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Comment by CmonDev | Hacker News Reader

I hope one day speed of trade execution will depend on beating cancer. Those guys will solve it in a month.

If you are male, then this financier's philanthropy may help you in the future : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken (Prostate Cancer)

Are you yourself working on a cure for cancer?

This fallacy is called tu quoque.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

I am in fact not accusing CmonDev of hypocrisy. My point is that he very likely has good reasons for not working on a cure for cancer, such as knowing absolutely nothing about that very complicated subject. The same is true of the people who work in HFT.

Frankly, "Why aren't you curing cancer instead?" ought to be a recognized logical fallacy.

I was. HFT is an interesting and rich problem on its own, but its complexity and difficulty pale in comparison to cancer research.

And I don't get this "our brightest minds wasted on HFT/adclicks/etc" argument. Research positions at universities and labs are extremely competitive. There are hordes of brilliant people beating down the door to work on the problems that matter. The bottleneck is funding. A smart person who chooses to work in a higher-paying field and contributes enough financially may well have a larger impact on overall scientific progress than doing research in person.

I've never thought of that. But it sure feels liek there are a ridiculous number of positions in HFT/adclicks/etc compared to research in hospitals. Certainly, there is less respect attached to earning money than 'making a difference' in medical research, yes?

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