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Comment by benihana | Hacker News Reader

Oh goodie, another arrogant whine by raganwald where he can't understand why the greatest minds (implying people writing code are somehow the greatest minds) aren't doing what he thinks is important.

This post makes two incorrect assumptions. First, that the things he derides (Google automating targeted content, Facebook introducing new search features that are tangential to their current features, Apple changing form factors) aren't beneficial to society as a whole. Second, that problems he would like to see solved are more important than problems other people would like to see solved.

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This post makes a third incorrect assumption too. That the "greatest minds of our generation" work at Google, Facebook and Apple.

I could be mistaken, but I think that line is a reference to an interview with Jeff Hammerbacher:

Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks."

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b42250609...

Which, I hope not coincidentally, echoes Allen Ginsberg's Howl.

It strikes me as a self-contradictory statement. If these minds are so great, why are they working on such mundane things? There's more to this equation than raw intelligence. Being one of the "best minds" also requires experience, drive, and the wisdom to apply one's talents usefully.

And that's been discussed here earlier today:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5087065

However, I would be willing to forgive even the best minds for taking a high paying job with good benefits at Google or Facebook. These are hard decisions to make, and a hard world to live in with ideals.

That being said, I'd rather the energy and treasure of our society go towards things other than consumerism.

It's also a reference to the opening line of Howl, of course: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179381

I don't know if that's what Jeff intended or not, but a lot of readers are going to have a strong association with the phrase "the best minds of my generation."

Perhaps the most laughable assumption of all.

It also assumes those terrible choices aren't stepping stones, enabling these great minds to undertake the meaningful work Raganwald demands, once they have acquired more capabilities and capital.

Stepping stones akin to Elon Musk and Paypal. He's now commercializing the electric car (Tesla Motors), running a solar company (SolarCity) and the most grandiose, SpaceX.

Well, it's worth noting that Musk claims that PayPal was also a major move to improve the world, and I think the claim is credible. And before that he did Zip2, which is about as impactful as Google. Which, btw, is fucking impactful.

To attract new blood, it's a useful myth to perpetuate. Repeat the mantra enough times and people start believing it.

Reminds me of investment bankers who thought that shuffling pieces of paper made them 'Masters of the Universe'.

I would hope it's uncontroversial that saving people's lives, health and sanity is categorically more important than making money or trivial social interaction.

And yet, if Google didn't make money, we wouldn't have such a great search engine to use. Think about how much Google has helped scientific research, both for academics and ordinary people.

Clicking ads is literally what supports Google.

I think the point is that there are many people who work on the clicking ads part, arguable moreso than the search part.

I understand that the NYT needs a paywall and ad networks to survive, I just hope that most of the staff spends their time on the journalism, not on the ad network.

I think the incorrect assumption raganwald makes is that the greatest minds aren't trying to solve these problems. You're not going to hear about massive successes in these fields nearly as often because the problems are hugely complex and very difficult to solve.

Yeah, I think the invention of synthetic insulin was probably more significant, and difficult, than yet another search engine, or yet another email client or yet another ad platform, even if the latter were improvements.

Also, isn't google pretty much a normal corporation at this point in terms of employee expectations and salary?

Is that really true? I imagine a world in which people never drove to see friends or acquaintances would be a world with fewer fatal car crashes, but I don't think it's a world I would prefer to the one I live in.

Thus making another assumption that social interactions on Facebook, Twitter, etc. are 'trivial'.

When you save those people's lives, health, and sanity, what are they going to do with themselves? "trivial" social interactions. Facebook alone has been brought indescribable joy to thousands of grandmas.

Funny you should mention grandmas. In the words of mine: "I hate that facebook thing. Nobody calls me any more."

Not to mention the assumption that developers working for Google or Facebook would make good bio-medical engineers.

This.

I am a chemistry grad student. There are tons of absolutely brilliant people doing hardcore science all over the globe. You just don't hear about them. Even top researchers in a field are only known by some hundred other researchers who do related work.

There are many fallacies with the argument that the greatest minds are at the googleplex. Google does hire some smart people and probably engineer for engineer, they probably stack up better than the averages across the US.

But, great people do great things. They don't necessarily work at google. And they don't necessarily advertise.

Who are the people that wrote the software that put the Mars Rover on Mars? What about the people that work on reddit? I am using Ubuntu12. What about the work that went into that?

I'm sorry but I don't see how reddit fits into this equation. It's laughable to compare the work that went into building Curiosity or Ubuntu with reddit.

Worth noting that Reddit doesn't have terribly many employees, so it can't represent too much waste even if all its employees were Nobelists. And given that Swartz was able to do so much after leaving Reddit, can we say that Reddit was a waste - even if we ignore the benefits to its actual users and all the enabled communities?

OK, I see your point. I had a hard time quickly coming up with important works of software engineering.

I guess I kind of stepped over my own argument. The post was about google ads, why is that important? Then I mention reddit.

As a type one diabetic, I wholeheartedly agree that bloodsugar management is more important than the next social thing. I think what raganwald is saying (IMO) is that the "problems" these "minds" are solving are not really problems at all. Agree or disagree, I think that's what is being said.

What does bloodsugar management entail though? Just mapping/graphing bloodsugar measurements vs. insulin injections? Is the missing piece the ability to take into account foods eaten, body mass, etc?

yeah. just (and then deriving useful conclusions from all the data.)

To my mind, the missing piece is a non-proprietary tool to make the collection of the data as easy as possible and integrate with devices from some large number of competing manufacturers.

Not so crazy.. but it doesn't exist as far as I know. I have dreams of trying to make it happen but, you know, the usual excuses.. (http://sanguinediabetes.com/)

What are the devices like to integrate with? Last time I had experience with bloodsugar tests, it was just a LCD readout. Do the devices now have things like bluetooth/etc to make connecting to a phone/computer easy? Or would this effort have to include working w/ manufacturers to create such connectivity?

A few points:

- there seems to be an underlying assumption that nobody is working on a better way to manage blood sugar levels for diabetics

- there are a lot more important things that better blood glucose measures if you're thinking of tackling the problems in global health; using the analogy of the blog article, one could also point to the med device companies and say "Why the fuck are people wasting billions of dollars per year finding a better glucose monitor system rather than tackling the millions of deaths due to childhood diarrhea??"

> (Google automating targeted content, Facebook introducing new search features that are tangential to their current features, Apple changing form factors) aren't beneficial to society as a whole

Care to explain how it benefits society as a whole ?

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