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Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#131

Post by ianai »

sethammons wrote: post #89
boffinism wrote: post #6

If it helps, energy really really should be worked on. Do that. Also, that's not really how regrets work. You will be comparing the path you took to what you imagine to be the roads not taken. It's very dependent on your own unique experiences and outlook, and very hard to safeguard against. Your way of evaluating your life will change over time, so optimising for your current values gives no guarantees. Best thing t…

My philosophy: make the best choice given the information you have at the time. If you do, you have no cause to regret anything in your life. Thinking of alternative paths you could have taken might be a fun exercise or could yeild insights to make better future choices, but if you chose the best you could, there is no sense in regretting a choice, even when that choice hurt.

Reminding myself of this has helped many times in the past. It’s always easy to critique in hindsight. It’s thus even more easy to criticize harmfully in hindsight. Just yesterday I got to regretting how a few dates failed to pan out...almost 12 years ago!

I think of this concept as similar to the excluded middle in logic. In hindsight, a decision is apparently either good or bad depending on the outcome. But it’s impossible to know the outcome with certainty the vast majority of the time. So a decision needs to be judged in the context of the information known at the time of decision - which does not include the information about the decisions outcome.

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#132

Post by ilian »

dhruvkar wrote: post #54
scrollaway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll skip over what I'm actively working on because I think this deserves a mention: I'm a hobbyist digital archivist. This is something where most people can likely make a meaningful and long-lasting impact, that nobody else could if they didn't. Archiving, for me, is a way of travelling forward in time. Think about "time capsules" and what not. Here's what I mean by this: If you write a message on a piece of paper,…

I tend to do the same with all physical pieces of paper I receive, whether or not it feels useful at the time. Recently added OCR to the process, which makes retrieval a joy. I have no logical reason for doing this, it feels like a compulsion. Why do you do it and what tools do you use?

Which tools do you use to organize the digital artifacts you create? And how do you organize them?

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#133

Post by jcoffland »

coldtea wrote: post #76
tw1010 wrote: post #14

I'm all for egalitarianism in the public sphere, but in private I still believe that there's such a thing as natural born talent. Anyone can probably reach the top 5% in most non-athletic areas given enough time. But if your goal is to maximize your output having already accepted that your time on earth is limited, then the wise thing is to probably steer in directions that have high impact but for you feel dispropor…

> Anyone can probably reach the top 5% in most non-athletic areas given enough time. At any given time, only the 5% of the population can reach the top 5% in any area. If anybody could do it and e.g. just 10% did it, then there would be a new 5% (the top 50% of that 10%), and the rest 50% wouldn't be in. > Thus, I'm a big fan of Peter Theils advice to work on things that satisfy the property that: "if you weren't wor…

>> Anyone can probably reach the top 5% in most non-athletic areas given enough time.

> At any given time, only the 5% of the population can reach the top 5% in any area.

I believe the GP is saying you can be in the top 5% of a chosen field, if you try, because other people are pursuing other things. So 100% of the population could be in the top 5% of something.

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#134

Post by whitepoplar »

I think money is the great enabler, assuming you don't spend it. Making a nice chunk of it early on makes the rest of your life better--you can choose exactly what you'd like to work on, relationships are statistically better, and your blood pressure will be at lower levels for the rest of your life. Freedom is the one thing that money can buy, and the great thing about it is that it never has to leave your bank account in order to buy it. :-)

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#136

Post by MrQuincle »

worldsayshi wrote: post #28
tw1010 wrote: post #14

I'm all for egalitarianism in the public sphere, but in private I still believe that there's such a thing as natural born talent. Anyone can probably reach the top 5% in most non-athletic areas given enough time. But if your goal is to maximize your output having already accepted that your time on earth is limited, then the wise thing is to probably steer in directions that have high impact but for you feel dispropor…

Question to anyone reading this: What is your answer to "if you weren't working on it, this problem would not get solved"?

This problem would remain a problem forever? I'm happy enough if I can help a problem be solved faster. If I can make it happen that some strategic technical solution happens ten years before it would have been without me, I'd be extremely satisfied. But there's no way to know.

I tend to work the other way.

Some day we will have smart homes. How would they look like and how can I work towards that vision? Or, what restricts ubiquity of wearables? In my opinion wireless charging over a considerable distance. Then I contemplate how I would do it. For example embedded in ceiling lights with infrared lasers and a positioning system. And I talk about it in case someone else also finds it an interesting idea, because I've so little time on this planet...

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#137

Post by abrichr »

badpun wrote: post #2

> I've been stuck with trying to figure what to do with the rest of my life. I can't decide whether I should be working on what I want to work on (Energy, AI) or whether I should work on what I believe should be worked on (Healthcare). 1. How about AI for Healthcare? 2. I don't believe you can do great work in an area you're not personally excited about. So, if the thought of spending the next 30 years working in the…

I'll second AI for healthcare.

Medicine is the killer app for AI, and yet not nearly enough people are working on it. I suspect it has something to do with the relative difficulty in accessing data (although this is changing), and the relatively lower pay compared to working at Google, Facebook et al. But in my opinion, if you're the sort of person who's searching for meaning and opportunity, this is the place to be.

Full disclosure: I work in AI for healthcare.

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#139

Post by ianai »

ianai wrote: post #131
sethammons wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My philosophy: make the best choice given the information you have at the time. If you do, you have no cause to regret anything in your life. Thinking of alternative paths you could have taken might be a fun exercise or could yeild insights to make better future choices, but if you chose the best you could, there is no sense in regretting a choice, even when that choice hurt.

Reminding myself of this has helped many times in the past. It’s always easy to critique in hindsight. It’s thus even more easy to criticize harmfully in hindsight. Just yesterday I got to regretting how a few dates failed to pan out...almost 12 years ago! I think of this concept as similar to the excluded middle in logic. In hindsight, a decision is apparently either good or bad depending on the outcome. But it’s im…

Replying to myself,

The value of a decision before uncovering its value is similar to the value of a lottery ticket before the draw. Before the drawing a lottery tickets value is nonzero-the aggregate value of the expected payout. But after the draw the lottery ticket is worth its realized value. When the pre-lotto expected value of the ticket meets or exceeds the cost of the lottery ticket the purchase of the ticket is rational. After the draw, the monetary value of the ticket is whatever the ticket won or did not win. Most likely the value of the ticket is 0$. That doesn’t make the purchase of the ticket irrational before the draw.

Re: Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime?

#140

Post by matte_black »

Without getting too philosophical, if energy is really what you want to work on, then the problem of making batteries that are as small and as energy dense as possible would be worth spending an entire life trying to solve, because a breakthrough in battery tech would easily have an impact on tons of unrelated industries and trigger a new technology revolution.
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