Yo.
We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
61–70 of 188 posts
Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#62To me, there's three categories startups fall into: fun, world-changing, and failures. SnapChat and Facebook are fun. Google and Tesla are world changing. The failures may be nameless, but they outnumber the rest 5 to 1. If you're a success story, it doesn't matter to me whether or not you are fun or world-changing. You succeeded. That's enough in itself.
5 to 1? Try 1000 to 1.
Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#63Unfortunately, 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.
Ditto. While I'm never going to use this Yo here thing, I don't consider it to be something that never should have existed.
Yo and the mere fact that it exists means that the per-unit cost, monetary or in terms of effort, of making something more useful has fallen, once again. The barrier of entry for something more innovative than Yo has dropped and people, at large, have become just that tiny bit more receptive to something even more interesting than Yo.
Ten years ago, just the concept of Yo actually working and having a user base in the millions would have been the biggest thing since sliced bread. If aspects of the present might be a little over the this-is-amazing hill, then that's not too much of a doomsday portent for the future as it's being made out to be.
Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#64Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#65Unfortunately, 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.
With the exception of games, the items you mention aren't distracting much engineering talent from solving the big stuff. With $1.2m, Yo can directly compete for talent that might otherwise go to graduate school or make progress in a more serious venture.
Right. It's just distracting chefs, artists, ecologists, photographers, etc. Clearly these people neither have engineering talent nor could contribute in any other way to McCann's chosen causes.
Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#66There'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…
>energy, food, water, health, education
The problem with those problems is that they are very hard. Much harder than starting a Yo.
It's a false choice. Even if the founders of Yo were working on important problems, those problems might not get solved, because they are very hard. The world is big enough to have people working on big problems and people working on Yo.
Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#67There'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…
But I don't know many people who think that we need to spend all our time tackling the world's biggest problems.
It's hard to see what the point of such a thing would even be. Isn't the whole point of solving the world's problems that we'll have more time to waste on frivolous pursuits like the Yo app?
Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#68There'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…
"Totalitarian"?
From the article:
"We need to think big, see the real problems that are out there and go solve them. For my part, I hope to stick by this philosophy and play my part."
Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#69How about if you want something done, do it yourself.
Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today
#70There'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…
Also temporarily assuming his premise, I disagree with your conclusion that this article itself becomes a waste of time: if he convinces a couple people to work on those things he finds important by way of having written and published this article then it may be more beneficial by the stated metric of doing good for the world than directly working on those important problems. I'd instead try to question the value of the post (again, assuming the premise, so in the eyes of the author) by asking this question: "if someone actually finds Yo worthwhile enough of their time to work on, maybe they aren't the kind of person who would actually come up with useful solutions to actually important problems anyway". Then again, the cost of writing this article is so low that even if the potential reward has very low probability, it has sufficient value (the productive output of another individual working on important problems) that it is probably still worthwhile (again, if you agree with the basic premise).