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How depressing. Our living planet is collapsing at a dizzying and increasing pace, and not only do our 'best and brightest' (if that's what they are) work large
by crispinb 9y ago
How depressing. Our living planet is collapsing at a dizzying and increasing pace, and not only do our 'best and brightest' (if that's what they are) work largely on trivia designed to accelerate the collapsing trend, they advertise their superficiality with this crude purported messianic zeal. Froth and bubble atop the dank turbid waters.
- iso-8859-1 9y agoWhich project should he work on instead?
- HugoDaniel 9y agoLinux on the desktop
- linuxps2 9y agoThis is the year, I just know it
- NetOpWibby 9y agoUsername checks out
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoNot everyone is in a position to make the world a better place through their work, but it would be nice if they didn't actively make it worse.
- atomashpolskiy 9y agoI'd say we desperately need new ways to self-organize to work on things that matter. Working for business, especially when governments are weak and regulation is pretty much non-existent, is a road to hell for the humanity
- Kratisto 9y agoI think it's a little unfair to just decide what "worse" is. Every older generation loves to say they like the old ways better. Seems hypocritical as they watch tv while playing on their iPad.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoI would reframe that as "Not everyone is in a position to make the world a better place through their work, so it would be nice if didn't pretend they were"
- altern8tif 9y agoI wish more people would work on ideas that would impact the poorer half of the human race.
- zeveb 9y agoI imagine that getting better food options to millions of people and enabling tens of thousands to start businesses does impact the poorer half of mankind positively. We've seen for decades that the typical Western approach of throwing money at the elites of a poor country really doesn't help improve life for the impoverished; it's when we create opportunities for them that their lives become measurably better. Contra the racists, there's no inherent reason for an African, Indian or Chinese peasant to be worse off than a German. They're not genetically inferior: they just had the bad luck to be born in a developing country. But if we can give those countries the same uptick in prosperity that Europe had from about 1812 to 1914, then approximately a billion people will be raised from poverty to something approximating a decent standard of living. That'd be amazingly impactful.
- gamblor956 9y agoIt will be extremely difficult to replicate European prosperity without replicating the colonial system that made it possible and is largely responsible for the state of the developing world today.
- crispinb 9y agoIf true, just as well. Given we're already so far beyond the living planet's carrying capacity (nearly every ecosystem is already in rapid decline) replicating European 'prosperity' (actually future-theft) would be cataclysmic. Extend-and-pretend 'economics' (ie. 18thC superstition) just pushes all the decisions out to a future that never arrives.
- bogomipz 9y ago>"I imagine that getting better food options to millions of people and enabling tens of thousands to start businesses does impact the poorer half of mankind positively." Better food options? Is there a better food option than something locally grown with sustainable agriculture? How exactly does VC-funded motorcycle and car taxis burning fossil fuels "impact poorer half of mankind positively"? >"We've seen for decades that the typical Western approach of throwing money at the elites of a poor country really doesn't help improve life for the impoverished;" Which has given rise to alternatives in the form of NGOs, PVOs and micro-finance initiatives. Do you really believe that some VC firms on Sand Hill Road is going to help lift the world out of poverty?
- crispinb 9y agoI could hardly know, from reading a few blog posts, enough about the man to say. I can claim that, given his history, the world is pretty much Yegge's oyster, so he's in a position to do a huge variety of worthwhile things. That he doesn't is obviously entirely his business, right up to the point that he makes public declamations combining world-blindness, triviality and self-important puffery in such an appalling way.
- manigandham 9y agoYou made it sound way more depressing. Who says they are the best? Maybe you are - so change the world the way you want to.
- crispinb 9y ago> Who says they are the best? Maybe you are Maturity comes with losses and gains: amongst the latter is understanding (and becoming content with) one's limitations.
- praneshp 9y agoFurther maturity is to accept the best people will work on what they want to, not what us commoners want them to.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- atomashpolskiy 9y agoCalm before the storm?
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
- linkmotif 9y agoExcept this piece is nothing but conviction.
- magic_beans 9y agoIt's "passionate intensity", actually.
- argonaut 9y agoExcept by your standards, Grab is a vast improvement over Google, an advertising company.
- crispinb 9y agoFor the record, I slightly regret my tone here. I stand by an extremely negative opinion of hypergrowth ideology (and the role played in it by tech). But this needs to be seriously argued for (which can’t be done in a comment para or two), and personal attacks are only irrelevant and unpleasant noise. Not that Mr Yegge will know or have any reason to care, but it does pollute the atmosphere on HN.
- Santosh83 9y agoNo need to regret. As you said, the living planet is irreplaceable and infinitely more precious than artefacts of technology which can be built again and again, yet our thoughtless species largely pursues trivialities and in the process squanders what cannot be regained. But comments like these are not well received so I seldom say them out loud.
- crispinb 9y agoSure, I don't resile from the basic point at all. Ecosystems are collapsing, and will take the dependent virtual worlds of business and tech with them if we don't change course. But the case isn't made any stronger by bagging individuals. I'm all for speaking up against mainstream myths, but it's usually worth taking a pause before being pointlessly combative.
- ozten 9y agoI found this essay a little shocking, because his last message I saw was the OSCON 2011 talk "What Would You Do With Your Own Google" [1] Something like - Let's all spend 5 years studying hard sciences and then go to work on important, world changing problems. The war metaphors and the Uber problems space caught me off guard. [1] https://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/20417 https://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/oscon2011/public/sched...
- crispinb 9y ago> The war metaphors and the Uber problems space caught me off guard Quite, me too. It may be deserving of a serious & respectful critique, but not having time or inclination for it, a few sentences of ad hominem dismissal can be tempting. Best resisted.