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As someone who often gets asked by government officials on what can be done to improve the lives of X, Y, or Z and what applications can be built and how can we

As someone who often gets asked by government officials on what can be done to improve the lives of X, Y, or Z and what applications can be built and how can we use artificial intelligence in a sector, my first answer is to get X, Y, and Z to the table and in the room then we'll talk. Alost anything other than that is a hammer looking for a nail, or an app looking for no user. The same used to happen to us building custom software for enterprise, where an executive starts telling us features to build for analysts/salespeople/marketing/engineering, and what the product should do. We asked access to users and were denied, and got paid for software nobody uses which is demoralizing. Our position now is: get the analysts/salespeople/marketing/engineering in the room and we'll build a product that drives value just fine. A lot of problems exist not for lack of a mobile app, and people either fail to see the problems in terms of systems, incentives, friction, trust, etc or there's pressure to show something is being done and an app is a good way to do just that. Activity over output. My opinion is: although the pressure may be strong on your brother to show something is being done, a good way to actually get things done is to meet the people your brother is trying to serve, and then serve them. Doing that may expose that many of them may have trouble actually acquiring soap, or are disabled and need someone to help them through this, or just need food and shelter.

samstave 7y ago
Sadly, I really agree with all you said - I told him something along similar lines - but I also told him I would field the question, and this being HN, I figured the best place o do so... He is adamant that we are at the very bottom of the beginning of the curve....... (I am inclined to know that he knows more than he lets on to me (see given creds about him, but I am also paranoid) so I wanted to see what could be done to help his request... he is also infuriatingly calm in any calamity, which is good for a field doc who helped many casualties in Iraq and beyong and in the literal pentagon Joint Chiefs office when the 'plane hit - but frustrating as heck when trying to discern true danger from a conversation with him) (((I was actually able to get more information from a Loral Space Sat Eng designer neighbor through our "blink if XX is true code about spy sats that I can from my literal brother)))
- Jugurtha 7y ago
  >He is adamant that we are at the very bottom of the beginning of the curve I've been pulling 18+ hour days working from home on our product so I haven't paid much attention to this, but looking at the exponential curve gives me the impression that this will change a many things, at least for some time. One of the things that have crossed my mind is that the financial distress lived by people in easily terminated positions or who do low complexity tasks will lead their children to witness how fragile a livelihood can be. This is more obvious in some societies than others, but the scale at which this will happen true will etch this in memories and many will probably pledge not to go through what their parents went through. Some societies where someone can be out of a job and still live decently because they're someone's brother/sister/cousin/nephew and the safety net makes it hard to starve or freeze. This will cause a mutation. The realization of what it is to be confined and not free of one's movement. I'm in my thirties but I know what a curfew is from more than a decade of terrorism and civil war. People who are just five years younger than me don't, and people in many countries find it crazy not to be able to go out after 1700 or 1900. This can make people more empathetic with people who need a good reason to go out, or people who simply can't. The disabled and the maimed, the bullied and the threatened, the outcast and the undesirable. The realization you cannot intimidate or project strength with a virus for it doesn't care if you pull a knife, puff the chest, or command goose-stepping eukaryotes. It doesn't care that someone loves their mother or their child, if someone is a believer, spiritual, an optimist, or a pessimist. It doesn't care about how much someone bench-presses or how many beers one drinks. This may not be a realization for many people, but a lot of people think that way. That being a badass, a wise-ass, or a dumbass somehow will prevent them from getting infected, and that loving their mom is enough to make things go well. This, too, will change things and will do most likely in painful ways. This would also stress organizations, governmental or not, and require them to change and come up with ways to survive. For example, the dwindling tax money the revenue service is collecting because of the crisis could provoke an acceleration in electronic payment, and remove some bureaucracy. Organizations such as ours are forced to learn to work completely remotely, and have message discipline and institutionalize knowledge. We are lucky we've been experimenting with this because we're paranoid enough to have thought that we needed to do it because at some point we'd have no choice but to do it so we're okay, but this could set a precedent in some organizations that eschew remote work with an opinion on productivity. This may also be a rare occasions for some countries where corruption is high as government officials get tested, government gets changed, and officials simply have no other place to go. What happens in a lot of countries is that the people act as low quality tenants who'll completely ruin a property because they have no ownership and plan to move somewhere else. They can't really do that now, so they have to fix some things or suffer the consequences. Writing these lines, I'm reminded of a passage in Blaise Pascal's "Pensées": Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantages which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.

samstave 7y ago

Sadly, I really agree with all you said - I told him something along similar lines - but I also told him I would field the question, and this being HN, I figured the best place o do so... He is adamant that we are at the very bottom of the beginning of the curve....... (I am inclined to know that he knows more than he lets on to me (see given creds about him, but I am also paranoid) so I wanted to see what could be done to help his request... he is also infuriatingly calm in any calamity, which is good for a field doc who helped many casualties in Iraq and beyong and in the literal pentagon Joint Chiefs office when the 'plane hit - but frustrating as heck when trying to discern true danger from a conversation with him) (((I was actually able to get more information from a Loral Space Sat Eng designer neighbor through our "blink if XX is true code about spy sats that I can from my literal brother)))

Jugurtha 7y ago
>He is adamant that we are at the very bottom of the beginning of the curve I've been pulling 18+ hour days working from home on our product so I haven't paid much attention to this, but looking at the exponential curve gives me the impression that this will change a many things, at least for some time. One of the things that have crossed my mind is that the financial distress lived by people in easily terminated positions or who do low complexity tasks will lead their children to witness how fragile a livelihood can be. This is more obvious in some societies than others, but the scale at which this will happen true will etch this in memories and many will probably pledge not to go through what their parents went through. Some societies where someone can be out of a job and still live decently because they're someone's brother/sister/cousin/nephew and the safety net makes it hard to starve or freeze. This will cause a mutation. The realization of what it is to be confined and not free of one's movement. I'm in my thirties but I know what a curfew is from more than a decade of terrorism and civil war. People who are just five years younger than me don't, and people in many countries find it crazy not to be able to go out after 1700 or 1900. This can make people more empathetic with people who need a good reason to go out, or people who simply can't. The disabled and the maimed, the bullied and the threatened, the outcast and the undesirable. The realization you cannot intimidate or project strength with a virus for it doesn't care if you pull a knife, puff the chest, or command goose-stepping eukaryotes. It doesn't care that someone loves their mother or their child, if someone is a believer, spiritual, an optimist, or a pessimist. It doesn't care about how much someone bench-presses or how many beers one drinks. This may not be a realization for many people, but a lot of people think that way. That being a badass, a wise-ass, or a dumbass somehow will prevent them from getting infected, and that loving their mom is enough to make things go well. This, too, will change things and will do most likely in painful ways. This would also stress organizations, governmental or not, and require them to change and come up with ways to survive. For example, the dwindling tax money the revenue service is collecting because of the crisis could provoke an acceleration in electronic payment, and remove some bureaucracy. Organizations such as ours are forced to learn to work completely remotely, and have message discipline and institutionalize knowledge. We are lucky we've been experimenting with this because we're paranoid enough to have thought that we needed to do it because at some point we'd have no choice but to do it so we're okay, but this could set a precedent in some organizations that eschew remote work with an opinion on productivity. This may also be a rare occasions for some countries where corruption is high as government officials get tested, government gets changed, and officials simply have no other place to go. What happens in a lot of countries is that the people act as low quality tenants who'll completely ruin a property because they have no ownership and plan to move somewhere else. They can't really do that now, so they have to fix some things or suffer the consequences. Writing these lines, I'm reminded of a passage in Blaise Pascal's "Pensées": Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantages which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.