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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#161

Post by ciupicri »

derpmeister wrote: post #23

Because nobody cares about your diabetes and obesity. Lay down that taco and get some fricken exercise, FFS.

There are multiple types of diabetes, one of them being type 1. "The exact cause of type 1 diabetes is unknown. Most likely it is an autoimmune disorder. An infection or some other trigger causes the body to mistakenly attack the cells in the pancreas that make insulin. This kind of disorder can be passed down through families." [1] So how could taco and exercise cure this type of diabetes?

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001350/

Re: Why the Fuck?

#162

Post by justsee »

whatusername wrote: post #103
justsee wrote: post #72

Elon 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)

Yes, but if Raganwald is laying into Google, I'd imagine he'd place a PayPal in the same category.

Raising the Musk example was illustrating the shlepping he did before embarking on great things.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#164

Post by delinka »

buss wrote: post #123
kibwen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I'll never start a company that sends a man to Mars or discovers the cure to a horrifying disease. Maybe not, but you can work at one: https://jobs.counsyl.com I work at counsyl and we're hiring generalist programmers, devops, etc.

But we all can't work there. Not only are there not enough jobs at That One Company That's Changing The World, someone needs to provide the tools and services the business is built on; all the ancillary things that allow Us to make progress (computers, operating systems ... vehicles and their fuel ... food for the humans ... waste receptacles and their sanitation ... etc)

How am I changing the world? A) By educating a future generation (my own children) in the ways of the world, by supporting their dreams and showing them how the world must function so they can realize their dreams; and B) by working for a company that provides services to its customers to use to make their employees more productive to grease the wheels of innovation and creativity so their own lives are enriched and their own dreams (and their children's dreams) can be realized.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#166

Post by pg »

Essentially he's asking why person-hours are expended on things that make the most money rather than things that are important, for some definition of important.

There are several answers to that.

1. The most obvious is that people need to make a living. People can and do work at some discount in order to work on things they think are important, but it rarely stretches as much as 10x. I expect most workers either don't care or can't afford to.

2. A lot of people do work for nonprofits (the biggest of which is the government), but the number of such jobs is constrained by the amount of money nonprofits can raise.

3. The number of people employed on frivolous things seems larger than it is, because e.g. things designed for entertainment are by their nature more visible than infrastructure. So it is dangerous to draw conclusions based on anecdotal evidence.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#167

Post by ciupicri »

derpmeister wrote: post #87
icebraining wrote: post #54

Earlier 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.

Isn't the treatment paid by the patients?

Re: Why the Fuck?

#169

Post by javajosh »

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…

>Just because he's drunk and in a saloon doesn't mean he's wrong, just boorish.

Just out of curiosity, can you identify the actual point in time when you came to believe that self-awareness of bad behavior makes that bad behavior acceptable?

Re: Why the Fuck?

#170

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #158
hackingla wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not smart enough" - this is not an excuse. I have no education, no college etc... and I created software that generates meal plans according to my Crohn's symptoms (made it from my hospital bed at SF General) and now I am off all my meds. Made an app for a friend that helped her identify that she had a Gluten allergy (later verified by doctor) And right now I am working on a way to help match patients and doctor…

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