4 ms·
I think you misunderstand how much time and focus is spent on trivial problems. Somebody already replied to this, but I will add more on the same note. 1 If so
by johnnyhillbilly 10y ago
I think you misunderstand how much time and focus is spent on trivial problems. Somebody already replied to this, but I will add more on the same note.
1 If some scientist finds a way to save a minute per instance of brushing your teeth, and if there is no difference in quality and cost, that is 600 million+ minutes saved every day in the US alone.
2 If some scientist finds a way for nocturnal people to contribute to society like other people, that is surely on the same magnitude as 1.
3 If some scientist finds some way to cut 10% of time on inspecting welds, it is surely a huge boost to the economy.
This is of course not meant to endorse situations where the quality drops. E.g. "If one cent is saved per unit of milk produced, I can buy a new yacht!"
- im_down_w_otp 10y agoAggregations in this case aren't interesting unless the component part of the aggregation is by itself interesting. A human, due to real constraints can't do a whole lot with an extra minute per day, and humans as a social body due to real constraints can't effectively collectively block-allocate 600 million diffuse minutes to some other cause. Each of them can only reallocate the minute they own/save. The units and the distribution matter here... a lot. This seems obvious enough to illustrate using your own narrative. What if I saved 6 Billion people 1ms per day? That's nearly 70 aggregated whole days saved per day. What are you going to spend your newly found 1ms on?
- auntienomen 10y agoReading hacker news. You never know which minute is the one with the good idea.
- Swizec 10y ago1min here, 10min there, 5min over there and before you know it, that's a whole extra hour of browsing the internet every week!