Comment by zach | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zach | Hacker News Reader

It has to be mentioned:

http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html

But you know, I just want to pipe up in defense of us pipsqueaks. I run a website that helps people find a home to buy that is at most, if it works great for them, maybe 5% or 10% better or cheaper (your pick) than what they could have gotten otherwise. And even then, only in the LA area. Is that really about the best thing I (along with my co-founder) could've been working on the last two years?

I'm going to say yes, and here's why. Three reasons. One, opportunity. I work with semi-realistic options -- it's not productive of me, a 90's college dropout, to pursue medical research at this point. But I have ten years of experience programming and I do at some point need to put food on my family, as the saying goes.

Two, passion, or you could say just motivation. This is a problem that I have faced, my parents faced, their parents faced. I know the technology can make it better and am fascinated with the possibilities. I believe passion is immensely important to making the most of one's talent.

Three, getting the ball rolling. As an innovator in a little bitty part of the gigantic web, one who can only implement a tiny fraction of the things I want to, I know I have a limited impact. But twenty years from now, for all I know, people around the world could be using stuff like what I'm pushing into the market. I have no idea what impact that will have.

So hey, if I make money, I would appreciate that, but I really think I'm doing what I want to do with what I've got regardless of that. But if you have the interest, let me hear more about your pitch for what I or someone like myself could be doing instead, because this is, after all, a subject of vital interest.

I still think this quote from the Hamming article points to one of the biggest opportunities for making a difference across all fields (at least for a programmer):

"Since from the time of Newton to now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools."

One problem that will continue to need solving is finding better tools to organize and search through all the information out there. That's more of the problem Google solves, as others have mentioned above.

Another, related problem is finding better ways to get the information into our heads. To give you an extreme example, coming up with a way to access a hard drive directly with our brain could potentially allow us to tackle harder problems. That's pretty hard and probably a long way off. But you can probably imagine baby steps toward that.

There's also the whole AI problem but the media has covered that one enough that it doesn't really need mentioning.

Good for you, dude. That's awesome! It sounds like you ARE making a difference with your site. And there really is no need to feel defensive. Like I said, I was just trying to start a discussion...and maybe prompt a goal or gut check.

I'm not necessarily trying to push anyone to do something different or 'better' with their life. I mean...who the hell do I think I am? [Nobody.] I just asked the question because I think everyone sometimes forgets to evaluate their place in the world and what they can accomplish when they are really focused on one thing. It's like speeding on the highway and missing the scenery. And I also don't like to see wasted potential, especially when it is just because someone never really thought about what they were doing and why. And I was also just curious.

I'd read the procrastination article, but not the Hamming one. Thanks for the pointer.

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