<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>salawat</author><text>&amp;gt;How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation?&lt;p&gt;Not having your media contributing to hyper-polarization of your populace through algorithm enforced bubbling, or riling them up through fear mongering helps. Lack of public works may also be a contributing factor. One thing I will say for the Great Depression&amp;#x2F;New Deal generation: they didn&amp;#x27;t have anywhere near the isolation issues our generation seems to grapple with.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; How do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?&lt;p&gt;Inability to escape or alter their situation except by altered mental state. Get people something they can constructively do (and fairly pay then for their time) and it&amp;#x27;s amazing how positive coping skills materialize.&lt;p&gt;For those with non-economic contributing factors, a big part of it seems to be social enablement, removing them from the stressor, etc... Which a robust framework of social services may help more with as long as you don&amp;#x27;t start trying to turn reaching out into a life tainting thing (no publically available by default records for info brokers to suck up that would adversely effect future prospects).&lt;p&gt;Also, unironically, a better justice system, post-release process.&lt;p&gt;These aren&amp;#x27;t hard. Just not terribly popular, due to the fact you have to pay people to help other people improve their lot. Or literally just inspect to make sure people are effectively using resources available to get their stuff straight.</text><parent_chain><item><author>2OEH8eoCRo0</author><text>&amp;gt; improve mental health&lt;p&gt;I think that this is a poor target. How do you set out directly targeting mental health? What are the biggest causes of mental health issues?&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;mentalhealth&amp;#x2F;learn&amp;#x2F;index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;mentalhealth&amp;#x2F;learn&amp;#x2F;index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and loneliness or isolation.&lt;p&gt;How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Use and misuse of alcohol, nicotine, and illicit drugs, and misuse of prescription drugs cost Americans more than $700 billion a year in increased health care costs, crime, and lost productivity.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.drugabuse.gov&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction&amp;#x2F;introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.drugabuse.gov&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;drugs-brains-behavior...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Some must cope with the early loss of a parent, violence, or sexual abuse. While not everyone who faces these stresses develops a mood disorder — in fact, most do not — stress plays an important role in depression.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.health.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;mind-and-mood&amp;#x2F;what-causes-depression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.health.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;mind-and-mood&amp;#x2F;what-causes-dep...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a big interconnected problem. My point is that just giving directly to mental health resources rings hollow. A tougher holistic approach needs to examine why American society just plain sucks for so many people. Why do people want to kill themselves or others? Why does life suck so much for so many? We have a rotten system and drug addiction&amp;#x2F;gun violence&amp;#x2F;suicide are symptoms and not causes.&lt;p&gt;My 2 rambling cents.</text></item><item><author>AnthonyMouse</author><text>&amp;gt; So you have all this talk of &amp;quot;bump stocks&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;ghost guns&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;assault weapons&amp;quot; and whatnot, but it&amp;#x27;s all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn&amp;#x27;t to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I don&amp;#x27;t take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives if it isn&amp;#x27;t focused on handguns and suicides.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the problem, well, like two thirds of US firearms fatalities are suicides. So a real solution is going to look like &amp;quot;improve mental health&amp;quot; and not &amp;quot;restrict who can buy a gun&amp;quot; or else you&amp;#x27;re only going to be diverting people to other methods of suicide, or keeping people &amp;quot;alive&amp;quot; but still in such a precarious mental state that the only thing preventing them from taking their own life is access to an effective means. Neither of which is actually acceptable.&lt;p&gt;But from a political perspective, proposing useless gun restrictions makes the other team have to spend political capital to oppose them, because even if they&amp;#x27;re completely ineffective at their stated purpose, they upset or inconvenience the other team&amp;#x27;s constituents. Which seems to be the goal of modern US politics.</text></item><item><author>umvi</author><text>&amp;gt; We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths&lt;p&gt;It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it, likely unpopular with both political parties.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to irrational people) than saving lives.&lt;p&gt;For example, guns. &lt;i&gt;Very&lt;/i&gt; few people die because of mass shootings. Your chances of dying in a mass shooting are virtually nil. Yet, every time one happens there&amp;#x27;s a big frenzy to enact anti-gun policies. So you have all this talk of &amp;quot;bump stocks&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;ghost guns&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;assault weapons&amp;quot; and whatnot, but it&amp;#x27;s all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn&amp;#x27;t to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I don&amp;#x27;t take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives if it isn&amp;#x27;t focused on handguns and suicides.</text></item><item><author>GhostVII</author><text>We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone&amp;#x27;s time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousands of people per year. Not that I&amp;#x27;m advocating for lower speed limits, just that there is a contradiction here.&lt;p&gt;I bet that if instead of having people go through security at sporting events, you had them all do 20 push ups, you&amp;#x27;d save more people from dying of heart disease than would die of terrorism.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?</title><url>https://www.ocregister.com/2021/09/07/20-years-after-9-11-will-we-ever-stop-taking-our-shoes-off-at-airports/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>lolwut9654</author><text>Have you tried doing more than nothing?&lt;p&gt;On many occasions in the past, I’ve found that doing anything often works better than doing nothing, like the US usually advocates.&lt;p&gt;Turns out that there are no perfect solutions, but there are a lot of partial solutions that in aggregate add up to the mental health the rest of the developed world has.</text><parent_chain><item><author>2OEH8eoCRo0</author><text>&amp;gt; improve mental health&lt;p&gt;I think that this is a poor target. How do you set out directly targeting mental health? What are the biggest causes of mental health issues?&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;mentalhealth&amp;#x2F;learn&amp;#x2F;index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;mentalhealth&amp;#x2F;learn&amp;#x2F;index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and loneliness or isolation.&lt;p&gt;How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Use and misuse of alcohol, nicotine, and illicit drugs, and misuse of prescription drugs cost Americans more than $700 billion a year in increased health care costs, crime, and lost productivity.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.drugabuse.gov&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction&amp;#x2F;introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.drugabuse.gov&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;drugs-brains-behavior...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Some must cope with the early loss of a parent, violence, or sexual abuse. While not everyone who faces these stresses develops a mood disorder — in fact, most do not — stress plays an important role in depression.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.health.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;mind-and-mood&amp;#x2F;what-causes-depression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.health.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;mind-and-mood&amp;#x2F;what-causes-dep...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a big interconnected problem. My point is that just giving directly to mental health resources rings hollow. A tougher holistic approach needs to examine why American society just plain sucks for so many people. Why do people want to kill themselves or others? Why does life suck so much for so many? We have a rotten system and drug addiction&amp;#x2F;gun violence&amp;#x2F;suicide are symptoms and not causes.&lt;p&gt;My 2 rambling cents.</text></item><item><author>AnthonyMouse</author><text>&amp;gt; So you have all this talk of &amp;quot;bump stocks&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;ghost guns&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;assault weapons&amp;quot; and whatnot, but it&amp;#x27;s all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn&amp;#x27;t to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I don&amp;#x27;t take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives if it isn&amp;#x27;t focused on handguns and suicides.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the problem, well, like two thirds of US firearms fatalities are suicides. So a real solution is going to look like &amp;quot;improve mental health&amp;quot; and not &amp;quot;restrict who can buy a gun&amp;quot; or else you&amp;#x27;re only going to be diverting people to other methods of suicide, or keeping people &amp;quot;alive&amp;quot; but still in such a precarious mental state that the only thing preventing them from taking their own life is access to an effective means. Neither of which is actually acceptable.&lt;p&gt;But from a political perspective, proposing useless gun restrictions makes the other team have to spend political capital to oppose them, because even if they&amp;#x27;re completely ineffective at their stated purpose, they upset or inconvenience the other team&amp;#x27;s constituents. Which seems to be the goal of modern US politics.</text></item><item><author>umvi</author><text>&amp;gt; We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths&lt;p&gt;It would be a highly controversial dashboard, I guarantee it, likely unpopular with both political parties.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that assuaging fear is often more important (to irrational people) than saving lives.&lt;p&gt;For example, guns. &lt;i&gt;Very&lt;/i&gt; few people die because of mass shootings. Your chances of dying in a mass shooting are virtually nil. Yet, every time one happens there&amp;#x27;s a big frenzy to enact anti-gun policies. So you have all this talk of &amp;quot;bump stocks&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;ghost guns&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;assault weapons&amp;quot; and whatnot, but it&amp;#x27;s all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn&amp;#x27;t to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I don&amp;#x27;t take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives if it isn&amp;#x27;t focused on handguns and suicides.</text></item><item><author>GhostVII</author><text>We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone&amp;#x27;s time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousands of people per year. Not that I&amp;#x27;m advocating for lower speed limits, just that there is a contradiction here.&lt;p&gt;I bet that if instead of having people go through security at sporting events, you had them all do 20 push ups, you&amp;#x27;d save more people from dying of heart disease than would die of terrorism.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?</title><url>https://www.ocregister.com/2021/09/07/20-years-after-9-11-will-we-ever-stop-taking-our-shoes-off-at-airports/</url></story>