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Comment by hilko | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps hackers tend to be a little more structured and in-crowd, or downright strangers to most of the world. I'm not sure. Or perhaps hackers can easily be distracted by any type of problem, no matter how trivial, no how much it benefits others over them, or no matter how insignificant it is. I think the latter is true very often.

The hackers I do know tend to be, generally speaking, wonderfully excited by problems presented to them, and have a childlike exuberance solving them. They are 'moral' individuals, but often seem to be unburdened by 'grander scheme' questions.

My uncle, for example, had a really important job but got paid relatively little. He was just... happy and never bothered to ask for a raise.

I've been trying to think of ways to 'prod' hackers to solve these problems that are 'bigger' in a way, but often still relatively trivial to solve.

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I think my problem is that compared to many hackers, I think that technical solutions that hackers might be able to provide are rarely the proper solutions.

What are the major problems today? Hunger? Overpopulation and access to family planning? Sanitation? Malaria, and other diseases? LGBT rights?

Are any of these things really suffering for lack of hackers proposing technical solutions?

Lots of these things are amenable, at least partially, to technical solutions.

Example: A major problem poor countries have is that donors donate medical equipment, but the healthcare systems have no ability to maintain or sometimes even not the knowledge to use that equipment. There is a ton of equipment that could be easily fixed, or even just unpacked and used, that instead sits gathering dust.

Don't you think something like that is amenable to a technical solution?

It sounds like they need training and skilled labor, not hackers.

Could a bunch of hackers get together and say "I know, lets roll Yet Another(tm) online training service to teach these doctors how to use and maintain complex medical equipment that we know nothing about!"? Sure, a bunch of hackers could say such a thing. But is the real problem here really a lack of technology for online training?

If you really want to attack this problem, you would talk with the donors that donated the equipment in the first place and work on allocating the donations in a more sensible manner. That could be as simple as prioritizing donations to teaching hospitals and using some of the donation money to attract and retain skilled teachers instead of just using it all on equipment.

> Yet Another(tm) online training service to teach these doctors how to use and maintain complex medical equipment that we know nothing about!

That example could actually work, you know. There's nothing stopping you from automating some intelligent scraping for each item that gets registered into the db, and presenting the users with tid-bits of what that item can be used for and how to use it, with a couple of links to places. It may not seem like a lot because it's so simple, but just trying to gather that tiny bit of preliminary information is probably a huge bottleneck in places that aren't used to automating everything and have better things to worry about. At least with this service they'd be able to quickly dive-in, get an idea of what something does, and if they need to, click on a few links for more information and have their questions answered within a few minutes.

The problem here is just assuming that this is a 'hard' problem that we lack the skill sets for. If we start looking at it that way, we prevent ourselves from even really trying to find any solution because our minds have already hinted at us that it's useless. "Nothing is impossible", and a community of entrepreneurs like HN should know that by now; but for some reason that curiosity, ambition, and cleverness just shuts down when looking at bigger problems that we might be a bit detached from. That doesn't make sense.

I think perhaps this generation has lost sight of what it means to be a hacker. It isn't about creating a new website. It's about taking a problem, and figuring out a solution, using any and every means.

Need to genetically engineer some grain to work better in drier climates? Learn just enough molecular biology to make it work. Economically-depressed nations don't distribute contraception effectively? Develop a cheaper alternative or find a way to incentivize its use. LGBTQ community being told they're sick, or they can't raise an effective family? Spearhead studies to show the actual effects of LGBTQ people's lives in society.

Hackers are not limited in the scope of the issues they tackle or the methods they use to solve them. That's why it's crazy that more hackers aren't hired to do public service or work in NGOs... they're the ultimate problem-solvers.

> Need to genetically engineer some grain to work better in drier climates? Learn just enough molecular biology to make it work. Economically-depressed nations don't distribute contraception effectively? Develop a cheaper alternative or find a way to incentive its use. LGBTQ community being told they're sick, or they can't raise an effective family? Spearhead studies to show the actual effects of LGBTQ people's lives in society.

I'm not talking about "building websites". I'm wondering about problems that have technical solutions, not policy solutions, that require the skills that "hackers" have, but established people in the area do not. If you want to make new grains, invent new contraceptives and fund studies, then there are better people for the job in every case.

It is hubris to think that established genetic engineers are lacking some sort of "hacker spark" that renders them unable to find a solution to that problem. The materials and medical science needed for cheaper contraceptives is not something that needs consult from an external hacker. Sociology doesn't need hackers barging in and demanding more studies about LGBTQ communities, they've got the importance of that one pretty much figured out themselves.

The extent that "hackers" can work on any problem is the extent to which they already are. You are basically just saying "these things need clever people to work on them." Well they already have clever people working on them. Clever people with degrees and/or experience in the subject matter. I consider myself a clever person, and my experience is in software development. Other clever people have experience in medicine, or materials sciences, or just about anything else you can think of. What makes my brand of clever something that they need?

Software development is not filled with some sort of "unique" sort of clever person that the rest of the world is somehow lacking. That sort of thinking is just developer exceptionalism. If the theory is that software development is creating some sort of "brain drain", then perhaps we could talk about policy solutions to drive more clever people into other fields. But I really don't think that there are not enough clever doctors because software development is gobbling up more than its fair share of clever people.

These things do need clever people to work on them. And yes, there are better people out there. But those better people are not working in droves to solve public issues. If you think there's an army of genetic engineers working on food shortage in an effort just to feed more people, you're crazy. The ones working in the field are working for private companies for profit so they can make a buck, not to help less fortunate people.

At not-for-profits there's usually a person who has the drive to help people, and has studied some particular way of solving a problem and will use the same hammer for every single nail they face. They are not applying creativity, they are applying the one rigorous discipline they learned.

My brother works on social issues for latin americans, for example. He is not a genius, he does not have a PhD. But he is trying to solve real, multifaceted problems that people have with the only skills he has available - communications skills. He is only interested in attacking problems from one angle. But that may not be the best way to approach it.

This isn't an isolated example. I lived in DC and worked with volunteers who would all study essentially one thing ad-nauseum. The idea of going outside their field was preposterous because they had no idea how to go about it.

You should also consider that my definition of hacker has nothing to do with software development. Most software developers I know have got jack shit in the way of a hacker mentality.

I get that you don't think "hacker" implies developer. But you said: "Can you imagine how much we could improve the quality of life of everyday people if everyone in Silicon Valley focused on economic, environmental and social issues for a couple months?"

Those "Silicon Valley people"... what are they going to do? Do you really think "Silicon Valley people" are going with a crash course in genetic engineering are going to make a difference? What are these people going to bring to the table, besides being clever (like people in every other field) and being inexperienced?

If you think there are not enough biomed people volunteering to work with non-profits to find super-crops, then fine, that is a legitimate complaint. Don't focus on importing Silicon Valley people to fill that gap though, focus on telling the biomed people to get their act together and start volunteering.

There is nothing unique about the Silicon Valley brand of clever. Really what you are complaining about is that a bunch of clever people have acquired skill sets that are not particularly useful for solving most remaining social problems. Go convince students to switch majors if you really want to correct that.

I would... but it's much easier to just complain on HN.

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