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We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

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Re: We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

#151

Post by GHFigs »

king_jester wrote: post #96
mpyne wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought. You should be careful how you consider this though. We wouldn't hack a tall person's legs off at the knee to force them to be equally as tall as the rest of us, nor do we give geniuses lobotomies to try and equal out intelligence wi…

> It is no one's moral imperative to punish themselves for being placed in a good situation. Nobody is arguing this. People that implore others to examine their privilege don't do so to make people feel bad (although this may be a side effect of having a new perspective). > Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possi…

People that implore others to examine their privilege don't do so to make people feel bad

And yet you're saying that just by not being (say) transgendered[1] I'm undermining other people's agency. And I can't choose not to. And that it's my fault if I don't think the concept is fully-baked and don't make certain incantations before I speak.

It seems completely transparent to me that this is meant to make anybody that doesn't adopt the terminology out to be a bad person--a sinner in other words. See the root of this thread: cllns has "just about zero tolerance left" for such people. Why would he need to invoke tolerance if it's just a matter of not having the same perspective?

[1] Or fat, vegan, illiterate, astigmatic, etc. The list of things people are apply the term "privilege" to is constantly expanding. Is there truly nothing amiss with the concept?

Re: We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

#152

Post by BoredAstronaut »

BoredAstronaut wrote: post #148

I'm not sure how long the OP has been an arm-chair social scientist, but I've been one for twenty-five years, and I feel like I might be able to share some insights. Firstly, his thesis could be boiled down to a very simple question: "Why do people do what they do (instead of what I want them to do)?" You suggest that they are insufficiently self-reflective, not very world-wise, and perhaps just a bit self-centred. T…

If I must speak directly to the point of "for the money" -- it's probably good sense to go for the money, first, and then changing the world (instead of the other way around). Whether one can acquire enough money to change the world through spending it is another question, but obviously people believe that they have a better chance at it, or that the rewards will be better, or both.

Re: We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

#153

Post by jzellis »

9999 wrote: post #123

Who is he saying is the third largest corporation on the planet? Privately held? Publicly? Largest in what sense, market capitalization? I'd really like to know who he actually means there. I assume he means a private company since he refers to ("the family that owns it"). In that case is he referring to Mars? Or maybe he means Wal-Mart, who do not appear to be the third largest corp, but the majority shareholders ar…

Wal-Mart is, according to Wikipedia, the third largest privately-held corporation in the world, after Shell Oil and Exxon.

And no, they're not a good model to emulate, that wasn't my point. :-) This was an eight minute speech, and the text you're reading was my notes for it, not the final version, so some of the subtlety gets lost.

Re: We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

#154

Post by jzellis »

parnas wrote: post #113
jzellis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize if I implied that poor people will never be innovators, that wasn't my intention. I meant to suggest that those of us who already have these skills share them with people who don't...including, I probably should have explicitly said, teaching them those skills.

what skills? what skills?

Technological skills. My target audience (literal audience; this was a speech) were, by and large, people in the tech sector.

Re: We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

#155

Post by BoredAstronaut »

liuliu wrote: post #149

I don't like the negativity associated with "first world" problem. The "first world" problems are very much real. If you believe that the rest of the world will catch up eventually with the "first world", they will have these "first world" problems too. We need to solve these "first world" problems. The only argument against it suggests a darker future where there is, and will always be, a huge gap between the rich a…

There are first world problems, and then there are "white whines".

Solving the problems of wealthy people might be rewarding and enriching (for the solver), but the actual impact on the world is generally much less than if you solved more pressing problems.

It's a law of diminishing returns. After a while, people should be able to solve their own problems. What they do instead is to redefine "problem" from "life-threatening risk" to "banal annoyance".

If you save a child from dying from cholera, they might grow up and change the world themselves. If you make it more convenient for spoiled white people to buy more shit to fill up their meaningless lives, not so much.

Re: We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

#156

Post by BoredAstronaut »

calinet6 wrote: post #21
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #15

This is the kind of post that happens when someone gets so wrapped up in startup land that they lose all context of the "real world." These "first world problem"-solving companies he's talking about are really just B2B companies made to help the ACTUAL, real-world problem solving companies do their jobs more easily. No customer cares about MailChimp. No consumer thinks about Twilio. They're not solving first-world pr…

This is all well and good, but I think the point is that there is an imbalance, and very few tech startups are going after the big problems these days. There are some notable ones, but it seems to be the road less traveled.

Most big problems cannot be solved, except theoretically, with information processing. In other words, software and computer networks and data mining and such will not actually solve the problem, although it might begin to provide some insight. Real problems are physical, and require physical things (like people and machines and other stuff) to solve them. It is also much harder to scale physical solutions, although software can also help. Whereas, you can often solve the whole problem if it is made of information, and you can throw enough CPUs and algorithms at it.

Re: We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

#157

Post by BoredAstronaut »

npsimons wrote: post #142
mindcrime wrote: post #133

That's probably one of the best and most insightful articles I've ever read, that used the term "first world problems". In fact, it may be the only article I've ever read that used that term, that wasn't a complete joke. There's so much truth there... we work on "stuff" and some of the "stuff" we work on is truly amazing in many ways, but - and I don't know about you - I sometimes find myself wondering "is this reall…

I just watched "Repo Men" again, and while it's not a great movie, nor is it directly related, it came back to haunt me while waiting in line at the bank: I'm still really afraid of "not being", specifically not being alive. And I asked myself, not for the first time, what's the purpose? Am I really making the world a better place? Does it matter? Eventually I settled on my old fallback of "well, as long as I'm happy…

There's a so-so TED talk about the pleasant/passionate/meaningful life distinction. http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psy...

Re: We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators

#159

Post by jzellis »

OP here. (Well, not "original poster", but "guy who wrote this".)

If anybody's interested: this is not an essay, it's my notes for a speech I delivered at Inspire, a monthly talk series put on by Tony Hsieh's Delivering Happiness project here in Las Vegas. The talk itself was filmed and you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moO2EfWQOTE

It looks like an essay because I'm a writer, and I write my talks like essays and then kind of wing it when I'm on stage.

I am aware that bits of this aren't especially subtle, but I had eight minutes to do the talk in.

And I apparently need to clarify what I mean by "innovation" versus "iteration". What I meant, basically, is that the Valley right now reminds me of Hollywood in the late 80s, where everybody was trying to pitch their new movie as "Die Hard in/on/with an [X]". Die Hard on a train, Die Hard on a submarine...taking some existing idea and trying to just twist it slightly enough to capitalize on it. So we do "It's like [X] for [Y]".

Instagram for animated GIFs.

Facebook for payroll managers. (I've actually heard that one.)

Evernote for illiterates.

These are jokes, but I hope you take my point. That's what I meant by "iteration" versus "innovation". Imagine if Jobs had said "The Apple is like the IBM 1620, except beiger and smaller." Or if that's how he thought of it.

Personally, I think a lot of the most-hyped stuff we make in this industry is just silly, useless bullshit that doesn't solve any real problems, or problems that are worth solving unless you're a lazy, pampered, entitled asshole who genuinely has a hard time with the notion of picking up one's own dry cleaning. (That example in my speech was something featured on HN, by the way.)

I guess if those are the problems you want to solve, go ahead, but I just feel as though there are more pressing issues in the world...provided you can see outside of your own circumstance.

I'm fortunate enough to have lived rich and lived poor, and while rich is better, poor is far more prevalent in the world. I feel like poor people's problems are more useful to solve.

But hey, I could be wrong. And I won't deny I'm being judgmental, but who really gives a shit what I think? :-)

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