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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#391

Post by pyre »

thedamon wrote: post #341
pyre wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does bloodsugar management entail though? Just mapping/graphing bloodsugar measurements vs. insulin injections? Is the missing piece the ability to take into account foods eaten, body mass, etc?

yeah. just (and then deriving useful conclusions from all the data.) To my mind, the missing piece is a non-proprietary tool to make the collection of the data as easy as possible and integrate with devices from some large number of competing manufacturers. Not so crazy.. but it doesn't exist as far as I know. I have dreams of trying to make it happen but, you know, the usual excuses.. ( http://sanguinediabetes.com/…

What are the devices like to integrate with? Last time I had experience with bloodsugar tests, it was just a LCD readout. Do the devices now have things like bluetooth/etc to make connecting to a phone/computer easy? Or would this effort have to include working w/ manufacturers to create such connectivity?

Re: Why the Fuck?

#392

Post by freddealmeida »

jthol wrote: post #365
ramanujan wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's go point by point. 1) Regarding diabetes and the FDA: I don't think removing the FDA is going to find a cure for diabetes. Well, before the FDA as such even existed, Banting and Best came up with the idea for insulin supplementation in 1921. A patient was treated by 1922. They won the Nobel Prize by 1923. Today's FDA would have made their methods completely impossible and they would have been criminally prosecu…

No one was arguing that point. The FDA does good things. The FDA does bad things. The question is whether the FDA is more helpful than harmful. I for one am happy that the FDA inspects my food and medicine and holds them to a standard of safety. On the other hand they do make some medical devices and advances overly expensive to make and create a barrier to entry into the market.

I think you would be rather surprised what those standard really are. Far lower than you would expect.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#393

Post by wamatt »

sukuriant wrote: post #344
wamatt wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. In general I find articulating the conceptual stream to be a challenge, especially since it jumps around disjointedly. Usually it takes a few iterations of a post, to improve the quality or tone, even though from my perspective, the core spirit of message remains unchanged between drafts. The trick in communication is to be understood on multiple levels, not to simply output claims, irrespective of how accura…

I actually think the parent's confusion is twofold. First, you're comma-splicing some of your sentences, making it harder to read what you're saying. Commas have rhymes and reasons to them; and, it is good to know when to use them and where. It also seems like you are too quick to begin a new paragraph. Concepts that connect to one another should be put into the same paragraph so a person knows where one idea (or sub…

>"The conceptual stream" is hard to follow. What conceptual stream? Do you mean you're having trouble articulating what you want to say? Then why not say that? "Conceptual stream" is not something usually said in conversational English

A fair point. While some statements could be a somewhat unfamiliar/unusual, it only take a little more effort to process, if one just thinks about it.

eg "conceptual stream"

Take the concept of a stream (aka a social network news feed, or a data stream). Take the concept of a concept. Then merge the two. Hence you should have an image of a stream of concepts, interconnected via a graph.

Another way to look at it could be to picture a sports commentator. We see him speedily narrating the action as he watches the game. Event's are often linked: "He hit the ball", "Now he's going for 3rd base", "Oh and it's a homerun", "the crowd is ecstatic"

Now what if we replaced the real word events, with concepts?

Sometimes events are completely unconnected too, concepts work in a similar way (at least for me).

Now in my head the nodes on the graph connect, although this may be non-obvious. Nodes could correlate with concepts and edges roughly with causality. How accurate that graph (map) to reality is, would always open to honest debate (if the goal is towards improving accuracy versus trying to score points).

It's difficult perhaps, because in some ways probably different to how you usually operate. There is also the very real possibility, that many simply find metacognition, largely uninteresting (which is fine too).

Continuing this theme, there are some are highly visual thinkers (such as Temple Grandin [1]), while for myself, for the most part am most comfortably naturally operating abstractly, conceptually, strategically and focusing on outcomes. In theory I tend towards impartiality, but in practice I'm biased towards a utilitarian framework.

Many highly intelligent people here operate highly tuned abstract pattern matching. I simply don't work like that, and yet I can appreciate its general effectiveness. I do feel genuinely happy, if on occasion, the courtesy is reciprocated. Ideally this would be irrespective of whether at that point in time, there happened to be agreement or not.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin

Re: Why the Fuck?

#394

Post by ynniv »

raganwald wrote: post #383
steve8918 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't try to twist your dumb rant into some sort of free speech issue. The multiple people telling you to shut up isn't because they are trying to squelch discussion on the topic. They are telling you to shut up because you, specifically, bring negative value to the discussion and you are responsible for decreasing the signal to noise ratio. In your example about the dumb, drunken football fan yelling at the T…

What? I don't agree at all. I wrote something in my personal blog on the Internet. That's the bar. If you want to tweet, or write something in on your blog, that's also the bar. But this is a kind of club where I didn't post those writings. And when I have discussed them, I've been civil as is our rule here. We have two ways of saying "This is noise, not signal." One is to downvote. The other, flagging, is reserved f…

The core problem is that 100 more people on Hacker News think that your top comment is valuable, and further that you take this as justification that your viewpoint is supported by the community. As there is no way for folks to only participate in the HN that disagrees with your rants, folks are being negative. That's the only tool they have.

When you sell books on how CoffeeScript is great and then rant that people aren't solving difficult medical device issues, I wish that there was a version of Hacker News that did not include your comments. Maybe someone will make that.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#395

Post by pinaceae »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

this won't be seen anymore, euro-timezone for the win, but anyway:

1., google did produce google search. i don't think there is a more important product in the last 20 years when it comes to the knowledge of the world.

2., apple's iphone is being used as a platform for health services (to stay in your health example). there are health startups targeting iOS, big pharma as well - patient adherence programs, even diabetes hardware, just look: http://www.bgstar.com/web/ibgstar

3., facebook, twitter facilitate human interaction. see the arab spring, it was not facebook specifically, but the network effect within it helped the people in egypt, etc. to post, share, discuss.

4., even small examples count, just look at BingoCardCreator with it's HN fame. it targets teachers, do you need something more nobler, grandiose than that?

Re: Why the Fuck?

#396

Post by kanzure »

hackingla wrote: post #143
raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

"I'm not smart enough" - this is not an excuse. I have no education, no college etc... and I created software that generates meal plans according to my Crohn's symptoms (made it from my hospital bed at SF General) and now I am off all my meds. Made an app for a friend that helped her identify that she had a Gluten allergy (later verified by doctor) And right now I am working on a way to help match patients and doctor…

> I created software that generates meal plans according to my Crohn's symptoms

You should also consider making gut bacteria for zonulin production.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#397

Post by kanzure »

clinth wrote: post #247
delinka wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we all can't work there. Not only are there not enough jobs at That One Company That's Changing The World, someone needs to provide the tools and services the business is built on; all the ancillary things that allow Us to make progress (computers, operating systems ... vehicles and their fuel ... food for the humans ... waste receptacles and their sanitation ... etc) How am I changing the world? A) By educating…

> there not enough jobs at That One Company That's Changing The World I met some Counsyl devs at PyCon last year, they were wonderful. We talked about meaningful work. There are so many companies and nonprofits trying to change the world. They need help with software. A partial list: Broad Institute: http://www.broadinstitute.org (disclaimer, I work there) JCVI: http://www.jcvi.org Sanger: http://www.sanger.ac.uk 23a…

Many of the JCVI programmers groan and complain that they can't turn that organization around. I am not convinced additional programmers will fix JCVI.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#398

Post by dinkumthinkum »

Kind of a tangent by why are we wasting so much engineering trying to make hypertext documents and HTTP do do things that could be done with other software years ago, why are we wasting all focusing so much on limited constraint computing when we have a lot of horsepower we could be going interesting things with. LaTeX on a browser? Near, but we've has LaTeX for decades. I'm not trying to call anyone specfically out. I just can't help feeling we as an industry have gone so full barrel down the hypertext path that innovation as a whole has potevtiallt suffered. Just my rambles.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#399

Post by thisishugo »

sliverstorm wrote: post #335
saurik wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I wrong in thinking that, if you actually did solve the kinds of problems mentioned in the article (obesity, diabetes, etc.) that your resulting business would make a lot of money? Is it really "makes more money" that keeps people working on ad-optimization, and not a simpler reason like "that is the kind of mathematical problem with an algorithmic solution that the analytical brain of a programmer can solve"? It'…

Actually solving diabetes would make you a lot of money. This is almost certainly accurate. But- Let me put it this way. How many people do you know that have made it big selling out to a MegaCorp? Not many, I'm sure, but now how many people do you know that have cured diabetes? Even though making it big in the startup world is not a sure thing, curing diabetes is even less of a sure thing.

There's also the MVP factor. It's easy to throw out a half-broken software prototype and then "pivot" until you have something you can sell (whether to users or a bigger company).

The minimum viable cure for diabetes still has to be a cute for diabetes. This is unarguably a harder problem to solve than "apply a filter to a photo and put in on the web."

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