We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today • Hacker News Board

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#151

Post by ricardolopes » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 10:24 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #2

Let's build apps like Yo. They're good practice. Doing silly things that amuse oneself is a critical component of hackerdom. Let's just not fund them.

Yes! This!

We all know that those silly apps/games/etc aren't solving any big world problem, but neither are watching TV, browsing cat gifs, etc. What we do during our chill out time is up to us, and I'd say there are way worse things to do than coming up with silly coding projects.

Let the Yos and fart buttons of today help these developers improve their skills in a fun way during their spare time, so that tomorrow some of them might be able to move to those big problem solving projects.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#152

Post by sejje » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 10:26 PM UTC

Throwaway0812 wrote: post #81

sejje wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And because, sometimes, Game of Thrones (or whatever you do with your spare time) can be the inspiration/genesis for something world changing, or at the very least a recharge period.

If watching Game of Thrones can be inspiring, than surely Yo can be as well. I don't understand why the author chooses to single out Yo. Someone took the time to develop something, and others are using it. Congrats to them for providing something of value. The simplicity of the app is inspiring in itself. Who cares if they raised 1.2 million? This is investment money, this isn't 1.2 million sucked out of a charity, o…

I was agreeing with you, actually.

People can build whatever they want.

Yo is a step towards bigger ideas, better skills, more resources to make bigger ideas happen, etc.

Let the market sort out what's a good effort and what's a piss-poor one.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#153

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 10:32 PM UTC

JoshuaDavid wrote: post #127

timr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not that EVERYONE should be working on the big problems -- just that the incentive systems seem to lean towards triviality over deep human benefit." Yes, exactly. And even more importantly: we can fix it, but we choose not to. I know brilliant people with extremely specialized training in chemistry, physics, biochemistry, and so on. People who should be developing new drugs, or high-speed trains, or improving s…

Who is "we"?

The humanity.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#154

Post by steveklabnik » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 10:39 PM UTC

lbrandy wrote: post #58

Unless my mom or dad recently signed up for HN, I'm not terribly interested in any of this paternalistic (and patronizing) advice on how I should spend my life and time.

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http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#155

Post by odonnellryan » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 10:42 PM UTC

tekalon wrote: post #91

odonnellryan wrote: post #21

I think we need a good, solid list of the big problems. Then we need to break them down into smaller problems.

I have a plan to do this, have it kind of like a wiki with a breakdown of problems based on location (Becuase you can't solve world hunger all at once, each place has its own issues). Then have users submit possible solutions, and then open people to volunteer to implement solutions (maybe add a crowd-funding portion to it). Only issue is I'm too lazy to brush up my web development skills.

What do you do?

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#156

Post by pwnna » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 10:44 PM UTC

skywhopper wrote: post #16

Unfortunately, this line of criticism works equally well about all games, art, haute cuisine, movies, national parks, and about 96% of our economy. More importantly, it also works against articles that gripe about effort wasted on apps the author doesn't care for.

Art is perhaps more important than engineering.

Engineers maintain the world that we see. They build roads, bridges, the internet, and so forth.

Artist (writers, game designer, etc etc) create things that we can enjoy using the infrastructures that engineers built. Without these artistic creations, the world would be a very boring place.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#157

Post by nemothekid » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 10:54 PM UTC

pwnna wrote: post #156

skywhopper wrote: post #16

Unfortunately, this line of criticism works equally well about all games, art, haute cuisine, movies, national parks, and about 96% of our economy. More importantly, it also works against articles that gripe about effort wasted on apps the author doesn't care for.

Art is perhaps more important than engineering. Engineers maintain the world that we see. They build roads, bridges, the internet, and so forth. Artist (writers, game designer, etc etc) create things that we can enjoy using the infrastructures that engineers built. Without these artistic creations, the world would be a very boring place.

What makes your art (writers, game designer, etc etc), more important than my art (being able express my presence as a human being through "Yo")?

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#158

Post by cwyers » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:04 PM UTC

digz wrote: post #148

cwyers wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, except there's all kinds of economic theories about how this isn't true: the tragedy of the commons, negative externalities. There's also a lot of evidence that rational actor theory isn't as true as pure economics would suggest. And of course market inefficiencies will distort price signals. And truly free markets have a hard time remaining such in face of large incentives for rational actors to instead engage…

Saying that free markets are best is not the same as saying free markets are perfect.

Go back and read again. He's not saying anything that free markets are an imperfect way of delivering what people want, but they're better than anything else we've come up with. He's saying that free markets tell us what people want, and if you disagree with the "free market" (which is an abstraction, I don't think most things people refer to as free markets actually are the "free markets" of economic textbooks), you're disagreeing with what people actually want. That makes free markets right by tautology; the best is what people want, and what people want is what they buy on free markets. Which is fine if you want to short-circuit debate, but it doesn't actually let us ask the important questions.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#159

Post by Nursie » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:04 PM UTC

pwnna wrote: post #156

skywhopper wrote: post #16

Unfortunately, this line of criticism works equally well about all games, art, haute cuisine, movies, national parks, and about 96% of our economy. More importantly, it also works against articles that gripe about effort wasted on apps the author doesn't care for.

Art is perhaps more important than engineering. Engineers maintain the world that we see. They build roads, bridges, the internet, and so forth. Artist (writers, game designer, etc etc) create things that we can enjoy using the infrastructures that engineers built. Without these artistic creations, the world would be a very boring place.

I'd rather live in a world without art than a world without science and engineering.

Bored, maybe. But bored with sanitation systems, transport and technology rather than entertained and dead of cholera by 25.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#160

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:08 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #158

digz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that free markets are best is not the same as saying free markets are perfect.

Go back and read again. He's not saying anything that free markets are an imperfect way of delivering what people want, but they're better than anything else we've come up with. He's saying that free markets tell us what people want, and if you disagree with the "free market" (which is an abstraction, I don't think most things people refer to as free markets actually are the "free markets" of economic textbooks), you…

> He's saying that free markets tell us what people want, and if you disagree with the "free market" (which is an abstraction, I don't think most things people refer to as free markets actually are the "free markets" of economic textbooks), you're disagreeing with what people actually want.

And while that's a common argument, the obvious problem with it is that free markets weight preferences by existing wealth. $ as a proxy for utils isn't really a valid assumption when people don't have the same quantity of $.