No.
Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
61–70 of 441 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#62You might as well have asked who among us won the lottery. I've been struggling with this for years now; after 4 boring jobs I finally gave up even the expectation that what I'll be asked to do will be even remotely interesting (or socially useful). The chance of landing an interesting job is absolutely minuscule - the market rewards whatever it rewards at the moment, and that's where jobs flock. These days, one of t…
While I don't agree with Marx, your sense of ennui seems to reasonably represent what I understand to have been his concepts of reification and alienation. One might ask: what does the alternative look like? From what I can tell Marx is a bit wishy-washy on that point. Hayek more helpfully explained that the market provides a mechanism for determining value, not virtue . That it works, but doesn't uplift. And that tr…
> the market provides a mechanism for determining value
The market's notion of value is weighted by wealth: making coffee for the rich is "valuable", meeting the basic needs of the poor is not "valuable." This makes the market notion of "value" very different from just about any other notion of value in the world. If you muddy the distinction, or let someone else muddy the distinction, markets become almost tautologically awesome, because the market notion of "value" is something that markets are very good at optimizing.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#63You might as well have asked who among us won the lottery. I've been struggling with this for years now; after 4 boring jobs I finally gave up even the expectation that what I'll be asked to do will be even remotely interesting (or socially useful). The chance of landing an interesting job is absolutely minuscule - the market rewards whatever it rewards at the moment, and that's where jobs flock. These days, one of t…
> alleviating a social problem for some group of people
Not sure what you mean by "social" problems specifically, but when you alleviate a problem for a group of people, they pay you, and that's what a business is.
I realized recently what a useful abstraction money is, because when money came about we didn't have the ability to create a massive blockchain keeping track of who did favors for who, and when. So it's a reasonable proxy for reputation and social credits.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#64You might as well have asked who among us won the lottery. I've been struggling with this for years now; after 4 boring jobs I finally gave up even the expectation that what I'll be asked to do will be even remotely interesting (or socially useful). The chance of landing an interesting job is absolutely minuscule - the market rewards whatever it rewards at the moment, and that's where jobs flock. These days, one of t…
You have found the boundaries of the box, and anything you find outside the box will be judged against everything inside the box. There are a lot of people inside the box, and the box is small, so they make a lot of noise. When you get outside of the box you need to also get away from the box so that you can't hear the judging.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#65Two essays on "interesting technical" problems.
"Richard Hamming : You and Your Research (1986)" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4626349
"Three Golden Rules for Scientific Research : E. W. Dijkstra" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1504402
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#66You might as well have asked who among us won the lottery. I've been struggling with this for years now; after 4 boring jobs I finally gave up even the expectation that what I'll be asked to do will be even remotely interesting (or socially useful). The chance of landing an interesting job is absolutely minuscule - the market rewards whatever it rewards at the moment, and that's where jobs flock. These days, one of t…
> alleviating a social problem for some group of people Not sure what you mean by "social" problems specifically, but when you alleviate a problem for a group of people, they pay you, and that's what a business is. I realized recently what a useful abstraction money is, because when money came about we didn't have the ability to create a massive blockchain keeping track of who did favors for who, and when. So it's a…
What about people with lots of problems and not a lot of money?
For some reason, I still think they have value and that their problems are worth solving, regardless of what the market thinks of them.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#67Hang out with the folks in biotech if you want to be inspired. You can literally see progress on a daily basis for a host of age related diseases ;)
You can also participate indirectly by tracking the market and making small investments in say: AbbVie, Gilead, Regeneron, Spark Therapeutics, Ginko Bioworks, etc. Or apply your skills to Kaggle style ML competitions, citizen science projects, open access gene banks, etc.
Stay positive!
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#68[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#69You might as well have asked who among us won the lottery. I've been struggling with this for years now; after 4 boring jobs I finally gave up even the expectation that what I'll be asked to do will be even remotely interesting (or socially useful). The chance of landing an interesting job is absolutely minuscule - the market rewards whatever it rewards at the moment, and that's where jobs flock. These days, one of t…
Dude I got you.
Two kinds of "work": work that gives you money, and work that gives you value. They are not necessarily the same one.
Most people have to work for money. The best we can do is to gather more "money" (or resources). So that you can dedicate more of your time to generate, as you said, "interesting outcomes".
I recommend the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin. I learnt a lot relevant ideas from it.
Re: Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?
#70The last job I had where I did interesting things was my first job in the industry, fresh out of school. Pay was abysmal and it was part time, but the things I did actually helped people and made their lives easier.
Since then, despite my best efforts to create technology that actually improves things, the things I make mostly just end up being co-opted to game bullshit metrics.
I think the truth of the matter is that most of the work that keeps the world running is just plain dull, and about 80% of it is just to make the people at the top feel like they're actually doing something.