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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#201

Post by mej10 »

hackingla wrote: post #178
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…

Note: legally I cant "launch" these because I am just some guy but if you would like to see full working versions or my entire portfolio please email me. email is on profile. [edit] "Why can't you launch them as some guy? I see people giving diet advice all the time" I am dealing with medical records not just diet recommendations, I take this very seriously and refuse to take a cavalier attitude toward the health and…

Why can't you launch them as some guy? I see people giving diet advice all the time, and making money off selling things to go along with it.

They all just put standard disclaimers at the bottom of the page saying that it isn't medical advice, and that they aren't doctors.

If you have looked into this further and still came to the conclusion that you can't post this stuff, please let me know why.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#202

Post by hackingla »

ramanujan wrote: post #191
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…

2. There are regulatory obstacles for businesses. As someone in the biotech space, this is by far the biggest factor. When you are dealing with humans, crashes and bugs mean deaths. Deaths mean increased regulation, often under the mistaken assumption that more rules would prevent engineers from making bugs. Modern testing and build systems might, but regulators aren't keen to change their testing systems, many of wh…

This is why I think that this revolution will be led by hacker/patients and not business men / politicians. I am not trying to be dramatic but I will literally die for this cause because I spent my entire life sick, in bed, shitting blood and trying what everyone else wanted me to.

3 months of doing it my way and I never knew life could be this good, so while I agree that the regulatory climate makes this difficult; I dont care. I will never take such a risky attitude toward others and risk their health or wellbeing because I do not have this right but I also will not use this as an excuse to do nothing when I know I can help.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#203

Post by oh_sigh »

comicjk wrote: post #56
oh_sigh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't saying that any given programmer was the best mind of their generation - just that many of the best minds of these recent generations have been programmers, or involved in technology development in some manner. And what are some of the "pretty good ways to make a good deal more money more predictably" that you're referencing?

Uh, finance? Maybe this isn't as obvious to a non-New Yorker, but that seems to me like the easiest way for a smart person to make money.

Except that it isn't at all easy to get into finance, and the profits are not guaranteed in any case, as you seemed to imply.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#204

Post by Falling3 »

mikeash wrote: post #172
jlgreco wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hypocrisy cry is only an ad hominen fallacy if we are saying that he is wrong because he is a hypocrite. If the accusation is not part of a presumably logical argument, then the accusation does not constitute a logical fallacy. If I am sitting down for a nice steak dinner with someone and they start telling me that I shouldn't eat meat because of cruelty in modern cattle farming, I'm not going to accuse them of b…

This is an important point that people often misunderstand in internet arguments. Attacking or insulting someone is probably not a good idea in general, but it doesn't constitute an "ad hominem" and doesn't affect the rest of the argument presented unless it's being argued that the other person is wrong because e.g. they smell bad. If it's just mentioned that they smell bad and they're wrong for other reasons, it's n…

I do understand that in order for an argument to be fallacious it has to actually be part of an argument.

There's a bit of subjectivity to this. Generally when someone makes an argument and the response is merely "you're a hypocrite", the inference is that person #2 believes that person #1 is wrong and that's the best counter they've got. I understand there's some inference on my part, but that's how I usually see it.

Someone does not have to literally say "You are wrong because you're a hypocrite" in order for the fallacy to apply.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#205

Post by ThomPete »

kyro wrote: post #136
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 b…

Kyro I have told you many times. You don't need to be killer at design (you are pretty solid) or development when you got domain knowledge like you do.

The very fact that you can think in all three domains make you potentially a thousand times more privileged than most great designers and devs from a start-up point of view.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#206

Post by maxdemarzi »

hackingla wrote: post #178
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…

Note: legally I cant "launch" these because I am just some guy but if you would like to see full working versions or my entire portfolio please email me. email is on profile. [edit] "Why can't you launch them as some guy? I see people giving diet advice all the time" I am dealing with medical records not just diet recommendations, I take this very seriously and refuse to take a cavalier attitude toward the health and…

Show me where to get doctor case history and I can do the matching website for you => http://maxdemarzi.com/2012/10/18/matches-are-the-new-hotness...

Re: Why the Fuck?

#207

Post by fredgrott »

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…

actually non-educated people solve Big Science problems daily...and most enlightened science people welcome the additional solving power.

It is a ,myth that only Science people get the opportunity to solve big science problems.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#208

Post by jimbokun »

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)…

My first thought when he asked why the great minds at Google are doing nothing for people suffering from diabetes and other ailments: How many people do you think have had their health greatly improved by researching their condition through Google?

Re: Why the Fuck?

#209

Post by rquantz »

mikeash wrote: post #195
rquantz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be mistaken, but I think that line is a reference to an interview with Jeff Hammerbacher: Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks." http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b42250609... Which, I hope…

It strikes me as a self-contradictory statement. If these minds are so great, why are they working on such mundane things? There's more to this equation than raw intelligence. Being one of the "best minds" also requires experience, drive, and the wisdom to apply one's talents usefully.

And that's been discussed here earlier today:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5087065

However, I would be willing to forgive even the best minds for taking a high paying job with good benefits at Google or Facebook. These are hard decisions to make, and a hard world to live in with ideals.

That being said, I'd rather the energy and treasure of our society go towards things other than consumerism.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#210

Post by bmj »

hackingla wrote: post #202
ramanujan wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. There are regulatory obstacles for businesses. As someone in the biotech space, this is by far the biggest factor. When you are dealing with humans, crashes and bugs mean deaths. Deaths mean increased regulation, often under the mistaken assumption that more rules would prevent engineers from making bugs. Modern testing and build systems might, but regulators aren't keen to change their testing systems, many of wh…

This is why I think that this revolution will be led by hacker/patients and not business men / politicians. I am not trying to be dramatic but I will literally die for this cause because I spent my entire life sick, in bed, shitting blood and trying what everyone else wanted me to. 3 months of doing it my way and I never knew life could be this good, so while I agree that the regulatory climate makes this difficult;…

From experience, a business can make a difference in how the FDA polices a segment of the industry. You need scientists, who really know the domain (and, perhaps, have some contacts at the FDA), who can try to set the bar with FDA.

Of course, that's out of the realm of most start-ups, unless you are starting from a research facility where someone might already know the ropes. That said, my employer (which was once a tiny start-up that grew from a research lab) has directly worked with the FDA to define the regulations around our particular domain.

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