"Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds" • Hacker News Board

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#151

Post by jsnk » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 12:10 AM UTC

sergiosgc wrote: post #137

Ensorceled wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually the best reason for government funding of basic and applied research. Society has to take the long view since individuals and corporations can not. This is why it is scary that politics has degenerated to the point where even 4 year plans are becoming difficult.

While capitalism is quite successful, it has shortcomings. These should be addressed by the society as a whole, and the State is THE organization that is participated in by the whole society. Major categories of capitalism faults: - It does not guard against negative externalities: pollution, long term degrading employee health and safety, value extraction with no value creation (think stealing and other crimes). Her…

While these are some textbook examples of claimed shortcomings of Capitalism, but in reality, it is not that straightforward.

- Soviet Russia and Communist China had massive men-made environmental disasters.

- Most monopolies are created by the state sanctioned environment. Not all monopolies are bad. If anything that remotely resemble monopoly arise in relatively free market, it is because it serves the needs of the customers so well that it has out-competed all the other companies.

- If you dump hundreds of billions of dollars in something, sure, you might get some good out of it, but no one can quite measure if it was done efficiently or not. There's no good reason to assume to that such things would be have been only funded by government.

[edit] formatting

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#152

Post by nikatwork » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 12:18 AM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #138

sergiosgc wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While capitalism is quite successful, it has shortcomings. These should be addressed by the society as a whole, and the State is THE organization that is participated in by the whole society. Major categories of capitalism faults: - It does not guard against negative externalities: pollution, long term degrading employee health and safety, value extraction with no value creation (think stealing and other crimes). Her…

All of these are the result of unregulated and unrestrained capitalism. I'm confused that the majority has somehow been convinced that it is a good thing that corporations are socipathic entities that will parasitically consume its host (society) if allowed.

The idea that "the market will regulate itself" is right up there with "the state will wither away".

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#153

Post by zindlerb » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 12:36 AM UTC

Hmm...

I think an interesting way to frame this problem is to take the theory that entrepreneurs should solve problems close to them as fact.

If we do this then we have two related problems. Why aren't people close to big problems becoming entrepreneurs? Why aren't entrepreneurs closer to big problems?

A solution to the problem of "useless" apps might come from finding ways to bring big problems to entrepreneurs, or making it easier for those closer to big problems to become entrepreneurs.

Thoughts?

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#154

Post by rorrr2 » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 12:43 AM UTC

RogerL wrote: post #146

rorrr2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about selfishness, it's just that most easy problems got solved, and we're left with really really hard ones. Cancer is so mind-boggingly complex that one person cannot even begin to look at ways to solve it on his own. Think about web developers, for example. We can either develop some SaaS website in 6 months that will bring us something like $500/month, or we can attack the cancer problem for 30 years and…

Not picking you out specifically, just this post caught my eye. We have (essentially) cured certain types of cancer. Testicular for men, skin melanoma in general, Hodgkin's lymphoma in young people. We are making tons of progress in cancer research, and we are making tons of difference in both quality of life, length of life, and survivability. Heck, my mother died of cancer, one with bad statistics, but it was almos…

"We"? Some cancers have been cured, not by programmers, but by huge well funded teams of researches - biologists, chemists, administrators, lab technicians, interns, etc.

Sure, you could join such a team and possibly end up being a part of the cancer cure, if you're lucky.

That's quite different from what we see with solo projects and startups.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#155

Post by mchusma » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 1:08 AM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #138

sergiosgc wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While capitalism is quite successful, it has shortcomings. These should be addressed by the society as a whole, and the State is THE organization that is participated in by the whole society. Major categories of capitalism faults: - It does not guard against negative externalities: pollution, long term degrading employee health and safety, value extraction with no value creation (think stealing and other crimes). Her…

All of these are the result of unregulated and unrestrained capitalism. I'm confused that the majority has somehow been convinced that it is a good thing that corporations are socipathic entities that will parasitically consume its host (society) if allowed.

I was going to point out the opposite, that most of these traits are attributable generally to "crony capitalism". First, his example is about banks that have had the worst of it. Second, the government protects individuals and entities from negative externalities in a way not originally contemplated by the founders. Essentially cronyism protected railroads from being sued for negative externalities, and that presented today's regime. It is not a "natural" component of capitalism.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#156

Post by sergiosgc » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 1:55 AM UTC

jsnk wrote: post #151

sergiosgc wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While capitalism is quite successful, it has shortcomings. These should be addressed by the society as a whole, and the State is THE organization that is participated in by the whole society. Major categories of capitalism faults: - It does not guard against negative externalities: pollution, long term degrading employee health and safety, value extraction with no value creation (think stealing and other crimes). Her…

While these are some textbook examples of claimed shortcomings of Capitalism, but in reality, it is not that straightforward. - Soviet Russia and Communist China had massive men-made environmental disasters. - Most monopolies are created by the state sanctioned environment. Not all monopolies are bad. If anything that remotely resemble monopoly arise in relatively free market, it is because it serves the needs of the…

The fact that other society models are worse isn't relevant to my analysis. Capitalism is so far the best societal model, but that does not imply perfection.

Monopolies arising naturally do not imply that, for the society, the monopolistic status is the most efficient. It is the most efficient for the monopolist. Think of it as a local maximum. This is microeconomics 101.

If an investment in investigation produces mostly positive externalities, then the investor will not recoup his investment, even if the end result is better for the society as a whole. As such, these investments will not occur in free form capitalism, even though they would be positive for the society as a whole. I'm purposely removing risk from the analysis, as it does not affect the conclusion.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#157

Post by carbocation » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 2:30 AM UTC

xradionut wrote: post #92

carbocation wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, really, I discharged a patient from the hospital late the other day because the software gave me no indication that the 4 pieces of disconnected discharge orders/paperwork were missing a fifth piece that finalized the discharge. Software is a real problem.

Sounds like it's the paperwork/bureaucracy, not necessary the software that struggles to keep up with red tape. My doctor had to sell her private practice and join a medical business group, just to keep up with the new insurance/government regulations. Healthcare in the US is insane...

With this particular piece of software, there is a mandatory workflow. It's just not software-enforced. You have to do this series of things in order. And there are landmines - you can but must not insert information into Field X.

Seems like the perfect situation for making a software workflow and simply not permitting information to be input into Field X. Etc. Anyway, in this case, I think the software could be improved (modulo my slow learning).

Now, in general, I think that software can help us make the bureaucracy / regulation more tolerable by helping to convert medical intent into both medical action and medicolegal documentation.

Anyway, your point is very well taken.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#158

Post by gregory144 » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 2:55 AM UTC

mechanical_fish wrote: post #105

Jack Handey: Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, mankind should be thinking about getting more use out of the weapons we already have. Let's explore this topic for three minutes, with Jack as our guide. An effective way to prevent cancer is to stop causing it, and cigarette smoking causes cancer. Convincing smokers to quit is an unambiguous way to save lives. I used to wonder if the th…

So... Angry Birds cures cancer?

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#159

Post by mechanical_fish » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 4:10 AM UTC

gregory144 wrote: post #158

mechanical_fish wrote: post #105

Jack Handey: Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, mankind should be thinking about getting more use out of the weapons we already have. Let's explore this topic for three minutes, with Jack as our guide. An effective way to prevent cancer is to stop causing it, and cigarette smoking causes cancer. Convincing smokers to quit is an unambiguous way to save lives. I used to wonder if the th…

So... Angry Birds cures cancer?

Nothing cures cancer in the sense that people mean when they speak of "curing cancer" as some sort of saintly alternative to "living your life."

Many thousands of people are treated for cancer every day. Some of them survive significantly longer, or are significantly happier, as a result. None of the many, many people who work tirelessly to treat the sick are ever credited with "curing cancer," though that is what they do, every day, one person and one day at a time.

I worked as a cancer researcher for three years. It was kind of embarrassing. People tend to fawn over you. You get a lot of credit you don't deserve. I never cured any cancer that I know of. I gave cancer to a lot of mice. Few of them ever recovered.

Downstairs in the shop were some machinists. They didn't have Ph.D.s. They made custom radiation shields for patients undergoing radiotherapy. When a beam of cell-destroying radiation blasts the tumor inside, say, your head, you want to be sure it blasts as little of the rest of your head as possible. Your future depends, in part, on the quality work of the machinist who carefully builds your radiation shield, just for you, according to the plans drawn up by your friendly medical physicist.

These people cured cancer. For all I know they've been laid off by now, replaced by a terrifying molten-lead-extruding 3D printer or something. But they should be proud. People are alive today because of their work. People survived long enough to see graduations and weddings because of their work. People suffered less because of their work.

If we ever really do "cure cancer" in the grand-visionary sense of having a magical vaccine against all cancer, people will rapidly become bored of it. Every fifty years or so there will be a resurgence of cancer because folks will have forgotten what it was like, but the rest of the time nobody will care. There will be a small but crucial guild of people who guard the knowledge and procedures for keeping cancer at bay for all humanity, and nobody will know their names except at industry conferences.

But that's okay. This is how life really works. It's really big and you live your part of it. Only in the movies does a bright light shine down out of the sky when you do good things.

Re: "Instead of cures for cancer we got Angry Birds"

#160

Post by ohblahitsme » Wed, Jul 31, 2013, 7:07 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #59

Nobody who had the skills to seriously take a stab at curing cancer is instead coding up Angry Birds. All those kids from Stanford going to work at consumer technology shops are smart kids, but even at a place like Stanford the talent to really make fundamental breakthroughs in human knowledge is exceedingly rare. And it's not like there is any undersupply of smart people going into biology. As a practical matter, it…

This is important. The people cashing in their skills to make small things like Angry Birds (perhaps with the intention of making a lot of money without a lot of effort) aren't the people who can sit down and figure out how to cure diseases.

Research is hard and not everyone can do it. Progress on diseases will be slower than progress on new forms of entertainment (or productivity, as many startups are geared towards).