8 ms·

First world demons

67 points by robheaton 13y ago

btrautsc 13y ago
The credit, as we know, belongs to the man in the ring but the pity belongs to the First World Objectionist for he is only sheltering from his own fears Agreed. Anytime you bring out something shiny, new, awkward, and full of a mix of excitement & doubt - the arm-chair-quarterbacks will miraculously emerge from the ether. It is their role. HN is still the best place to get feedback on products, and it comes with the pendulum of 'that is the best thing ever" to that is a toy and no one will buy or invest. Know your market. Get the feedback you need and utilize what's valuable.
hawkharris 13y ago
To me the real issue is not that many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs tackle problems such as photo sharing. It's that they do so with an utter lack of humility and awareness for what's going on in the world. If you want to create the next big photo app, that's great. I'll support you, use it and enjoy it. But be modest and don't always insist that you're changing the world on a grand scale.....because when you get paired up with, say, oncologists and Red Cross volunteers, you'll seem kind of silly.
- msglenn 13y ago
  But isn't there a certain lack of humility in attempting to solve a set of problems that you have no insight into because they do not affect you at all? There is nothing wrong with trying to address "third world problems" if you have the skills and background knowledge to actually do something, but if you grew up in a middle class suburb then stick to working on what you know. A lot of the innovations in the first world eventually end up being used and applied to bigger problems anyway.
  - hawkharris 13y ago
    If someone doesn't have the skills necessary to solve so-called third world problems -- or if he or she simply is not interested, that's okay. We should feel free to focus on the challenges that appeal to us. I'm just advocating for a little more humility in the tech industry. We should put our contributions in perspective before asserting (as many tech entrepreneurs do) that we're changing the world and people's lives.
    - mgkimsal 13y ago
      Changing the world? Probably not. Changing the worlds and lives of specific people? Probably yes, and that's OK, but I do understand the perspective that's being called for. I'd met with someone last year and built a quick prototype for his idea. Was thinking of doing an actual partnership with him - I'd initially been impressed with his hustle (which turned out not to be as great as I'd initially thought). I'd indicated that I liked the idea, but it was also essentially a feature than foursquare or yelp could add in an afternoon - I'd prototyped the thing in a couple days - what was needed was sales execution on the street to make it happen. With that in mind, I'd asked him what he'd do if, for example, yelp offered a small buyout (say, $2m). "Oh no, I wouldn't sell - this will change the world - this will replace Facebook in the next 5 years - I wouldn't sell for $50m". With that, we parted ways. Even if his idea is right - and honestly, I think it will likely come to pass - he/we aren't in a position to take down Facebook, and a small cashout deal would put him in a much better situation to tackle his other ideas. The idea will happen, I'm pretty sure, but not in the way he sees it happening.
      - jpadkins 13y ago
        I disagree to a bit. You need people who really believe that they are going to take down myspace (or friendster...) even if they are irrational. Was there any serious, rational reason why any engineer would believe facebook would grow like it did when it was first started? I think you need to suspend disbelief if you are going to be part of something game-changing (although I have never been a part of it, so I could be wrong).
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    Okay - there are a lot of First World Problems too left solve. Like - drop in replacement system for the flywheel of a car consisting of electrical engine with recuperation braking system backed by supercapacitors (batteries are expensive) you could turn any car in de facto hybrid for a fraction of the cost and it could be used on the current fleet that will be in commission for a long time to come. Heat pump that cools tank of water at night to 4 degrees and pumps up the cold back into the build which would make air conditioning at summer much less straining on the grid and cheaper to operate. There a lot of inefficiencies in out energy production and consumption system that could be eliminated by some engineering ingenuity and sufficiently smart software.
    - tocomment 13y ago
      Those are great ideas! I'd be up for working on those. So you're actually thinking to replace the flywheel of an engine instead of refitting the brakes? (I'll put my heatpump comment in a separate comment)
      - tocomment 13y ago
        Actually what about putting in a bigger alternator and stronger belts and having it charge some super capacitors? That's already connected to the engine through a belt so whenever you use engine braking you could also be partially charging. Can the alternator run in reverse though and provide energy to the engine/drive train?
        tocomment 13y ago
        Wow, funny, that's actually how hybrids do work! "Hybrid automobiles replace the separate alternator and starter motor with one or more combined motor/generator(s) (M/Gs) that start the internal combustion engine, provide some or all of the mechanical power to the wheels, and charge a large storage battery. When more than one M/G is present, as in the Hybrid Synergy Drive used in the Toyota Prius and others, one may operate as a generator and feed the other as a motor, providing an electromechanical path for some of the engine power to flow to the wheels. These motor/generators have considerably more powerful electronic devices for their control than the automotive alternator described above." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternator
exratione 13y ago
Nonetheless, I think it's important not to lose touch with the fact that some things are more important than others. It's necessary for an entrepreneur to think that what he or she is doing is important, but one can take that too far. It's not as though the entrepreneurs are on their own in this, anyway. There is always far more money and attention for things that are not important in comparison to those that are. Playing games versus medical research, for example. Political campaign funding versus medical research. Pretty much anything in the mainstream of culture versus medical research. In general we are the species that fritters away our opportunities for significance, with odd exceptions here and there. Entrepreneurs are just like everyone else in this respect.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  If all you do is tackle big problems, what do you do when you ron out of problems? Someone has to provide a welcoming world for the ones whose problems have been solved.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    Since it's too late to edit, that should be "run out of problems" -- HN's text edit box does not work well with the stock browser on my phone.
schrijver 13y ago
Teju Cole argues against the expression ‘First World problems’ more convincingly: > I don't like this expression "First World problems." It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn't disappear just because you're black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here's a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are. > One event that illustrated the gap between the Africa of conjecture and the real Africa was the BlackBerry outage of a few weeks ago. Who would have thought Research In Motion's technical issues would cause so much annoyance and inconvenience in a place like Lagos? But of course it did, because people don't wake up with "poor African" pasted on their foreheads. They live as citizens of the modern world. None of this is to deny the existence of social stratification and elite structures here. There are lifestyles of the rich and famous, sure. But the interesting thing about modern technology is how socially mobile it is--quite literally. Everyone in Lagos has a phone. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/whats-wrong-with-firstworldproblems/248829/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/whats-...
- jumblesale 13y ago
  Really excellent points. Also it's worth considering that most of the people providing these solutions are not equipped with the expertise or experience to tackle 'third world problems' like floods or infant mortality. No amount of AngularJS or Clojure can solve these issues. However photo sharing is a domain that is approachable and there are obvious financial incentives to do so.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
"Why should it bother anyone that someone should build another photo sharing service? Is it really such an offensive thing to do?" When the money for building this another photo service comes from the people, through money printing by central bankers, then , yes it could be offensive. In USA, Japan and Europe money for banks and big institutions like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or Apple is free, as they could get money at near 0% interest with real inflation way over 3%. No problem with "yet another whatever" that really makes profit by itself, and is necessary, but a real problem with a new multi billionaire acqui-hire that never returns what it extracts from society and when the show is over makes everyone to pay for it, creating misery for all in the process.
onli 13y ago
The "he is criticizing it because he fears it for himself" theory is of course an oversimplification. But sometimes it is true. And even if it is not true, it is a great strategy to make someone stop with the criticing, which i used quite a few times when I got sick of homophobic jokes. And there is an other argument for doing it anyway, even though it looks much less important than curing illnesses or stuff like that: We live our lifes in a specific way. The way we live it, we generate expertise. I know nothing about illnesses or development work, I would have to start at zero. But I know how to build a computer together with the parts on the market, and I think I know how to select the best ones, so I can build a hardware recommender. Same thing for other people with foto sharing apps and so on. Working there where we have a clue is not arrogant and mindless, often times it is smart.
SCdF 13y ago
"my assumption is that whatever they hate is simply the same thing they fear in themselves." Hold on. It's late where I am, I'm tired, and this might be me performing some kind of logically fallacy but: are you saying that if I hate Paris Hilton I'm actually internally scared of being an airhead who gets far more publicity than she deserves? I think saying "what you're doing is stupid because X" is pointless, navel-focused and unproductive, though not necessarily even remotely wrong. Here's what I'd like: I'd like instead for a discussion to take place on exactly what areas we can write code in that changes the world in a useful and laudable way. The medical imaging example is sort of interesting, because I've worked on hospital software before and the biggest challenge has nothing to do with writing code, it has to do with politics and money. I've occasionally thought of apps that you could build and run in a hospital (watch HL7 traffic and send alerts when probable bad things happen, e.g. patients get prescribed too much drugs / odd medications), but again: writing the code is not the hard part, getting it into hospitals is. I'd like to know what problems I can help solve now, where the main problem is actually writing code.
- petenixey 13y ago
  Interesting example. I kind of wonder why you would hate her. She may be a irritating but she hasn't killed anyone, stolen anything or brought down any banks. However, if you value intelligence, meritocratic success and substance over style then the fact that Paris apparently represents the opposite of those things is bound to be unpleasant. Is it really her that's so distasteful though or the fact that people seem to like her for it. If it's the latter then she's bound to be unpleasant by association. On a different note I think idea that Paris is an airhead is probably misguided. Being a billionaire heiress will only fly for so long before the press lose interest and like Kim K she's been an extraordinarily savvy girl in keeping the ball rolling.
- bilbo0s 13y ago
  Medical and molecular imaging code is, hands down, the hardest code I have ever written. Because you have to guarantee it's correctness. Obviously HL7 is trivial... but I don't think that's what the guy was talking about. He was talking about the hard stuff.
- 13y ago
Nursie 13y ago
"The First World Problem objection is a classic of these. Why should it bother anyone that someone should build another photo sharing service? Is it really such an offensive thing to do?" That depends. Is it accompanied by a statement saying "Look at our cool photo app!" or is it accompanied by a statement saying "Look at us, with this photo sharing app we're going to change the world!" 'cos that latter one gets annoying...
squozzer 13y ago
I get his rant. But most of the "real" problems at least on the surface require huge amounts of resources, if they are even solvable. For instance, world hunger. We seem to produce more food per unit land area each year yet people still go hungry. I'm sure the explanations given are all valid, but more importantly solving them requires near-global consensus for which no incentives seem to exist. Example 1 -- food market speculation. How many in the West care if millions go hungry when there's money to be made? Example 2 -- continued breeding by the poor. Many in the West are opposed to any form of birth control except "God's will." Having tilted at a few windmills in my day, I can see why people would give up trying to solve "moon shot" level problems in favor of something achievable (and with any luck, sinfully profitable) in their lifetime.
rayiner 13y ago
Ever see the episode of South Park where San Francisco is overrun with smug? You think Trey Parker is secretly just afraid that he loves to smell his own farts? I mean this is textbook logical fallacy. Just because some groups of people react to internal fear (e.g. Homophobes) by lashing out against those that have the characteristics they fear they have, does not mean that any time people are critical of other people its because they harbor secret fears. The problem isn't that people individually are making photosharing sites. That's way cooler than 90% what people do. But so is being an advertising exec like Don Draper in Mad Men. Very cool job that many people would love to have. But Don Draper doesn't tell himself every morning that he's changing the world. This is of course something you see on Wall Street too. "I'm changing the world by securitizing these income streams." And how do tech folks react to that? Also, people love to complain, about everything. Try writing a new GUI toolkit and prepare yourself for the barage of complaints from people asking why you didn't just contribute to GTK.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Unless that is, you’re in a job you don’t enjoy and the reason you’ve coached yourself not to leave it is that you haven’t found anything “worthy enough” to start yourself. No, the problem is money. Good ideas are not that rare. "Worthy" ideas are not that rare. The money to implement them is almost impossible to come by, whether you're in a corporation or raising on the outside. Free-floating capital is not actually that rare. Talent is not that rare, "talent shortage" whinging aside. The problem is a bilateral and cataclysmic distrust between both sides. Money doesn't trust Talent not to steal so it injects a bunch of useless management that makes Talent impossible to unlock. Talent doesn't trust Money not to be stupid and develops a deep, smoldering cynicism that the rest of the world misperceives as obnoxious entitlement. The problem is that any idiot can raise money for something any idiot can do. On the other hand, if you try to convince someone to pay you, even at the level of mere salary money to do something worthwhile, you get a lot of questions because not everyone can do those useful things. You get: why you? Which is actually a valid question, even if mildly insulting, because things that are worthwhile are hard. We end up all working for the smooth-talkers selling trivial ideas because they've been overriding the "why you?" objections since college, when it involved booze and women with low self-esteem and, by age 30, they're very practiced at overcoming, for example, "last minute resistance" (LMR). So when they see LMR in investors, they know what to do, and we don't.
- gizmo 13y ago
  I notice most of your posts lately have a very negative tone. I don't think the negativity is really justified, given how many opportunities there are for programmers. Life isn't just good for programmers, it's also getting better every day. We are probably living in the golden age of internet startups, where small 3 man shops can effectively compete with large enterprises. This won't be true forever, but it's true today. If you don't have any money (and let's face it, most of us don't), you can still start a startup. You can work on your project in evenings and nights. Or you save money and quit your job for 8 months or so. Or you can work part time on your startup and do part-time contracting work on the side. Starting a software startup is so much easier than opening a bar or a restaurant or a jeans shop it's not even funny. People put their life savings in ordinary businesses like these every day, and more often than not they get utterly crushed by reality. A restaurant without customers can't afford to keep the doors open for long. Buying a 30k kitchen and hiring 5 people before the first customer has walked through the door is scary. We programmers in contrast can just pivot until we find something people are willing to pay for. We can build half a product and use server analytics to figure out which direction is best. We have unique insights in our users and customers and the press loves to write about anything that involves startups. There are so many things subtly working in our favor! Doing a startup isn't easy. But nobody is entitled to an easy road to guaranteed riches. But doing a startup is possible even if you're broke, don't have any connections and are only a mediocre programmer or business person. Of course the VC money game is rigged to an extent. So what. If you have traction you have leverage and if you have leverage you'll still get a good deal. And if you have paying customers you may not even need VC money. These are, in the big scheme of things, not things to get terribly upset about.
ruswick 13y ago
His argument regarding the way in which we develop "demons" is incoherent. Negative emotions are not just the product of disdain or fear of our own actions. Just because one thinks murder is abhorrent does not mean that they are secretly harboring a desire to commit murder. He never defends this claim, and merely asserts that, because people are displeased with the abundance of companies solving trivial problems, we must be afraid of entrepreneurship. How does he reconcile this with people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, whom most people venerate. Did they not work exceptionally hard and face hardship that most of us couldn't bear? If the impetus for our dislike was really a fear of the toils of entrepreneurship, we wouldn't venerate any hard-working entrepreneurs like Elon and Steve. If anything, we'd dislike them more because they have faced more adversity than the photo-sharing apps. No one dislikes these companies because they fear work. They dislike these companies because they are trivial, and there are too many exigent problems in the world to make another Pinterest clone.
Eliezer 13y ago
Hi. This is Eliezer Yudkowsky. I work at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute on reflective decision theory for eventually building stable self-modifying AIs. I do this because I think it's literally the most important problem in the world. I do not have issues with a dead-end job or think that I haven't found anything worthy of leaving it. I wish entrepreneurs would stop working on First World Problems. I think a planet that raises its best and brightest to dream of building the next Instagram is on its way to doom. Thereby your psychological hypothesis is shown, by this clear counterexample, to be factually false as a generalization about a necessary cause of worrying about "First World Solutions"; or to put it another way, someone already working on an important problem would arrive at the same worry for much the same reason that others say they are worried. With that out of the way, I remark that it furthermore constitutes a fallacy of ad hominem / poisoning the well.
- angersock 13y ago
  What's reflective decision theory, and why should I fund it? :)
- revorad 13y ago
  Hi Eliezer, what are your thoughts on people not as smart as you, working on lesser problems with the aim of donating heaps of money to fund your work?
- saucetenuto 13y ago
  That's a pretty unfair standard; no psychological statement is true of literally all humanity, and only someone very naive would try to generalize that broadly. I don't know the author at all, but I'm willing to give them that much credit. Let me try to reframe his point in a way you might find more palatable. When you feel anger, it's an opportunity to learn something about yourself--an opportunity that most people ignore. You'll always feel like you have a good immediate reason to be angry because that's how emotion works, but those explanations are often retroactive and superficial; they don't point toward a change in the world that would make your anger go away. Projection one such failure mode, and a very common; so common, in fact, that many people would do well to check themselves for it every single time they feel anger. The author illustrates his point with a concrete example. Perhaps none of this is useful to you personally. That's fine. But you aren't representative.
cust_support 13y ago
Wait. Why did anyone continue reading that post after the thoroughly inaccurate description of Chris Cooper's character? The character is not homophobic: he is driven to murder by the shame and guilt of his repressed homosexuality. The character is acting in a manner that he believes to be more acceptable, either socially/collectively or personally, than embracing his own desires. If you want an analogy, that is the analogy: it is more acceptable to focus on first-world problems in our culture than to focus on second-, or third-world problems. Repressing a desire to build things that enhance the lives of those who are less fortunate drives some people mad.
gems 13y ago
I don't find it offensive, I just find it troubling. The talent can be used more effectively in other areas. This bothers others at varying degrees. I don't believe this has anything to do with my own fears. I still admit that that psychological effect is real. I'm sure it's true for many circumstances. I just don't think it's applicable to this case.

67 points by robheaton 13y ago

The credit, as we know, belongs to the man in the ring but the pity belongs to the First World Objectionist for he is only sheltering from his own fears Agreed. Anytime you bring out something shiny, new, awkward, and full of a mix of excitement & doubt - the arm-chair-quarterbacks will miraculously emerge from the ether. It is their role. HN is still the best place to get feedback on products, and it comes with the pendulum of 'that is the best thing ever" to that is a toy and no one will buy or invest. Know your market. Get the feedback you need and utilize what's valuable.

hawkharris 13y ago

To me the real issue is not that many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs tackle problems such as photo sharing. It's that they do so with an utter lack of humility and awareness for what's going on in the world. If you want to create the next big photo app, that's great. I'll support you, use it and enjoy it. But be modest and don't always insist that you're changing the world on a grand scale.....because when you get paired up with, say, oncologists and Red Cross volunteers, you'll seem kind of silly.

msglenn 13y ago
But isn't there a certain lack of humility in attempting to solve a set of problems that you have no insight into because they do not affect you at all? There is nothing wrong with trying to address "third world problems" if you have the skills and background knowledge to actually do something, but if you grew up in a middle class suburb then stick to working on what you know. A lot of the innovations in the first world eventually end up being used and applied to bigger problems anyway.
- hawkharris 13y ago
  If someone doesn't have the skills necessary to solve so-called third world problems -- or if he or she simply is not interested, that's okay. We should feel free to focus on the challenges that appeal to us. I'm just advocating for a little more humility in the tech industry. We should put our contributions in perspective before asserting (as many tech entrepreneurs do) that we're changing the world and people's lives.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    Changing the world? Probably not. Changing the worlds and lives of specific people? Probably yes, and that's OK, but I do understand the perspective that's being called for. I'd met with someone last year and built a quick prototype for his idea. Was thinking of doing an actual partnership with him - I'd initially been impressed with his hustle (which turned out not to be as great as I'd initially thought). I'd indicated that I liked the idea, but it was also essentially a feature than foursquare or yelp could add in an afternoon - I'd prototyped the thing in a couple days - what was needed was sales execution on the street to make it happen. With that in mind, I'd asked him what he'd do if, for example, yelp offered a small buyout (say, $2m). "Oh no, I wouldn't sell - this will change the world - this will replace Facebook in the next 5 years - I wouldn't sell for $50m". With that, we parted ways. Even if his idea is right - and honestly, I think it will likely come to pass - he/we aren't in a position to take down Facebook, and a small cashout deal would put him in a much better situation to tackle his other ideas. The idea will happen, I'm pretty sure, but not in the way he sees it happening.
    - jpadkins 13y ago
      I disagree to a bit. You need people who really believe that they are going to take down myspace (or friendster...) even if they are irrational. Was there any serious, rational reason why any engineer would believe facebook would grow like it did when it was first started? I think you need to suspend disbelief if you are going to be part of something game-changing (although I have never been a part of it, so I could be wrong).
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Okay - there are a lot of First World Problems too left solve. Like - drop in replacement system for the flywheel of a car consisting of electrical engine with recuperation braking system backed by supercapacitors (batteries are expensive) you could turn any car in de facto hybrid for a fraction of the cost and it could be used on the current fleet that will be in commission for a long time to come. Heat pump that cools tank of water at night to 4 degrees and pumps up the cold back into the build which would make air conditioning at summer much less straining on the grid and cheaper to operate. There a lot of inefficiencies in out energy production and consumption system that could be eliminated by some engineering ingenuity and sufficiently smart software.
  - tocomment 13y ago
    Those are great ideas! I'd be up for working on those. So you're actually thinking to replace the flywheel of an engine instead of refitting the brakes? (I'll put my heatpump comment in a separate comment)
    - tocomment 13y ago
      Actually what about putting in a bigger alternator and stronger belts and having it charge some super capacitors? That's already connected to the engine through a belt so whenever you use engine braking you could also be partially charging. Can the alternator run in reverse though and provide energy to the engine/drive train?
      - tocomment 13y ago
        Wow, funny, that's actually how hybrids do work! "Hybrid automobiles replace the separate alternator and starter motor with one or more combined motor/generator(s) (M/Gs) that start the internal combustion engine, provide some or all of the mechanical power to the wheels, and charge a large storage battery. When more than one M/G is present, as in the Hybrid Synergy Drive used in the Toyota Prius and others, one may operate as a generator and feed the other as a motor, providing an electromechanical path for some of the engine power to flow to the wheels. These motor/generators have considerably more powerful electronic devices for their control than the automotive alternator described above." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternator

exratione 13y ago

Nonetheless, I think it's important not to lose touch with the fact that some things are more important than others. It's necessary for an entrepreneur to think that what he or she is doing is important, but one can take that too far. It's not as though the entrepreneurs are on their own in this, anyway. There is always far more money and attention for things that are not important in comparison to those that are. Playing games versus medical research, for example. Political campaign funding versus medical research. Pretty much anything in the mainstream of culture versus medical research. In general we are the species that fritters away our opportunities for significance, with odd exceptions here and there. Entrepreneurs are just like everyone else in this respect.

nitrogen 13y ago
If all you do is tackle big problems, what do you do when you ron out of problems? Someone has to provide a welcoming world for the ones whose problems have been solved.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Since it's too late to edit, that should be "run out of problems" -- HN's text edit box does not work well with the stock browser on my phone.

schrijver 13y ago

Teju Cole argues against the expression ‘First World problems’ more convincingly: > I don't like this expression "First World problems." It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn't disappear just because you're black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here's a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are. > One event that illustrated the gap between the Africa of conjecture and the real Africa was the BlackBerry outage of a few weeks ago. Who would have thought Research In Motion's technical issues would cause so much annoyance and inconvenience in a place like Lagos? But of course it did, because people don't wake up with "poor African" pasted on their foreheads. They live as citizens of the modern world. None of this is to deny the existence of social stratification and elite structures here. There are lifestyles of the rich and famous, sure. But the interesting thing about modern technology is how socially mobile it is--quite literally. Everyone in Lagos has a phone. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/whats-wrong-with-firstworldproblems/248829/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/whats-...

jumblesale 13y ago
Really excellent points. Also it's worth considering that most of the people providing these solutions are not equipped with the expertise or experience to tackle 'third world problems' like floods or infant mortality. No amount of AngularJS or Clojure can solve these issues. However photo sharing is a domain that is approachable and there are obvious financial incentives to do so.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

"Why should it bother anyone that someone should build another photo sharing service? Is it really such an offensive thing to do?" When the money for building this another photo service comes from the people, through money printing by central bankers, then , yes it could be offensive. In USA, Japan and Europe money for banks and big institutions like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or Apple is free, as they could get money at near 0% interest with real inflation way over 3%. No problem with "yet another whatever" that really makes profit by itself, and is necessary, but a real problem with a new multi billionaire acqui-hire that never returns what it extracts from society and when the show is over makes everyone to pay for it, creating misery for all in the process.

onli 13y ago

The "he is criticizing it because he fears it for himself" theory is of course an oversimplification. But sometimes it is true. And even if it is not true, it is a great strategy to make someone stop with the criticing, which i used quite a few times when I got sick of homophobic jokes. And there is an other argument for doing it anyway, even though it looks much less important than curing illnesses or stuff like that: We live our lifes in a specific way. The way we live it, we generate expertise. I know nothing about illnesses or development work, I would have to start at zero. But I know how to build a computer together with the parts on the market, and I think I know how to select the best ones, so I can build a hardware recommender. Same thing for other people with foto sharing apps and so on. Working there where we have a clue is not arrogant and mindless, often times it is smart.

SCdF 13y ago

"my assumption is that whatever they hate is simply the same thing they fear in themselves." Hold on. It's late where I am, I'm tired, and this might be me performing some kind of logically fallacy but: are you saying that if I hate Paris Hilton I'm actually internally scared of being an airhead who gets far more publicity than she deserves? I think saying "what you're doing is stupid because X" is pointless, navel-focused and unproductive, though not necessarily even remotely wrong. Here's what I'd like: I'd like instead for a discussion to take place on exactly what areas we can write code in that changes the world in a useful and laudable way. The medical imaging example is sort of interesting, because I've worked on hospital software before and the biggest challenge has nothing to do with writing code, it has to do with politics and money. I've occasionally thought of apps that you could build and run in a hospital (watch HL7 traffic and send alerts when probable bad things happen, e.g. patients get prescribed too much drugs / odd medications), but again: writing the code is not the hard part, getting it into hospitals is. I'd like to know what problems I can help solve now, where the main problem is actually writing code.

petenixey 13y ago
Interesting example. I kind of wonder why you would hate her. She may be a irritating but she hasn't killed anyone, stolen anything or brought down any banks. However, if you value intelligence, meritocratic success and substance over style then the fact that Paris apparently represents the opposite of those things is bound to be unpleasant. Is it really her that's so distasteful though or the fact that people seem to like her for it. If it's the latter then she's bound to be unpleasant by association. On a different note I think idea that Paris is an airhead is probably misguided. Being a billionaire heiress will only fly for so long before the press lose interest and like Kim K she's been an extraordinarily savvy girl in keeping the ball rolling.
bilbo0s 13y ago
Medical and molecular imaging code is, hands down, the hardest code I have ever written. Because you have to guarantee it's correctness. Obviously HL7 is trivial... but I don't think that's what the guy was talking about. He was talking about the hard stuff.
13y ago

Nursie 13y ago

"The First World Problem objection is a classic of these. Why should it bother anyone that someone should build another photo sharing service? Is it really such an offensive thing to do?" That depends. Is it accompanied by a statement saying "Look at our cool photo app!" or is it accompanied by a statement saying "Look at us, with this photo sharing app we're going to change the world!" 'cos that latter one gets annoying...

squozzer 13y ago

I get his rant. But most of the "real" problems at least on the surface require huge amounts of resources, if they are even solvable. For instance, world hunger. We seem to produce more food per unit land area each year yet people still go hungry. I'm sure the explanations given are all valid, but more importantly solving them requires near-global consensus for which no incentives seem to exist. Example 1 -- food market speculation. How many in the West care if millions go hungry when there's money to be made? Example 2 -- continued breeding by the poor. Many in the West are opposed to any form of birth control except "God's will." Having tilted at a few windmills in my day, I can see why people would give up trying to solve "moon shot" level problems in favor of something achievable (and with any luck, sinfully profitable) in their lifetime.

rayiner 13y ago

Ever see the episode of South Park where San Francisco is overrun with smug? You think Trey Parker is secretly just afraid that he loves to smell his own farts? I mean this is textbook logical fallacy. Just because some groups of people react to internal fear (e.g. Homophobes) by lashing out against those that have the characteristics they fear they have, does not mean that any time people are critical of other people its because they harbor secret fears. The problem isn't that people individually are making photosharing sites. That's way cooler than 90% what people do. But so is being an advertising exec like Don Draper in Mad Men. Very cool job that many people would love to have. But Don Draper doesn't tell himself every morning that he's changing the world. This is of course something you see on Wall Street too. "I'm changing the world by securitizing these income streams." And how do tech folks react to that? Also, people love to complain, about everything. Try writing a new GUI toolkit and prepare yourself for the barage of complaints from people asking why you didn't just contribute to GTK.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Unless that is, you’re in a job you don’t enjoy and the reason you’ve coached yourself not to leave it is that you haven’t found anything “worthy enough” to start yourself. No, the problem is money. Good ideas are not that rare. "Worthy" ideas are not that rare. The money to implement them is almost impossible to come by, whether you're in a corporation or raising on the outside. Free-floating capital is not actually that rare. Talent is not that rare, "talent shortage" whinging aside. The problem is a bilateral and cataclysmic distrust between both sides. Money doesn't trust Talent not to steal so it injects a bunch of useless management that makes Talent impossible to unlock. Talent doesn't trust Money not to be stupid and develops a deep, smoldering cynicism that the rest of the world misperceives as obnoxious entitlement. The problem is that any idiot can raise money for something any idiot can do. On the other hand, if you try to convince someone to pay you, even at the level of mere salary money to do something worthwhile, you get a lot of questions because not everyone can do those useful things. You get: why you? Which is actually a valid question, even if mildly insulting, because things that are worthwhile are hard. We end up all working for the smooth-talkers selling trivial ideas because they've been overriding the "why you?" objections since college, when it involved booze and women with low self-esteem and, by age 30, they're very practiced at overcoming, for example, "last minute resistance" (LMR). So when they see LMR in investors, they know what to do, and we don't.

gizmo 13y ago
I notice most of your posts lately have a very negative tone. I don't think the negativity is really justified, given how many opportunities there are for programmers. Life isn't just good for programmers, it's also getting better every day. We are probably living in the golden age of internet startups, where small 3 man shops can effectively compete with large enterprises. This won't be true forever, but it's true today. If you don't have any money (and let's face it, most of us don't), you can still start a startup. You can work on your project in evenings and nights. Or you save money and quit your job for 8 months or so. Or you can work part time on your startup and do part-time contracting work on the side. Starting a software startup is so much easier than opening a bar or a restaurant or a jeans shop it's not even funny. People put their life savings in ordinary businesses like these every day, and more often than not they get utterly crushed by reality. A restaurant without customers can't afford to keep the doors open for long. Buying a 30k kitchen and hiring 5 people before the first customer has walked through the door is scary. We programmers in contrast can just pivot until we find something people are willing to pay for. We can build half a product and use server analytics to figure out which direction is best. We have unique insights in our users and customers and the press loves to write about anything that involves startups. There are so many things subtly working in our favor! Doing a startup isn't easy. But nobody is entitled to an easy road to guaranteed riches. But doing a startup is possible even if you're broke, don't have any connections and are only a mediocre programmer or business person. Of course the VC money game is rigged to an extent. So what. If you have traction you have leverage and if you have leverage you'll still get a good deal. And if you have paying customers you may not even need VC money. These are, in the big scheme of things, not things to get terribly upset about.

ruswick 13y ago

His argument regarding the way in which we develop "demons" is incoherent. Negative emotions are not just the product of disdain or fear of our own actions. Just because one thinks murder is abhorrent does not mean that they are secretly harboring a desire to commit murder. He never defends this claim, and merely asserts that, because people are displeased with the abundance of companies solving trivial problems, we must be afraid of entrepreneurship. How does he reconcile this with people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, whom most people venerate. Did they not work exceptionally hard and face hardship that most of us couldn't bear? If the impetus for our dislike was really a fear of the toils of entrepreneurship, we wouldn't venerate any hard-working entrepreneurs like Elon and Steve. If anything, we'd dislike them more because they have faced more adversity than the photo-sharing apps. No one dislikes these companies because they fear work. They dislike these companies because they are trivial, and there are too many exigent problems in the world to make another Pinterest clone.

Eliezer 13y ago

Hi. This is Eliezer Yudkowsky. I work at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute on reflective decision theory for eventually building stable self-modifying AIs. I do this because I think it's literally the most important problem in the world. I do not have issues with a dead-end job or think that I haven't found anything worthy of leaving it. I wish entrepreneurs would stop working on First World Problems. I think a planet that raises its best and brightest to dream of building the next Instagram is on its way to doom. Thereby your psychological hypothesis is shown, by this clear counterexample, to be factually false as a generalization about a necessary cause of worrying about "First World Solutions"; or to put it another way, someone already working on an important problem would arrive at the same worry for much the same reason that others say they are worried. With that out of the way, I remark that it furthermore constitutes a fallacy of ad hominem / poisoning the well.

angersock 13y ago
What's reflective decision theory, and why should I fund it? :)
revorad 13y ago
Hi Eliezer, what are your thoughts on people not as smart as you, working on lesser problems with the aim of donating heaps of money to fund your work?
saucetenuto 13y ago
That's a pretty unfair standard; no psychological statement is true of literally all humanity, and only someone very naive would try to generalize that broadly. I don't know the author at all, but I'm willing to give them that much credit. Let me try to reframe his point in a way you might find more palatable. When you feel anger, it's an opportunity to learn something about yourself--an opportunity that most people ignore. You'll always feel like you have a good immediate reason to be angry because that's how emotion works, but those explanations are often retroactive and superficial; they don't point toward a change in the world that would make your anger go away. Projection one such failure mode, and a very common; so common, in fact, that many people would do well to check themselves for it every single time they feel anger. The author illustrates his point with a concrete example. Perhaps none of this is useful to you personally. That's fine. But you aren't representative.

cust_support 13y ago

Wait. Why did anyone continue reading that post after the thoroughly inaccurate description of Chris Cooper's character? The character is not homophobic: he is driven to murder by the shame and guilt of his repressed homosexuality. The character is acting in a manner that he believes to be more acceptable, either socially/collectively or personally, than embracing his own desires. If you want an analogy, that is the analogy: it is more acceptable to focus on first-world problems in our culture than to focus on second-, or third-world problems. Repressing a desire to build things that enhance the lives of those who are less fortunate drives some people mad.

gems 13y ago

I don't find it offensive, I just find it troubling. The talent can be used more effectively in other areas. This bothers others at varying degrees. I don't believe this has anything to do with my own fears. I still admit that that psychological effect is real. I'm sure it's true for many circumstances. I just don't think it's applicable to this case.