Everyone churning out Tiktok, Clubhouse, and Robinhood while we need more SpaceX and Teslas. I’m unsure how to tilt the equation so solving for hard (necessary) engineering is more profitable (or lower risk) than window dressing.
Tesla sold half a million cars last year. TikTok provided entertainment for a billion people.
I do think people are much happier than they were 20 or even 10 years ago, largely thanks to the increased joy brought by better apps. Can that continue until people are "overwhelmed with the pure bliss of being alive"? No clue, doesn't seem likely, but it's certainly possible.
E.g this study: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/216770261772337...
Suicide rates increasing because of too much bliss?
Once you start scrolling there, it is very difficult to stop, and I have tried it, but I don't think at least for me, it would add any actual value to my life even if I can't stop myself from using the app.
There's other entertainment, that I would think is more healthy, meaningful and can improve you as a person, so any time spent on Tiktok, I think is straying away from that other type of media.
So Tiktok definitely has impact, but I don't see how this impact is more positive as compared to say reading books or similar, which could potentially also provide infinite entertainment, but I also improve your brain
At the end of a workday, a spacex or Tesla employee will likely sit down and watch stupid tiktok videos or Netflix or any number of things the rest of us do (or just sleep).
The point is that we need both these things and they do complement each other.
The way I think of it though, is more about scarcity of talent.
The idea that a really smart human being (a finite quantity) can either help build a better renewable energy system or a better video compression pipeline, that feels more obvious. One is using their talents to help humanity. The other is using their talents to help a company’s bottom line but doesn’t actually add to the pleasure of the audience or the enjoyment of humanity like the actual content does. And the cost of having a slightly less efficient video processing pipeline or subtitles software, is negligible compared to the cost of taking another five years to build better toilets, ways to recycle plastic, or use drones to plant trees.
So it’s less about whether the companies are useful. It’s more about where we most need our best and brightest talents used.
It’s that gross misallocation of talent at places like Facebook, Netflix, and Apple that bothers me.
Maybe the only reason we are spared extermination by some alien enemy is because our videos are so great (I think there is a short story from Philip K. Dick simikar to that).
Although it might be true that we're over-investing in a sort of ultra-sugary sort of consumer goods that are not healthy for society in the long term.
most consumer apps are net negatives that sell digital dopamine hits and studies have shown make people more depressed the more they use them
All of this work doesn't change a single thing. It's more of the same. Tomorrow, it'll be replaced by more of the same. Maybe it'll not be replaced, just added to a growing pile of more of the same.
The space industry has a shot at changing humanities future. So does the aging industry, prosthetics, robotics, ai, fusion and others. It might not work out, but if it does, it'll change something.