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Comment by soderfoo | Hacker News Reader

> we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology...

It's such a waste of a generation's talent. I think about this from time to time.

What problems could we be solving? How much further would the cutting edge of innovation be? It's kind of depressing.

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Heh, people said the same thing in the 80s when all of our "greatest minds" were working in Finance.

The last time our great minds were put to a task that most people agree bettered humanity was in the 60s, when working as a government scientist in the space program was considered the best job you could get.

That was mostly a cover to build rockets that could land more accurately on Moscow.

I'd rather we have the gambling.

Making tools for the powerful to use while they manipulate the weak is not merely a waste. It's actively harmful. We're summoning monsters today that we'll have to fight tomorrow.

On addition to thinking about "how much better could tech be" I insist we begin thinking abt "how much simpler and more peacefully could we live?"

Why extract so many resources to run gambling and adtech servers? Why doom infants abroad to mining? Why invade international boundaries to get their resources?

The really sad part is that they could even use that same technology for good AND profit. If it's true that (for example) the facebook algorithm knows if someone is depressed, people would pay real money for the algorithm to shape their behavior and mood for the better.

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