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My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." Th

• mscarborough 14y ago
  You're obviously a smart dude. Nothing more annoying than a good person who wants to claim how bad they have it.
• DanBC 14y ago
  There is a problem with the way that HN wants article titles - this one is link-baity and has caused some unneeded negative reaction to a reasonable blog post. I have no idea what it could have been changed to when being submitted, or if that new title would have been kept.
  • Semiapies 14y ago
    Someone could have shown better judgement and not submitted it.
• kibwen 14y ago
  > It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in > physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could > work on "big problems." Seconded, though I could never find the words to express this before. How the fuck is anything that I'm doing right now helping to make the world a better place? How could I even begin to make a difference with my life? Making software is the only thing that I'm marginally proficient at--I'll never start a company that sends a man to Mars or discovers the cure to a horrifying disease. Is making the next $BIG_SOCIAL_NETWORK the best that I have to aspire to?
  • buss 14y ago
    > I'll never start a company that sends a man to Mars or discovers the cure to a horrifying disease. Maybe not, but you can work at one: https://jobs.counsyl.com https://jobs.counsyl.com I work at counsyl and we're hiring generalist programmers, devops, etc.
    • delinka 14y ago
      But we all can't work there. Not only are there not enough jobs at That One Company That's Changing The World, someone needs to provide the tools and services the business is built on; all the ancillary things that allow Us to make progress (computers, operating systems ... vehicles and their fuel ... food for the humans ... waste receptacles and their sanitation ... etc) How am I changing the world? A) By educating a future generation (my own children) in the ways of the world, by supporting their dreams and showing them how the world must function so they can realize their dreams; and B) by working for a company that provides services to its customers to use to make their employees more productive to grease the wheels of innovation and creativity so their own lives are enriched and their own dreams (and their children's dreams) can be realized.
      • clinth 14y ago
        > there not enough jobs at That One Company That's Changing The World I met some Counsyl devs at PyCon last year, they were wonderful. We talked about meaningful work. There are so many companies and nonprofits trying to change the world. They need help with software. A partial list: Broad Institute: http://www.broadinstitute.org http://www.broadinstitute.org (disclaimer, I work there) JCVI: http://www.jcvi.org http://www.jcvi.org Sanger: http://www.sanger.ac.uk http://www.sanger.ac.uk 23andme: https://www.23andme.com https://www.23andme.com
• Falling3 14y ago
  Very well said. And the hypocrisy cry is just an ad hominem fallacy.
  • raganwald 14y ago
    "Ad Hominem Tu Quoque." But when someone criticizes me, I try to remember that the Ad Hominem Fallacy is any suggestion that someone's words are wrong because they are objectionable. The good side is that I can say my words may still be right. But by the same token, the personal criticism may still be valid even if my words are right. So maybe I should think about what people are saying even if it doesn't mean that what I am saying is wrong.
    • Falling3 14y ago
      Oh of course, the sword cuts both ways. Their criticism of you may be perfectly valid and worth noting. But it's still no refutation of your original claim, which I think is how it's generally presented.
  • jlgreco 14y ago
    The hypocrisy cry is only an ad hominen fallacy if we are saying that he is wrong because he is a hypocrite. If the accusation is not part of a presumably logical argument, then the accusation does not constitute a logical fallacy. If I am sitting down for a nice steak dinner with someone and they start telling me that I shouldn't eat meat because of cruelty in modern cattle farming, I'm not going to accuse them of being wrong... but I am going to tell them to shut the hell up. Nobody likes hypocritical whining.
    • mikeash 14y ago
      This is an important point that people often misunderstand in internet arguments. Attacking or insulting someone is probably not a good idea in general, but it doesn't constitute an "ad hominem" and doesn't affect the rest of the argument presented unless it's being argued that the other person is wrong because e.g. they smell bad. If it's just mentioned that they smell bad and they're wrong for other reasons, it's not that fallacy.
• sskates 14y ago
  I think people are reacting negatively to your post because it comes off as a criticism of the people who work on the problems you described. If this was not the intended effect, perhaps you should clarify on your blog post, because most readers are interpreting it that way.
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• the_cat_kittles 14y ago
  Your point about hypocrisy is something I have thought myself- Being a hypocrite doesn't make your argument wrong by default, and it's strange that we instantly act like it does. There must be some reason we act this way, does anyone have a good explanation?
  • ceol 14y ago
    It's because we treat arguments like battles, looking for that one opening to strike no matter how desperate it may be. It's why you see a lot of people quote a single sentence out of a three paragraph post and reply to that, ignoring the rest of it. Aside: I would love to see someone study the differences between in-person and online arguments.
  • sskates 14y ago
    If someone claims that "you should always do X" and then proceeds to do Y, isn't the fact that they did Y evidence that "always do X" isn't a good rule?
    • jamesbritt 14y ago
      No. It suggests it's easier to give advice than to follow it.
    • neumann_alfred 14y ago
      Only if "because I do it" is their one and only argument for "always do X". Which it rarely, if ever, is.
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  • DanBC 14y ago
    Politicians don't tend to say "Here's this bad thing; we all do it; let's see what we can do to lower the incidence of this bad thing." Politicians tend to say "Here's this bad thing. Those people over there, that do this bad thing? They're destroying our society. They're bad and they should feel bad, and anyone who supports them is bad and should feel bad." You can see how someone saying the latter, while doing the bad thing, isn't just a hypocrite, but is an annoying judgemental hypocrite. We're just holding them to their own standards. Some people say that's the problem - don't have any standards any no-one will call you a hypocrite. I'd disagree. Have standards, just don't be a judgemental idiot about them.
• wissler 14y ago
  Please don't underestimate #2. We in the software field have massive liberty compared to scientists trying to solve problems relating to human life and disease. And indeed, there are plenty of smart people who avoid this realm just because of that, and go into software instead.
• waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Directly pursuing medical advances without the required stamp of education might be difficult because of the obstacles society puts up for that path (perhaps rightly so). You could certainly educate yourself in the field, but you'd likely have a tough time winning acceptance for your advances. But you could certainly find a way to help people indirectly. Some of the same talent that targets people for ads is not necessarily all that different from using psychological principles to help them be healthier, for example. And there's always the path of partnering with someone who does have the required education. Combine that with your own self-directed education in bioinformatics or similar fields and you could definitely make a real difference. It's riskier, but it also has the potential for a bigger payoff. The path is there, there is a way.
• d0m 14y ago
  HackingHealth.ca might be of interest to some of you who want to help but not necessarly know where to start and/or find the barrier of entry very abrupt. It's an event very similar to a hackaton where developers, designers and health professionals work together during all the weekend on real practical ideas that will be tested in clinical environment shortly after. Two have happened in Montreal and Toronto and where huge success. The next one is in Vancouver, late February. Lots of other cities are coming in the following months (sf, melbourne, london). Anyhow, feel free to email me (phzbox at gmail) if you're interested in sponsoring or organizing one in your city; I'd be more than happy to help a fellow HNer wanting to hack health.
• kyro 14y ago
  If it's of any consolation, it depresses me daily that I have a future career in medicine but don't have a strong skill set (be it programming, statistics, biomedical engineering) to work on any meaningful problems. There's really not a day that goes by where I don't regret not majoring in one of those areas, or being more interested in them at a younger age. I'm just a guy who can design an okay-looking site. I'll be good at only applying solutions that others, like you, can develop.
  • kylemaxwell 14y ago
    A doctor with an understanding of programming - even if he's not a world-class programmer - is more than a few steps ahead of others. If you get that career in medicine started, you've got tremendous potential in ways other people do not.
    • MDS100 14y ago
      How exactly?
      • jtheory 14y ago
        Case in point, the founder of the startup I work for. Mohammad was trained as a physician, but has had a long-standing interest in software (and has even some experience coding, though we don't let him touch it nowadays). http://www.patientsknowbest.com/about-us.html http://www.patientsknowbest.com/about-us.html
  • malandrew 14y ago
    Between this lamentation and Raganwald's lamentation, me thinks two should at least get together to solve diabetes or some other problem where your domain expertise and his software development expertise can be combined. I've seen your design skills and they are solid. I was actually surprised when you said you are headed for a career in medicine. Never would have expected that.
  • ThomPete 14y ago
    Kyro I have told you many times. You don't need to be killer at design (you are pretty solid) or development when you got domain knowledge like you do. The very fact that you can think in all three domains make you potentially a thousand times more privileged than most great designers and devs from a start-up point of view.
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• stared 14y ago
  A short question: have you ever worked in research? Or know well anyone working in academia? First, many problems there are much harder just to get to the level that one can do any valuable contribution. And approaching them goes well beyond reading tutorial, playing with it, asking some questions on SE, being expert. In mathematics, or medicine, it's rather years than weeks. Second, many deep problems are not that easy to commercialize; even if they may, possibly, save many lives in future, they are not an easy base to make profit in, say, next 10 years. Third, as projects are way to hard to be run by a few enthusiasts + commercialization is not straightforward - everything works in universities, with an inertia typical for huge institutions (and no 2-3 people startups are available). As a secondary effect, it deters creative people to pursue such option. And fourth, there is money in programming. When you fail a startup you can still get a great job. If you fail your academic career - it may be harder.
  • brfox 14y ago
    Very good points. I work as a bioinformatics scientist at Novo Nordisk, and we take our jobs very seriously in trying to find medicine for diabetes and other autoimmune diseases - and we feel lucky to have this possibility of success. It is very difficult because of many reasons, especially because each iteration (drug) takes years and costs millions of dollars to try out and hundreds of patients to volunteer to inject it into their body.
    • stared 14y ago
      And one more point (also: the rationale for regulations in medicine) - in programming you are allowed to risk a lot more. Create a social network and the it fails? No problem! Running out of money so you need to shout down you server? OK! And in general - approach "we have no idea if it is going to work, but let's try!". In medicine, a failure may cost thousands of lives (and in past it did, a lot of times), so time and cost overhead is enormous.
• hackingla 14y ago
  "I'm not smart enough" - this is not an excuse. I have no education, no college etc... and I created software that generates meal plans according to my Crohn's symptoms (made it from my hospital bed at SF General) and now I am off all my meds. Made an app for a friend that helped her identify that she had a Gluten allergy (later verified by doctor) And right now I am working on a way to help match patients and doctors based on case histories. My passion is helping people, so that is what I do. I am not smart, funded etc... I just really really really give a fuck and refuse to quit. You dont need education, funding or any of those things. You just need drive, passion and google. I cant take these products to market myself and have been turned down by all Incubators, Angels etc... but that does not matter because like i said; I wont quit. Your problem is not lack of intelligence or funding, your problem is lack of passion. You dont work on these things because you dont give a fuck. [edit] http://hackingcrohns.com http://hackingcrohns.com - (took down meal plan because I cant afford the machines for the ABM Sim) http://trackxvsy.com http://trackxvsy.com - Site not active but if you want the app email me http://cvchk.com http://cvchk.com - going to have this ready for HN Whose hiring (job applipicaion only) but you can see how structured search for a job w/ resume is same as structured search for doc w/ case histroy.
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  • hackingla 14y ago
    Note: legally I cant "launch" these because I am just some guy but if you would like to see full working versions or my entire portfolio please email me. email is on profile. [edit] "Why can't you launch them as some guy? I see people giving diet advice all the time" I am dealing with medical records not just diet recommendations, I take this very seriously and refuse to take a cavalier attitude toward the health and medical information of other people.
    • 14y ago
• ciupicri 14y ago
  Regarding smoking, I doubt there's any smoker who doesn't know about all the warnings and possible issues. By the way, some of them smoke for the sheer pleasure of doing it (aroma, gesture etc.), not necessarily because they're addicted.
• javajosh 14y ago
  >Just because he's drunk and in a saloon doesn't mean he's wrong, just boorish. Just out of curiosity, can you identify the actual point in time when you came to believe that self-awareness of bad behavior makes that bad behavior acceptable?
  • raganwald 14y ago
    Yelling at a television in a saloon may or may not be acceptable, I suspect it depends on the saloon. Self-awareness has nothing to do with it. Now if you're trying to suggest that it is unacceptable for me to voice opinions on a blog, we need to talk. I invite you to criticize my words. If your intent is to criticize my speaking my words, I defy you.
  • xivSolutions 14y ago
    One can be rude, and still be correct in their reasoning. I do believe that was the point here. Additionally, one can still engage in bad or unhealthy behavior and still recognize it as wrong.
  • flyinRyan 14y ago
    I don't believe any claim was made about if the behavior was wrong or not. The claim was simply that the drunk might actually have good advice about what the coach should do next, even if he had a poor way of giving it.
• rplst8 14y ago
  I do think a lot of good minds are being wasted on pretty meaningless endeavors - simply to make investors happy. But that is capitalism in a nutshell. Money talks, everything else walks. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing capitalism, everything has it's pros and cons. That said, I personally feel that only certain aspects of medicine are a good investment. OTOH, just because you don't have a career in a basic science doesn't mean you can't change the world. IMO, the biggest challenges facing us are in the field of computer science and computer/electrical engineering. We need to make computers more efficient and we need to find a way to power the future expansion of data centers around the globe. Less than half of the world's population is taking part in the information economy, and already our data centers are using about 2% of the electrical supply. And all we are doing with those is Siri, Maps, and facebook. If we want our cloud computing resources to do the heavy lifting in the future, we are going to need massive amounts of computing power and a way to supply electricity to that.
• ramanujan 14y ago
  2. There are regulatory obstacles for businesses. As someone in the biotech space, this is by far the biggest factor. When you are dealing with humans, crashes and bugs mean deaths. Deaths mean increased regulation, often under the mistaken assumption that more rules would prevent engineers from making bugs. Modern testing and build systems might, but regulators aren't keen to change their testing systems, many of which were encoded by legislation decades ago. For example, adaptive clinical trials have been known to be theoretically superior to the Phase I/II/III design for 15 years, yet are still in limbo[1] at the FDA; their proponents are still banned from trying them out. Facebook does not need a Federal Software Assocation to sign off on its new unit testing framework. Moreover, it is just more stressful to deal with a regulatory climate where any error is assumed to have happened because you were an evil corner-cutting capitalist who didn't allocate enough for safety. This kind of Monday morning quarterbacking is unfortunately usually done by people who've never shipped a drug or device in their lives, like most politicians, journalists, or federal regulators. Twitter, unlike Genzyme[2], is not fined millions of dollars by the FDA when its site is down. Finally, you have to guess what the law is. There is so much "discretion" [3,4] afforded to regulatory agencies that the threat of fines and seizures over bizarre interpretations of the law by a Carmen Ortiz-style ambitious regulator is never far from your mind. Example [5]: [Newsweek:] What exactly would constitute a “medical claim?” Would pointing people to medical research papers [qualify]? [FDA]: It depends. There are rules as to how one can do that … Those rules are actually worked out pretty well, and they just would need to make sure they’re staying within the rules. [Newsweek:] Are those rules on the Web? [FDA]: I don’t know where the policy is. I would have to get it for you. It’s an agencywide policy. I would have to find it for you. And it won’t be that easy for people to follow it… Another example [6]: The agency has urged hospitals to allow vendors to guide them on security of sophisticated devices. But the vendors sometimes tell hospitals that they cannot update FDA- approved systems, leaving those systems open to potential attacks. In fact, the agency encourages such updates. “A lot of people are very confused about FDA’s position on this,” said John Murray Jr., a software compliance expert at the agency. And one more [7]: In United States v. Park, the Supreme Court held that a responsible corporate official can be convicted of a misdemeanor based on his or her position of responsibility and authority to prevent and correct violations of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). Thus, evidence that an individual participated in the alleged violations or even had knowledge of them is not necessary. Think about that: criminal penalties for violations of laws that "won't be that easy for people to follow", where knowledge or participation in the alleged violations is not necessary. And the law is not static. The FDA also can and does write "guidances" outside of the legislative process which will make your business model illegal overnight or vastly more expensive due to unanticipated regulatory costs. Google does not need to guess what the DNS protocol is or will be in 2013. For just a taste of how all this plays out, look at the FDA's ongoing attempt to regulate[8] mobile health apps. Who knows what the rules will be, what they will cost, or what the fines are? Look at the FDA's attempt to deny[5] people access to their genome without a prescription. Look at the fact that they issued a record 10000+ 483s in 2011[9], which threaten a business with civil or criminal penalties. Look at the fact that they used these 483s to shut down Teva and Sandoz and Hospira and Bedford at the same time[10], causing a massive shortage of injectables which they blamed on industry profit seeking and used to gain[11] yet more regulation, more power, more budget. Look, finally, how they claim in an official court filing against family farms producing raw milk that you have "No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health" [12], where they approvingly cite the case of Cowan vs. US, where a terminal cancer patient was denied access to experimental medication, denied the right to opt-out of the FDA: There is No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health. Plaintiffs’ assertion of a “fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families” is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish. In addition, courts have consistently refused to extrapolate a generalized right to “bodily and physical health” from the Supreme Court’s narrow substantive due process precedents regarding abortion, intimate relations, and the refusal of lifesaving medical treatment. See Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 721 (warning that the fact “[t]hat many of the rights and liberties protected by the Due Process Clause sound in personal autonomy does not warrant the sweeping conclusion that any and all important, intimate, and personal decisions are so protected”); see also Cowan v. United States, 5 F. Supp. 2d 1235, 1242 (N.D. Okla. 1998) (rejecting a claim that the plaintiff had the fundamental “right to take whatever treatment he wishes due to his terminal condition regardless of whether the FDA approves the treatment”). I know it sounds surreal, but they are arguing here that you only control your own body with respect to abortion, intimate relations, and euthanasia. Everything else is controlled by the FDA, yea even unto your death from cancer. The only solution here is for hackers to carve out a jurisdiction in which the FDA has no say, where patients are free to be early adopters and startups are free to push the technological envelope. Patients in this zone will need to be mature and understand that these are version 1.0s, and may not help or even actually harm them. But every drug or device or surgery needs someone to be first, and a few brave risk takers could both benefit their own health and push humanity forward. After all, we have thousands of people dying for futile risks in various foreign wars. So, the limiting reagent is not money, or expertise, or motivation, or smarts. raganwald, you and most of HN are plenty smart enough. It's about the freedom for companies to innovate, for patients to take risks. We need a jurisdiction (a seastead? Singapore? Estonia?) that enables us to push the technological frontier. Everything else will fall into place once we can't be punished for innovating. [1] http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/104/18/1347.extract# http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/104/18/1347.extract# [2] http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/genzyme-submits-175m-fine-fda-consent-decree/2010-05-25 http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/genzyme-submits-175m-fine-... [3] http://www.ivdtechnology.com/article/letters-labcorp-show-fdarsquos-enforcement-discretion http://www.ivdtechnology.com/article/letters-labcorp-show-fd... [4] http://www.fdalawblog.net/fda_law_blog_hyman_phelps/2011/03/cost-of-compliance-fdas-new-enforcement-discretion-1.html http://www.fdalawblog.net/fda_law_blog_hyman_phelps/2011/03/... [5] http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/the-human-condition/2010/08/05/dna-dilemma-the-full-interview-with-the-fda-on-dtc-genetic-tests.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/the-human-condit... [6] http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-25/news/36015727_1_health-care-medical-devices-patient-care http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-25/news/36015727_... [7] http://www.gatewayfda.com/fda-regulations/under-park-doctrine-fda-can-prosecute-individuals-for-company-violations-of-fdca/ http://www.gatewayfda.com/fda-regulations/under-park-doctrin... [8] http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/the-fda-takes-on-mobile-health-apps http://m.spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/the-fda-takes-... [9] http://blog.fdazilla.com/2011/11/fda-issues-483-every-50-minutes-in-2011/ http://blog.fdazilla.com/2011/11/fda-issues-483-every-50-min... [10] http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/06/15/how-margaret-hamburgs-fda-causes-cancer-drug-shortages/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/06/15/how-margaret-ham... [11] http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/DrugShortages/ucm050796.htm#q5 http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/DrugShortages/ucm050796.... [12] http://www.organicpastures.com/pdfs/FDA%20dismissal%20documents%20FTCLDF%20CFR%201240.61%20.pdf http://www.organicpastures.com/pdfs/FDA%20dismissal%20docume...
• fredgrott 14y ago
  actually non-educated people solve Big Science problems daily...and most enlightened science people welcome the additional solving power. It is a ,myth that only Science people get the opportunity to solve big science problems.
  • ruswick 14y ago
    Any examples? It just seems intuitive that there is a strong correlation between academic acclaim and occupational success in the sciences, and being classically and comprehensively educated in the sciences.
• flipside 14y ago
  As someone who switched from a nanoengineering phd focused on medical diagnostics and blood analysis (including some diabetes work) to an internet rating startup, I have some opinions on this matter. 1. The time scales are completely different for internet and biotech. A/B testing online can take hours or days while biotech experiments take months to years. In fact, I came up the idea for the startup while I was waiting 4 months for a substrate to be synthesized! 2. The costs are also dramatically different. The limiting reactant isn't people, it's $$$. Biotech is extremely capital intensive. Equipment, reagents and people all require significant amounts of money over a long period of time. 3. Lastly, hard sciences do not have a monopoly on "big problems". Maximizing my impact is a desire I share with many of the HN crowd. For me, the impact I foresee by improving rating systems dwarfs what I thought I could accomplish in bio-nano. Don't get me wrong, this was simply the right decision for me, which is why I dropped out a year ago with zero regrets.
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  • chronophilic 14y ago
    As someone who has always viewed web technology as trivial/frivolous when compared to something as noble as biotech, I for one, out of genuine curiosity and with a goal of possibly updating my beliefs, would be interested to hear about what kind of impact the improvement of a rating system would have.
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• rayiner 14y ago
  > It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." This is some quite "grass is greener" thinking. The world needs all kinds.
• Semiapies 14y ago
  "Just because he's drunk and in a saloon doesn't mean he's wrong" Doesn't mean he's right, either. Just means he's an asshole in a saloon who never wanted to do something, but out of his resentment of all those who've made more money than him, he tries to assert some flimsy moral superiority over them because they made money, instead of doing that stuff he somehow always found excuses for not doing.
  • Semiapies 14y ago
    Yeah, yeah, downvote away. Ultimately, this is the ultimate, overwrought version of those stupid blog posts complaining that nobody codes something that does X, but when it's put to them why they don't make it, they answer, "Eh, it's not billable hours for me. But, hey, someone out there on the internet can do that for me, right?"
• mscarborough 14y ago
  what is your point? it's your life so if you want to do something different, then go do it.
• steve8918 14y ago
  > "Hypocrisy" is one of those empty criticisms, like "Unprofessional." If someone says to you, "smoking is bad," it doesn't matter whether he smokes. Maybe, his advice is actually more relevant if he's an older fellow who smoked and now regrets not making a different choice when he was your age. It's not an empty criticism. It speaks to your credibility. You are admonishing Google and Facebook for working on "stupid" ideas, when you yourself are working on a presumably stupid idea, since you're not saving anyone's life but instead working on a way so that you can make money. How credible can your rant be if you aren't following your own advice? I would rather hear the same rant from someone in the field who is frustrated because they are "fighting the good fight", not from someone who is engaging in the exact same "stupid" behavior that they are ranting about.
  • rtpg 14y ago
    There is a perception difference, for sure, but an argument's validity is not reduced by the person saying it. Granted, here it's much more opinion than fact, so...
    • steve8918 14y ago
      No, but the likelihood of the argument having any value is greatly reduced if the person themself doesn't believe in it enough to actually follow the argument. I doubt there is a high likelihood of a meaningful conversation from someone who is screaming "Why doesn't Google stop working on stupid problems and fix this, while I continue working on my own stupid problems".
      • flyinRyan 14y ago
        >No, but the likelihood of the argument having any value is greatly reduced if the person themself doesn't believe in it enough to actually follow the argument. Total nonsense. So a drunk who's destroyed their own life telling some teenagers about the dangers of alcohol greatly reduces the likelihood of his argument being valid since he still drinks? Ridiculous. Crying "hypocrit" is just ad hominem. Nothing more noble than that.
    • 14y ago
• mscarborough 14y ago
  Attention whoring at its worst. If you care about any of these issues, go work on it. Being whiny and taking a better-than-thou man-child is lame. Personally, there's stuff I care about I don't cry about it in public.
• pknerd 14y ago
  But you can collaborate with the domain expert, can't you?
• mscarborough 14y ago
  dude, pick one angle and stick with it. if it depresses you 'daily', then go learn the computer science and make the algorithms you want to see. otherwise, live your life and enjoy it. and please just shut the fuck up about how hard you've got it.
  • raganwald 14y ago
    I don't have diabetes, Scott Hanselman has diabetes. If everyone with "first world problems" followed your advice and shut up, how would we every hear about anything except AIDS, Malaria, or Gun Violence? Which woman would speak up about diversity in conferences if the response was "Shut the fuck up and organize a conference."--Oh, wait...
    • MisterBastahrd 14y ago
      “It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.” -- Eleanor Roosevelt
• eranki 14y ago
  Two points: 1) "Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - Feynman Most smart scientists and engineers I know (not just web programmers) work on their problems due to some combination of: they enjoy the problem, they're scratching their own itch, they get prestige from doing the problem, and they make good money doing it. Even the ones that are working on "important" problems. 2) Sometimes it's hard to see the downstream effects of what we do. By improving ad targeting, maybe Google has enough cash to reinvest in something like self-driving cars, which ends up saving untold numbers of real lives in the future. By spending time on planetary motion (seems pretty useless) in addition to alchemy (eternal youth and unbounded riches? clear winner), Newton has helped solve more "important problems" than anyone could dream to. Summary: The incentives of people that work in science and engineering are generally far from altruistic. We don't really know enough about the impact of the stuff we do to be able to say what's important.
• mscarborough 14y ago
  you're a pretty big crybaby.
• vacri 14y ago
  That's pointless handwringing. Firstly, people in science aren't smarter than people outside. They just have different motivations and a better grasp of the scientific process. Secondly, as always, follow the money. If you want better medical research, the contact your representatives. There's really no other way - there are plenty of scientists, but to do the research, they need to feed, clothe, and house themselves. This means either doing profitable research (like the iphone) or grabbing grant money (which is where your representative comes in). Unless there's a profound shift in grassroots approval of grants for medical research, there's not going to be any real change in how things are done. Until there's more grants for the research in the name of the public good, you'll see the lopsided profit-driven research, simply because it pays its own way.
• chernevik 14y ago
  Well then shut up and go do something better. I'm not sure how to read this as anything but a passive-aggressive complaint that _other_ people aren't doing more about these problems. You try to disqualify yourself from the responsibilities you imply for others, but the fact is we can all be more diligent, if we like, and we can all do work to improve the lives of others. Guess what? If you _seriously_ try to help other people, as opposed to just posing so, it is really, really hard. There are many excellent reasons for this. Chiefly, people are actually very good problem solvers, and are particularly interested in their own problems. So any one who has a _real_ problem, has a problem that is pretty hard, or they would have already solved it themselves. For another you have to fight your way through hordes of posers, who want credit for helping but discover that folks have solved all the easy problems on their own. They don't want to do _real_ work, they want to look good, so they chiefly get in the way and muddy the water. And then you discover that "helping people" has become such a poser cottage industry that simply _meaning_ to help counts, and that saying anything remotely unpleasant is cause for ostracism. 'Cause all these folks have to congratulate one another, and tell one another what a difference they're making, which is all kind of difficult if someone is saying "but does this actually work?" For example, if I explain that it's simpler to tweet a picture than cure diabetes, because tweeting a picture isn't technically that fucking hard but diabetes is a really complicated problem, I'd pop your bubble of woe at how screwed up the world is. The world isn't actually that screwed, and to the extent it is, it has been getting better pretty much daily since 1945. Barring some corners where some major league posers got in charge. If you look at treatment options and outcomes for diabetics I feel pretty sure you'd see a pretty strong and clear progressive improvement. But if the world is getting better then how can you Make A Difference? So what you want to do is complain, and so not having much to complain about is a problem. If you want a real complaint, go out and try to actually help some people. I guarantee you will very quickly acquire some very real complaints. And that voicing them will get you ostracised by the posers. So really, the best thing is to shut up and get to work. Failing that, just shutting up is, under these conditions, not a bad second best at all.
  • raganwald 14y ago
    > shut up No. You can say that all you want, and I defy you. You're welcome to suggest that there is some better use of my time, but there is nothing more chilling to freedom of thought and expression than someone saying "That thought is too rude, too lame, to annoying, cuts too close," or whatever else and therefore cannot be uttered. It's like "Let he is without sin cast the first stone." That's a passive-aggressive way of trying to cut criticism out of society.
• ajdecon 14y ago
  > It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. (warning: rant) Look: if you really want to get into these fields, it's really not that fucking hard. The people working in science are usually not stupid, and there are some geniuses, but they are mostly not ridiculously smart. They're pretty dedicated to their research, but no more than any programmer who enjoys their work enough to stay late on a regular basis. They put in a lot of time and work, but having done both, working in any startup is probably just as much work. Research can be ridiculous amounts of fun, and it can be extremely satisfying. The progress is a lot slower, more incremental, and less visible than releasing a webapp, but if you're working on something you think is important, it still feels great. But the pay isn't great, the work isn't easy, you need to spend a lot of time in school, and academic politics is a pain. And you have to be ok with the fact that your personal impact will probably be small. (The last is the part that puts a lot of people off.) If you don't want to do research directly, there are plenty of places to go where you can help indirectly. I work for a company that builds HPC hardware, and some of our customers are labs big and small. There are lots of companies that write research software, or you can contribute to the many open source projects that support scientists. (Witness the huge scientific Python community.) You did not make bad life choices just because you aren't contributing to "big problems". The world is bigger than science and research, and that's ok. Working on social webapps, because they are more fun and pay more, is ok. But if you're not working on these things, and you're working in startups and tech, it's because you probably don't want to.
• mikeleeorg 14y ago
  I'd like to humbly suggest going into the growing education technology (aka "edtech") field. There are lots of startups here with big ambitions and hiring needs (disclaimer: I'm in an edtech startup). Of course, there are lots of edtech startups that have meager ambitions and meager products too, but many are aspiring to be a part of shifting education. Here's why I suggest something in education. I'm not smart enough to be a medical doctor or theoretical physicist either, but I have the drive to make the world a better place for my children. And if I can't cure cancer myself, if I can improve the education system, maybe I can pave the way for someone else to cure cancer. Maybe I can do that in a scalable way and pave the way for all kinds of brilliant minds. This system has its share of barriers too, of course. A lot of edtech startups are smartly starting with a small, doable solution. But many that I know have the ambition and drive to do much more. There are LOTS of problems in the education system that need solving. If you want a list, email me and I can send you lots. If you go buy an educator a coffee, s/he can give you a laundry list too. The field of education desperately needs people who have the drive and desire to make a change. Change education, and it will have a cascading effect into other fields too.
• InclinedPlane 14y ago
  I think you're being a bit unfair to google, apple, and even, as much as I don't want to say it, ugh, facebook. And I think this comes from trivializing communication. It's easy to focus in on the seemingly least substantive aspects of the work a company does, such as reducing the idea of google into a company trying to pimp out your attention by way of ads. However, even while that's true it's not the whole story. Take youtube for example, as a part of google. It is also quite easy to trivialize of course, but it is rapidly becoming a nexus of communication. It's increasingly becoming the way that artists share their music, for example. And it's also becoming a host to things like first hand journalistic reporting, educational videos, and many forms of entertainment. How much have people's lives been enriched by the music, art, comedy, and scientific knowledge they've experienced through youtube? And even if you restrict the subject to merely google search, how much have people's lives been changed by that as well? How many times has a google search helped someone struggling with a disease learn something or gain access to resources which helped them understand their treatment options or find a better doctor or care facility? How many times has a casual google search resulted in someone learning something important that they didn't know before? That sort of thing can affect someone's entire worldview, it can impact the entirety of the rest of their life. There are things that bother me about the way google, apple, and facebook do business, but I don't think there's anything especially ignoble about their work in general. Much of what they do is to facilitate communication between people. Sometimes the result of communication is banality (e.g. "Check out this bowl of cheerios I made for breakfast, pls RT.") and sometimes it's farce (e.g. Jerry Springer), but sometimes it is the very essence of our civilization in the form of art, science, humor, personal growth, etc. Edit: Also, I don't disagree with your sentiment in general, but I think it's a bit too harsh to paint companies that are having a significant effect on our world as trivial. And I think there are better and more positive ways to motivate people than the standard "you're wasting your life!" diatribe.
• pinaceae 14y ago
  this won't be seen anymore, euro-timezone for the win, but anyway: 1., google did produce google search. i don't think there is a more important product in the last 20 years when it comes to the knowledge of the world. 2., apple's iphone is being used as a platform for health services (to stay in your health example). there are health startups targeting iOS, big pharma as well - patient adherence programs, even diabetes hardware, just look: http://www.bgstar.com/web/ibgstar http://www.bgstar.com/web/ibgstar 3., facebook, twitter facilitate human interaction. see the arab spring, it was not facebook specifically, but the network effect within it helped the people in egypt, etc. to post, share, discuss. 4., even small examples count, just look at BingoCardCreator with it's HN fame. it targets teachers, do you need something more nobler, grandiose than that?
• new299 14y ago
  1. The barrier for entry (education, &c) is higher in medicine and bioinformatics. 2. There are regulatory obstacles for businesses. I'm not sure these really apply to Bioinformatics. Particularly if you're looking at the research market, you don't need FDA approval to write research tools. And a lot of the current problems are not really research problems but "how to I make these tools easy for non-computer people to use". If you look at things like Galaxy and Pipeline pilot, you may get some idea of what I mean. 3. The problems are harder to solve than it may seem to the man in the saloon. So is building twitter, making an iPhone app or anything else. They all may look easier than they might be. But honestly I'd say building and scaling twitter is no easier than building a usable tool for launching Bioinformatics applications (for example). Anyway, if you're actually interested in any of this stuff with respect to Bioinformatics, ping me (new at sgenomics dot org).
• mikle 14y ago
  Hi taganwald, I'm the one who outright called you a hypocrite. I hope you don't take it personally, that's just what I feel reading this. I'm a programmer because that's what I like doing, not because I think that this is the best way I can contribute to the world. To be honest, even your last line doesn't impress me much. I've been told smoking is bad and I never smoked. I've also been told to go to university and work in a stable job. Not all advice from older people is applicable to everyone. I will not regret not being a doctor (or whatever you are advising) because I am happy and the world needs more happy people :)
• karmel 14y ago
  Don't give up yet! I studied linguistics in undergrad; learned to program in order to build websites; spent several years as a software engineer; and then decided I could only complain for so long that no one had cured type 1 diabetes (which I, like Scott Hanselman, suffer from) before putting my best foot forward. I am now getting my PhD in Bioinformatics, knee-deep in immune cells after not having taken a real bio class since middle school. For all of the people in this thread or reading this thread who wish more people would address "big problems"-- I totally agree. So get in there! The problems of biology are indeed fantastically hard to solve, but that's part of what makes them worthwhile. And don't worry-- the natural world is so vast and ill-understood that biologists are very patient as long as you are trying to learn; the good ones recognize that there may be an infinity of things you don't understand, but the things they don't understand sum to infinity minus one, so we're all in the same boat. Cheers, and hope this discussion encourages a few people to pursue the biggest problems they can!
• mw1 14y ago
  Hypocrisy is not always an empty criticism, but you have picked an example that is. Someone who smokes saying "smoking is bad for you" is not a serious hypocrisy -- it could actually be informed wisdom, and they are just stating a fact. Someone in a position of power or influence who smokes on a regular basis, yet would form laws or prosecute/punish others for doing so, is a much better example of when hypocrisy is not at all an empty criticism.