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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#431

Post by flyinRyan »

steve8918 wrote: post #308
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"…

No, he's 100% right. This irrelevant "hypocrisy" charge scares people into pointing things out that should be pointed out. So what if someone admonishes Google/Facebook for working on "stupid" ideas while working on an even stupider one? Wouldn't that put said person in a better position to know about working on stupid ideas?

Crying "hypocrisy" is just the "cry wolf" fallacy.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#432

Post by nova »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #44
glesica wrote: post #37

To 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…

> Screw up a medical device, you get sued out of existence. Or, you know, people die.

People also die because of late or never materialized medical technology. We just prefer that people die from inaction (because is "normal") than from mistakes. This may be psychologically attractive because we avoid SEEING all the blood and dead bodies, but probably not the best way to minimize death and suffering.

Of course this is nothing new (Economic version: "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen"). Just another cognitive bias.

There is some more-or-less optimal middle ground between too little and too much regulation, but I don't think we're on it now. In fact, maybe it would be worthwhile to have a two-tier system, one for ordinary medical devices, another for experimental "this will probably kill you but perhaps you have nothing to lose" situations.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#433

Post by flyinRyan »

steve8918 wrote: post #330
rtpg wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a perception difference, for sure, but an argument's validity is not reduced by the person saying it. Granted, here it's much more opinion than fact, so...

No, but the likelihood of the argument having any value is greatly reduced if the person themself doesn't believe in it enough to actually follow the argument. I doubt there is a high likelihood of a meaningful conversation from someone who is screaming "Why doesn't Google stop working on stupid problems and fix this, while I continue working on my own stupid problems".

>No, but the likelihood of the argument having any value is greatly reduced if the person themself doesn't believe in it enough to actually follow the argument.

Total nonsense. So a drunk who's destroyed their own life telling some teenagers about the dangers of alcohol greatly reduces the likelihood of his argument being valid since he still drinks? Ridiculous. Crying "hypocrit" is just ad hominem. Nothing more noble than that.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#434

Post by flyinRyan »

javajosh wrote: post #169
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?

I don't believe any claim was made about if the behavior was wrong or not. The claim was simply that the drunk might actually have good advice about what the coach should do next, even if he had a poor way of giving it.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#435

Post by jhartmann »

hackingla wrote: post #420
new299 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does "doing it my way" in this context mean? What did you try and how did you research it? Have looked into this kind of thing myself before and am interested in how you went about your project and if there's a community around that kind of thing.

Their way == Prednazone, Asacol / 6MP My Way = Macrobiotics, Stress Control, Acupuncture etc... Yes, there are many communities; I mostly used trial and error but the difference is how I measured what worked. I kept a food diary that allowed me use actual nutrient stats etc... to find patterns in my trigger foods.

I'm very glad this worked for you. I don't have Crohn's, but I also have an auto immune disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis. For many immune conditions there seems to be an environmental trigger, or something that makes it worse. There is quite abit of research that many of our conditions are caused by interactions with the bacteria in our gut and our immune response to certain food. I saw your other posts about working on tools to help people track these things, I commend you. There is a large body of people who could potentially benefit from this work. Not just people with Crohn's, but many autoimmune conditions. Keep on trucking and I wish you luck.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#436

Post by wr1472 »

Wow! This post has generated a lot of debate. I wonder is it because of the content or the delivery?

Playing devil's advocate, I would say that Raganwald has touched a raw nerve with those that are working on the types of apps he is having a go at. There are a lot of people who are attacking his point by name calling and responding to tone (ie. the delivery and not the content).

Re: Why the Fuck?

#437

Post by thetable »

I've been entertaining the thought lately that all the work being done on photosharing sites and other "unworthy" commercial projects may qualify as basic research in the sense that the short-term benefits for society may be hard to see.

In contrast to traditional science, today, in computing, big ideas and inventions come from commercial applications, and then move into the public domain where they are often used for greater causes. For example, a new database may be invented at a hot photosharing startup, but graduates that particular application and becomes something that _could_ be used to fight cancer.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#438

Post by MDS100 »

kylemaxwell wrote: post #147
kyro wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A doctor with an understanding of programming - even if he's not a world-class programmer - is more than a few steps ahead of others. If you get that career in medicine started, you've got tremendous potential in ways other people do not.

How exactly?

Re: Why the Fuck?

#440

Post by nirvana »

polshaw wrote: post #250
nirvana wrote: post #130

I can't speak to the other companies, though I know google want's "all the worlds info at your fingertips" which is a reasonably high ideal... I can speak to what Apple is doing as someone whose followed the company closely for a couple decades. Apple doesn't care whether you buy the 3.5", 4.0", 7.85", or 9.8" screen. Apple is bringing the personal computer to the 6 billion other people who weren't able to get in on…

Your description of how apple is on a noble quest to bring the personal computer to the poor of the world through the '$50 computer' that is an ipod shuffle is so far from reality in so many different ways that you are verging on a parody of yourself. I can't believe you seriously typed all that out and then submitted it.

It's a shame that you chose to ignore the point I was making, and instead post this snide, narrow minded response. Alas, this is typical of the anti-intellectualism that pervades hacker news these days.

Of course the reason you did this is that you know what I say is true. You just are an apple hater and can't even admit that this is what they're doing.

Also typical of hacker news: Burying comments that point out that others have got nothing but personal attacks, while upvoting personal attacks. Everyone who engages in this is, by definition, anti-intellectual.

So, go ahead and downvote me, it just proves to me that you are not worth wasting time on, and that this site is full of narrow minded anti-intllectual bigots.

Make a counter argument, and I can respect that. But you don't. Probably because you can't, right?

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