On Saving the World and Other Delusions
moreright.net
moreright.net
With that said, I think there's two major reasons for bold "save the world" visions expressed by startups to lack viability. The first is that the symbiosis between startups and venture capital creates a cycle where the most successful players are inevitably end user-facing services optimized for rapid growth. There are a ton of problems whose solutions do not find under this model. In fact, being too big of a visionary is usually considered a negative: it likely means you have no product-market fit. The incentive henceforth becomes to achieve a maximum market valuation and preferably a low fair value (less effort in creation, ops and maintenance).
The second is what jerf terms the "BOAC fallacy" (http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916). Lots of programmers seem to have this odd magical thinking that they can trivially obsolete industries and professions by just applying statistical learning over some data sets, or by writing what amounts to a spreadsheet... except marketed and branded towards a given field. Doesn't change the fact that it's just a spreadsheet application, and that there are other intricacies that naturally impede automation of a certain area which you haven't accounted for.
I had never met any of them wanting to "save the world". Saving the world does not make sense. It is too diffuse, too abstract.
When you met someone like Bill Gates, you met someone who has traveled to Africa and seen people suffering, children and women spending hours a day to get water (that they can't use for other things like learning). Children dying of diarrhea(because of the water), Parents dying because of H.I.V and creating millions of orphans.
You see, this is not abstract but concrete problems. You can actually do something today to improve other people's lives, today. The world is full of them.
We love problems because we can solve them, and this is not a delusion. It is a gift. You can improve people's lives in lots of ways. Geeks have the opportunity to improve millions of lives.
Helping people is incredible rewarding, just by itself.
1. That there was a creator of life that predetermined what our lives should mean.
2. That no other meaning except for the one described in point 1 is valid.
It doesn't work that way, meaning is not singular and is not preset. A "meaning of life" sounds like a rational idea but you can't condense life down to a single meaningful goal without losing its essence. Life is what you make it.
Why would a god that needed us to fulfil a singular purpose give us the power to choose to not fulfil that purpose? Why would a god choose a purpose and then not clearly communicate that purpose? Why would a god give us the capacity for reflection and awareness, allowing us to derive our own meanings, if none of those meanings were valid?
What would a single meaning of life even look like? Let's take a guess and say that love is the meaning of life. That would mean the only point of life was love. All the other experiences? Meaningless. Says who? Who says they're meaningless?
"A meaning" is like "a sock". There is only one true sock, all other socks are false, only those that have this sock can truly know what a sock is, etc... You're trying to condense a potentially infinite group to a single example.
As for the whole "beneficial to us" thing, in what sense? The whole "life after death" thing? Something else?
Also, if you accept that any possibility is potentially the reality in which we inhabit, then it's possible that you are god. Now you could be god, what do you want to do with your life?
The possibility of solipsism cannot be excluded, but it also seems to be very difficult to test. I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it, because there are two approaches of broadening our knowledge which appear to have lower hanging fruit: The theory of mind and the theory of everything.
A universe without a creator might seem scary to those who have been brought up to believe in a creator, but how would it affect your day to day life? The pleasure and the pain found within existence is just as real as it was before, you can still take time to reflect on the nature of existence as it's a fascinating but unanswerable question, the only real difference is taking advice from different sources about the path you take through life.
Furthermore, if there is a God, and this God designed us, then our natural state is what God intended us to experience. By separating ourselves from the life that surrounds us we can disconnect from these experiences. How can a God judge you for living according to the nature it designed?
Who is this 'I'? Is 'I' a collection of thoughts and feelings? Does 'I' include some semblance of physical appearance? Where does this 'I' start and end? If 'I' eat an apple, is it still an apple or is it now 'I'?
I realise these are tricky questions to think about, please try not to worry. If it helps, I can tell you that I've less fear of death after taking time to think about this sort of stuff, I hope in time you'll find a sense of peace too. If you want to explore it some more, I'm here for you.
I'll try explaining the whole heaven/hell thing again. What does hell look like to you? Is it millions of former people being tortured for not living a virtuous life? If you go to hell, what part of you goes to hell? Do the former people in hell have bodies and faces? Do the former people keep their memories of their past life? Do the former people still think like the people they once were as humans?
If you want another example, say a bread roll. If you eat a bread roll, is it still a bread roll or does it become part of 'I'?
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
[2]: More modern philosophers, like Michel Foucault, while accepting the premise of an absurd existence, reject the notion of an inner human essence, and firmly place the human condition within spheres of influence which they called "power", which then served as the basis for the modern definition of politics as the theory (and practice) of power.
This is an anti-essentialist position.
>...
>just because its beautiful and brings out joy to people in your world, however small the number might be
You answered your own question.
But I think a lot of people would be just as happy working on a project along with many others to change the world, provided that they have confidence that it's a just cause, has a good chance of succeeding, and they're treated reasonably fairly. When these preconditions align (in perception if not in reality) you can get something big.
I think individual humans are often fearful about reality which is often outside of our control and goes against what we would prefer to happen. This fear generally expresses itself as individual reserve, which means that even if there is a negative issue in our vicinity, we would rather accept its negative effects then proactively attempt to change it, even if changing the negative issue is within our capability.
I think the power of a true liberation teacher (Mandela, MLK Jr., Ghandi, Whitman, Tolstoy, Mohammad, Jesus, Mani, the gautama or whoever you might include in that list that is incomplete) is that they show us that we can travel beyond our fear to improve the world. It's not so much that Ghandi, for example, stood up to the British Empire all by himself, but that he showed his countrymen that they could stand up as well.
At a more personal level, consider the teachers and mentors who've helped you and pushed you forward beyond where you thought you could go. They didn't take your math test for you, but expanded your own ability to see success perhaps. They didn't give you that great creative idea, but they supported it or helped you refine it by probing its weaknesses. In addition, we're the product of all the people making incremental improvements and negative effects who have come before us, so no amazing success is the product of a complete vacuum. It's our duty as beneficiaries of that positive balance of improvements versus decrements to at least improve the environment for further improvements in the world's situation despite costs to ourselves.
I dunno, that's just my long-winded idea of how we may not be able to do some crazy ground-breaking accomplishment or develop a paradigm-shifting idea ourself, but we can lay the groundwork through our fellow man so that they might themselves. Just a thought...
I have ambitions of making the world better (not just a wish, but with ideas on how to), but I'm not doing so because I need it, but because if I'm not prepared to do it, I don't believe it'll get done, not at the rate we need it anyway. I'm sure there are tons of people with a similar attitude, we can all have our part to play.
If the world was healthier, I'd prefer doing something like making arcade games. Perhaps I'll have time for that later.
Yes.
> "And perhaps you'll find someone with better ideas than yours, so their project would be a better use of your time?"
Yes.
As I implied before, it's not about individual glory, it's about making things better so I can enjoy doing what I want with a clearer conscience.
I look to the great minds of history, people like Aristotle, Newton, and Nietzsche, as role models and examples of who I want to be like, but then I remember that even for them, the majority of people on earth don't know their names. To say nothing of actually being acquainted with their work.
Perhaps a good compromise is that, while you might not be able to impact everyone alive, present and future, you might be able to impact all people who share some property X. Most people don't know who Gauss is, but everyone who is a part of the mathematical community and studies mathematics to a certain level knows who Gauss is. In that way, some kind of enduring immortality and greatness can still be achieved.
"Save the world" = really, really hard.
"Improve the world" = challenging, but doable.
It seems like I have my "save the world" visions as I'm getting ready for bed and trying tho think through what I can do the next day. In the morning it seems hard enough to do mundane chores let alone get everything set up to save the world. I think my most productive times are when I've found something tangible I can make better and work through it in small steps.
The modern capitalist society is not designed to "make the world a better place". It's designed to justify the status seeking behavior inherent in mankind, and allow the few winners to enjoy their wealth without being vilified.
Want to make the world a better place? Start thinking about a steady state economy, a steady state lifestyle and a minimal consumption, minimal destruction society. That means minimizing energy usage, consumption and waste. This the complete antithesis of everything modern capitalism stands for. I'm sure this isn't gonna go over well here, as we have quite a few dyed-in-the-wool Randians, but its the truth.
Also "minimal consumption, minimal destruction" isn't necessarily what will be required, a better approach can be found in mimicking nature, waste=food, etc... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoRjz8iTVoo
If you have kids, you have people who you can spend each and every day investing in and you'll likely get to see that impact firsthand, and lead them in the right direction for many years to come, and I think that's really just awesome. And if you're reading this, you probably went through the challenges of learning to code, and think of how you can improve the lives of your friends who will put the work forth to honestly learn - now they have a desireable skill and can find a job and poteintally take better care of their families as well. I'd call both of those changing your world!
I agree entirely with your second paragraph, however.
Right now I'm reading Bold, the new book by Peter Diamandis, who has pretty much the opposite opinion of this article. One thing he points out is that if you start with an absurdly ambitious goal, then even if you only accomplish a small portion of it, you're still really successful.
Nu, so what are they?
I'm also designing a cryptocurrency system that I think could make a dent in global warming. If the Ethereum project succeeds, it'll be a lot easier to implement that one.
Last year I did some volunteer fundraising for a small team attempting to invent cheap practical fusion power.
Also I've got some less-ambitious projects that I hope will help make a little money along the way.
Or you burn out, get depressed and become much less successful and effective than you could be.
Only if you base your self worth on what you accomplish (which some people undoubtedtly do). Those who accept their inherent worth wouldn't be affected. I admit it's easier said than done sometimes.
And I imagine he quotes Wayne Gretzky.
The thing is, making the wildly ambitious attempt isn't free. You amplify your risk: both the probability of failure (due to an impossible goal, or skipping intermediate steps) and the cost of failure (all or nothing! death or glory!).
Wayne Gretzky missed 100% of shots he didn't take. But each such shot was cheap. He took thousands of shots at goal in his time ... none of which was a single gamble that could cost him his house, mental health or career prospects.
(And thank you, ZenoArrow, for the point on intermediate steps. :)
The inverse of your argument is an actual logical fallacy, known as the continuum fallacy. Or, "if we can't do it all today, and tomorrow is the same as today, we will never be able to do it."
I have a poster on the wall behind my monitors of the 5th Solvay Congress in Brussels. It has many of the greats including Planck, Curie, Lorentz, Einstein, Schrodinger, just to name a few. There are times when, for example, I've been working on a problem or trying to understand a concept and want to walk away; I will look up at the poster and think about how those people spent their entire lives on problems, they were the type that didn't give up.
Things don't happen all at once, sometimes you have to be more patient than you'd like. But I believe it's those people that never give up that make the most impact.
Be realistic with yourself but aim high; work hard and smart and you have a better chance than many to get what you want.
Here's a not bad measure of life success: after you retire, how many Christmas cards will you get each year?
A lot of good math and science was done before the Enlightenment - look at Newton or Euler or Descartes, for example. The scientific environment often operates rather independently of the political environment - the Soviets also had high-quality science going on.
Newton and Descartes are considered part of the Enlightenment, and you cannot conduct high-quality science while the politicians are telling you that conclusions like "evolution operates by natural selection" (re: Lysenkoism) or "there's no evidence for a natural hierarchy of races" (re: both current and previous incarnations of racism) will lose you your job.
What do you mean, even? Politicians are much worse than the general population at ever admitting to thinking clearly: their chief occupation is righteousness signaling.
Democrazy has its flaws but it is damn good at two things: making it fanatically difficult to get a revolution going and keeping the masses thinking they have some influence. Its main problem is that it doesn't curb the spread of government.
I'm now back to a public health focus to make up for it. It's kind of depressing work. I write software used by crisis call centers, suicide hotlines, 211 call centers, etc. and when I log into the server and watch the messages passing through the system in realtime I see people being talked out of suicide, children talking about being bullied, lots of pregnant single mothers looking for shelter... One of the most depressing for me though was a guy looking for replacement glasses since his broke and he couldn't afford a new pair.
We're a barebones operation (just three of us) and we don't make a ton of money - most of our customers are non-profits. We'll never have a big payout, or a big exit. And being closer to the problems in society is a little depressing, to see how a large number of people really live. I can see how people delude themselves into thinking "Making the world a better place, through minimal message oriented transport layers" is a real thing.
If you ever need infrastructure/devops help, or even someone just to help with the little tasks you don't have time for, more than willing to help.
But seriously - this article forgets that 'nerds' measuring what they call success is key; by doing so they get a much better handle on it. In that sense, if you try to save the world like a nerd, you'll at least know if it's working.