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I have a hard time seeing how this is anything other than a feel-good distraction that provides little in the way of real benefits. Non-disposable coffee cups

by philk 16y ago

I have a hard time seeing how this is anything other than a feel-good distraction that provides little in the way of real benefits. Non-disposable coffee cups do not make up a meaningful proportion of our environmental footprint as a whole. If there's a need to change something (such as environmental footprint) then use market mechanisms[1] to implement it. [1] For example, if landfill needs to be reduced one could charge money based on volume/weight of rubbish collected.

Tichy 16y ago
What's wrong with a feel-good distraction? Instead of implementing "Hello World" in 120 languages, why not tinker with papercup designs?
- philk 16y ago
  I don't have a problem with someone tinkering with coffee cup designs if it gives them enjoyment. I just find the pretense that it's going to make a non-negligible difference to the environment puzzling and intellectually dishonest. What's wrong with a feel-good distraction? Instead of implementing "Hello World" in 120 languages, why not tinker with papercup designs? Why not do something actually meaningful? There's an awesome talk by Richard Hamming on pg's website (http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html), where he recounts: And I started asking, ``What are the important problems of your field?'' And after a week or so, ``What important problems are you working on?'' And after some more time I came in one day and said, ``If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?'' I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with!
  - Tichy 16y ago
    "58 billion paper coffee cups" doesn't sound so negligible to me? Sure, it is might not be as paramount as plugging the oil spill to me, but perhaps making a small impact is better than no impact. I just mentioned the 120 programming languages because I am sure that post would make it on HN, too. Are you working on superimportant stuff all the time? Also read Richard Feynman's books - he claims when he was stuck for a while, he only managed to make progress again when he started to do calculations on the rotation of thrown paper cups just for fun for a while. He later derived some quantum mechanics stuff from those paper cup equations.
sunir 16y ago
Big challenges are sometimes too big. Small challenges can teach us techniques to solve bigger challenges. Before you fly to the moon, you have to get a tin can in orbit. Coffee cups are easy to relate to, so the hope is to inspire a lot of interest. That energy once applied to this problem can be reused to work on similar problems of bigger scope.

by philk 16y ago

Tichy 16y ago

What's wrong with a feel-good distraction? Instead of implementing "Hello World" in 120 languages, why not tinker with papercup designs?

philk 16y ago
I don't have a problem with someone tinkering with coffee cup designs if it gives them enjoyment. I just find the pretense that it's going to make a non-negligible difference to the environment puzzling and intellectually dishonest. What's wrong with a feel-good distraction? Instead of implementing "Hello World" in 120 languages, why not tinker with papercup designs? Why not do something actually meaningful? There's an awesome talk by Richard Hamming on pg's website (http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html), where he recounts: And I started asking, ``What are the important problems of your field?'' And after a week or so, ``What important problems are you working on?'' And after some more time I came in one day and said, ``If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?'' I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with!
- Tichy 16y ago
  "58 billion paper coffee cups" doesn't sound so negligible to me? Sure, it is might not be as paramount as plugging the oil spill to me, but perhaps making a small impact is better than no impact. I just mentioned the 120 programming languages because I am sure that post would make it on HN, too. Are you working on superimportant stuff all the time? Also read Richard Feynman's books - he claims when he was stuck for a while, he only managed to make progress again when he started to do calculations on the rotation of thrown paper cups just for fun for a while. He later derived some quantum mechanics stuff from those paper cup equations.

sunir 16y ago

Big challenges are sometimes too big. Small challenges can teach us techniques to solve bigger challenges. Before you fly to the moon, you have to get a tin can in orbit. Coffee cups are easy to relate to, so the hope is to inspire a lot of interest. That energy once applied to this problem can be reused to work on similar problems of bigger scope.