The World is Full of Real People

While he seems well meaning, his point is a bit silly and shows a lack of understanding as to how capitalism works.

>>Instead of measuring ourselves by the size of our Series A or our average profit per employee, let’s measure in lives changed.In an article that talks about the power of software to scale and effect entire populations of people, just how does he propose to "measure lives changed"? He doesn't, really. And how could he?

For example, if you rescue me from a burning building, you've certainly changed my life. But by how much? Do you now get credit for every accomplishment (or bad act) I do from that day forward? Or, if you're polite and let me get the cab we both hail, which allows me to get to my meeting on time, which allows me to close the sale and get the promotion... you've actually changed my life quite a bit, and you'll almost certainly never know about it.

The problem is, many more lives are changed by actions that are seemingly trivial, and often even unseen, than by those that are visibly heroic. Measurement then becomes impossible. Except we've figured out how to measure it. We use money.

If you're getting paid a princely some to design some system that end users will never see, you can be sure it's because the middleman thinks its valuable. He thinks he will be able to change people's lives. And, his belief will be confirmed when the end users pay him. In exchange for money, the end users get something that makes them better off. And that's the entire basis of capitalism.

So, while it's sexy to say that we have a responsibility to better the world at large because of our privilege, don't overlook the fact that by performing some service for pay, you are already bettering the world at large. By definition.

“I worked harder than I had to. I gave up time with my kids, with my friends, to do what needed to be done.”

You know what one of the absolute best ways you can give back to the world?

- By spending time with your children and raising them to be good productive people so they can become contributors as well.

- Another way to give back to the world is to spend time with the people you care about which hopefully makes them happier as well.

Thinking that you are a martyr to build software for the greater good is somewhat laughable. In fact you may find that when you write your software what you really have done is put some people out of jobs - that seems to be one of the things software is really good at.

Tremendously enjoyed your post, particularly the part about fucking around with gene assays. My wife is a physician, and sometimes I rile her by saying she is not helping real people because she is just a glorified hashmap. She does a lookup on the disease and returns a drug prescription. She says that's still better than fucking around with gene assays in a labcoat :) I'm completely familiar with your line of reasoning. Its just that the number of nodes needs to traverse from a styloot to a vaccine is significant. Its not zero. Most companies get around this by simply making large philanthropic donations from time to time. But you'll still agree that's not the same. Some of my classmates got their math & physics PhDs and then gave it all up and returned to India to feed the poor and work with the homeless. When I look at that and then look at the fact that I'm messing around with sobol sequences....it just irks me, that's all. I think that was the point of the article - dealing directly with the real world full of real people, and not via some long indirect causal mechanism.

> "So how many lives have garbagemen changed in the way OP talks about? How much impact do workers in a steel mill have?"

I'd argue these people have a greater impact on society than a lot of hackers. These people are contributing directly. Take away the garbagemen (as the city of Toronto did, for a little while) and observe their impact (or rather, smell).

Compare to the innumerable hackers being employed to build, well, a whole lot of nothing, much of which won't ever even see the light of day. Between running out of cash, big-company reorgs, and just plain bad ideas, there's a lot of software being written that simply won't benefit anybody in any significant way.

Humanity is reaching an unprecedented amount of specialization - we used to live in societies where the purpose and contribution of a particular person to the whole is easily understood by everyone. The cooper makes barrels, that the vintner uses, so that we can all enjoy wine. The blacksmith makes tools for everyone else, etc etc. As we abstract and specialize, we need to maintain perspective and never lose track of what role we play in the grand scheme of things.

I too was born into a stable country but my parents were far from rich or even well-off (they are now, but back then they had almost nothing).

I have no idea if they have a natural inclination to mathematics/logic -- and I doubt it would have matter, my brother studies chemistry one of the subjects I suck most at.

I didn't have access to a computer that early, at least not earlier than my classmates, but they spent all their time gaming, I spent (some) of my time with Delphi.

It is true that my life would have been different if I had been born in Rowanda, but I was no better of than those I grew up with.