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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#131

Post by steveklabnik »

kibwen wrote: post #113
raganwald wrote: post #102

My 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 footba…

> 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." Seconded, though I could never find the words to express this before. How the fuck is anything that I'm doing right now helping to make the world a better place? How could I even begin to make a difference with my life? Making software is the only thing that I'm marginally…

Since you're struggling to find words, you might find the concept of 'alienation' helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_alienation

Re: Why the Fuck?

#132

Post by waterlesscloud »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My 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 footba…

Directly pursuing medical advances without the required stamp of education might be difficult because of the obstacles society puts up for that path (perhaps rightly so). You could certainly educate yourself in the field, but you'd likely have a tough time winning acceptance for your advances.

But you could certainly find a way to help people indirectly. Some of the same talent that targets people for ads is not necessarily all that different from using psychological principles to help them be healthier, for example.

And there's always the path of partnering with someone who does have the required education. Combine that with your own self-directed education in bioinformatics or similar fields and you could definitely make a real difference.

It's riskier, but it also has the potential for a bigger payoff.

The path is there, there is a way.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#133

Post by d0m »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My 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 footba…

HackingHealth.ca might be of interest to some of you who want to help but not necessarly know where to start and/or find the barrier of entry very abrupt. It's an event very similar to a hackaton where developers, designers and health professionals work together during all the weekend on real practical ideas that will be tested in clinical environment shortly after. Two have happened in Montreal and Toronto and where huge success. The next one is in Vancouver, late February. Lots of other cities are coming in the following months (sf, melbourne, london). Anyhow, feel free to email me (phzbox at gmail) if you're interested in sponsoring or organizing one in your city; I'd be more than happy to help a fellow HNer wanting to hack health.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#134

Post by haberman »

pekk wrote: post #115
haberman wrote: post #80

In my five years at Google, I am not sure I have met a single engineer who is "trying to figure out how to get Scott Hanselman to click on ads." I have met tons of engineers who work on interesting problems like building models of query patterns to detect spiking queries (Google Trends and Google Hot Trends, all publicly accessible: http://www.google.com/trends/ ), Gmail, Maps/Directions/Traffic, improving (machine)…

That makes sense. And I am sure engineers working on cool problems at Facebook and other large companies can say the same. But there has to be someone thinking about how to get people to click on ads at these companies, because selling ad clicks is their bread and butter. Right?

Yes I'm sure there must be some mixture of business people, engineers, and UX people who do focus on this. But I've never met any of them, and have never had a conversation with any other engineer that discussed how to get people to click on ads. My point is that it's a small minority of Google's engineering effort that goes towards this.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#135

Post by ceol »

the_cat_kittles wrote: post #121
raganwald wrote: post #102

My 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 footba…

Your point about hypocrisy is something I have thought myself- Being a hypocrite doesn't make your argument wrong by default, and it's strange that we instantly act like it does. There must be some reason we act this way, does anyone have a good explanation?

It's because we treat arguments like battles, looking for that one opening to strike no matter how desperate it may be. It's why you see a lot of people quote a single sentence out of a three paragraph post and reply to that, ignoring the rest of it.

Aside: I would love to see someone study the differences between in-person and online arguments.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#136

Post by kyro »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My 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 footba…

If it's of any consolation, it depresses me daily that I have a future career in medicine but don't have a strong skill set (be it programming, statistics, biomedical engineering) to work on any meaningful problems. There's really not a day that goes by where I don't regret not majoring in one of those areas, or being more interested in them at a younger age. I'm just a guy who can design an okay-looking site. I'll be good at only applying solutions that others, like you, can develop.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#137

Post by Falling3 »

raganwald wrote: post #126
Falling3 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well said. And the hypocrisy cry is just an ad hominem fallacy.

"Ad Hominem Tu Quoque." But when someone criticizes me, I try to remember that the Ad Hominem Fallacy is any suggestion that someone's words are wrong because they are objectionable. The good side is that I can say my words may still be right. But by the same token, the personal criticism may still be valid even if my words are right. So maybe I should think about what people are saying even if it doesn't mean that w…

Oh of course, the sword cuts both ways. Their criticism of you may be perfectly valid and worth noting. But it's still no refutation of your original claim, which I think is how it's generally presented.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#138

Post by [deleted] »

sskates wrote: post #119
raganwald wrote: post #102

My 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 footba…

I think people are reacting negatively to your post because it comes off as a criticism of the people who work on the problems you described. If this was not the intended effect, perhaps you should clarify on your blog post, because most readers are interpreting it that way.

[deleted]

Re: Why the Fuck?

#139

Post by [deleted] »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My 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 footba…

[deleted]

Re: Why the Fuck?

#140

Post by Evbn »

pekk wrote: post #115
haberman wrote: post #80

In my five years at Google, I am not sure I have met a single engineer who is "trying to figure out how to get Scott Hanselman to click on ads." I have met tons of engineers who work on interesting problems like building models of query patterns to detect spiking queries (Google Trends and Google Hot Trends, all publicly accessible: http://www.google.com/trends/ ), Gmail, Maps/Directions/Traffic, improving (machine)…

That makes sense. And I am sure engineers working on cool problems at Facebook and other large companies can say the same. But there has to be someone thinking about how to get people to click on ads at these companies, because selling ad clicks is their bread and butter. Right?

There are ads and there are ads. Spamming you with Brand awareness billboards so that you buy Frobulous instead Snaztacular (both produced in the same assembly line and recipe) at the grocery store is one thing, helping you find a good deal on a product you are searching for (even if you don't know its name) is another
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