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

#161

Post by lmm » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:14 PM UTC

buckbova wrote: post #50

arasmussen wrote: post #34

> "Some expressed anger that there own startups hadn't received funding" Hard to take this guy seriously when he can't even grammar right in his intro paragraph. I love yo.

> "Hard to take this guy seriously when he can't even grammar right in his intro paragraph. I love yo." Can't "grammar" right? Can "grammar" be a verb?

Yes, "grammar" can be a verb. And even if it were in some sense incorrect, the meaning is clear. Confusing "there" and "their", OTOH, is outright misleading, and suggests a lack of understanding.

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

#162

Post by tekalon » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:14 PM UTC

odonnellryan wrote: post #155

tekalon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm a business analyst that also does some basic IT work. I know some basic HTML/CSS/JS, enough to tweak some web pages that I support, but nothing from scratch.

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

#163

Post by Karellen » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:28 PM UTC

tedks wrote: post #107

grecy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people derive value out of Yo, then terrific. If they don't, it goes away. Don't need a moral crusader to decide what is worthy. Then you wind up with things like Fox "News" (actually Entertainment, NOT news) being popular, because they found that entertainment is much better at making money than actual news. If you let "making money" be the decider, lots of valuable things fade away.

The answer is that those things are not valuable. People don't want news. This is not a bad thing. This means that people aren't like the elitist ideal of what you want in your socialist utopia. Real people happen to like Facebook and Fox News and Snapchat and Yo. And that's fine . To say that those desires are somehow immoral because they aren't lofty enough is elitist, condescending, and anti-humanist.

I'm not sure it's entirely correct to claim that the set of "things that people want" is equivalent to the set of "things that add value to people's lives".

I'm also unsure as to how arguing that such a distinction might exist could be construed as elitist, condescending, or anti-humanist. And I've no idea at all how you got the idea that it might imply that the desires, of people, for things which do not add value to their lives, are immoral.

(That is, that the desires are immoral, not the people. Crikey that last sentence is hard to parse. Sorry.)

Or socialist? WTF?

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

#164

Post by frostmatthew » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:28 PM UTC

I'm pretty sure creating Yo doesn't require a team of the most "driven, focused, intelligent and inspiring individuals" of our society." Does the author really feel the people behind this (or any/every startup) could easily cure cancer or solve world hunger?

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

#165

Post by FD3SA » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:31 PM UTC

This argument comes up from time to time, but it's first order thinking. The real question he should address is the following:

Why does the modern economy incentivize negative and/or zero sum endeavors (e.g. trivial startups, exploitative finance,etc) instead of positive sum endeavors (e.g. genetics research?)

Which leads to a very interesting discussion. In short, extant economic policies disincentivize research so strongly that it's a wonder any research occurs at all.

I think at some point, "free-market" radicals threw the baby out with the bathwater, and have forgotten that some activities, such as research, are extremely risky in the short term but produce unfathomable long term benefits (antibiotics, vaccines, etc.). At present, neither companies nor governments want to foot the short term costs of research.

As such, we are paid six figures to brainwash people to click ads, but must accept financial ruin to even attempt to contribute to research.

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

#166

Post by digz » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 11:40 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #147

digz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I'd venture a guess that if you sum up the total cost that has gone into Facebook's Poke feature (development, maintenance, deciding whether or not to turn it off), it would dramatically eclipse the 1.2M that everyone is so up in arms about. No one is losing their marbles over that stuff. Look, I agree it's a ridiculous app.. but if people use it and derive value from it, good! Utility created!

> people use it and derive value from it I think you could just stop at "people use it". What kind of value they derive from it (if any) is another inquiry, and can't be discerned from merely observing the fact that they use it. At least, not without some really strong assumptions to the effect that people always correctly make positive-utility choices. It's possible people use it, but derive negative utility from it…

Your points are all very valid of course. While utility theory has largely been superseded by prospect theory, like Newtonian physics, it can still be useful for back-of-the-envelop thought.

Furthermore I'll be a devil's advocate however and just make the point that one could rationally defend tobacco use as utility deriving. Just because a (in my view) sane person would see all the horrible effects of tobacco as trumping any positive attributes, someone else may disagree. Depending on one's own discount rate, tobacco use at any point in time in fact be net positive in enriching their life. Even if you argue that some of the positives are created by advertising cigarettes as cool (Joe Camel, etc.), so what? Someone spending $50,000 on a fancy watch is also making the same sort of determination. If the user derives the benefit, regardless of whether it's endogenous or exogenous to the product itself, that isn't obviously inherently bad.

Now, of course, smoking has it's own set of problems because it negatively affects others... but again, it's not so clear that one can't attribute rational decision making to even a smoker.

All that to say, your point is well taken.

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

#167

Post by odonnellryan » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 12:01 AM UTC

tekalon wrote: post #162

odonnellryan wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do?

I'm a business analyst that also does some basic IT work. I know some basic HTML/CSS/JS, enough to tweak some web pages that I support, but nothing from scratch.

My email should be in my profile. If you can't view it let me know. We'd need to get an outline.

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

#168

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 12:43 AM UTC

digz wrote: post #137

jal278 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." [0] The reason why this article resonates with many readers is that it expresses frustration with the triviality of how our economy allocates resources to start-ups. The promise of tech is huge, but following the money often leads to optimizing ads, machine learning algorithms competing with each other in HFT, or other appl…

Why is helping people find products and services that will enrich their lives an inherently bad thing?

Advertisements are more manipulative than informative. But the bigger point was that they are far less of a benefit to humanity than other things, yet they get far more resources allocated to them.

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

#169

Post by forgottenpass » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 12:44 AM UTC

digz wrote: post #150

gress wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is a service designed to help corporations exploit psychology to induce people to buy their products. What you are describing is more like a concierge. Hint: The person who pays is the person who's interests are being served.

Reaching consumers is hard, even if you have the superior product. Facilitating such a transaction should make one proud. The 'psychological exploits' are a marginal component, but again, why is it inherently bad for someone to feel good about using product x over product y, even if they're exactly the same?

Reaching consumers is hard, even if you have the superior product. Facilitating such a transaction should make one proud.

It's entirely an accident if an advertizing service facilitates that transaction. They're not consumer reports, they're boosters for whoever pays.

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

#170

Post by Houshalter » Tue, Jun 24, 2014, 12:51 AM UTC

digz wrote: post #79

pdabbadabba wrote: post #51

There's a lot that I dislike about this article, but I'll start with this: it is probably self-refuting. Someone could just have easily written: "I find it difficult to see individuals who could focus their time and effort solving [problems like energy, food, water, health, education], instead put their efforts into something like a takedown of the moral priorities of the people behind Yo on a their personal blog." A…

>> And, by the way, who appointed Christoph McCann arbiter of what it good and valuable in this world? This is such an important point, and why free markets work best. If people derive value out of Yo, then terrific. If they don't, it goes away. Don't need a moral crusader to decide what is worthy.

There are things like Public Goods[1] that can have very high value to society but no individual has any incentive to invest in pay for them. E.g. most of the "big problems" the author is talking about. Free markets severely misallocate resources because of this. There are also things like normal wealth inequality. A poor person can't pay for the drug that will save his life. Then there are things that are very long term.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good