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Why the Fuck?

911 点作者 mehulkar超过 12 年前

127 条评论

raganwald超过 12 年前
My fellow HNers:<p>It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life.<p>That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some football team what to do next. Just because he's drunk and in a saloon doesn't mean he's <i>wrong,</i> just boorish.<p>I lamented the fact that it's easier to upload and simultaneously tweet about a picture from my phone than it is for Scott to lead a normal life. There are lots of reasons why this is so:<p>1. The barrier for entry (education, &#38;c) is higher in medicine and bioinformatics.<p>2. There are regulatory obstacles for businesses.<p>3. The problems are harder to solve than it may seem to the man in the saloon.<p>4. Some people feel the monetary incentives are to avoid medicine.<p>p.s. "Hypocrisy" is one of those empty criticisms, like "Unprofessional." If someone says to you, "smoking is bad," it doesn't matter whether he smokes. Maybe, his advice is actually more relevant if he's an older fellow who smoked and now regrets not making a different choice when he was your age.
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pg超过 12 年前
Essentially he's asking why person-hours are expended on things that make the most money rather than things that are important, for some definition of important.<p>There are several answers to that.<p>1. The most obvious is that people need to make a living. People can and do work at some discount in order to work on things they think are important, but it rarely stretches as much as 10x. I expect most workers either don't care or can't afford to.<p>2. A lot of people do work for nonprofits (the biggest of which is the government), but the number of such jobs is constrained by the amount of money nonprofits can raise.<p>3. The number of people employed on frivolous things seems larger than it is, because e.g. things designed for entertainment are by their nature more visible than infrastructure. So it is dangerous to draw conclusions based on anecdotal evidence.
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untog超过 12 年前
<i>"Reginald Braithwaite is a software developer at Leanpub, where he and his colleagues take the friction out of writing and selling books"</i><p>Why the <i>fuck</i> are the greatest minds of our generation toiling away on a book publishing platform? Oh, right, because <i>you</i> think it's important. Guess what- we all have different opinions. Is book publishing more important than dating? Before you laugh, think about it- finding someone to share your life with is very important to a lot of people. A lot more than will ever publish a book.<p>It's pretty depressing to see this upvoted as far as it has been on HN. What is it <i>actually</i> saying? It's like one of those stupid motivational posters (only negative)- all emotion-tugging, no depth.<p>Why are you making a book publishing platform and not following your own advice?
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glesica超过 12 年前
To launch a Facebook clone you sign up for Heroku or AWS, push some Rails code, and start promoting yourself. To launch a medical device you spend years cutting through regulation and red tape, negotiating with and marketing to an industry that is probably threatened by your existence and will do its best to stop you.<p>Screw up at Facebook, you get yelled at on Twitter and your share price dips for a few days. Screw up a medical device, you get sued out of existence.<p>This probably doesn't explain the whole thing, but it is certainly related.
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haberman超过 12 年前
In my five years at Google, I am not sure I have met a single engineer who is "trying to figure out how to get Scott Hanselman to click on ads."<p>I <i>have</i> met tons of engineers who work on interesting problems like building models of query patterns to detect spiking queries (Google Trends and Google Hot Trends, all publicly accessible: <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/trends/</a>), Gmail, Maps/Directions/Traffic, improving (machine) efficiency of Google Search, and tons of systems problems/architectures like MapReduce, Dremel, etc. And people I haven't met are working on everything from Flu Trends to Driverless Cars.<p>This oft-repeated claim that Google is squandering a bunch of engineer talent building things that don't improve humanity reflects a distorted view of what Google engineers do, one that is easily refuted even by the publicly-accessible information about Google's engineering accomplishments.
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johnbender超过 12 年前
It appears that Diabetes research receives over a billion in funding each year just from the NIH [1][2]. As far as I can tell this doesn't include private funding for cures/treatments.<p>Maybe I'm misinterpreting the data here, but it looks like many people and many millions of dollars are devoted to solving real world problems like the one Scott Hanselman has.<p>[1] General Disease research numbers <a href="http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx</a><p>[2] Diabetes funding by project <a href="http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending_project_listing.aspx?FY=2011&#38;ARRA=N&#38;DCat=Diabetes" rel="nofollow">http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending_project_listing.a...</a>
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cynicalkane超过 12 年前
Bad incentives.<p>Maybe smart people don't care about money all that much, but they want their lives to not suck, their effort to not feel wasted, their identity not wrapped up in the service of dysfunction and politics. There are not many places where you can better humanity for a living and live the life such a person deserves, and it is not the job of humans to sacrifice themselves for no reward. That's why people who do so, effectively, are so rare.<p>Here's a guy who left the ivory tower for Google: <a href="http://cs.unm.edu/~terran/academic_blog/?p=113" rel="nofollow">http://cs.unm.edu/~terran/academic_blog/?p=113</a><p><i>I’m concerned that the US — one of the innovation powerhouses of the world — will hurt its own future considerably if we continue to make educational professions unappealing.</i>
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shazow超过 12 年前
Why do we play videogames? Why do we create art? Why do we eat tasty unhealthy foods? Why do we go on hikes or climb rocks?<p>Why do we write posts complaining about other people not saving the world?<p>We do things we enjoy, things we're passionate or curious about, things we care about or have no choice but to do them. Glamour is a factor. Money too.<p>Perhaps if I had diabetes, or someone very close to me was suffering from the disease, then I would spend some time thinking about how to more efficiently manage one's blood sugar levels. Perhaps if I were closer to the realities of obesity, then I Move You (my former startup focused around getting healthy through social pressure) would have worked out differently. I learned that this isn't something I'm passionate about, but I know there are others who are.
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DigitalSea超过 12 年前
I hate to sound rude, I mean well. But why the fuck is Raganwald whining about start-ups that aren't solving real problems instead of solving the problems himself? That's what really irks me about today's society. People bitch and whine about things, wanting people to change the world and yet don't do a single things themselves to make it happen. I hate the mentality that it's up to everyone else to solve serious problems when Raganwald is wasting his time whining about people not solving real problems behind his computer screen oblivious to the fact there are people out there trying to make a difference. Curing things doesn't happen over night. After the initial study, it can take upwards of 10 years before a new drug can come to market.<p>Maybe people aren't solving medical issues because it's not easy. Case in point: a man by the name of Thomas Shaw engineered a syringe that after it's use the tip retracts inside of the syringe to prevent people from jabbing themselves, an obviously genius idea, right? He's worked on the design for over 15 years and has failed to crack into the market, although accomplished many other notable contracts and things other budding start-ups wanting to crack into the medical market could only dream of. Other companies have copied his device, he's had to fight even though his device has been proven to be the best in comparison to others.<p>The medical industry is not only tightly regulated, it's heavily infiltrated by super lobbyist groups. Doctors taking kickbacks for exclusively using a particular medical supplier or company regardless of safety or price.<p>Having said that, what makes this guy think people aren't out there solving problems? While diabetes is a serious medical issue, it's manageable. But I would much prefer resources are allocated to illnesses where they're only treatable for so long before you die, like you know cancer and leukaemia. Be grateful you have a condition that if managed properly you can still live a normal life unlike those who are bed ridden and slowly dying from cancer because even though the treatments they have can cure them if caught early they make you extremely sick in the process.
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bhickey超过 12 年前
Because research pays terribly and not everyone has the luxury of martyrdom.<p>Want to be a grad student? 80-90% pay cut. (Unless you go to Switzerland and then it's closer to 70%).<p>Want to be a university research programmer? 70% pay cut.<p>Removing economic considerations, would I rather be researching auto-immune disease? Sure. But 'doing good' means compromises like buying a house at 45 instead of 35.<p>No one asks doctors to make these compromises.<p>Edit: If someone wants to deposit $2m in my bank account I'll quit my job on Tuesday and go to grad school.
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MatthewPhillips超过 12 年前
Who says programmers are the greatest minds of our generation?
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justsee超过 12 年前
Elon Musk chose to do PayPal (a rather disliked company on HN) which enabled him to work on Tesla, SolarCity, and SpaceX (which HN rather likes).<p>Isn't it possible that some of these people toiling away in the corporate womb are acquiring capabilities and capital so they can be reborn to do important, but potentially unprofitable 'change the world' projects?
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YuriNiyazov超过 12 年前
Because most people, Facebook programmers included, don't have the patience and the resources to undergo the amount of schooling necessary to reach the level of understanding to make an impact in these areas; and after they do, the amount of bureaucracy they will need to fight to make a dent will drive even the most resilient minds to take a job getting people to click on ads.
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jholman超过 12 年前
Okay, wait, what? You seriously think that Google isn't making huge positive impact on humanity? I mean, please discount the following argument based on the admittedly-confounding fact that I have drunk the kool-aid and am on payroll, but...<p>First, I claim that the improvement from searching with AltaVista etc, to searching with Google, has made the web orders of magnitude more useful. And Google search continues to get more effective.<p>Second, I claim that the web, as an information-interchange platform, is hugely impactful to society, on the same level as curing diabetes, and more useful to society than the kind of incremental improvement in diabetes management that was Raganwald's case study.<p>Third, I claim that making hugely awesome projects profitable (or at least sustainable) is part of making those hugely awesome projects actually have impact. With no revenue ever, Google wouldn't be able to have all the positive impact it has.<p>Fourth, Google has done and is doing lots of other shit that is also hugely impactful. Along with, let's all explicitly admit, lots of bullshit stuff that it's fair to mock. Google Books. Google Health (which admittedly failed). Mother-fucking Maps and Earth (which admittedly were _founded_ outside of Google, but were bankrolled into awesomeness by Google ads). Maps and Earth are a big deal in solving real-world macro-scale ecological problems, even aside from the huge convenience they provide their normal users. Google.org. And in the sexy-so-it-must-be-bullshit department, the self-driving cars _could_ save hojillions of lives and help reform oil dependence.<p>So if you want to decrease "useless busywork", and you want to increase real solutions to real problems that affect real people, Google is doing that. And also some bullshit stuff involving social/mobile/local whatever whatever.
kogir超过 12 年前
Judging by all he's accomplished at Microsoft, I'm sure Scott could successfully lead a team to solve his problem and bring a product to market. But he doesn't.<p>I (luckily) would not have use for such a product. If he doesn't care enough to tackle the problem, why should I?<p>Same goes for Obesity. Most of it could be controlled by changes in diet and behavior. If people affected can't be bothered, why should I care?
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lindowe超过 12 年前
There are a lot of interesting startups right now in the mobile health space, but it is a significantly more difficult space to operate in. It takes years to get FDA approval for new medical devices, the healthcare industry is beholden to several large industry players, and the culture of medicine is resistant to rapid innovation. I understand and echo your frustration that silicon valley often only pays lip service to 'dangerously ambitious ideas', but there are also real reasons why people don't operate in these difficult business environments.
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Shenglong超过 12 年前
My friend is in the process of completing his residency in emergency medicine. When I asked him what the most difficult part of his job was, he told me, "having to see one obese person after another, knowing what I tell them will almost certainly have no impact."<p>Lots of people have already mentioned the incentive factor (well covered by Bill Gates in his comment about baldness: <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html</a>), so I won't speak about that. Rather, it might be worth thinking what solving these <i>real problems</i> involves.<p>Fixing obesity? Working with obese people day in and day out, trying solution after solution with no success? It's not just that these things aren't glorious - but they're also soul crushing. When you make a social network, people around you get excited for you. When you make a weight-loss application, well... not much happens.<p>For an industry that is already prone to depression and mental illness, it's not entirely difficult (although it may not be right) to see why things have developed the way they have.
moultano超过 12 年前
Lots of people in the Googleplex, including my team, are working to make sure that when Scott Hanselman types [blood sugar monitoring] into Google he gets useful results. I'm working on this because I believe it to be the most important thing within range of my skills and experience.<p>People at Facebook are working to allow Scott Hanselman to be able to find friends of friends with diabetes to ask for advice.
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chewxy超过 12 年前
Because those who can market themselves lean to 'easier' spaces.<p>Think of it this way. I'm a very terrible programmer. My understanding of the O notation is abysmal at best. If you ask me to write a distributed database, I probably won't do a good job at it.<p>But you know what I can write? Webapps! Any Tom Dick and Harry can write them. People who can market themselves well and can write the easy stuff wins. And with that comes the compound effect of the rich getting richer.<p>Example: I write the next social network and I market the hell out of it. Now I'm the cool company that people who are really good in computer science want to join, since you know, I've scaled out to the point where data is big enough to warrant the term 'Big Data', where information retrieval is now a problem.<p>Imagine instead if I were say a very very good biologist. That also typically means my focus is very very narrow, and doesn't lend itself to marketability. I cannot start a company saying I want to create a drug that turns off production of the PRSS3 enzyme. No, I'd have to market it as "I am creating a drug cure for prostate cancer". But I can't and I won't (if I am being honest with myself), because all I know about prostate cancer is the PRSS3 enzyme. There are other factors that causes prostate cancer.<p>People who are experts in their fields are generally stuck on the narrow field they're in. A PRSS3 researcher would know everything there is to know about the PRSS3 enzyme. He/she would probably suck at marketing it though. Same with say, information retrieval experts. The people who don't give talks at XYZ conference. The people who work behind the scenes, engineering everything - they don't market themselves well.<p>As a result, the people who best market themselves win. The easiest things to make are also usually quite easy to market.<p>tl;dr: people flock to 'easier' spaces because that's what's easy to market to. Programmers flock to the latest SoLoMo startups, because SoLoMo is easy to market to hackers.<p>wow I'm so ranty today
quasque超过 12 年前
Funnily enough, this is exactly why I gave up on software development and went to study a degree in the biosciences.<p>Ten years of fixing crappy websites, writing dull database interfaces, troubleshooting bugs in shit code written by people who didn't give a damn -- and for what purpose? The paycheck was good but money is not everything. It felt like such a colossal waste of life.<p>My mind is my best asset - I want to apply it to something that will actually make a difference and help people. And it isn't going to happen in software or IT.<p>Anyway, I'm well on my way to working in biomedical research as a career, so this has really paid off. Already interned in a lab for a while and it was amazing, just the feeling of finding out something new and real, even if it takes months, is such a rush. The previous software experience came in very useful too.
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RoboTeddy超过 12 年前
Probably because profit is only somewhat related to delivering actual utility.
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will_brown超过 12 年前
As it relates to developing pharmaceuticals and medical devices they generally require FDA approval. Please watch "Burzynski Movie: Cancer is Serious Business" it is about a Dr. who patented non-toxic cancer treatments that have better "survivor" rates than surgery+chemo on many types of cancer and it has even treated certain brain cancers in children that have never been successfully treated by current treatments. The Movie documents the FDA's continued harassment of the Dr. on behalf of big pharmaceutical companies, including multiple criminal charges that the Dr. was always acquitted for. Included is footage of Congressional hearing about this matter and a direct question to the FDA Director as to why the Dr.'s applications for FDA trials were repeatedly denied when his treatments had cured certain childhood brain cancers, and the response was he never had and never will approve applications unless they are from big pharmaceutical companies.<p>The best minds are busy preventing the best minds from taking a piece their pie (ie. Google protecting its market share), for the best minds to be busy making a difference (this is simultaneously why none of us have privacy on the internet, we cannot enjoy an internet experience without a bombardment of adds and why cure of diabetes is not the focus but rather treatment.
chaostheory超过 12 年前
I feel that Jolie O'Dell had a more eloquent rant on the same subject:<p>"However, more and more, I am royally pissed off that so many bright engineers, good entrepreneurs and capable venture capitalists are throwing resources into problems that no one really has. They’re creating “bread and circuses” in a digital format — apps that are wildly popular, infinitely entertaining, and exactly what people want.<p>The only problem is that they don’t really do anybody any good. They’re not doing what technology is intended to do: Solve problems."<p><a href="http://blog.jolieodell.com/2010/10/07/bread-and-circuses-the-state-of-web-app-startups/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.jolieodell.com/2010/10/07/bread-and-circuses-the...</a>
mahyarm超过 12 年前
Seeing how pharmaceutical companies and other medical related things have a lot of money thrown at them world wide, I think that isn't the case. Computing isn't the only place where 'the greatest minds of our generation' reside, there are a lot of them in the medical community.<p>Also there has been a recent trend of quantified self and medical start ups starting to gain traction, such as fitbit, mybasis.com, the tricorder xprize and so on. For quite a while it's been a software only world and just now we are starting to see an uptick in consumer electronics start ups.<p>Not everybody can work on curing cancer.
uladzislau超过 12 年前
The answer is well known. All challenging real world problems require deep domain knowledge besides programming.<p>You need to have medical expertise to even consider providing solutions to people with diabetes.<p>That's why we have 100:1 ratio of useless, solving not existing problems projects to world changing ones.
crazygringo超过 12 年前
&#62; <i>Why the fuck are programers strategizing how to pivot Facebook into being a dating site?</i><p>Umm... finding and getting a date with the right person can eventually lead to marriage, incredible happiness, new children in the world... seems like a pretty worthy goal to me.
maxcameron超过 12 年前
Reginald strikes again!<p>But the real question is why a mind as bright as Reg is doing biz dev at a services company in Toronto? Shouldn't he be saving the world?
seanduffy超过 12 年前
I'm the Co-Founder &#38; CEO of Omada Health (<a href="http://omadahealth.com" rel="nofollow">http://omadahealth.com</a>), and any engineers who are keen to help make a dent in the diabetes and obesity crisis should please reach out. Our company has built a web-version of a landmark clinical study called the diabetes prevention program (<a href="http://goo.gl/shiaw" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/shiaw</a>) to help the 78 million people with prediabetes from progressing to full-blown type 2 diabetes. Diabetes prevention is absolutely possible, and there are technology and design solutions that can help.<p>sean@omadahealth.com
Zarkonnen超过 12 年前
My father spent most of a decade running a company developing a non-invasive blood sugar meter: <a href="http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes-technology/meters-monitors/future-meters-monitors/solianis-monitoring-ag" rel="nofollow">http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes-technology/meters-monito...</a><p>After many years of struggle, the company folded from a lack of investment: medicine investors were scared off by the tech component, and tech investors didn't understand that in medicine, you have to prove, with studies, that your treatment or device actually works. This takes time, and frequent trips back to the drawing board.
steveplace超过 12 年前
Why the fuck do we see this complaint pop up on HN every quarter?
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seehafer超过 12 年前
If you knew the difficulty/incentive trade-off involved in making sugar management easier relative to that involved in getting people to click on ads, you wouldn't ask this question.<p>If web application developers had to jump through the same hoops that medical device developers did we'd all still be using AltaVista.
sshillo超过 12 年前
Because curing cancer and solving major issues doesn't make money right now. It takes major investment and years of research for something that may or may not give return.<p>Further, google is solving big problems. How bout better internet service, cars that drive themselves, making computers more accessible, a universal translater, etc.<p>How bout the fact that many of the top grads from schools go to work in finance. If we could get all those people to go work at google, the world would be a better place.
rickdale超过 12 年前
The one word answer to your question is MONEY. Thats why the fuck. Also an old proverb from urban dictionary tells you, don't hate the player player hater, hate the game.
abrahamsen超过 12 年前
Not sure about the world, but the smartest people in Denmark are likely working within the Novo Nordisk domicile, trying to work on better ways to manage diabetes with second-by-second efficiency.<p>They don't post a lot here, because honestly, this site has few stories that matches their interests.<p>It is rather arrogant to believe that the greatest minds of our generation are to be found in our field, and not e.g. in biomedicine and other fields more relevant for diabetes treatment.
scottilee超过 12 年前
Raganwald,<p>Have you considered asking yourself this question? You "take the friction out of writing and selling books." You could start with yourself and helping with Diabetes.
snitko超过 12 年前
The incentives are in the wrong place. It's not that entrepreneurs don't want to work on important things, but rather that important things are regulated by the government. Good luck waiting 2+ years and spending millions waiting for your blood sugar measuring device approved by the FDA. It pays to work on Facebook-like things because government has not yet spoiled the internet with endless expensive regulations.
brudgers超过 12 年前
My son doesn't trust my recommendations in books. It's justified. He'd been reading a fantasy series. I recommended <i>Sword of Shanara</i>. He thought it sucked. Fair. I thought it sucked when it came out. I was the same age.<p>Yet, when I pulled <i>Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i> off the library last month, the title pulled him in.<p>"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground" is a hit in middle-school. But that's not the part Reg got me thinking about.<p><i>The other two-thirds, of course, stayed at home and lived full, rich, and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.</i><p>I'm in agreement with Reg. To a point. He is able to share his thoughts with me here, not because someone was seeking a cure for diabetes, but because someone wrote software to automate the building of web storefronts.<p>While steely eyed missile men took us to the brink of nuclear war, a B-grade actor, a lawyer, a playwright and a longshoreman helped bring down the iron curtain. The idea that we should seek work which matches our nature goes back to Plato's <i>Republic</i>. We don't know in advance phone sanitizers important.
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saurik超过 12 年前
&#62; even if they don't sound glamorous when writing a "Show HN" post<p>Is this true? I feel like "Show HN: technological solution that allows people to forget they have diabetes" would cause a "woah, that's awesome" reaction. I mean, for another example, imagine "Show HN: I'm 14, please check out my fool-proof iOS dieting app"; or, at the far end of the scale, "Show HN: my weekend project - I cured cancer". I feel like these would be pretty "glamorous"; like, sufficiently so, that I'm having a difficult time keeping a straight face writing the titles of the posts, as they come off as the kind of thing way too epic for a "Show HN": if I saw these headlines, I'd immediately think "yeah, whatever, obviously total BS; maybe let's check out the comments to see what they failed to take into account" ;P.
sajid超过 12 年前
The greatest minds of our generation are not working at the googleplex. They are at universities and research labs working on math, physics, molecular biology, etc.
jerf超过 12 年前
<a href="http://www.glooko.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.glooko.com/</a> ?
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mikle超过 12 年前
Is the author of this is currently working on curing diabetes? I think the chances are small he is. What I'm trying to say is that he is a hypocrite.
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namank超过 12 年前
Oh my god why does every god damn person, including the author, think they are incapable of stuff?<p>Fucks sakes people, you don't need to learn physics or chemistry or math or whatever. You bunch of perfectionist want to learn the science when ALL you need to do is learn how to apply it.<p>EVEN if you're technically incapable, think about how you can make someone's life better. How you can help someone feel better about themselves. Go figure out how to solve a human problem if you can't do technical ones.<p>But, no matter what, do not give me excuses as to what you can't and why you can't. That, sirs and madams, is unacceptable. All of us, within our current skillset, have some knowledge that the world can directly benefit from. Find it, own it, be it.
desireco42超过 12 年前
Why to fuck do you think that overweight people are the real problem, I would think endless wars and poverty and living on this planet without destroying it would be real problems.<p>I agree that masses of people are working on ridiculous problems, it is like those people in wall street working on how to squeeze out few pennies more during a trade. In part, it is because we live in capitalism and money is only measure of success, so if you make 40K and i make 60K, I am better then you and 150% better to be precise :).<p>Plus, these other problems are really hard and if you start tackling them you really stir up things.<p>I believe Elon Musk is, for example, a guy who is trying to work on real problems.
thewisedude超过 12 年前
I usually dont like to talk in sound bites. But I can't help but say this famous quote from Gandhi.<p>Be the change you want to see in the world.<p>This article has a very judging tone. People are doing whatever they think matters for whatever reason - Its their choice. If you think Physics/Chem/Bio research is more important than dating, please be the guest of the world.... learn it and do it!<p>If you improve dating (to sufficient levels) and people are having better marriages and in turn healthy family structure that could possibly be more effective(in some measureable way) than say finding cure for some disease. So I dont buy that doing a dating service is worser!
jiggy2011超过 12 年前
I don't have a degree in medical sciences so I have no idea where I would start.
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studentrob超过 12 年前
You don't need great skills to make an impact. I work in Cambodia and there are plenty of opportunities for web developers to bring opportunities and learning here for the local culture. Also I would compare the existing base of developers here to what I imagine it was like in the US in the 70s. Computer Science is just picking up steam and the folks who learn it are very bright. Quite a cool climate to be in, in my opinion. Cost of living is dirt cheap, you have all the western amenities, and internet is fast enough (5 Mbit down via my phone).
agentultra超过 12 年前
I suspect the rewards of an academic career are not on par with or even close to those of a career on the commercial path. The cost of tuition is prohibitive for most families and the rewards of a teaching/research career are mediocre at best compared to one in on a commercial track.<p>As well most schools have incentives to place students in commercial careers. It's what parents and students expect these days from an educational institution.<p>Finally it's extremely easy to get started and learn enough programming to be dangerous and difficult to learn enough to produce real innovation.
waterlesscloud超过 12 年前
A year or two ago most of the responses to a blog like this were along the lines of "But facebook/google/mystartup <i>is</i> trying to change the world."<p>Now people don't even bother with that line.<p>That might be progress, actually.
nbashaw超过 12 年前
Because it creates value, whether or not you approve or understand it. Fun and entertainment are what most people spend most of their time seeking. Simple as that.
opminion超过 12 年前
Because the diabetes researchers use Google.
kolleykibber超过 12 年前
Why is this upvoted..? HN needs a homer simpson exclaiming boorring. Let's tell the truth. At least they're not bankers. The world is truly getting better,
confluence超过 12 年前
Simple. Ad work pays better and is less hard work. Same reason people become radiologists and gps instead of working in the er.<p>Make the other shit pay better and you'll be flooded with applications. I only live once and I don't intend to be a sacrifice on the altar of science when I can easily live a great life pushing cat pictures to a sedentary work force.<p>Do I feel bad about that? Not really. I have bills to pay.
MisterBastahrd超过 12 年前
Individuals are motivated by different sets of wants and needs. Financial security just happens to be damned near at the top of the list.
jowiar超过 12 年前
2 brief points:<p>Consider the amount of human innovation dedicated to killing other humans more efficiently. Ads are an improvement.<p>Also, analysis techniques and technologies developed and funded with the goal of selling more ads translate to other fields, making life easier for researchers there. Just because the short term goal isn't curing cancer, that does not mean the work does not bring us closer.
orangethirty超过 12 年前
The line reached the restaurant's entrance. It was 12:00pm, people were on lunch break. Orders came in as Confederate batallion ready to strike us down. There I was. In the middle of everything. Knowing how the software that took the orders worked (and how to write it), and working in that restaurant.<p>Why the fuck?<p>At that moment, it was one of the choices I had. Being smart does not give you unlimited amount of choices. It only means that you can understand some things better than others. It does not grant super powers. Or even connects you socially. You are just <i>smart</i>.<p>Why are the smartest minds doing those jobs? Maybe they don't have a choice. In reality, few people (percentage wise VS. general population) are equipped to start, grow, and operate a successful business. Smart people can't just go and get funding and cure Cancer. Shit don't work that way. There is a lot more needed than being smart to do so.<p>Instead of asking why the fuck, focus on <i>how the fuck can I build something</i> to allow this people to build the cure for Cancer.
a_bonobo超过 12 年前
If you're interested in working in bioinformatics, use Google to check for your local university and drop a mail to any of the bioinformatics groups, interns and research assistants are always great!<p>We love to have someone on board who's a) motivated and b) actually knows what he/she's doing, not many bioinformaticians know how to "properly" code, it's a lot of dirty hackish stuff.
shaunxcode超过 12 年前
I can only speak for myself: When I was younger I had nothing but the loftiest of goals. To implement the cybernetic fantasies that had been suggested to me either directly by my favorite authors, or by my imagination connecting the dots of how the world I longed to live in could exist.<p>I got older. I realized it was going to be nigh on impossible to get a large enough user base for anything of that sort to exist so I settled into a cycle of keeping a straight job whilst I focussed on tool refinement as a form of procrastination. "Once I have the perfect platform..."<p>I doubled down on my critical theory. Maybe once I REALLY understood what marx, beer, derrida, lacan, mcluhan, and debord were REALLY saying my next steps would be clear.<p>I became stuck. Entirely aware of the complexity and futility of the "all". For now I wait and attempt to inspire those around me to take a deeper look into their cybernetic heritage (past and future). Keep on refine, keep on read, keep on eval, keep on print.
thechut超过 12 年前
Well said, people need to focus on real world problems.<p>On the diabetes note, I'm close friends with the founders of Jerry the Bear[1], who's primary goal is helping kids with diabetes. There are startups out there doing real good, but they need to get more exposure.<p>1. <a href="http://www.jerrythebear.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jerrythebear.com/</a>
djt超过 12 年前
My friend has a insulin pump similar to this<p><a href="http://www.medtronic-diabetes.co.uk/product-information/paradigm-veo/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.medtronic-diabetes.co.uk/product-information/para...</a><p>This seems to be a solved problem, if only someone could make a way for people to search out such things via the internet ;)
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tunesmith超过 12 年前
I don't get the sense that there's an obvious, simple solution here that is just waiting to be implemented. I don't think it's that the only reason it doesn't exist is just because programmers are choosing to work elsewhere. Basically I think this question is probably built on faulty assumptions.
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levlandau超过 12 年前
"The market will be satisfied"--Marc Andreessen<p>i) It's probably never right to worry about technological stagnation. ii) Tech solutions to big problems (including diabetes) never look like solutions to big problems at the start.<p>I worry about startups that complain about regulations. Want to become the hotel industry? Start by renting out air beds. For now maybe it's just making some hardware that tells you how many hours a day you sleep. We all know that the answers here lie in the data. It's a mistake to try an obvious frontal attack on this problem though.<p>Maybe it's some hardware made by the guys up at Mountain View that you put in front of your eyes that eliminates the ned for a guide dog because it talks to you.<p>There are numerous (smart) engineers working on very useful and tractable problems in these spaces. They just look like toys now... that's all.
tubelite超过 12 年前
If you get right down to it, the end goal of anything and everything is absurd. Life is a runaway exploding self-catalyzing chemical reaction and its ultimate goal is the replication of aperiodic crystals. It so happens that the replication process involves some fiendishly complicated side effects, rube goldberg to the goldbergth power machinations (viz. multi-cellular plant and animal bodies) which are very very interesting indeed.<p>So what if the smartest minds are focussed on getting clicks? That is only an issue if there weren't very interesting side effects, like indexing megatons of information and making it accessible by a simple search interface.<p>In fact, I would encourage Google to get its smartest minds to do focus on insulting everyone in the universe in alphabetical order. Space travel, here we come.
sakopov超过 12 年前
Since we're talking about medical industry here, we're talking about insane regulations because human lives are at stake. I personally believe that software professionals working in this field must be professional engineers. Much like every other engineering discipline where you are obligated to take the blame for your actions. Unfortunately, given the current state of our industry, I would have to say from experience that more than 50% of devs are either self-taught or certified without any formal education. Not to say that all of them are terrible devs, but it sure as hell doesn't look good for us. I don't want people "hacking" medical industry like it's some kind of mind-numbing picture-sharing app. I want people building better medical experience.
Mz超过 12 年前
Hey, dude, I will probably make money from a webcomic at some point. People like it when I am cute and funny. No one wants my "cure"* for cystic fibrosis. So I will likely pay the bills by making people laugh, then sereptitiously slip the health thingy under the door while folks aren't looking.<p>Chill. Life is more convoluted than you seem to think. For example, fiction is how humankind dreams up the future. We collectively write about things like traveling to the moon long before we do them. There are no small problems. Go watch the movie "It's a wonderful life", examine your bellybutton more privately for a bit, get laid or drunk or loose. Come back fresh.<p>Happy New Year.<p>* Not a cure, a means to be healthy in spite of the defect. Quibbling detail which everyone misses.
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JustARandomGuy超过 12 年前
<i>Diabetes. Overweight. These are real problems, affecting real people, that need real solutions...</i><p>Doing healthcare projects requires dealing with hardware, dealing with regulatory overhead, etc. It's much, much more difficult than building out another web app for social/ads/etc.
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ok_craig超过 12 年前
I think one obvious point is that the minds dedicated to increasing ad clickthrough generate the revenue needed for other great minds to embark on projects like self-driving cars, glass, and, you know, only indexing the entire internet.<p>Also, not everyone on the planet is interested in becoming a doctor. People have different interests. The ones who are not people who want to solve those problems, instead support the economy that allows people who are doctors to do their work and make scientific advances. To simplify, if we were all capable of working on these things, and we all did so, it wouldn't be any better because we'd all die from lack of food, because none of us are doing menial things like being farmers and cashiers.
adventured超过 12 年前
The speed of product innovation radically slows down when you have to seriously concern yourself with whether you might kill the consumer with a mistake.<p>There is a large class of engineering minds out there that simply don't want to work in that field of risk.
dannyr超过 12 年前
It is pretty easy to dismiss that what Google, Facebook &#38; Twitter are not that important.<p>These companies have impact that are not easily measured. Google gave people knowledge at their fingertips while Facebook and Twitter have become tools for democracy.
HunterV超过 12 年前
Is this not unlike one yelling at a toy maker for not using his clever engineering to create "more useful" products? I'm sure the toy maker would tell you that making a child smile is as useful and satisfying as a product can be.
bhauer超过 12 年前
I can't do anything to help with diabetes research directly, but my own little side project is predominantly about using charitable giving as a force to drive local community improvements. So what I can do, if not the research itself, is make a $50 donation to the American Diabetes Association on behalf of a favorite city-improvement tasks of interest to me [1].<p>Sure, it's using charitable giving to draw some attention to something of interest to me, and that may sound base. But what's wrong with a tiny incentive to give to good causes such as this research?<p>[1] <a href="http://btforce.com/348" rel="nofollow">http://btforce.com/348</a>
thetable超过 12 年前
I've been entertaining the thought lately that all the work being done on photosharing sites and other "unworthy" commercial projects may qualify as basic research in the sense that the short-term benefits for society may be hard to see.<p>In contrast to traditional science, today, in computing, big ideas and inventions come from commercial applications, and then move into the public domain where they are often used for greater causes. For example, a new database may be invented at a hot photosharing startup, but graduates that particular application and becomes something that _could_ be used to fight cancer.
oliyoung超过 12 年前
Well, if <i>you</i> can't do something, support one of us who is <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nialg/the-diabetic-journal" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nialg/the-diabetic-journ...</a>
jisaacstone超过 12 年前
I was thinking about this the other (past few months)<p>Getting into _that_ industry, I mean.<p>I was wondering specifically if it might be possible to get some existing medical devices to communicate via bluetooth with a central server; to build an adapter so everything that sent out a vital signal was logged on disc and remotely accessible in real time.<p>I was in a hospital recently, and the vital signs were logged on paper, and abnormalities were signaled by a loud alarm, to be audible at the nearby nurses station.<p>But I don't know how I can 'weekend hack' this sort of thing. Perhaps I can grab some medical surplus, a bluetooth adapter and start hacking?
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dinkumthinkum超过 12 年前
Kind of a tangent by why are we wasting so much engineering trying to make hypertext documents and HTTP do do things that could be done with other software years ago, why are we wasting all focusing so much on limited constraint computing when we have a lot of horsepower we could be going interesting things with. LaTeX on a browser? Near, but we've has LaTeX for decades. I'm not trying to call anyone specfically out. I just can't help feeling we as an industry have gone so full barrel down the hypertext path that innovation as a whole has potevtiallt suffered. Just my rambles.
timonv超过 12 年前
Obesity isn't a problem, it's an effect. People eat crap and don't work out and the media doesn't help.<p>Whether problems are 'real' is a point of perception. Obesity and the high rate of diabetes are only a problem in ignorance of the cause. That's yours to fill in. The same goes for the banking crisis, political scams and the facade we call democracy (<a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democracy/" rel="nofollow">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democracy/</a>).<p>I totally agree we should be addressing real issues in our society, however, addressing effects is like duct taping a drain - temporary.
charlieok超过 12 年前
Economics is about allocating resources in order to produce goods and services that people want and need.<p>A lot of people are spending a lot of time using google and facebook's products these days.<p>Assuming that people are spending time this way because they like what they are getting, and presumably need or want more of it, it makes sense to allocate resources to the upkeep and evolution of these services.<p>How to balance want vs need, and how to add all this up to get a useful total score is, of course, subjective and up for debate.<p>The person doing the complaining is, of course, highly encouraged to offer suggestions for improvement...
hawkharris超过 12 年前
Why the fuck does everyone always throw plastic beads in the air, drink tequila and eat catfish? Oh, wait, I'm on Bourbon St. in New Orleans.<p>Just saying it's easy to make generalizations based on the people, places and industries with which you're familiar. While I agree that too much emphasis is placed on ad-related tech careers, it's a cop out to say that engineers aren't finding important solutions, some of which improve the lives of people with disabilities. Other commenters mentioned Google Flu Trends and driverless cars, which are both great examples.
ruswick超过 12 年前
Why? Because people don't want to change the world. Most people want a job that they can easily complete with minimal effort that still affords them a large salary. Most people want a comfy couch upon which they can stare a black rectangle on their wall for 4 hours each night. Most people want to sit on a beach for 2 weeks every winter. Most people want to pursue a lifestyle, not a legacy. An unremarkable life lived to achieve domestic success and hedonistic pursuits is an attractive proposal. I don't blame people for wanting one.
rewind超过 12 年前
It used to annoy me, but now I'm just amused when someone tells me what I should think is important when he's not even putting importance on those same things himself. HN trolling at its finest.
petercooper超过 12 年前
Love the sentiment of this post. But why does water run downhill instead of up? Up would certainly be useful.<p>As in physics, there seems to be a gravity that pulls people towards the greatest rewards for the least effort.<p>Becoming wealthy by building a diabetes management tool is, I suspect, much harder than drinking some of Facebook's cream for working on their ad network. There are certainly people who relish and lean into such challenges, but it's not the majority and never will be IMHO.
OafTobark超过 12 年前
Why people gotta judge? Lead by example, or shut the fuck up (statement made by the excessive fucks in the article). Ignore what others do and do what you believe.
mangler超过 12 年前
Because millions of others have a much more desperate need for some love and some feeling of self worth. Even a surrogate one. There's no insulin for that...
jamesaguilar超过 12 年前
Apparently all of society needs to be devoted to fixing diabetes before we do anything else. Meh. This article kinda sucks, as does the sentiment behind it.
tathastu超过 12 年前
It actually takes a lot more to have a career in the sciences; the field is extremely competitive. More so than getting a job at Google or Facebook. I applied for a lot of computational biology post-docs (having a PhD in the field), and because I wasn't from a big-name university, didn't get anything, and wound up working for one of the so-called "WTF" companies.
wr1472超过 12 年前
Wow! This post has generated a lot of debate. I wonder is it because of the content or the delivery?<p>Playing devil's advocate, I would say that Raganwald has touched a raw nerve with those that are working on the types of apps he is having a go at. There are a lot of people who are attacking his point by name calling and responding to tone (ie. the delivery and not the content).
michaelbuddy超过 12 年前
Don't forget a ton of brilliant minds are also in finance toiling away in fantastic paying jobs making the mega rich even more rich.
pbreit超过 12 年前
Maybe I misunderstood the post but my first reaction is "I hate this sentiment". I refuse to listen to anyone trivializing the good put forth by Google, Apple and Facebook. They may not be perfect (no entity is) but it is simply ridiculous to suggest these 3 companies are wasting human brilliance on things of comparatively little import.
orion512超过 12 年前
The greatest minds of today are not all specialized in diabetes. If they are not masters of a highly specialized skill, their main focus is probably earning money. Which is OK, because all this infrastructure being created is going to hopefully make the life easier of those who do specialize in curing disease.
cowsandmilk超过 12 年前
Does he honestly believe the greatest minds of this generation are all working at the googleplex?<p>Anyone in the biomed field knows there have been huge advances towards artificial pancreases over the last five years. The purpose of an artificial pancreas is to provide the "second-by-second efficiency" that raganwald discusses.<p>From googling (as I am an expert in other areas of biomedical research), there are several companies and universities going into clinical trials in hospitals during this time and UVA entered outpatient clinical trials last year[1]. FDA gave preliminary guidance on approval of these devices in December 2011 and final guidance in November 2012 [2].<p>As one example of the extremely intelligent people working in this field, I point to an interview with Ed Damiano[3], who describes some of the difficulties in the control algorithms around these devices. A big one is that the time delay within a single patient evolves with time, and this time delay can be on the order of hours. So, you have continuous glucose monitoring on a second-by-second basis, but if the patient doesn't respond to the insulin for hours, you can quickly overdose the patient. A lot of control theory work is extremely well established, but usually with a fixed time delay related to the physical parameters of the system. (at this point, I should point out that work on ad systems that learn over time and adapt to changes in individual users response over time to an individual ad may be very applicable here, meaning work on optimizing ads may someday contribute to better managing diabetes, who knows? cross-polination in algorithms is very common, one algorithm I have used in my biophysics research was adapted by Ephraim Katzir from work he did for the israeli army on detecting tanks in satellite photos....).<p>I don't know why raganwald believes "the greatest minds of our generation toiling away in the Googleplex". There's lots of proof this isn't the case and I know several people in the biotech field that are much smarter than anyone I've seen go to work at Google. In fact, just as it is easy to jump from a physics PhD into google or the finance industry, I've seen a ton of people do it from the biotech field (prominent example: D.E. Shaw[4]).<p>At the same time, don't forget that people work to cure or manage diseases such as diabetes so that people can lead normal lives with a vibrant social circle. Many social apps serve a similar purpose of helping keep us connected with loved ones. While there are specialized social networks for people with diseases, this activity is often mirrored on nonspecialized platforms. Additionally, while a specialized network may help you find people with a similar disease, facebook or gmail may be what keeps someone who has to have a specialized treatment at a hospital hundreds of miles away in touch with their friends and facetime can allow a patient to call the spouse and kids and read a bedtime story. When Intel comes out with a new power-efficient processor, they may be driven by tablets and ultrabooks, but those processors may allow new portable medical devices that save lives in the field as paramedics are now able to apply medical technologies critical minutes earlier to a patient. So, don't let your narrow view of technologies blind yourself to the good actually resulting from the work done at these companies. Not everyone will make the next vacanti mouse, but their work may save more lives.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120514/First-US-outpatient-trial-of-UVA-developed-artificial-pancreas.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120514/First-US-outpatien...</a> [2] <a href="http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/UCM259305.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulation...</a> [3] <a href="http://www.diabetesmine.com/2011/02/behind-the-scenes-of-the-artificial-pancreas-human-trials.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.diabetesmine.com/2011/02/behind-the-scenes-of-the...</a> [4] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._E._Shaw_Research" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._E._Shaw_Research</a>
madiator超过 12 年前
Thats a very myopic view. Indeed its not good if everybody work on things that 'matter'; it is essential that some people do work on things that don't matter.<p>Not everybody can be doing and/or should be doing cancer research or whatever the author seems to perceive is important.
noonespecial超过 12 年前
Is it possible that one activity doesn't necessarily preclude the other?<p>Perhaps society is already running at its "cure diabetes hull-speed". What is everyone else to do? Sit around and cheer them on... hey that gives me an idea for this social app...
ryanjodonnell超过 12 年前
Diabetes isn't a problem that we need technology to solve. Sure it could help, but that's treating the symptom, when what we really need to do is use preventative care to treat the root of the problem - corn subsidies and education.
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ilaksh超过 12 年前
Because the underlying 'economic' and political institutions are fundamentally flawed since they doesn't incorporate relevant information like human needs and social science, ecology, physics and developments in technology, etc.
crockstar超过 12 年前
All I can say is "thank you." In spite of not being one of our greatest minds (far from it) this kick up the backside forced me to respond to an email and get involved in a project that might actually do some good.
rachelbythebay超过 12 年前
The greatest minds aren't necessarily selling ads, either. This came up in a comment thread about 6 months ago:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4347948" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4347948</a>
tomasien超过 12 年前
Control f'd "vulgar" and "profanity" - only one hit. Really proud of HN for not making this about the use of the word "Fuck", which was used exquisitely and in its most potent form (which is "to add emphasis").
agumonkey超过 12 年前
Didn't Steve Yegge have the same issue ? I wish there was less layers to important research, I always have a feeling that solutions would emerge if some people have met but they just don't know each others.
Tloewald超过 12 年前
I's the same reason, unfortunately, that leads to all (most) commercial radio stations playing much the same music. People would rather chase a small piece of a big pie than come up with a new pie.<p>Great rant though.
hanula超过 12 年前
That reminds me of this terrific example <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOYCkHFMnVc" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOYCkHFMnVc</a> Funny/sad, but true.
jmadsen超过 12 年前
How smart can the guy be if he can't even express himself without using a word that is still considered by most people to be vulgar and unfit for public use?<p>"Vulgarity is no substitute for wit"
dotborg超过 12 年前
"the smartest guys" didn't want to work on health problems, ok, however<p>Google Search is pretty much crap lately, AdWords/Facebook ads campaigns are expensive and ineffective<p>maybe it's not that bad after all
cromwellian超过 12 年前
Only a small fraction of Googlers work on ads optimization. The money made from ads allows the vast majority of the rest to go work on other problems.
dorkitude超过 12 年前
Well, that's certainly not what <i>everyone</i> of consequence is doing, just the risk-averse and as-yet-unrescued.<p>A lot of us work hard to rescue them :P
hbien超过 12 年前
If you're looking into making a big impact: <a href="http://80000hours.org/" rel="nofollow">http://80000hours.org/</a><p>The answer is usually not clear cut.
roopeshv超过 12 年前
similar to "Why should we be spending money exploring space when there are so many problems here on Earth that we need to solve first?".
armored_mammal超过 12 年前
If I new of a job where I could program for a container agriculture company or something I would. Your comments ring true to me.
krickle超过 12 年前
I bet if you pay them what they expect to get from their own companies, they'll stop fucking around and get right on it.
polskibus超过 12 年前
5 letters as the answer: money.
rjzzleep超过 12 年前
you don't need a degree in physics chemistry or biology to do great things.<p>And you don't need to be at google, to be qualified as a great mind. But people may not call you that then.<p>So what
saurabh超过 12 年前
For money, obviously.
cynwoody超过 12 年前
Too small; didn't read.<p>Raganwald needs to forget the font-size attribute.
elisk超过 12 年前
Why the fuck? I'll tell you why. Because true innovation is too far and few in between, because it took us 60,000 years to realize that we can plant our own crops, that we can cultivate and breed our own farm animals.<p>Because it took us a good few thousand years to understand that there is more to life than just bashing each other with stones and sticks.<p>Because coming up with something new, and having the guts to share it with your community, and not being killed for it is still rather rare today.<p>Because it took us almost 1,500 to "accept" the fact that we're on a spherical object, not being held by a bunch of turtles. Because some of us are still not convinced that this is true.<p>Because most of the time we're not actually creating anything new, but instead try to improve something that was already there, because we're afraid thinking out of the box. Because our society loves new stuff as long as it doesn't change their old views, and most of the truly revolutionary ideas are just that, shattering our older views.<p>Because we're distrustful apes that think that their youngsters are naive or just plain stupid. Because we think that our 5 year-old's are too young to see the naked body of a human being.<p>Because our society teaches our kids how to suppress originality from the very first days in schools and throughout their "education", which is just a pretty word for enslavement camps that teach our population how to be obedient, unoriginal parrots.<p>Because if you ask 95% of humanity who they believe more, their parents or the scientists that tell them something different than what their parents (and their parents parents) said or think, they'll tell you they prefer the "truth" of their parents, ignoring facts, experiments, and their own eyes.<p>Because we have patent laws that do nothing but prevent true innovation. Because a lot of the ideas that we have are already protected by some stupid law and we can't actually do that. Because we can't experiment with human embryonic cells because we consider them sacred and at the same time we allow the slaughter of millions of people around the world, deny them the food that we throw away in the garbage because we simply can't consume that much.<p>Because we distrust each other and we intimidate and sometimes execute those who do something different. Because we're so arrogant that we're always sure that we know best, and this new thing that someone just mentioned to you won't work because of a million reasons.<p>But mainly, because we're lazy as fuck, and we rather complain about why we don't have anything truly new and life improving, and replying to those rants explaining the reasoning behind it.<p>Why? Because you're too squared in. Because you're too afraid to truly say what's on your mind. Because you don't want others to think that you're crazy. Because if you don't conform, society will reject you. And new things, are by definition, non-conforming.<p>Now go and create something new. I dare you.
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natmaster超过 12 年前
Audience isn't scalable.
kcbanner超过 12 年前
Check out Glooko.
boomlinde超过 12 年前
Capitalism?
andrijac超过 12 年前
money
benihana超过 12 年前
Oh goodie, another arrogant whine by raganwald where he can't understand why the greatest minds (implying people writing code are somehow the greatest minds) aren't doing what <i>he</i> thinks is important.<p>This post makes two incorrect assumptions. First, that the things he derides (Google automating targeted content, Facebook introducing new search features that are tangential to their current features, Apple changing form factors) aren't beneficial to society as a whole. Second, that problems he would like to see solved are more important than problems other people would like to see solved.
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wissler超过 12 年前
I agree with Raganwald's sentiment, and I think most of the posters here at HN lack vision and standards and are just fat dumb and happy with the status quo. Well the status quo is not good enough, and YOU need to raise your standards and expectations about what is possible and you need to get a clue about the kinds of things that are holding us back, but first and foremost, it is YOUR ATTITUDE that is holding us back.
dakimov超过 12 年前
Dude, the folks doing websites aren't greatest minds. They aren't even engineers. It's a bunch of ADHD kids rushing for cash.<p>All this social web bullshit is not really even programming, and programming is not even engineering.
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moneypenny超过 12 年前
The benefit is that you know which tedious people to avoid when they tell you they work at Facebook/Google/etc.
LatvjuAvs超过 12 年前
One day I killed few children, few days later I happen to kill about two children. Week later I killed one...<p>And so day by day, I kill few, mostly children, of course sometimes I kill adults too, but most targets are children.<p>Yet, I feel perfectly fine.<p>Every time when I walk past charity advertisement person.
CleanedStar超过 12 年前
As Warren Beatty said in Reds:<p>"Profits"
nirvana超过 12 年前
I can't speak to the other companies, though I know google want's "all the worlds info at your fingertips" which is a reasonably high ideal... I can speak to what Apple is doing as someone whose followed the company closely for a couple decades.<p>Apple doesn't care whether you buy the 3.5", 4.0", 7.85", or 9.8" screen.<p>Apple is bringing the personal computer to the 6 billion other people who weren't able to get in on the PC revolution.<p>Their slogan in the 1980s used to be "The Computer for the Rest Of Us." While it isn't used for marketing, the mission hasn't really changed.<p>There were two key issues that prevented those people from participating in the PC revolution.<p>The first was that you had to be trained how to use a computer. You had to be at least literate, and you had to spend the time to overcome the significant usability hurdle that even Mac OS X presents to the random person. (Eg: your grandmother.)<p>iOS has revolutionized computer usability such that your grandmother can use it, even if she never made it to high school (bless her heart.)<p>The second is price/distribution. PCs were for the relatively rich. And while Apple never <i>seemed</i> to compete on the lowest end, that's simply because most people who think Apple makes expensive products think about $300 laptop as "affordable". Instead, Apple put a $50 computer in peoples hands- the iPod shuffle. Sure, it might not be as full featured as a laptop, but you have to walk before you can run.<p>Lets also not forget that there's a big difference between a PC that draws serious amps and thus needs a house wired for electricity... and a mobile that runs on batteries and can be charged with solar power.<p>Apple is toiling away building the greatest development/ design/ manufacturing/ distribution machine in history. Of course they have some key partners in this- foxconn and their suppliers.<p>That iPod shuffle has been replaced with the inexpensive iPod touch, which really is a PC. And of course there is the iPad mini, also a new entry on the low end pc market.<p>Just because they didn't choose to make zero margin crap that nobody can use (Eg: windows running netbooks), doesn't mean they aren't working their tails off to address this under filled market. They are coming in from the high end, which makes sense given that they can't make the devices fast enough. Hence scaling the company across all those axis I mentioned.<p>I'm sure this sounds like a radical idea, because "everyone knows" that Apple is only interested in selling "shiny things to rich people". Just keep thinking that!<p>Whether android ultimately beats them to it, or not, their mission is pretty damn noble, as far as I'm concerned.<p>The post-PC era they created is going to empower a massive number of people.
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spuiszis超过 12 年前
Awesome title
AndrewKemendo超过 12 年前
C.R.E.A.M. my friend, it all comes back to the C.R.E.A.M.
kylebrown超过 12 年前
Diabetes is just another first-world problem.<p>What about the millions of children dying of preventable diseases in the third-world?
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derpmeister超过 12 年前
Because nobody cares about your diabetes and obesity. Lay down that taco and get some fricken exercise, FFS.
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