somebody's own fault.
|
| More importantly, you can (almost) never say that if a
| cancer patient had done this and that or not done such
| and so they wouldn't have gotten sick. You just can't
| know and even if you did it'd still be a shit thing to
| say.
| melling wrote:
| Maybe looking at the average is the wrong thing to do. People
| who die from cancer can be robbed of a lot of years. A couple
| of other recent cancer deaths I saw on HN:
|
| Walter Ehmer died at 58
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41490388
|
| Jake Seliger was also known on HN died around 40:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41201555
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| This reminds me of a video I saw on HN yesterday:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJkWS4t4l0k
| w3gS34k354K7978 wrote:
| I find those estimates believable in a narrow interpretation
| of the question - i.e. if we solve cancer but change nothing
| else. I would expect a longevity M.D. to understand the
| spirit of the question and answer accordingly, though. I'm
| curious which podcast / doc this was?
|
| It's true that solving cancer, heart disease, and even all
| other similarly deadly diseases, would not automatically mean
| humans living indefinitely, because there's still cellular
| senescence to contend with.
|
| Fortunately, we've effectively solved senescence (or at least
| it seems we're well on our way). Check out the picture of the
| twin mice from David Sinclair's lab
| (https://sinclair.hms.harvard.edu/research) - it's hard to
| believe the two mice were born at the same time...
|
| And if I recall correctly, they didn't even do any sort of
| telomere modification in that study either... Don't quote me
| on that. But telomeres are another potent avenue towards >10x
| extension of life span, and also as it turns out, fairly
| trivial to lengthen and thereby allow a cell to continue
| mitosis indefinitely.
|
| The problem to solve is cancer, though. Telomeres limit the
| number of times a cell can divide by design, and seemingly
| the purpose of limiting division in the first place is to
| mitigate risk of developing cancers.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| This sounds surprisingly short. Surely the average person
| with cancer isnt going to live just three additional years?
|
| Went and did a brief lookup
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6710558/) -
| life expectancy is reduced by at least 3 years, even for the
| oldest patients, and increases significantly as age at
| diagnosis goes down.
|
| I suppose from the perspective of an 80 year old, curing
| cancer would in theory increase life expectancies by ~ 3
| years, though I wonder how many people die of "old age" but
| have an undiagnosed cancer of some form contributing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Most people don't have cancer, so the average lifespan
| reduction of everyone is going to be quite a bit lower than
| the average lifespan reduction of people diagnosed with
| cancer.
| pcwalton wrote:
| It's because of the Gompertz mortality law [1]--the
| probability of dying at a certain age is exponential. If
| you assume that the mortality of each age-related terminal
| illness itself follows the Gompertz law, then eliminating
| any one of those illnesses won't affect the overall life
| expectancy much, because exponential growth is so powerful.
| Even if we had cures for all age-related diseases except,
| say, Alzheimer's disease, the fact that Alzheimer's disease
| mortality also follows the Gompertz law (probably a
| reasonable assumption) would lead to lifespans not
| dissimilar from our present ones.
|
| Essentially, in order to achieve dramatically longer
| lifespans, we would need to eliminate, or at least
| significantly slow, _all_ aging-related causes of death.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham
| _law_o...
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Keeping the body alive is a low bar.
|
| Lost quality-adjusted life years would be a better measure.
| Many people survive for many years with cancer, but the
| quality of life drops significantly.
| petercooper wrote:
| My total guess(!) is because relatively few people lose a
| _large_ number of years to cancer, due to both the median
| age of diagnosis and long term survival rates of some
| common cancers being high? (For example, breast cancer has
| a 75% 10 year survival rate with a median age of diagnosis
| of 62. Bowel cancer is about 60% and 71 respectively.)
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Three years would be an amazing amount of precious time with
| a loved one. I know this.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| Microplastics?
| kragen wrote:
| probably because it's the first, second, or third leading cause
| of death in every country, depending on how you slice it up,
| killing about a quarter of everyone
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The problem of controlled cellular growth in a multicellular
| organism is a really hard problem that evolution has spent
| billions of generations on, and any cell in any of the dozens
| of systems that keeps the human body going can potentially
| escape the normal cell cycle control process and go out of
| control, leading to cancer. (edit: the fact that so many people
| lead full lives without coming down with cancer is more
| remarkable from this view, it's one of the miracles of life).
|
| While the ability to treat cancer using modern technology
| (especially if it is detected relatively early) has made vast
| advances, we're also surrounded by and exposed to a wide
| variety of molecules that can, especially in high
| concentrations, inflict damage on the cellular control system
| (a whole lot of proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, cofactors,
| etc.) and while that damage may be somewhat random in nature,
| if it happens to hit a key sequence in the cell control DNA you
| get a cancer cell. You can greatly reduce the prevalance of
| such carcinogenic mutagens in the food, air, water and soil
| with suitable regulations but this cuts into profit margins for
| the producers of various commodities and products who in turn
| lobby governments to eliminate said regulations (which to be
| fair may not have been well-designed or implemented).
|
| Yes there are genetic factors which may increase one's cancer
| risk but these are very complicated and often overemphasized by
| those who dont't want to see clean air, water, soil, food etc.
| regulations implemented.
| rlpb wrote:
| > ...a really hard problem that evolution has spent billions
| of generations on...
|
| I think it's worth noting that this isn't evolution's "goal".
| We just need to produce offspring and give them a good start
| in life such that they are competitively successful. Beyond
| that, evolution doesn't care.
|
| Even for that, there's a budget. If it's not economical over
| letting us die and not taking valuable resources from our
| offspring, then evolution also doesn't care.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| That could suggest why longevity in humans (or primates )
| was under active selection, as they put a lot of effort
| into raising the children so you'd expect that cancer in
| younger people would result in the death of their children,
| so evolution selects for robust anti-cancer systems (like
| the human immune system, which is relatively good at
| detecting and eliminating cancer cells as well as
| pathogenic bacteria, etc.).
|
| These explanations are however always a bit hand-wavy, eg
| why do galapagos tortoises live to 150 when they don't seem
| to do much parental investment?
| rlpb wrote:
| There must be other evolutionary pressures that change
| cancer resistance as a side effect.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Having grandparents around to care for the young would
| allow for more procreation.
| rlpb wrote:
| Yes, but only to a limit. The resource cost in ensuring
| longevity must be less than the benefit provided in
| caring for the young.
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| Because they are.
| jmcgough wrote:
| You become a lot more aware of it as you get older, and what
| you see to some degree depends a lot on your socioeconomic
| status. A big part of it is that we've made so much progress
| when it comes to heart disease. Most people who go to my
| hospital are on public insurance, and they're dying more
| frequently from lifestyle-related diseases (like T2DM which
| leads to hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and congestive
| heart failure)
|
| https://www.clubvita.net/us/news-and-insights/top-charts-23-...
| Yawrehto wrote:
| TL;DR: Because today, people are regularly living long enough
| to get it. It's often a good sign to have higher cancer rates
| -- societies with higher cancer rates are richer, happier, and
| live longer than those with lower cancer rates.
|
| I mean, cancer is bad. But it's a good sign for society if lots
| of people die of cancer -- they tend to hit the elderly.
| Historically, about 80 percent of people who die of cancer are
| over 50, and that's fairly constant. (Interestingly, the share
| of cancer deaths that are in people over 70 have been rising,
| from about 36 percent to 49 percent - that's as a portion of
| the total.)[1]
|
| The ranking for prevalence of cancer is higher income
| countries, upper-middle-income countries, lower-middle-income
| countries, and finally with the lowest rates low-income
| countries. Since the world is getting richer, it stands to
| reason that it's likely there will be higher cancer rates (of
| course, it's not guaranteed; it's possible being European makes
| you more likely to get cancer, which would explain the higher
| rankings of high-income countries, which are often European,
| but not lead to higher numbers elsewhere).[2]
|
| This is borne out individually. Countries with the lowest rates
| of cancer tend not to be great places to live. Our World In
| Data has three countries[2] tied for the lowest cancer rates
| (0.1 percent), Niger, Chad and Benin, which have life
| expectancies of 62, 53, and 60[3][4] and had happiness scores
| (self-reported life satisfaction) of 4.56, 4.47, and 4.38 (out
| of 10; for reference, the world average is 5.27, with numbers
| for individual countries ranging from 7.74 to 1.72)
| respectively.[5] The full list of countries with a prevalence
| of cancer below 0.5 percent is as follows: Niger, Chad, Benin,
| Gambia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Yemen, Democratic Republic
| of the Congo, Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina
| Faso, Burundi, Liberia, Angola, Guinea, Cameroon Guinea-Bissau,
| Nigeria, East Timor, Tajikistan, Mozambique, Senegal, Togo,
| Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Oman,
| Sudan, Nepal, Kenya, Mauritania, Maldives, Bhutan, South Sudan,
| Ghana, Vanuatu, Equatorial Guinea, Bangladesh, Tanzania,
| Solomon Islands, Sao Tome and Principe, Eritrea, Malawi,
| Rwanda, Laos, India, Uganda, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Djibouti,
| Congo, Botswana, Zambia, Kiribati, Lesotho, Algeria, Gabon,
| Mongolia, Eswatini, Morocco, Comoros, Honduras, Haiti, Samoa,
| Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan,
| Marshall Islands, Namibia, Philippines, Egypt, Cambodia,
| Indonesia[2]
|
| The happiest of those is Guatemala, at 6.29, and a prevalence
| of 0.4 percent. But most of them are much less happy. To take a
| random example (I used random.org to randomize the list and
| chose the top one and the top six, excluding Sao Tome which had
| no happiness data), Uganda is at 4.37, and the average of
| Uganda, Comoros, Turkmenistan, Yemen, and Bhutan is 4.41,
| nearly a point below the world average.
|
| Life expectancy is no better; again doing Uganda, Comoros,
| Turkmenistan, Yemen, and Bhutan, Uganda had a life expectancy
| of 62.7 years, and the average of them is 66.2, almost 5 years
| below the world average of 71 (range of typical life expectancy
| is from 85.9 to 52.5).
|
| Okay, so life expectancy and happiness are both lower for
| countries with lower rates of cancer, seemingly. What about
| those with _higher_ rates?
|
| Well, those with cancer rates up to or including 3 percent are
| as follows: Monaco, Bermuda, Italy, France, Netherlands,
| Finland, Germany, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan,
| Denmark, Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Spain, Estonia, Canada,
| Norway, Andorra, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Belgium, Iceland,
| Switzerland. Monaco comes in at the top, with 5.9 percent with
| some type of cancer.
|
| Monaco has a life expectancy of 85.9 years, the highest. In the
| world. There was no happiness data available for it or the
| runner-up Bermuda, but Italy ranked itself at 6.32.
|
| Of the top five countries in life expectancy that show up on
| the cancer list at all (Monaco, not Hong Kong or Macao, Japan,
| Australia, Switzerland, Malta), all of them but Malta show up
| on the list, and Malta just misses the cutoff (2.9 percent). In
| happiness (Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Israel), Sweden
| and Israel aren't ranked. Sweden just misses the cutoff at 2.9
| and Israel is at 1.6 percent but has a notably much younger
| population than any of the others.
|
| Again using random.org and taking the top one and then the
| follow-up four, Monaco came in at number one (data already
| covered and missing happiness, so excluded), followed by the
| US, Switzerland, Iceland, Australia, and Italy. The US has a
| life expectancy of 77.2 years. The average for the five is
| 82.26, so if it were a country it would be number 21 globally
| and over TEN YEARS above the world average of 71, above even
| the Oceanian average (the highest) of 79.4; for happiness, the
| US is number 18 worldwide excluding ties, ranking itself at
| 6.72; the average is 6.938, meaning if it were a country it
| would come in number fourteen including ties and almost two
| points above the world average of 5.08.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-deaths-by-age
|
| [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-
| with-...
|
| [3] Rounded to the nearest whole number
|
| [4] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy
|
| [5] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/happiness-cantril-ladder
| balls187 wrote:
| Fuck Cancer. RIP.
| throwanem wrote:
| I'll miss his commentary here, and I'm glad to hear he is
| celebrated among those who knew him.
|
| May flights of angels sing him to his rest.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Terrible news. If it's important to you, reminder to let someone
| know to let HN know if you pass away.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Oh no. Man I had so many arguments with this guy. I didn't know
| he was dying.
| freedomben wrote:
| I can only speak for myself of course, but arguments can be
| great. Some of the best discussions of my life have been on hn
| with people who are open-minded, curious, and respectful. In my
| opinion, this is a great reminder to be those things.
|
| To be clear, I'm not implying that you weren't those things,
| just making a personal observation.
| eru wrote:
| Makes you wonder whether anyone outside of your immediate friends
| and family will miss you.
|
| RIP Dan.
| Inconel wrote:
| I've thought about that myself, and came to the conclusion that
| in my case the answer will most likely be no. I can't say I'd
| be too disappointed though, being missed by a handful of
| friends and family would already signal a life well lived.
|
| I will miss Dan's comments, and this community was better for
| his participation.
| khazhoux wrote:
| The number of people who would cry at my death is ~13
| (immediate family including in-laws). Within that, the number
| of people who would be _deeply affected_ is 5 (kids, spouse,
| parents). Aside from them, the number of people who would think
| "wow, weird" on hearing of my death is maybe a couple dozen,
| and the number within that who would think of me for >20
| seconds more than a year from my death is probably less than
| half dozen.
|
| It doesn't bother me that these numbers are "small."
| passion__desire wrote:
| We have limited familial / personal attention and care to
| give to others. Either you could spread it thin by becoming a
| big leader but no personal depth among fans. Or you could
| increase depth among very few near and dear.
| vasco wrote:
| I'm sure it brings Alexander the Great a lot of comfort knowing
| he is remembered. I say, enjoy life without optimizing for what
| happens after you're dead.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| Though a little cold, you are correct. "fear is the mind
| killer", and fear of death or not being remembered is
| ultimately not a positive thing to hold on to whilst being
| alive.
|
| With respect to DanBC, whom I did not have the pleasure of
| knowing very well, I am happy for him that he seems to be
| celebrated and loved widely - a clear sign of a good person
| (regardless of how valuable that ultimately might or might
| not be in the minds of outside observers like myself) who had
| a positive impact of those he touched throughout his life.
|
| I wish all people who knew him all the best in processing
| this surely tough to swallow pill. Despite someone having a
| long-term illness, if you care a lot for someone, it is
| always seemingly unexpected for it to end. Dealing with a
| passing of a friend is always difficult, and I hope anyone
| who misses him, has people to share with good memories of him
| to process and deal with this in a good way.
|
| May the joyful and kind memories of him serve as pillars of
| support for those who miss him, to move on and keep him in
| their hearts.
| Theodores wrote:
| I am from Gloucestershire myself and I never realised that DanBC
| was from my manor. I could have walked past him in the High
| Street to never know that he was the owner of a HN handle I
| recognised and read.
|
| May Dan rest in peace, and in Gloucestershire. There are worse
| places to spend an indefinite period of time.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| I'm in Gloucester as well and had no idea.
| serf wrote:
| that's too bad.
|
| I enjoyed his commentary, even if often it seemed that he didn't
| enjoy mine -- I'll miss the perspectives.
| jdorfman wrote:
| RIP Dan. Thanks for your contributions to HN and mental health
| communities.
| saagarjha wrote:
| There are always people that stop posting on this site and I
| wonder where they've gone. Found a better place to spend their
| time, perhaps? At least, that's what I hope for them. I am sure
| the same is for Dan :( I wish the best to those who knew him
| well.
| brador wrote:
| His last post here " Be interesting to see if climbers like it -
| I'd love to see Wide Boys testing it out."
|
| Makes you think what your last will be.
|
| Whatever it is it'll live on in some legacy database till bit rot
| finally takes it.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Rest in peace Dan.
| petercooper wrote:
| RIP. I note that he had a Twitter thread a month ago where he
| shared some broad observations about healthcare and ended it with
| a goodbye: https://x.com/DanBealeCocks/status/1819712155941228853
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Rest in peace, Dan. Like many other, more important ones, this
| place too will feel different, lesser, knowing you aren't around
| anymore.
| tivert wrote:
| Totally off topic HN implementation observation, as of this
| writing:
|
| This post:
|
| > 417 points by in_memoriam 17 hours ago | flag | hide | past |
| favorite | 69 comments
|
| in_memoriam's karma (just this post, no comments):
|
| > karma: 83
|
| Apparently the karma credit for posts is points/5.
| shadowdang wrote:
| Honestly shocked (bamboozled) that he wasn't living in SV and a
| former Yahoo senior eng or whatever by how he wrote. Some people
| just have strong opinions I suppose. Welp RIP.
| CassyJH wrote:
| To some extent, a person continues to live in his affairs,
| intellectual work and the memory of people.
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