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.
Why the Fuck?
101–110 of 528 posts
Re: Why the Fuck?
#102My fellow HNers:
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.
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 wrong, just boorish.
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:
1. The barrier for entry (education, &c) is higher in medicine and bioinformatics.
2. There are regulatory obstacles for businesses.
3. The problems are harder to solve than it may seem to the man in the saloon.
4. Some people feel the monetary incentives are to avoid medicine.
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.
Re: Why the Fuck?
#103Elon 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). 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?
Paypal is awesome.
It's 2012 and I'm still not aware of any other company that allows me to sign up (for free) and start taking payments straight away (for arbitrary items no less). See also: http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html
(Note: Stripe have a schlep blindness in International Transactions. I still can't sign up for Stripe. Last Week I was recommending a friend use paypal)
Re: Why the Fuck?
#104My friend has a insulin pump similar to this
http://www.medtronic-diabetes.co.uk/product-information/para...
This seems to be a solved problem, if only someone could make a way for people to search out such things via the internet ;)
Re: Why the Fuck?
#105Oh 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 he thinks is important. 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 for…
As a type one diabetic, I wholeheartedly agree that bloodsugar management is more important than the next social thing. I think what raganwald is saying (IMO) is that the "problems" these "minds" are solving are not really problems at all. Agree or disagree, I think that's what is being said.
Re: Why the Fuck?
#106To 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. Screw up at Facebook, you get yelled at on Twitter and your share price dips for a few days. Screw u…
Because consenting adults aren't allowed to engage in an exchange of medical services without the approval of federal bureaucrats + lurking personal injury lawyers. All we need is just one state with medical contractual freedom.
No thank you, Christian Scientists are "experimental" enough. We don't need the Tim Ferrises of the world selling snake oil to parents (as medicine).
Re: Why the Fuck?
#107Dude, the folks doing websites aren't greatest minds. They aren't even engineers. It's a bunch of ADHD kids rushing for cash.
All this social web bullshit is not really even programming, and programming is not even engineering.
Re: Why the Fuck?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would hope it's uncontroversial that saving people's lives, health and sanity is categorically more important than making money or trivial social interaction.
I think the incorrect assumption raganwald makes is that the greatest minds aren't trying to solve these problems. You're not going to hear about massive successes in these fields nearly as often because the problems are hugely complex and very difficult to solve.
Yeah, I think the invention of synthetic insulin was probably more significant, and difficult, than yet another search engine, or yet another email client or yet another ad platform, even if the latter were improvements.
Also, isn't google pretty much a normal corporation at this point in terms of employee expectations and salary?
Re: Why the Fuck?
#109> Why the fuck are programers strategizing how to pivot Facebook into being a dating site?
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.
Re: Why the Fuck?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
What an ignorant post. How exactly does "laying down the taco" help Scott Hanselman and the other million of US citizens who suffer from Type 1 diabetes?
Even if it doesn't, there's a lot more profit in advertising than insulin. The economy would probably function better if diabetes patients were left untreated and die, since the cost saving estimates are quite enormous.
Why should we care more about the economy than we care about people with diabetes?