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>> At this very moment a large percentage of the brightest minds in the world are working on getting people to click on internet ads and building products that

by doktrin 15y ago

>> At this very moment a large percentage of the brightest minds in the world are working on getting people to click on internet ads and building products that monetize well but are honestly a net loss to humankind. Strictly speaking, it's a very small percentage of the world's brightest minds. To imply otherwise reflects a stunning amount of hubris. If we do some very rough back of the envelope calculations : There are roughly 1.3 million software developers in the U.S, out of a population of ~306m (0.4%). Extrapolating that against the global population of ~7 billion, we can round up to ~30 million developers worldwide. If we define "brightest minds" as those holding IQ scores in the 99th percentile (135+), there are 70 million people with genius level intellect. While I don't have numbers measuring the IQ distribution across developers, I think we can safely assume that no more than 10% (3m) have an IQ in the top 1%. Therefore, no more than 4.2% of the world's brightest minds are in fact developing software of any kind. The number can be further pared down to reflect the number of "geniuses" working on generating ad-clicks.

freshhawk 15y ago
I could have sworn I included the financial sector in that list but obviously I did not, must have been a different comment. Not that it makes much of a difference to the point. For a realistic calculation you would definitely have to take access to education and enough wealth to pursue some field of study into account. That certainly falls under the definition of "brightest minds" by any fair definition since IQ on it's own isn't very meaningful. I would argue that you would also want to take motivation into account as well as the opportunity/temperment to work in an organized fashion with a good team if you wanted good numbers but I never mentioned that. Still, I don't really take issue with your ballpark numbers. Let's just assume that's close for the sake of argument. I could have been more clear and less flippant I suppose but I certainly didn't mean "a majority", I think 5% is a large percentage. So pedantry aside, the idea is to consider the enormous waste of talent going on at places like google, facebook, yahoo and the majority of internet or mobile app startups. Very little of that effort will have any actual long term impact (other than the relatively small team at google working on search).
- doktrin 15y ago
  I agree with your sentiment. However, I do feel the need to awkwardly defend ad-clicks on a purely philosophical level. While not a particularly impressive raison d'étre, connecting buyers to sellers is a legitimate market function. This lies on contrast to several revenue generation tools employed by the financial sector. For instance, high frequency trading is practically indefensible and arguably destructive. This sadly does not change the fact that a legitimate contribution is not necessarily meaningful. I'm curious to see what the legacy of our current tech boom will be.

by doktrin 15y ago

freshhawk 15y ago

I could have sworn I included the financial sector in that list but obviously I did not, must have been a different comment. Not that it makes much of a difference to the point. For a realistic calculation you would definitely have to take access to education and enough wealth to pursue some field of study into account. That certainly falls under the definition of "brightest minds" by any fair definition since IQ on it's own isn't very meaningful. I would argue that you would also want to take motivation into account as well as the opportunity/temperment to work in an organized fashion with a good team if you wanted good numbers but I never mentioned that. Still, I don't really take issue with your ballpark numbers. Let's just assume that's close for the sake of argument. I could have been more clear and less flippant I suppose but I certainly didn't mean "a majority", I think 5% is a large percentage. So pedantry aside, the idea is to consider the enormous waste of talent going on at places like google, facebook, yahoo and the majority of internet or mobile app startups. Very little of that effort will have any actual long term impact (other than the relatively small team at google working on search).

doktrin 15y ago
I agree with your sentiment. However, I do feel the need to awkwardly defend ad-clicks on a purely philosophical level. While not a particularly impressive raison d'étre, connecting buyers to sellers is a legitimate market function. This lies on contrast to several revenue generation tools employed by the financial sector. For instance, high frequency trading is practically indefensible and arguably destructive. This sadly does not change the fact that a legitimate contribution is not necessarily meaningful. I'm curious to see what the legacy of our current tech boom will be.