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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#461

Post by CookWithMe »

pg wrote: post #358
saurik wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The critical distinction here is between how much something would make, and how much it would make per person-hour.

That's definitely true. Also, preventing diseases is much harder to monetize than treating them.

An unhealthy diet plays a large role in obesity and diabetes (the other one being a sedentary lifestyle). Research has unsurprisingly shown that if people know how to create food from scratch and care about a healthy diet, their risk to become obese reduces significantly.

My startup appetico tries to create cooking apps that are as engaging as Instagram, Pinterest, Angry Birds etc. because otherwise kids most likely won't start cooking for themselves.

That is a really tough story to sell to investors in itself. People won't go back 20, 30 years later and pay us because they realize that they are not obese because we got them into healthy cooking. It's easier (but still hard...) to sell that cookbook publishing is a $1bn industry that is still growing despite falling sales for books overall.

Shameless plug: We're looking for seed investors and basically everyone else who would like to tackle this problem with us. Shoot me a mail at whateverhuis at gmail dot com!

Re: Why the Fuck?

#462

Post by neumann_alfred »

sskates wrote: post #154
the_cat_kittles wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If someone claims that "you should always do X" and then proceeds to do Y, isn't the fact that they did Y evidence that "always do X" isn't a good rule?

Only if "because I do it" is their one and only argument for "always do X". Which it rarely, if ever, is.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#463

Post by tel »

ramanujan wrote: post #428
Someone wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Development : "Thalidomide was developed in 1954 by the CIBA pharmaceutical company, marketed under at least 37 names worldwide. It was prescribed as a sedative, tranquilizer, and antiemetic for morning sickness.[9] Thalidomide, launched by Grünenthal on 1 October 1957" So, slightly more than two years, but it points to the problem: the judgment of the experts may be awfully w…

So, a few points (I didn't downvote you). 1) First, FDA fast-tracks many bad things. Hundreds of millions of people were irradiated by scanners that FDA waved on through because a fellow .gov agency (TSA) sponsored them. So: even the risk-averse can't trust a single centralized regulator to be "risk-averse" rather than "pro-government". We need multiple regulators (see my posts elsewhere in the thread), where you can…

While I don't disagree with most of your points here, I want to know more about your opinions on efficacy testing. It is definitely a strange corner of the FDA mandate and seems most justified by their marketing restriction power---the principle that marketing medical claims should be done from a position of earned, valid authority.

But it's definitely the most expensive and difficult to test component of FDA regulation. It's also awkwardly theoretical do to the sterility and white coatedness of the testing procedures (you and I both have something to say against RCTs). But at the same time, a market inundated with false claims to efficacy would be terrible. The current mobile health market is a fair comparison---many of them are efficacious, all of them would love to claim it, but nobody knows which ones.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#464

Post by fakhrazeyev »

elisk wrote: post #454

Why the fuck? I'll tell you why. Because true innovation is too far and few in between, because it took us 60,000 years to realize that we can plant our own crops, that we can cultivate and breed our own farm animals. Because it took us a good few thousand years to understand that there is more to life than just bashing each other with stones and sticks. Because coming up with something new, and having the guts to sh…

People got too lazy, overly complacent. Very few real programmers. Most are /scared/ to challenge and be bold, /afraid/ to make mistakes.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#465

Post by djt »

thedamon wrote: post #363
djt wrote: post #104

My friend has a insulin pump similar to this http://www.medtronic-diabetes.co.uk/product-information/para... This seems to be a solved problem, if only someone could make a way for people to search out such things via the internet ;)

Solved problem? Not even close. Having an insulin pump is equivalent to doing frequent insulin injections more easily and calculating what your dosage should be in a more complex way. Still requires tons of attention to make sure your insulin sensitivity ratings etc are accurate. I've heard from endocrinologists that patients on insulin pumps tend to have hbA1C scores about the same as patients on multiple-daily-inje…

my friend has one and it is imbedded 24 hours and monitors giving top ups throughout the day. I was commenting that the problem the author mentioned is solved (ie measuring and injecting many times throughout the day).

Yeah that sounds horrible to deal with. Maybe chat with Fit Bit :D

Its not ideal by any stretch of the imagination but short of pancreas gene therapy, it is an intervention rather than cure unfortunately

Re: Why the Fuck?

#466

Post by abrahamsen »

Not sure about the world, but the smartest people in Denmark are likely working within the Novo Nordisk domicile, trying to work on better ways to manage diabetes with second-by-second efficiency.

They don't post a lot here, because honestly, this site has few stories that matches their interests.

It is rather arrogant to believe that the greatest minds of our generation are to be found in our field, and not e.g. in biomedicine and other fields more relevant for diabetes treatment.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#468

Post by ynniv »

jules wrote: post #416
ynniv wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core problem is that 100 more people on Hacker News think that your top comment is valuable, and further that you take this as justification that your viewpoint is supported by the community. As there is no way for folks to only participate in the HN that disagrees with your rants, folks are being negative. That's the only tool they have. When you sell books on how CoffeeScript is great and then rant that people…

You're being incredibly rude and unfair. The guy wrote a blog post on his personal blog. It gets posted to HN and gets massive criticism. And now you're complaining that he posted a response to that in the comments? If you don't like the voting behavior, add something valuable to the discussion rather than slinging empty complaints and repeating ad hominems. e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090255 and http:/…

You're being incredibly rude and unfair.

Rude? Maybe. Unfair? Hardly. The OP completely mischaracterizes what the best groups in our industry do, then laments that people aren't helping his friend, and this lamentation is the extent of his contribution to his friend's plight.

Ad hominem means that I disagree with him because of his person, which is not true. I disagree with him because of specific hypocrisy and finger pointing. I am further disappointed that this story is so popular on Hacker News, because I read Hacker News for insightful posts, and this is just demagoguery - popular because it's what people want to hear. That doesn't make him more wrong, but it does make me more likely to say something about it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089296

pg is good about handling people with kid gloves. He addresses the OPs points in a rational way that is insightful and without reproach. But I don't think that pg speaks to the problem, which is that a popular, long time contributor to the community is apparently upset that people work to make money and that some things are difficult for non-technical reasons. Bad apples ruin a community, and if the community isn't tended to it devolves into blithering noise.

I also did not comment on his original post, but on a comment thread that began with:

That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some football team what to do next. Just because he's drunk and in a saloon doesn't mean he's wrong, just boorish.

And any drunkard yelling at a television is wrong. His non-participation means that he doesn't actually understand the problem, and without that he cannot be anything other than wrong.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#469

Post by chernevik »

pg wrote: post #356
chernevik wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then shut up and go do something better. I'm not sure how to read this as anything but a passive-aggressive complaint that _other_ people aren't doing more about these problems. You try to disqualify yourself from the responsibilities you imply for others, but the fact is we can all be more diligent, if we like, and we can all do work to improve the lives of others. Guess what? If you _seriously_ try to help oth…

You can make this point perfectly well without being so nasty.

Maybe. I've been 25 years experimenting with it.

If every person complaining the world should be better would take the time to visit with a mentally handicapped person, or wipe the drool off an Alzheimer patient's chin, or have coffee with the lonely dude in the corner -- the world _would_ be an enormously better place. Better than they dream.

This is obvious. Also, that these things aren't sexy. Which leads to implications for people's motivations.

One reason Jesus commanded that his followers not let their right hand know the charities the left was up to, was that the pursuit of opinion spoils those charities.

This is an old and important problem. I am not sure that some occasional rudeness to the vainly well-meaning isn't part of the solution.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#470

Post by sajid »

The greatest minds of our generation are not working at the googleplex. They are at universities and research labs working on math, physics, molecular biology, etc.
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