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Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#61

Post by NoGravitas »

falcolas wrote: post #30
austenallred wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The HN demographic is spectacularly disinterested in the well-being of humanity. Wait, what?

It's crudely phrased, but the quantity of posts which show up in opposition to anything that helps society at large at the cost of profits is remarkably high, and getting higher as time goes on. All anecdotal, of course.

Indeed. Go read the comments on the "My Family's Slave" article from a few days ago. A large proportion of them were supportive of slavery, or at least identified strongly with the slavers rather than their victim. Furthermore, the admins apparently disabled downvoting of comments, and detached strongly anti-slavery subthreads.

HN and the HN demographic are strongly interested in preserving/advancing a particular social order; one that is largely detrimental to most of humanity.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#62

Post by johan_larson »

mjburgess wrote: post #58
johan_larson wrote: post #54

You have a job, right? If your employer solves a useful problem for its customers at a reasonable price, obeys the law and treats its employees and suppliers fairly then it is doing good and you are doing good through it. Do your work conscientiously and go home happy.

That's assuming "giving people what they want" is inherently good, or worse, the only good. It is neither. People getting what they want is neither good nor bad; it is effective at distributing resources. But this is distribution isnt inherently good either (effective != good). We don't need to define "Good" in order to observe this. Very few definitions by anyone, let alone OP, produce this equivalence.

I agree with you. It's quite possible to make money doing pernicious things. It's even possible to make money legally doing pernicious things. And that's why I'm setting the bar considerably higher. Note my words: "useful problem", "reasonable price", "treats ... fairly".

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#63

Post by srikz »

simplicitea wrote: post #46

OP here, actually floored by the rapidity and variety of responses. Thanks HN. I'll take this opportunity to float an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a long time. The premise is to: 1) (this is almost certainly the easy part) build out a platform that is like a two-way khan academy - teacher and student, with at least the teacher having a tablet and a stylus that function well, sharing a digital blackb…

You may want to explore this with the folks at freecodecamp. I feel it aligns a lot with what they are doing. I wanted to suggest you to check their initiative to build apps for NGOs as part of the process of graduating from FCC (maybe bypass the learning part and directly contribute?) but this may be even better.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#64

Post by eeZah7Ux »

austenallred wrote: post #39
falcolas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crudely phrased, but the quantity of posts which show up in opposition to anything that helps society at large at the cost of profits is remarkably high, and getting higher as time goes on. All anecdotal, of course.

I'd say that HN seems extremely interested in the wellbeing of humanity. That's all anyone talks about. The disagreements are over what methodology is most likely to reach that ends. My guess is that parent sees comments that recommend a different means to the same end we all generally believe in, and views those as disregard for humans.

"making the world a better place by selling $service" is usually hypocrisy rather than a matter of methodology.

Same goes for making a service cheaper at the expense of the workers and the list goes on...

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#65

Post by RichardHeart »

Humans are executed data. The blueprint of life has never been more like computer code. Ben Horrowitz believes where data touches biology is where there's ton of profit waiting. Pick a SENS initiative and see where you can attack it with software. Human Longevity Inc is using machine learning I think to figure out what genes actually cause what pathologies.

It would be interesting to point at the genes for the heritability of IQ for giggles. We are all data, the meat is what matters. The life you save may be your own.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#66

Post by Jemmeh »

https://github.com/HospitalRun

Open source, modern software for charitable hospitals in the developing world.

Find some open source projects for some issue you care about. The medical community could use a lot of help, anything that automates some part of their job means medical staff is available to help more patients. There's a lot of room for automation in this field.

Personally I think anything in renewable energy, sexual education, and poverty alleviation are good highly effective causes to get behind as well.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#68

Post by eeZah7Ux »

austenallred wrote: post #45
darwhy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see it in the many comments claiming that working at an ordinary day job or donating your income to charity is akin to the social good asked for by OP. It's a failure of imagination to assume that you can do more good for the world as programmer #9001 at Facebook who donates some of his income to effective altruism than as a programmer who adds all of her value to some other cause. A good programmer making 10…

> You can see it in the many comments claiming that working at an ordinary day job or donating your income to charity is akin to the social good asked for by OP. If OP doesn't see donating to charity as interest in the well-being of society then let's just admit that the parent isn't so much concerned about whether or not HN is interested in the well-being of society so much as if HN wants to contribute to the well-b…

> Donating to charity is, almost by definition, interest in the wellbeing of society.

...or dodging taxes while getting good PR and also giving jobs to people in your own country (instead of elsewhere)?

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#70

Post by maxerickson »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #68
austenallred wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can see it in the many comments claiming that working at an ordinary day job or donating your income to charity is akin to the social good asked for by OP. If OP doesn't see donating to charity as interest in the well-being of society then let's just admit that the parent isn't so much concerned about whether or not HN is interested in the well-being of society so much as if HN wants to contribute to the well-b…

> Donating to charity is, almost by definition, interest in the wellbeing of society. ...or dodging taxes while getting good PR and also giving jobs to people in your own country (instead of elsewhere)?

It isn't a tax dodge.

The cost of the donation always exceeds the tax benefit.

People do things like setup foundations and then appoint people to work for them, but that still doesn't allow the money to be kept without paying taxes on it (the foundation has to engage in bona fide charitable activities to maintain tax status).

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