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Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#121

Post by tolmasky »

wpietri wrote: post #36
dnautics wrote: post #6

"Helping rich people get taxis easier". As a Lyft and Uber driver, I count among my rides: getting a rough looking fellow (who has spent years in prison after accidentally killing someone in a bar fight) get to the only job that would take him - affordably and on-time (he would have been fired otherwise). I've given an enlisted navy family from Oklahoma (husband was deployed) get home from a late night run to a dista…

The explicit inspiration for Uber's founding was as a "limo timeshare service": http://newsroom.uber.com/2010/12/ubers-founding/ I"m glad that some people are also getting easier taxi service. But having worked in in SF since the last bubble, there is definitely an intense focus here on solving rich-people problems; when they serve others (e.g., struggling felons and young military personnel) it is often, at best, a…

A lot of problems look this way. If you want to really start thinking about this: ask yourself whether we should be focusing on obesity and heart disease at all. What greater rich person problem than too much food. You could argue that we should be focusing entirely on "real" problems like malaria first, then deal with the side effect of first world culture. We choose to focus the lens in our own frame of reference, so "taxis" seem like rich people problems, as opposed to having the frame of reference be something more objective like the state of the world, when all of a sudden many more issues reveal themselves to be "rich people problems".

Of course, funny enough, many of the same people that complain about this will simultaneously tell you how many unexpected discoveries came from seemingly abstract government funded projects (from pure research that has no clear immediate benefit to huge projects like landing on the moon). Such side effects are not exclusive to government projects however. So too the problems we choose to work on voluntarily. I think its not necessary to get into the great many benefits studying the heart for the sake of heart disease have given the medical community in general. Another example I like to use is how the gaming industry has led to the development of super powerful graphics cards that now have enormous medical uses. Personal computers themselves have enabled so much for our society. But before there could be a 200 notebook there had to be a 10,000$ rich person computer.

In my experience, it is a trap to worry about what is "impactful". You will make a much greater impact on the world working on what you're good at and what you enjoy, because you have more control on making that GOOD than making the alternative impactful. If you look at the history of truly amazing discoveries, they are rarely straight forward, so its a better bet to invest in what you like than what you think is important.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#122

Post by woodman »

britknight wrote: post #118
woodman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry, but that strikes me as a pretty privileged sentiment. How does any of the prior statement sound "privileged"? Or was that just a hamfisted attempt at using a dog whistle?

> If you're a programmer and you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber Um, this, for one. I see no possible reality in which a disease that kills almost one child every minute [1] could possibly take a backseat to you not being able to get a taxi when you call for one. The above could be put in the dictionary next to "first world problem". I would love to hear your reasoning if you have some opinion to…

> Um, this, for one.

Actually, that is a pretty neutral position. Your position sounds much more "privileged", as you appear to be attempting to tell people not only what they should do, but how they should feel. I'm going to assume that you didn't imply that anybody holding a contrary opinion on the best use of their time is somehow cheering on malaria :)

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#123

Post by skybrian »

wpietri wrote: post #52
jsn117 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every solution starts out as a solution for rich people, that's what brings the price down for everyone else

That's pretty far from true. Using rich people to pay for product development is a well-developed modern technique, and it can definitely work well. But we didn't get, say, the smallpox vaccine because Jenner said, "I wonder what I could do for very rich people?" Most early Internet work was done for the sake of public benefit; the rich-person version was Compuserve, which was basically an evolutionary dead end. More…

Hi William!

I'm wondering how it would work otherwise. Should someone buying a new car who is thinking about its entire lifecycle optimize for fuel efficiency? Resale value? Ease of maintenance? Something else? I suppose a house should be designed so that it could easily be split into apartment units? It doesn't seem impossible to get wealthy people to consider these things, similar to how they consider the effect of the products they buy on the people in the supply chain and on the environment, but it would require a lot of research and marketing.

On the other hand, long-term planning like this is hard to do effectively. It seems like a lot of charity efforts specifically targeting the poor turn out not to be very cost effective, compared to the best approaches highlighted in GiveWell. It's hard to be confident that your average startup would achieve anything more than just showing good intentions.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#124

Post by lefler »

alwaysdoit wrote: post #29

Why not take rich people's money for taxis, and then donate how ever much of your salary to charities that are trying to fight malaria you think is appropriate? Is making $40K/yr doing something "meaningful" better than making $100K/yr doing something "meaningless" and donating $60k/yr to meaningful causes?

It doesn't have to be either/or. Will Chan is donating 20% of his income to charity. He has done that whether he was in DC with us or at Google. https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13pddzpwn30d5ozb04...

I support the idea of effective altruism, but at this exact moment, I believe that technical people donating time goes further than technical people donating money.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#125

Post by rgjm »

pagingdraltman wrote: post #106
afarrell wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ineffective comment for a few reasons: 1) The person you are responding to is advocating a course of action (funding work to end malaria) which helps poor people. They are responding to advocacy of a course of inaction (not developing taxi apps). The comment thus has some value, even if you disagree with it's conclusion. 2) You are advocating banning people for saying things. This puts a burden on you to m…

No. You are wrong on so many levels: 1) the comment I responded to was a broad-based insult lobbed at anybody who believed that malaria research is more important than Uber. Calling it 'teen angst' showed it wasn't a serious suggestion, it was just a way to insult people who disagree with him. That comment made INCREDIBLY clear that he wasn't here for discussion, he was here to shit on people who hold a different wor…

> Fuck you for pretending it was a real comment. It's disgusting that you're pretending it was a real comment. Losers like you are the reason HN is a piece of shit now.

> 2) I am advocating banning people for being rude.

Indeed

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#126

Post by beatpanda »

I would love it if anyone repeating the tired talking point, that solutions for rich people's problems will magically transmogrify into solutions for real problems with actual impact on human potential and quality of life, could name even one example of this that's come out of U.S. technology startups in the last ten years.

I would also love it if anyone could explain why so many people don't feel compelled to do anything about the poverty in Silicon Valley that is becoming much, much worse and drastically curtailing social mobility for poor people in the area, and instead promote this idea of "efficient charity" or whatever to help people far away, instead of fixing the problems caused by the kind of people who focus solely on earning a lot of money. Problems that exist whether those people spend that money on mosquito nets or hookers and blow.

These talking points get thrown around over and over again, largely without evidence, and it's starting to feel like it's just people trying to justify their desire to make a pile of money without feeling bad about it.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#127

Post by kmonsen »

nbevans wrote: post #99

I love how after 6 months working for someone he is happily blogging about it and he isn't ashamed about it even in the slightest. If I saw he'd worked for someone for 6 months only then I'd want to hear a good reason why he left. Otherwise I will just assume he was fired, or knew he was struggling against his peers and decided to move on by himself. You have to read his About page to realise that is probably not lik…

You sign up for 6 months ...

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#128

Post by mikeyouse »

peteretep wrote: post #119
mikeyouse wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not true.. There are numerous diseases which only affect the most poor and downtrodden citizens that are being worked on by thousands of 'first world' scientists.

With the obvious axioms that anyone with 1st world single-payer insurance behind them, or, say, the Gates foundation, isn't poor, could you give some examples?

The Perlstein Lab is a Public Benefit Corporation in the Bay Area looking for lysosomal deficiency drug candidates. A ton of research scientists are working on obscure diseases at university.

Basically the whole Orphan Drug market; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_drug

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#129

Post by silverthorn »

afarrell wrote: post #80
timr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so tired of the thoughtless repetition of this talking-point. Yes, some technologies developed serendipitously for luxury products. But when you take a broader view than the latter half of the 20th century, most of the technological progress that actually made our lives better were the results of targeted effort: wastewater treatment, antibiotics, essentially all medications. We didn't get to these things acciden…

An example of a startup doing work for the developing world is Wave, focusing on helping people send remittances to family in west Africa. http://www.sendwave.com/

That's great! And it's not even an exceptional case. There are lots of tech-related companies with an explicit social and developing-world focus, including many in SF---such as our company, Angaza, which makes it possible for emerging-market consumers to get much more energy for much less money through decentralized solar

http://www.angazadesign.com/watch-video/ (obligatory: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/company/angaza/)

and many, many others, e.g.

https://welldone.org/ http://saner.gy/ http://wecyclers.com/ http://www.allpowerlabs.com/ ...

not to mention areas of "SF tech proper" with a direct positive impact, such as medtech or cleantech.

Re: Back to SF After the U.S. Digital Service

#130

Post by timr »

silverthorn wrote: post #129
afarrell wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example of a startup doing work for the developing world is Wave, focusing on helping people send remittances to family in west Africa. http://www.sendwave.com/

That's great! And it's not even an exceptional case. There are lots of tech-related companies with an explicit social and developing-world focus, including many in SF---such as our company, Angaza, which makes it possible for emerging-market consumers to get much more energy for much less money through decentralized solar http://www.angazadesign.com/watch-video/ (obligatory: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/company/a…

I'm glad to hear about these sorts of things. The world seems like a slightly less shallow place!
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