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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#301

Post by sjs »

JustARandomGuy wrote: post #86

Diabetes. Overweight. These are real problems, affecting real people, that need real solutions... Doing healthcare projects requires dealing with hardware, dealing with regulatory overhead, etc. It's much, much more difficult than building out another web app for social/ads/etc.

Facebook has dealt mainly with software till now, but look at all the projects Google has tackled. Self-driving vehicles, fiber Internet service, blanketing cities with wifi, Google Glass, fighting for net neutrality. Google has the talent, bank roll, and ambition to tackle something monumental that spans hardware, deals with regulatory overhead, involves a lot of on-the-ground grunt work, etc. Apple has the resources to tackle such problems as well but hasn't shown the will to do things like street view or fight for net neutrality, which is probably why people think of Google more than Apple when they think of such problems.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#302

Post by Semiapies »

Semiapies wrote: post #294
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" Doesn't mean he's right, either. Just means he's an asshole in a saloon who never wanted to do something, but out of his resentment of all those who've made more money than him, he tries to assert some flimsy moral superiority over them because they made money , instead of doing that stuff he somehow always found excuses for not doing.

Yeah, yeah, downvote away. Ultimately, this is the ultimate, overwrought version of those stupid blog posts complaining that nobody codes something that does X, but when it's put to them why they don't make it, they answer, "Eh, it's not billable hours for me. But, hey, someone out there on the internet can do that for me, right?"

Re: Why the Fuck?

#303

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: Why the Fuck?

#304

Post by wamatt »

cko wrote: post #275
wamatt wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta: OP is looking past the author's sentiment, generalizations and inaccuracies to respond thoughtfully to the central point of the message. Someone is following their own advice: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html So regarding hypocrisy, while it's true in certain contexts and under certain conditions, calling out hypocrisy, could constitute a logical fallacy, simply stating that possibility, says very little…

Do you speak like this in real life? I went ahead and read your other comments on other threads and I can't understand what you're writing until I've read the words at least three times.

Interesting that you should pick up on that. It usually depends on the audience.

In general if one has a slightly more divergent worldview than that of the company in which he/she finds themselves, it's historically been useful (albeit frustrating at times), to be more considered and precise.

Between my best friend, a fellow coder/entrepreneur of ten years, (who has a very different personality), we can communicate in shorthand as he understands what I mean, irrespective of the natural imprecision, that creeps in by wanting to be "good enough" to get the message across. Although the early days of our friendship was somewhat.. challenging.

Some of the usernames on HN that I've noticed that have insightful content, do not appear to reward sloppy rhetoric, and even, I suspect, use it as a filtering signal.

Hence, it would seem rational to at least demonstrate one is willing to embrace the norms of that group, but more importantly to avoid genuine misunderstanding, which has plagued me since childhood.

(I know what a cliche, what a special snowflake etc etc ;) Yes I dislike how it sounds too.

Lastly my own values dictate a personal preference for dialectic over sophistication. But perhaps that's a debate for another time.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#305

Post by Semiapies »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #270
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this list! It'd be great if there was a resource somewhere that aggregated these companies so hackers could reference it as they look to switch jobs.

That's an interesting idea. Whatever anyone thinks of the periodic surfacing of the feeling that Raganwald was expressing, the fact that it does come up with a degree of regularity indicates there's an unfulfilled need here. What can be done to help people fill it? It seems one thing that factors in is that people feel helpless to get started on the path to working on "big problems". What can be done to make it not f…

It's called "mid-life", and it ultimately doesn't care what you're actually doing. If you're just making money, you feel bad that you aren't helping people, or that you aren't accomplishing enough. If you're helping people, you feel just as bad about how you don't seem to be helping people, or about all the ways you could imagine doing more.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#306

Post by mscarborough »

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…

what is your point? it's your life so if you want to do something different, then go do it.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#307

Post by saurik »

pg wrote: post #166

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…

Am I wrong in thinking that, if you actually did solve the kinds of problems mentioned in the article (obesity, diabetes, etc.) that your resulting business would make a lot of money? Is it really "makes more money" that keeps people working on ad-optimization, and not a simpler reason like "that is the kind of mathematical problem with an algorithmic solution that the analytical brain of a programmer can solve"?

It's just that I would have thought that a problem that so many people had (again, such as obesity, diabetes, etc.) and that led to such horrible quality of life would cause there to be tons of money ready to pounce on a solution (and would have cited the depressing amount of resources thrown at things like diet pills, as well as the number of Google ads people have placed on the keywords "diabetes cure", as evidence).

Re: Why the Fuck?

#308

Post by steve8918 »

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…

> "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.

It's not an empty criticism. It speaks to your credibility. You are admonishing Google and Facebook for working on "stupid" ideas, when you yourself are working on a presumably stupid idea, since you're not saving anyone's life but instead working on a way so that you can make money. How credible can your rant be if you aren't following your own advice?

I would rather hear the same rant from someone in the field who is frustrated because they are "fighting the good fight", not from someone who is engaging in the exact same "stupid" behavior that they are ranting about.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#309

Post by DanBC »

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?

Politicians don't tend to say "Here's this bad thing; we all do it; let's see what we can do to lower the incidence of this bad thing."

Politicians tend to say "Here's this bad thing. Those people over there, that do this bad thing? They're destroying our society. They're bad and they should feel bad, and anyone who supports them is bad and should feel bad."

You can see how someone saying the latter, while doing the bad thing, isn't just a hypocrite, but is an annoying judgemental hypocrite. We're just holding them to their own standards.

Some people say that's the problem - don't have any standards any no-one will call you a hypocrite. I'd disagree. Have standards, just don't be a judgemental idiot about them.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#310

Post by fatalerrorx3 »

kogir wrote: post #53

Judging by all he's accomplished at Microsoft, I'm sure Scott could successfully lead a team to solve his problem and bring a product to market. But he doesn't. I (luckily) would not have use for such a product. If he doesn't care enough to tackle the problem, why should I? Same goes for Obesity. Most of it could be controlled by changes in diet and behavior. If people affected can't be bothered, why should I care?

kogir hit the nail on the head. It's hard to convince someone to care about their health, and a good majority of people don't. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089690
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