Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 237 posts

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#201

Post by judk »

rosser wrote: post #105
waterlesscloud wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's all someone else's fault?

Of course it is. I'm reminded of a scene in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys , with Kieran Culkin and Emile Hirsch. (Great movie, btw.) Minor spoilers: The boys are riding their bicycles along a country road, and happen upon a dog that's been struck by a passing vehicle, and is dying. Hirsch's character, Francis, says (paraphrased), "Someone needs to come for it. They need to do something." Tim, played by Culkin, re…

Great movie. But the tiger part was a bit ridiculous.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#202

Post by rayiner »

strlen wrote: post #196
rayiner wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its an issue of discounting the return by probability, and being able to internalize positive externalities. You can spend $10 billion trying to cure cancer, but how much do you have to get in return for the risk that you won't? And if you need to make a 50x return in the successful case to justify the failure risk, how will you do it while society is demonizing you for withholding cancer cures from dying peo…

I think part of it also diminishing returns: life of cancer patients has been greatly improved, with early detection it's no longer a death sentence and at times not even a major handicap. See, e.g., quality of life after treatment of prostate cancer now vs. quality of life after treatment of prostate cancer treatment just 20-30 years ago. I imagine power law holds in most disciplines: going from 99.99% uptime to 99.…

No I mean that when you discover or invent something that "saves the world" it might have a large net positive benefit, but it might be difficult for the inventor to capture enough of that benefit to justify the risk of investing in the discovery. Say you need a $500bn payout to justify the risk of investing $10bn in curing cancer, as opposed to spending that money in something with surer returns. Curing cancer might generate $2 trillion dollar in net social benefit, but it might be very difficult for practical and political reasons for the company making the invention to extract 25% of that to justify their investment. A cure for cancer would quickly be subject to generic drug licensing by the government, under the premise that it would be wrong to profit so much from withholding cancer treatment from sick people. So why deal with that when you can get 100x return on an internet startup?

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#203

Post by bertil »

michaelt wrote: post #168
badman_ting wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how that line of thinking should boil down to "capitalism, or at least the way we are practicing it, misallocates resources", but the thought-buck always stops with the smart people. There's no "well, I the incentives must say these people should work on sexting apps, and they are acting rationally, I wonder why the incentives are that way?", it's just "Ugh! You're smart! Stop it with the sexting and start…

People who believe incentives are destiny tend not to take jobs writing for the New York Times. It's not like journalists enjoy high pay or great job security. Maybe the author of this piece believes "I don't do X for the money, I do X to make the world a better place / for the love of X". Many people in the arts, education, charities, research etc act as if they believe this. Perhaps it's never occurred to the autho…

There is a third, and far more likely option: they applied, and were rejected. Recruitment process are terrible through out, and world-changing institutions are no exception. Let me know when I can fix cancer or neurological disease: I know how well enough to make a significant contribution. While I wait, three head-hunters have called about that virtual good start-up…

Also: (b) is far more likely than (a).

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#204

Post by digisth »

Now might be a good time to revisit a previous discussion on this: Schlep Blindness (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3465521) I'd also add (another part) of my take on it:

- Creating the "new Snapchat" is a whole lot easier than curing cancer, which is not even a single disease. It's a constellation of diseases/conditions we still don't fully understand.

- People need to eat, want to enjoy themselves, all that stuff. To do this, you need money. What's the easier way to do so? Making the new Snapchat.

- People want raised status. You'd get a lot more from curing cancer(s), but it would take so much longer, and you're not guaranteed it'll really work. Making the new Snapchat is the much easier option.

- You need piles of money to do research to cure cancers. You also need time. Short-termism (caused by the other side of accountability, transparency, and demands for ROI) means you may not get either of these. So where does the money come from, and is what you're getting enough? If it is, do you have time (and enough of the right type of skilled researchers) to do so? Modern medicine and research is not an individual endeavor; it requires teams, sometimes large ones.

The incentives are just not there. Some of these things also do not always lend themselves to private investment; the risks are high, the time horizons are long, and the payoffs very uncertain. The way our current systems are set up, this is not an easy problem to solve. People who have already made their fortunes elsewhere (e.g., Elon Musk) and companies that have huge cash piles and lots of big ideas (like Google) seem like our current best bets until we collectively decide that we should fund more of these things via public money.

My comment on the older article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3465754

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#206

Post by Jaiguss »

judk wrote: post #200
Jaiguss wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, if you actually need an app to help you get some ass, I suspect there might be another significant underlying issue there, and the app probably wont help you anyway. Besides there being hundreds of these silly things out already, I don't see why you or someone else getting sex should necessitate some brilliant programmers help who could otherwise be spending her time on problems far more worthwhile(e.g. perhaps…

What makes you think that the people getting rich off Poke apps are the brilliant ones? That is the fallacy of it all.

Did you read the article? Its not only about the ones who get rich, its moreso about the significant amount of talent flowing towards these superfluous types of "companies" (ie. startups that are really nothing more than mere features, or eCommerce websites), instead of working for a larger "old-guard" company that actually accomplishes much more because the startup is more cool or popular; according to the author.

I think it may be overblown a bit sometimes, but there is definitely truth to this.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#207

Post by strlen »

rayiner wrote: post #202
strlen wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it also diminishing returns: life of cancer patients has been greatly improved, with early detection it's no longer a death sentence and at times not even a major handicap. See, e.g., quality of life after treatment of prostate cancer now vs. quality of life after treatment of prostate cancer treatment just 20-30 years ago. I imagine power law holds in most disciplines: going from 99.99% uptime to 99.…

No I mean that when you discover or invent something that "saves the world" it might have a large net positive benefit, but it might be difficult for the inventor to capture enough of that benefit to justify the risk of investing in the discovery. Say you need a $500bn payout to justify the risk of investing $10bn in curing cancer, as opposed to spending that money in something with surer returns. Curing cancer might…

Ah, got it. It also seems the more useful the drug, the higher the pressure for low cost generic licensing (though, then again, the larger the circulation).

I wonder if an X-Prize like model might work better here, with, e.g., individuals with genetic risk for a specific cancer "crowd funding" various grades of prizes, with the actual awarding of prizes, setting and advertising the prizes, being done by an organization/consortium that knows what they're doing.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#208

Post by givehimagun »

scarmig wrote: post #24

Frivolous, perhaps, but the shitty sexting apps and the like[1] are low hanging fruit where we can afford to be cutting edge. It's best to view the current Silicon Valley euphoria as a testbed for new technologies and labor processes and as an incubation chamber for the next generation working class. All the awesome stuff the writer wants will happen in the next decade or two, and most of the technologies and technol…

I'd like to expand your comments a bit further.

Not only are these ideas low hanging fruit but they are low risk, innovation test beds. Imagine trying to do this kind of work on a medical device that could kill someone...you can't be nearly as wild and crazy. The internet is always going to be productized with ideas that are cheap to stand up, low risk and scalable....that's the beauty of it.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#209

Post by 72deluxe »

aspensmonster wrote: post #84
72deluxe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely GIFs are hardware accelerated these days? Great article, right?

Oh FFS. Where's the principle of charity when you need it? YES. Without graphics processing of one form or another, on one chip or another, over one cable or bus or another, to one screen or terminal or another, your GIF absolutely won't be visible. Or your PNG, or your JPG, or your desktop or movie or e-book. Nothing will be visible.

Maybe I was a bit harsh. Now on to create something that's both cool and really matters (satisfying both the kids and the elders).

If you're viewing GIFs on Windows and it is drawn using GDI or GDI+, nothing is accelerated. It's bust.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

#210

Post by eli_gottlieb »

michaelt wrote: post #168
badman_ting wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how that line of thinking should boil down to "capitalism, or at least the way we are practicing it, misallocates resources", but the thought-buck always stops with the smart people. There's no "well, I the incentives must say these people should work on sexting apps, and they are acting rationally, I wonder why the incentives are that way?", it's just "Ugh! You're smart! Stop it with the sexting and start…

People who believe incentives are destiny tend not to take jobs writing for the New York Times. It's not like journalists enjoy high pay or great job security. Maybe the author of this piece believes "I don't do X for the money, I do X to make the world a better place / for the love of X". Many people in the arts, education, charities, research etc act as if they believe this. Perhaps it's never occurred to the autho…

>Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it.

Yet another third option: the people with opportunity to change the world do have the desire, but are working on something else at the moment.

It's a sad fact that the world has an extreme shortage of people with both competence and idealism, because our social system has a strange urge to exterminate idealism at all costs[1].

[1] -- http://www.thebaffler.com/past/practical_utopians_guide

Post reply on HN