Solving All the Wrong Problems • Hacker News Board

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#81

Post by vonnik » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 9:37 PM UTC

I was disappointed in this article when it was first published in July. Whenever a newspaper columnist makes a plea to reset humanity's "moral compass", you know that the article is basically worthless, an exercise in futility. Usually, these posts are inspired by a sort of lazy annoyance that results when they receive one too many press releases about startups they don't want to cover.

But more importantly, writing like this makes a fundamental mistake about how humanity moves forward. We don't do it efficiently, moving in a straight line. We do it while wasting tons of effort. A bit like the media. We could turn Allison's own criticism against her with an article about media coverage entitled: Writing All the Wrong Articles.

If you look at any website, there is remarkably little news, and a whole lot of speculation, various ill-informed opinion pieces and other forms of clickbait. Waste is just part of human activity. You need to make mistakes before you get them right.

Also, many startups create solutions that are appropriate for niches that any given newspaper columnist may not occupy. They look useless from the outside, but may serve their target well.

Finally, the author doesn't even address the fact that industries core to human wellbeing, such as healthcare, are among the most heavily regulated. Founding a healthcare startup is a good way to waste 10 years of your life navigating obscure laws that impose a heavy compliance burden. And that is not startups' fault, it's the fault of lawmakers and industry lobbyists.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#82

Post by aetherson » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #64

aetherson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "right" problems for the "right" populations is a silly formulation. First of all, the implicit idea that the founders of these companies are all like, "Oh, hey, I have ten really highly functional business plans for bringing an app to profitability, and I'll reject the ones serving population X because I think it's 5% less profitable than the ones serving population Y" is dumb. Second, the idea that that writer…

First of all, the implicit idea that the founders of these companies are all like, "Oh, hey, I have ten really highly functional business plans for bringing an app to profitability, and I'll reject the ones serving population X because I think it's 5% less profitable than the ones serving population Y" is dumb. Isn't that precisely what VCs do when assessing the viability of a startup? But we've seen time and time ag…

No, what VCs do is try to figure out "Does this thing have any chance of making a big business." And they're mostly wrong.

And not every tech idea is or should be VC-backed.

Software engineers are clearly in the cultural elite. And if any software engineer was in the business of telling people "I know what the right population and right problems are," they'd be idiots, too.

Note that that's distinct from, "I have AN idea that I think I can turn into a successful business, by targeting problem X of population Y" which says nothing about the universe of ideas.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#83

Post by icantdrive55 » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #25

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #5

> "As one colleague in tech explained it to me recently, for most people working on such projects, the goal is basically to provide for themselves everything that their mothers no longer do." Ha! I've used the exact same characterization. Anyway, this seems entirely predictable given a couple different considerations. 1) People are most apt to effectively solve problems for which they have some context. 2) People who…

Is this a problem or a good thing? Washing machines, kitchen appliances and similar technological advances, freed up our at home time so much that we can put a whole nother 50% of the population through college. A whole 50% of the population that can get jobs, have careers, and do cool shit, who was stuck wiping men's proverbial bottoms until the 1950's. Making free time free is a good thing. There's no telling what…

I'm sure all that technology helped, but I think the free time was more of a result of good union jobs, just a plethora of good private sector jobs, and reasonable housing. These good jobs allowed us to buy food, live where we wanted, take vacations, take on risk, have weekends off, etc.

The technology that really saved time was modern food procurement(the supermarket, or food that was ready to bring home with a short walk to a few stores.

And women, they wanted to work. I remember my mom had a lot of time on her hands, but it wasen't due to appliances.

When she got a career, she was happy at first, but then missed all the free time she had when she was a housewife.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#84

Post by scandox » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

I think if you take into account the target audience for this article, then she has a fair point to make which is simply the mismatch between the hubristic talk and the reality. That's something non-tech people probably should have brought to their attention. At the same time it's obviously frustrating that she uses such a basic hook at the beginning to get her point across.

Perhaps I'm living under a rock but it seems to me that the great majority of tech companies and their employees (including me) are working on things that aren't very important in the scheme of things. Which is fine.

What isn't fine are the delusions of grandeur. Especially when people are actually buying into it. I hadn't realized how crazy stuff had got until I read this, from one of our own homegrown entrepreneurs:

https://blog.websummit.net/maths-and-conferences-lanyards-an...

Maybe I should have been watching Silicon Valley on TV.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#85

Post by wott » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 9:46 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #25

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #5

> "As one colleague in tech explained it to me recently, for most people working on such projects, the goal is basically to provide for themselves everything that their mothers no longer do." Ha! I've used the exact same characterization. Anyway, this seems entirely predictable given a couple different considerations. 1) People are most apt to effectively solve problems for which they have some context. 2) People who…

Is this a problem or a good thing? Washing machines, kitchen appliances and similar technological advances, freed up our at home time so much that we can put a whole nother 50% of the population through college. A whole 50% of the population that can get jobs, have careers, and do cool shit, who was stuck wiping men's proverbial bottoms until the 1950's. Making free time free is a good thing. There's no telling what…

A good part of the 'solutions' offered are in fact new time-wasters (and money-wasters, of course).

And honestly, that concerns almost everything around me, except a fridge, a stove and a washing machine.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#86

Post by jdoliner » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #75

jdoliner wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of companies who raise money to solve problems for the poor. Although if you want to be cynical you could dismiss it as them just trying to make money off the poor, they are businesses after all. Lendup is a good example of this, their goal is to provide loans to poor people that are better than pay day loans. Pretty impactful stuff if you ask me, but it doesn't seem to count in this article or in yo…

I counterpointed this comment, too, but you might be going too far here: "The article would much rather focus on an incredibly narrow band of startups that are easy to poke fun at and prove the point." The article does narrow it a bit but it's overall claim appears to be true. Most startups seem to target either frivilous stuff, stuff useful for businesses, or stuff appealing to middle class and up. That's almost eve…

> Most startups seem to target either frivolous stuff, stuff useful for businesses or stuff appealing to the middle class and up.

This is drifting pretty far from the article in my opinion which focussed almost entirely on frivolous stuff. The article only obliquely lamented that lower classes don't have enough focus put on them. It mostly seemed to be claiming that it's all frivolous stuff, these last 2 categories are the things I think the article narrowed it's sites to avoid.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#87

Post by matt4077 » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 9:53 PM UTC

vonnik wrote: post #81

I was disappointed in this article when it was first published in July. Whenever a newspaper columnist makes a plea to reset humanity's "moral compass", you know that the article is basically worthless, an exercise in futility. Usually, these posts are inspired by a sort of lazy annoyance that results when they receive one too many press releases about startups they don't want to cover. But more importantly, writing…

THere's the difference between aiming high and failing vs. aiming low and glorifying it (and often still failing). Her argument is that there are a lot of low-hanging fruit that have the potential to actually help people but that the startup community is too homogenous to know or care about such project domains. Some of the domains may be hard to tackle but even within the software domain there are certainly classes od problems that are underserved vs. the gaming/photos/music/sharing market. Indeed one of my favorite example is visible right here: not a week passes without someone writing a new client for Hacker News on (the cli|oculus|as a kernel module). These ate usually side project to learn a new technology and it's completely legitimate to chose a domain you're familiar with, but with a bit more effort I belive it'd be possible to redirect that creative engery to projects that are both more enjoyable and actually useful.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#88

Post by matt4077 » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 9:59 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #59

dasil003 wrote: post #50

None of this is going to change unless capital miraculously grows a conscience. As an entrepreneur seeking funding you can't afford to solve problems for the poor because there's no way to raise money for that, and there's certainly not a lot of disposable income available to bootstrap from. The problem with this type of article is that it conflates all the struggling little startups with the unicorns who are actuall…

One of the reasons few 'startup' businesses target the needs of the poor is that many (especially among venture capital and government regulators) are uncomfortable with doing business with (or 'making money off') the poor. Marc Andreessen commented that a partner at A16Z has veto-d at least one funding proposal because of this discomfort.

There's a difference between predatory lending and tackling actual problems. And a16 actually has a few serious companies in its portfolio such as opengov.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#89

Post by ebcode » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 10:07 PM UTC

ixtli wrote: post #71

mzw_mzw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use racist language on HN.

Sorry, I'm unclear how what I said was racist :/ Edit: To be clear I used those examples because they are the majority in America (which I should have been more clear about) in an effort to point out that the majority often does not pay as close attention to the problems that arise from being in a minority.

>Homogenous, largely white, largely male, largely safe people are not going to detect the problems the author appears to be implying are going untreated.

What you said was both racist and sexist. You're saying that a group of people (based on race and sex) are "not going to ..." do something. Speaking in generalizations using these classifications is generally regarded by most folks as racist/sexist.

It can be tricky though. You might be right, but you'll still be called out for it. For example, the peoples of eastern asia are statistically less tall than their counterparts in western europe. Nevertheless, "asians are shorter than europeans", is still a racist statement.

Unless you can see, as well as explain, how the generalizations you're making benefit the conversation, it's probably best to avoid making those types of statements in the first place.

Racism itself might be "wrong", but that doesn't mean you can't be racist and still be "right" in your assertions. That's the tricky part.

Re: Solving All the Wrong Problems

#90

Post by johnnyhillbilly » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #37

Swizec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a problem or a good thing? Washing machines, kitchen appliances and similar technological advances, freed up our at home time so much that we can put a whole nother 50% of the population through college. A whole 50% of the population that can get jobs, have careers, and do cool shit, who was stuck wiping men's proverbial bottoms until the 1950's. Making free time free is a good thing. There's no telling what…

The calculus of the opportunity cost presented here isn't the tiny incremental improvement attached to my already amply comfortable lifestyle, but rather the aggregate full-time loss of many dozens or hundreds of engineers, data scientists, and investment $$$ diverted to trivial pursuits. Or put more simply. The lost problem-solving potential for 8-10 hours a day of a single PhD in Applied Mathematics massively dwarf…

I think you misunderstand how much time and focus is spent on trivial problems. Somebody already replied to this, but I will add more on the same note.

1 If some scientist finds a way to save a minute per instance of brushing your teeth, and if there is no difference in quality and cost, that is 600 million+ minutes saved every day in the US alone.

2 If some scientist finds a way for nocturnal people to contribute to society like other people, that is surely on the same magnitude as 1.

3 If some scientist finds some way to cut 10% of time on inspecting welds, it is surely a huge boost to the economy.

This is of course not meant to endorse situations where the quality drops. E.g. "If one cent is saved per unit of milk produced, I can buy a new yacht!"