7 ms·

What's wrong or boring about any of the things you mentioned? What would you do differently?

by CardenB 10y ago

dlo 10y ago
It's a shame to waste an elite education on people who do not serve society.
- wyager 10y ago
  > It's a shame to waste an elite education on people who do not serve society. Have you considered that you may not be as good as you think at predicting the needs of society? Based on past experiments, it seems that the market does a pretty good job of predicting what society actually wants and needs, whereas enlightened do-gooders aren't as good as they think. The upside is that there is lots of cheap soviet surplus technology available even today, because the englightened folks in charge of soviet production focused a bit too much on the first-order "needs" of soviet society like Mosin Nagants and Nixie Tubes, whereas those foolish and vain Americans were wasting their time and elite educations following market demands for frivolous things that didn't serve society, like Color TV and food production beyond subsistence.
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    > Based on past experiments, it seems that the market does a pretty good job of predicting what society actually wants and needs, whereas enlightened do-gooders aren't as good as they think. I would love to see those studies! I'm struggling to imagine how you'd even find a random sample of do-gooders, let alone measure their effect on their communities.
    - dmichulke 10y ago
      A good proxy is market demand. If Apple releases an iPhone and 1bn people buy it they served the needs of at least 1bn people. Of course, a whole lot of poor people (probably the other 5/6 bn) won't be affected immediately but some years later they also start benefitting and today it's almost a (used) 100$ laptop per child equivalent (except for the poorest). You can argue the same way about mpesa, bitcoin and other innovations/products. Do charities have a similarly fantastic metric?
      - UweSchmidt 10y ago
        "Market demand" does not optimize globally by default. Effects can be positive or (extremely) negative. Example: Global warming is a result of the "market", an unexpected consequence from decades of growth. It can only be countered by coordinated action. To get back to the topic at hand: The "elites" should be the ones who lead such a transformation instead of, say, just looking to advance their carreers.
        dmichulke 10y ago
        The "elites" are the ones currently in charge (e.g., climate change, terrorism, monetary policy, ...) and I don't see them optimizing. Just a few related questions: Who is going to define who are the elites? If you say the people, then we end up in a democracy just like we have already and yet, I cannot see any optimization. What if climate change can be evaluated not only as a single metric but as a tradeoff? E.g., nuclear energy vs CO2? Or cost of each marginal ton of CO2 saved vs. the things you can do with the same money (e.g. a few cancer therapies). Are there even appropriate "elites" who are experts in all of the above areas?
- gozur88 10y ago
  People don't exist to serve society.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
dlo 10y ago
There's a lot of human trafficking in Oakland, a short BART ride away from SF. With so much problem-solving ability in nearby SF, why is this still a problem? So are homelessness, childhood hunger, etc And why do we crowd around in the Bay Area, pushing out artists and other people? Why don't we spread out across the U.S., spreading ideas and doing good?
- DocSavage 10y ago
  I think you are stereotyping Stanford grads, particularly older ones. There are plenty of Stanford grads outside the US as well as on East Coast, etc. There are also plenty of Stanford grads in medical and science careers. By the time he's done, Bill Gates will have done more to impact disease and save lives in the world than probably thousands of your volunteers, yet he was a techie that built a start-up and sounds like the people you deride. Not everyone has to walk the paths you've set out as the proper way to do good in the world. And sometimes it comes later in life. The problem with the article to me is that the author makes a lot of assumptions, maybe because of his upbringing and his lack of social intelligence. Not every one looks down on people of different social or wealth classes, particularly students who come from lower income or homes with less educated parents.
  - eropple 10y ago
    > And sometimes it comes later in life. And more and more often, it does not come at all. The effective noblesse oblige of, say, the New England rich is by-and-large dead outside of New England in favor of a very exploitative, plantation-society-esque Southern "liberty". There are enclaves where this isn't the case. It's hard to call San Francisco one, because the city and its very, very rich residents have done all they could to chase the poors away. (It is one of many reasons I refuse to consider living there.)
- wyager 10y ago
  Humans are bad at multiplying utilities. Building a service that gives $100 of utility to ten million people is probably better for society than improving the nutrition of a few hundred children in SF. People tend to over-value charitable endeavors that fall into certain categories, like helping the homeless or feeding the children. I suspect it's a societal mechanism for encouraging practical charity that was a lot more effective before our current age of plenty.
dlo 10y ago
Here is another possibility for something to work on. We are deploying IoT at scale without much concern for security. Effectively, we are building a massive weapon for our enemies to use against us -- one that is distributed, fault-tolerant, and built into our infrastructure. We would not be able to escape the consequences of such a weapon. In addition to serving society, this would also be self-serving. I have to imagine someone working on this would become fairly wealthy or at least very eminent. As far as I know, something close to nothing is being done about this problem.

What's wrong or boring about any of the things you mentioned? What would you do differently?

by CardenB 10y ago

What's wrong or boring about any of the things you mentioned? What would you do differently?

dlo 10y ago

It's a shame to waste an elite education on people who do not serve society.

wyager 10y ago
> It's a shame to waste an elite education on people who do not serve society. Have you considered that you may not be as good as you think at predicting the needs of society? Based on past experiments, it seems that the market does a pretty good job of predicting what society actually wants and needs, whereas enlightened do-gooders aren't as good as they think. The upside is that there is lots of cheap soviet surplus technology available even today, because the englightened folks in charge of soviet production focused a bit too much on the first-order "needs" of soviet society like Mosin Nagants and Nixie Tubes, whereas those foolish and vain Americans were wasting their time and elite educations following market demands for frivolous things that didn't serve society, like Color TV and food production beyond subsistence.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  > Based on past experiments, it seems that the market does a pretty good job of predicting what society actually wants and needs, whereas enlightened do-gooders aren't as good as they think. I would love to see those studies! I'm struggling to imagine how you'd even find a random sample of do-gooders, let alone measure their effect on their communities.
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    A good proxy is market demand. If Apple releases an iPhone and 1bn people buy it they served the needs of at least 1bn people. Of course, a whole lot of poor people (probably the other 5/6 bn) won't be affected immediately but some years later they also start benefitting and today it's almost a (used) 100$ laptop per child equivalent (except for the poorest). You can argue the same way about mpesa, bitcoin and other innovations/products. Do charities have a similarly fantastic metric?
    - UweSchmidt 10y ago
      "Market demand" does not optimize globally by default. Effects can be positive or (extremely) negative. Example: Global warming is a result of the "market", an unexpected consequence from decades of growth. It can only be countered by coordinated action. To get back to the topic at hand: The "elites" should be the ones who lead such a transformation instead of, say, just looking to advance their carreers.
      - dmichulke 10y ago
        The "elites" are the ones currently in charge (e.g., climate change, terrorism, monetary policy, ...) and I don't see them optimizing. Just a few related questions: Who is going to define who are the elites? If you say the people, then we end up in a democracy just like we have already and yet, I cannot see any optimization. What if climate change can be evaluated not only as a single metric but as a tradeoff? E.g., nuclear energy vs CO2? Or cost of each marginal ton of CO2 saved vs. the things you can do with the same money (e.g. a few cancer therapies). Are there even appropriate "elites" who are experts in all of the above areas?
gozur88 10y ago
People don't exist to serve society.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

dlo 10y ago

There's a lot of human trafficking in Oakland, a short BART ride away from SF. With so much problem-solving ability in nearby SF, why is this still a problem? So are homelessness, childhood hunger, etc And why do we crowd around in the Bay Area, pushing out artists and other people? Why don't we spread out across the U.S., spreading ideas and doing good?

DocSavage 10y ago
I think you are stereotyping Stanford grads, particularly older ones. There are plenty of Stanford grads outside the US as well as on East Coast, etc. There are also plenty of Stanford grads in medical and science careers. By the time he's done, Bill Gates will have done more to impact disease and save lives in the world than probably thousands of your volunteers, yet he was a techie that built a start-up and sounds like the people you deride. Not everyone has to walk the paths you've set out as the proper way to do good in the world. And sometimes it comes later in life. The problem with the article to me is that the author makes a lot of assumptions, maybe because of his upbringing and his lack of social intelligence. Not every one looks down on people of different social or wealth classes, particularly students who come from lower income or homes with less educated parents.
- eropple 10y ago
  > And sometimes it comes later in life. And more and more often, it does not come at all. The effective noblesse oblige of, say, the New England rich is by-and-large dead outside of New England in favor of a very exploitative, plantation-society-esque Southern "liberty". There are enclaves where this isn't the case. It's hard to call San Francisco one, because the city and its very, very rich residents have done all they could to chase the poors away. (It is one of many reasons I refuse to consider living there.)
wyager 10y ago
Humans are bad at multiplying utilities. Building a service that gives $100 of utility to ten million people is probably better for society than improving the nutrition of a few hundred children in SF. People tend to over-value charitable endeavors that fall into certain categories, like helping the homeless or feeding the children. I suspect it's a societal mechanism for encouraging practical charity that was a lot more effective before our current age of plenty.

dlo 10y ago

Here is another possibility for something to work on. We are deploying IoT at scale without much concern for security. Effectively, we are building a massive weapon for our enemies to use against us -- one that is distributed, fault-tolerant, and built into our infrastructure. We would not be able to escape the consequences of such a weapon. In addition to serving society, this would also be self-serving. I have to imagine someone working on this would become fairly wealthy or at least very eminent. As far as I know, something close to nothing is being done about this problem.