Ask HN: How can I do something meaningful?
I couldn't believe some of the responses. There were tons of people saying that their iPhone apps were because they made it easier to find restaurants.. or that their B2B social media marketing startup was because it was improving productivity for marketers. I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist of many of the responses. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for people who have successful typical startups. But that said, I think people sometimes are extremely sheltered if they think that those sorts of problems are really impacting lives.
Families who never thought it would happen to them across the United States are finding themselves homeless. My wife is from a small town that just 15 years ago had very high employment. Today the town is rapidly turning into a miniature Detroit after the main employer of the town closed down and moved overseas. Countless numbers of children are going hungry this summer since their primary and often times only nutritious and filling daily meal is their school lunch. My city recently had a free health treatment clinic for one day only. Hundreds of people stood in line for hours and hours, only to be sent home since not all were able to be seen.
And yet, that's just in the United States. Elsewhere in the world, one BILLION people don't have access to clean drinking water. Hundreds of millions of people work 12 hour days seven days a week for in exchange for pennies. People are killed or imprisoned every day just for speaking out against their governments.
I'm not delusional or hopelessly optimistic. I'm aware that these are all major global problems, and they're far more complicated than any one person could ever hope to solve. But what I am interested in is finding out a way that I could be doing something as a career to be a part of this. I don't necessarily think that you have to be a nonprofit or charity to still contribute to these sort of things. SwipeGood and Sparked are two examples of this.
But my question is - has anyone actually built or is working on something related to these sorts of issues? I'm fascinated by stories such as the one behind Charity Water (http://www.charitywater.org/about/scotts_story.php) and reading about organizations like FreeGeek. I'd love to start a nonprofit of my own, but I have no clue where to begin. If anyone has any advice, thoughts, or would like to connect I'd love to hear from you.
161 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] thread"Just as there is only one best charity, there is only one best way to donate to that charity. Whether you volunteer versus donate money versus raise awareness is your own choice, but that choice has consequences. If a high-powered lawyer who makes $1,000 an hour chooses to take an hour off to help clean up litter on the beach, he's wasted the opportunity to work overtime that day, make $1,000, donate to a charity that will hire a hundred poor people for $10/hour to clean up litter, and end up with a hundred times more litter removed. If he went to the beach because he wanted the sunlight and the fresh air and the warm feeling of personally contributing to something, that's fine. If he actually wanted to help people by beautifying the beach, he's chosen an objectively wrong way to go about it. And if he wanted to help people, period, he's chosen a very wrong way to go about it, since that $1,000 could save two people from malaria. Unless the litter he removed is really worth more than two people's lives to him, he's erring even according to his own value system.
...and the same is true if his philanthropy leads him to work full-time at a nonprofit instead of going to law school to become a lawyer who makes $1,000 / hour in the first place. Unless it's one HELL of a nonprofit."
(and the comments)
It's all well and good to plan to work in a high paying job so that you can do good by donating some of the surplus you earn.
But being immersed in corporate culture and being surrounded by people who's aim is largely to make money, to look out for #1, and to value consumerism has a way of corrupting people with the best intentions.
Many start out wanting to make a difference, and wind up fretting over whether their next bonus will be enough to buy a timeshare in Cancun.
Sure, that's a selfish choice to some extent, but I think it's a reasonable one. Some people choose to live in one city over another just because they like it, or to work at Google rather than Wall Street because they like what they're building there more. Some people will pass up a job for one that pays 20% less, because it's building an exciting new app they want to help succeed. Wanting to work on a social-justice project just seems like a variation of that; it's quite common and natural for people to want their day job to be something they care about, if they have the option.
I think the argument as given also assumes that charities are currently operating optimally, and there's no room for improvement or disruption. If you applied the efficiency argument to startups in general, it would argue that you should work a well-paying job and pay other people to do startups. When would it ever be beneficial to do one yourself? Only if you think the market is not already efficient, and your personal intervention as a founder could change things more than working your current job and just funding startups would.
Another thing to consider is consumer choice. Very few people donate as much as they can to charity.
I also think that "good" startups create a lot of social value by improving wealth - the bigger the pie the more to distribute.
One could get wrapped up in logic games all day. For my life, I prefer the general heuristic of "ABC" - "Alway Be Creating" as opposed to destroying or fighting over my share of the pie (which from an opportunity cost POV is actually destructive). This is just a personal preference of mine (and probably most people who read HN), BUT I also think it's prudent economics as someone who is generally creating useful stuff for those around them will be guaranteed compensation of one form or another (hourly wage, salary, startup equity, etc). The obvious exception to this is those who help the disadvantaged since they can't compensate you. And that's where donations (and for non-right-wing-libertarians, tax dollars) come into play.
At the big dollar amounts, are you going to be able to make the ethical choices to only choose cases that do not do net harm? Perhaps, but not guaranteed, and one "no" to one client can lose you a big client and cause trouble getting the next.
The Roman historian Sallust said of Cato "He preferred to be good, rather than to seem so". The lawyer who quits a high-powered law firm to work at a nonprofit organization certainly seems like a good person. But if we define "good" as helping people, then the lawyer who stays at his law firm but donates the profit to charity is taking Cato's path of maximizing how much good he does, rather than how good he looks.
"Well, I am going to do this thing that makes money and then when I am rich I will give back"
Is bullshit. You either give back or you don't. It's not a question of time and money.
I try and do as much local charity work as I can, I try to be present when listening to friends and family. I try and treat my wife and my family as the most important people in the world so that they can bring that love to other places, but I hear what you saying.
I want to be working on things that change the world. I think at some level, we all want to be.
Thank you for asking / sharing.
Kent
It's a cumulative thing, and without all the little niceties, the important stuff doesn't get done.
Don't knock the little people. They're helping, too.
The "giant's" primary school teacher, sure. The guy that funded his first crackpot-sounding business. His admin assistant, etc. That forgotten 5th employee who wrote half the code... or all those other companies that the "giant" first bought and sold stuff to/from. But no - not generally a bunch of random 'lifestyle' startup guys peddling restaurant finders and photo organizers and casual games.
Doing something meaningful, in the way you described it, looks a lot to me like guilt over a perceived unfairness of life. Yes people are dying in remote places, yes people need healthcare in the US, and yes not everyone has a job. You want to try and fix the situation, but many others also have tried, and failed.
Maybe you want to do that to be relieve of your guilt, to try and find happiness instead. I mean it's very popular to say that you are trying to change the world, making it a better place, and so on, but then in the end, will it make you happy?
And even worse- what is your final objective? Being happy?
Maybe you perceive a dysfunction is the way the world works vs how you think it should work. Then your goal might be to "remove biais", or be "less wrong". Some blogger might help you in your path.
If your goal is finding consistence, there are many ways which do not always involve doing "something meaningful" in the sense of charity work. Abstaining from charity and being vocal about it, trying to make more people join such absentionist movements, might be very positive. A lot of people believe the problems for exemple in Africa are due to foreign involvement creating a long lasting dependance on aid, food, and so on. Basically, it might not be good to have more people on a continent that can be fed by the production of this given continent. Here the lack of action would have dire consequences in the short term, but would improve the situation in the long term - and it would be self consistent.
If you goal is happiness, a better shortcut might be finding happiness without having to resort to such a guilt-ridden trip of charity, ie learnt to not care anylonger!
If your your goal is being popular, ie respond to peer pressure which views charity work in a positive light, maybe you could find some other way that is also well received - say american idol, a free software project that'll make you famous, fight again racism/global warming/whatever is popular these days.
But from what I have read in your message, I would sincerily question your premises.
Instead of doing what is better "for the world" or "for the global good", have you considered the possibility of doing "what's fun", "what you like", or "what is important to you"? You do not need justifications or moral endorsement to do that. Yet it requires some serious introspection.
If you do have considered these alternatives, and if you are sure of your premises, have you identified limitating beliefs, ie the reason why you consider these alternatives not to be worth your limited time on this earth?
I would answer the question of "should you?" with a resounding yes.
I've been finding it difficult to match up my skills as a software engineer to a project with meaning as a lot of them are in the hardware or humanitarian aid realm.
Your point of doing "what's fun" or "what you like" is also an important factor and almost goes without saying. The ideal job for all of us is doing something we like that pays the bills and has a tangible benefit to humanity (not a made up one).
I have always thought very disturbing in the occidental culture the notion that there are "unworthy" occupations, and some people "waste their life" doing something different that they could in someone else's opinion.
But that's just applying peer pressure to make such people comply to our (skewed?) visions of how life should be, and when failing, using guilt to try to destroy the joy they find in doing what they do the way they do.
Maybe because I grew up watching too much anime and reading too many mangas I admire whatever people are, in any field, trying to remove my own bias.
Like - you don't have to be a Nazi to admire what Roemmel (sp?) did in north-africa. A true military genius of the time. Or how a handfull of guys armed with box cutters social-engineered they way to massive destruction and terror. And also it's hard not to admire the beautiful job of some people in charity work - eradicting polio, wow. Using cellphones to develop microcredit and banking in countries with little infrastructure - that's beautiful!
But unlike you, I would but the fun part above the "important" part, because what's important is a personal opinion. If someone find something important, it's important.
If designing and testing landmines aimed at killing and maiming people is fun because, I don't know, the mathematical challenge behind it, the noise of explosions, whatever - it's a worthy endeavour. If you make good money because you're good at the job you love, even better.
BTW the knife cut both ways - my training has been mostly on the medical field, but someday I realised the humanitarian field no longer meant anything to me. I'm not feeling any greater purpose or anything, and I don't believe I ever did. Maybe I tried to fool myself thinking I did. Maybe I resent the fact that's it's difficult to match up my skills to what's usefull in the industry, but I doub thatt and I don't think it's clouding my judgement too much. Anyway it is just no longer fun and that's what matters.
I don't feel bad about that. It's not good or bad - just an indication that's it's time to do something else now, and that as usual change is hard. If I listened to what people would think about my move, I'd up for one another good guilt trip :-) Like why don't I go to some poor country to save people? Because I don't care, don't see the point, and while the visiting part might be fun initially, it would be boring and I may not like the food and the culture :-)
What I fear is many people are doing this for a time in their life - sometimes their whole life - without realizing how empty it is, until it bites them back, a la Lars Von Triers' "Dogville".
Maybe I grew out of the guilt trip that's forcing of lot of people into such training and studies. I'm just sad to see such post and comment, including people downvoting the not politically correct things to say.
Do what you like, and figure out justifications later.
PS: You don't have to spend 8 hours a day working on something BTW - slavery is gone is most part of the world. Economic slavery however remains, and if you want more things than you can affort, yes, you will have to spend your time this way, and might resent it.
Some people, mostly in europe, figure out how to strech their money and benefits to live without doing any purposeful work. I would find that sad - unless they enjoy the "game" part of gaming and abusing the system. In that case maybe a worthy endeavour to them, rest of mankind be damned.
I can only talk about personal experience; that is, if I meet someone in need, am able to help them, and as a result they are in a better position than before, it makes me feel great.
It's a selfish proposition, by helping someone, i'm essentially helping myself. Having said that, it still feels right and I have a compulsion to extend that to my life's work.
idealist.org is a good place to look for tech or design work with non-profits. I also got my start just cold-calling groups I respected. Most didn't know what to do with me, but all it took was one or two projects before word-of-mouth referrals started to spread.
If you are serious about starting a non-profit, the NOLO books are a good mix of legal and practical advice and often include the forms you need. Check nolo.com. But I recommend volunteering as a board member or advisor, or working with an existing non-profit so you can get a closer look at the mechanics before you dive in. If you have a very specific idea for a charity or project, perhaps get an hour consultation with a lawyer who specializes in non-profit corporations.
Feel free to drop me an email if you have more specific questions.
I really like the question in this thread and look forward to see insightful suggestions in the comments.
I started in 2002, and went through years of working with shelter charities, the US military and various other groups to get the technology into the field. There are experimental units in Haiti and Sri Lanka right now!
On the way I learned a hell of a lot about how the entire mess works, and why humanitarian innovation is so slow. There's a couple of talks on the hexayurt web site which might give you useful context: "Ending Poverty with Open Hardware" and "Enabling Humanitarian Innovation."
Please feel free to drop me a line if you have specific questions, and do check out Google Image Search on hexayurts to get an idea of where they're being used most right now!
Vinay
http://www.khanacademy.org/jobs
To me, your method relied on a)having kids learning a lesson at home b)drilling exercises.
On a), I must say that it surprised me much. It means that kids must all have computer available at home (which is clearly not the case, even in western countries) and it also means that their home is sufficiently stable so that they can listen to a lesson (which is probably not doable if mom & dad fight each other every night, whereas doing small exercises is doable in between fights?).
Then, there's this part about creating a school, costing upwards of 10k$ a year. Call me a socialist or whatever, but seriously, paying 10k$ a year to get primary education, wtf?? Shouldn't a not for profit org seek to open such a school for free?
Please do not see this msg as completely negative: you're doing stuff to find other/better ways to teach kids, which is definitely awesome.
Personally, I believe that the act of working through problems is often more important to learning and development than watching or listening to lectures explaining how to work through problems. If a student's conditions at home are so unstable that they cannot concentrate on watching a single video, then they are clearly never going to be able to put a reasonable amount of effort into homework assignments in the normal education system. I would rather they fail to watch Khan videos at home and interact and explore exercises in class than listen to lectures in class every day but never put those skills into practice because they fail to do homework at home. However, yes, availability of computers at home is an issue. It would be great if Khan Academy were the cure-all for education and would be perfect for everyone, but this is never what has been claimed; unfortunately, for the time being, Khan Academy is not a viable solution for those without computer access.
I'm not sure if the phrasing of drilling exercises was supposed to imply something negative, but the goal of KA's exercises is not to drill students on a question until they can answer it as quickly as possible (this is what I think of when I think of a drill). The goal is to allow students to explore and advance at their own pace, proving mastery of a concept covered in a video and then feeling confident to move onto a more advanced topic. We try to make the exercises as modular as possible (which may make them outwardly resemble drills), but we do this so a complex problem can be broken down into many smaller and easier problems. Instead of making a staircase with huge steps that would take a giant to leap, we're making a staircase with small steps; that way, everyone can advance at their own pace.
1) We do want kids to learn lessons at home so that teachers are freed up to do more project-based learning and...well...teaching (instead of lecturing). This doesn't mean the world falls apart if kids aren't watching videos at home. As @rubergly says, computers in the classroom allow for individualized instruction and solid data, which humanizes the kids' experience by helping teachers address individual needs.
2) On the school front -- there are lots of ideas floating around when thinking about the future, but I can assure you that our primary focus is exactly what it says on the website: "providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere."
Indeed, I used the word drill in precisely that meaning.
I think I might have been biased by wired's piece. Maybe it's just me or maybe they failed to render correctly what your org really is.
The YC and other entrepreneurs ALWAYS help people. If they didn't, their business folds. Because simply: it's not useful to people. eg They created an app to put moustaches on every picture; you may think it's not helping people but it'll give a smile to families who see the wedding pictures with moustaches everywhere. So, help to people is quite subjective.
On the other hand, it sounds like you're doing a 'numbers of helping many people for as little work possible'. This is incredibly hard. For example, if you give water to communities but you also have to deal with culture that creates inefficiency issues. eg Corruption, malice, war and population issues. Yes, you could be exacerbating the problem by making their lives easier but in long term worst as so many people are reliant on you giving water. Don't always assume that helping many people at once will be the best solution.
I hope you seek something that's very helpful and is long term solution for them. Even if it's only helping one person. If that person lives to wealthy world life expectancy, that's better than many suffering at once because that person can pass on knowledge, etc.
If you want to get some ideas, listening to problems is usually helpful, then brainstorm with it. eg over a million children are trafficked; maybe create cheap GPS transmitters for children so parents in home countries can track their children's 'work opportunities' and report discrepancies. Bonus: There's an awful lot of lazy people or people with not enough time that talk about ideas but never execute them. Since you want to execute something, you have a lot of research and brainstorm material done for you!
Some directions to go from:
http://www.good.is/
http://itstartswith.us/
http://www.charitynavigator.org/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-08-13/12m-children-trafficke...
Last tip: Try to release your project! It's time wasted if you let it be in obscurity. If you don't want to do it any more, release it anyway. eg free code repositories, free blog post with project notes and research, etc. People like me who want to do something similar to you will be able to make use of it.
There are actually a few startups mentioned there which fall in the category that the poster is looking for.
In which case, I FEEL YOU. I'm infinitely more interested in SwipeGood than I am in Zynga. But everyone makes their own choices. Some people just aren't that concerned with injustice. Some people may have the same goals you do, and try a different path; nonprofits/NGOs always have good intentions, but not always good results (have you ever tried fundraising? it's not any easier than just making money.) And finally, it's a heck of a lot harder to fix injustices than add happiness. It's harder to scale, too. Much easier to build that photo sharing startup and be happy. :)
You should figure out what exactly you want to do. Injustice is too broad. Pick something and start there. You can try to pick something where you think you'll have "the greatest impact", but it's a) impossible to predict, and b) it's better long-term if it's something you're passionate about and won't burn out on.
Khan Academy, Kiva, DonorsChoose, and Samasource are nonprofits that are popular/well-known in the tech/startup world. Do any of those interest you? What about them interests you?
Where are you located? If you're in the Bay Area, there's a lot of people working in/on nonprofits/foundations, social enterprises, and other innovative social change efforts. But there are so many problems to solve; figure out what motivates you first. (There's also a lot of crap, just like in tech, and it's probably harder to tell the difference because everyone is just "trying to do good" and there are no easy success metrics like revenue or profitability.)
Good luck! I hope you find something that's meaningful for you and makes an impact on those less fortunate than you.
"Happiness" is a real stretch to describe the thing that a lot of these startups are "adding". "Pleasant distraction" might be a more apt phrase, or even just "pleasure". Or "yet one more goddamn reason to start vacantly at my smartphone, ignoring everything around me", if you're of a cynical bent.
www.smallact.com
Also, I work for Etsy, which is providing a way for people to become more self-reliant and giving consumers a way to form a more human connection with the people they purchase goods from. We're in NYC.
www.etsy.com
I keep a small, out of date parenting and homeschooling site. It rarely gets updated. I still hope this will change someday. I also keep my toe in on a list or two. I believe firmly that if you want to see less crime, fewer people in prison and so on, you should put more societal resources into supporting families and helping people be good parents and helping kids get raised right. I think every little bit helps in this regard. So I continue to be a resource, on a small scale, for folks who have very challenging children.
I also run a health site. I have a form of cystic fibrosis, as does my oldest son. I have figured out how to get us well. I share that info to the best of my ability, in spite of huge negative reactions from the CF community. My thought is that I would like to write a game (aka simulation) to better share my understanding of what works. My approach is a diet and lifestyle approach which flies in the face of what most people know to be true about this deadly condition. I do not want to do this as a charity. Yet I can't do it as a traditional business model. Maybe something like a freemium model will work. I'm not sure.
I'm pretty disillusioned and disenchanted with the charity model. It tends to fundamentally assume that people cannot help themselves. I think this tends to cause big problems and you need to be very, very careful about such underlying assumptions. I have overcome some very serious personal problems. In the course of doing so, I have routinely run into "helpers" who had to be ditched at some point -- even if they were professionals. It is standard modus operandi of most such people to want to help you walk better but not want you to stand entirely on your own two feet because then they have no role in life as someone's crutch. My experience has been that such people have an enormous need to be needed and can't imagine anyone would genuinely "love" them or befriend them as an equal. It speaks simultaneously of both phenomenal arrogance (often rooted in being much more competent than average) and phenomenal insecurity (often rooted in having been given hell socially for most of their lives, in part for the crime of being too competent).
I would like to see the world be a better place. I consider that to be a form of selfishness: If the world is a better place, I get to live in a better place. I see no reason why a charity model is fundamentally superior to a business model for achieving such a goal. I see lots of cases where a charity model is part of the problem. One notable "exception" is Habitat for Humanity. Please note they are not really a charity per se: They do not give away houses for nothing. They sell the houses and recipients have to also provide labor beforehand. They just a) don't sell at a profit b) due to volunteer labor and donated supplies, not selling at a profit means selling a house for substantially less than it is typically worth on the open market and c) they don't charge interest on the loan. This combo makes the loan payments dramatically less than house payments typically are.
Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts while exhausted and foolishly posting anyway.
Peace.
There is a long history of selling dietary advice in book and newsletter form. Hard to say without knowing the details but if you feel like you have something to share it's worth seeing if anyone cares to find out about it. I'd be willing to try just about anything if one of my daughters had CF. Price isn't really a factor to people in that frame of mind.
A blog, forum, and one on one advice site for this seems like it could work assuming your results are real and repeatable (not saying they are or aren't just saying really). Seems like that'd be worth a monthly subscription.
The fundamental problem appears to be that people define CF in the following manner (quote from a doctor): "People like you don't get well." Since I got well, I must be lying. I can't really have CF.
I have no plans to charge money for information. I have no idea how it would be monetized. I generally assume I am better off pursuing other things for money and keeping this fairly low on the radar. Attempts to shout it from the rooftops has only served to convince people in the CF that I am a liar, a charlatan and a snake oil salesman -- that I suffer from Munchhausen Syndrome and am doing this out of a sick need for attention rather than a sincere desire to help other people like me.
Anyway, there is a link to my site in my profile. It's the one with the word "health" in the URL. :-) I have no idea how that $3 billion could be tapped into to support a saner, more humane and cheaper treatment approach. God knows I would be on it in a heartbeat if I could figure that out as I have a pile of debts from getting myself well.
Peace.
Beyond this, the major health effects of CF are not directly due to these genetic defects. The main symptom of CF is the build up of thick mucous in the lungs, however the battle against CF is a battle against infection, not against mucous. It's only recently that the role of the immune system has started to be understood. Needless to say, CF is a manifestation of a large, complex system of things, all of which vary from patient to patient, and change dramatically as the patient goes through life.
It's taken decades to unravel the puzzle thusfar, with many roads leading to dead ends. As you surely know, CF was a disease that was supposed to be cured 10-15 years ago. But, it's proven difficult.
There are reasons for hope. The truth is that your particular struggle with CF may have made it possible for you to get well through certain dietary changes, but the fact is this is a complex, ever-changing disease and dietary changes, while helpful, certainly are insufficient for most CF sufferers to feel well.
Decades of medical research have brought about drugs that, after years of study, have proven reliability in increasing FEV1. (I was one of the patients in the Phase II trial of Pulmozyme many years ago.) These have been a godsend for myself and other CF sufferers.
Your blog seems to make many claims unsupported by medical research, and has a long series of hypotheses and theories about how certain things affect yourself and your child. There are a few things that I see in your writing that I suggest you reflect on as part of the reason you are having a time being accepted by the CF community:
- You seem to have an attitude that your solution is so simple, "boring", and hard work, that you've managed to figure out the solution when all these foolish doctors and researchers have had their heads up their asses. It's not easy, and they haven't. This attitude manages to tell CF sufferers that its their laziness keeping them sick. I can assure you all of us work hard and would gladly do what we need to get well if we knew it was possible.
- You play the victim card, alienating anyone who hasn't heard of your blog before.
- You make logical fallacies. You claim that nobody telling you your technique failed is proof-positive that it probably works. You claim that people tell you that they have had success as proof as well. These are classic fallacies in medical research, and is part of the reason medical research is so hard to do correctly.
In order to make a positive impact on the CF community, I'd encourage you to attempt to reach out to researchers and collaborate with them in a constructive fashion. I'd suggest you do the research on what has been learned so far about CF. I'd suggest you educate yourself on biology, genetics, immunology, and basic medicine as much as you can. I hope you can channel your energy into organizing information in an honest, informative manner without having it be tarnished by the various things I mentioned above. Good luck, and I hope you and your son continue to see good health.
Edit: for those interested, I'd encourage you to check out the CF foundation's drug pipeline:
http://www.cff.org/research/DrugDevelopmentPipeline/
The CF foundation has done some good and some not so good things in the past, but this page at least is accurate and up-to-date. VX770 right now stands to be the most promising path to alleviating the symptoms of CF sufferers in a large way.
I am guilty as charged of thinking that the whole thing is rather stupid. When I discovered that addressing excess acidity was effective in helping me need less medication, I thought this was some major revelation. It turns out it is rather well established in the CF community that CF leads to very extreme excess acidity. Yet it goes largely untreated, in spite of acidosis being a known serious medical problem. Additionally, the salt issue is so well established as an issue for CF that a sweat chloride test is the single most common initial test for CF, yet nothing is really done to address that issue. Both seem very obvious for anyone in the know yet both go largely ignored in treatment modalities.
As for victim card, I've really had the crap kicked out of me for trying to share info. I have no doubt that at this point that negatively impacts the way I come across when discussing the issue. I don't have some magic wand for how to make that go away. I think the ugliest thing said to me publicly was that someone implied that my son was the product of an incestuous relationship. Moderators routinely side with my attackers and act like I have some unreasonable expectation for thinking I should be able to participate in conversation on the same footing as other members where such attacks would not be tolerated. I have left lists over such incidents.
Researchers and doctors have expressed no interest in what I am doing. My doctor's response to my dramatic improvements in health was to schedule me fewer and fewer appointments and express zero curiosity as to how I was doing so much better. For the most part, people on CF lists are also not really interested. Their primary response is to be very defensive and default to accusations that I am a charlatan and a snake oil salesman. I find this personally very difficult to comprehend or deal with. I have CF. Why on earth would make any of this up? People are suffering and dying and begging for a cure. One would think that my testimony about my experiences would be warmly welcomed rather than viciously attacked. I am both baffled and hurt by this consistent response over the past five years.
I didn't get myself well in order to impress anyone. I am willing to help if I am able, but I am not interested in martyring myself. I got well to get my life back, not to find new ways to be tormented by life. If getting my life back is all it accomplishes, that is enough in my book. (I have heard similar stories of health improvement due to diet/lifestyle changes about other people. I am apparently not the only one who made significant changes to diet and lifestyle and saw major improvements. Most people apparently just go on living quietly rather than fight with other people about it, an approach I continue to work on in spite of my big mouth.) The degree to which the CF community plays the victim card and expects other people to pay for their survival and very high on-going medical expenses is something that looks to me like a big part of the problem, both in terms of mental models and logistically.
As for the "excess mucus" theory, I do not buy it. I have seen more than one public discussion about women with CF suffering vaginal dryness, in some cases so severe it ruined their sex life. I see no reason why one set of mucus membranes in the body would work the opposite of the rest for a genetic disorder that impacts all cells in the same manner. One study I ran across indicated that it was not excess mucus clogging up the lungs of people with CF, it was phlegm -- ie infection -- and that, in fact, people with CF produce too little mucus, not too much. This fits with my experience that when my sinuses are too dry, that's when I have more lung issues and sinus issues. I have seen women with CF complain of "goopiness" (vaginally). I see no reason to believe that isn't also a form of drainage from infection, similar to phlegm build up in the lungs. It seems to me if it were mucus, then women with CF shouldn't have any of the difficu...
Folks who are genuinely interested in my experiences and my understanding of the problem space are few and far between. I leave the site up for the benefit of the small number of people who are interested in the information. These days, I spend a great deal less time posting on health lists than I used to. It accomplishes very little and gets me loads of very negative attention. So I see little point in pursuing such activities. Having gotten myself basically well, my main focus is on other things these days.
Take care.
The history of CF is full of stories like yours where people seem to be onto something only to find out that it was circumstantial or not scalable to the rest of the CF population. This is still a very mysterious disease. My point is that a large part of the reason you might not be taken seriously is due to your tone, your apparent skepticism of western medicine, and your lack of expertise on the fields you are making claims about.
If you do not want to try to use the information you have to help others, so be it. But if you do, posting on health lists and arguing over the internet is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to educate yourself enough that you can hold a real discussion with medical researchers, and find medical researchers (or become one yourself) who would be willing to test your claims empirically. You've positioned yourself as a champion against the establishment, and this is not the way to actually get anything meaningful accomplished. Posting anecdotal evidence, contradictory claims, and lots of random speculations about the effects of various foods and dietary changes without accurate measurement and study does little good towards this end, if the goal is to help the wider CF community, despite your intentions to be helpful.
Take care.
Does anyone know of something like this out in the wild already? Seems like an obvious idea.
I would be very interested if someone knows of something more along the OP's lines.
"Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of innovation focused on developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges. Random Hacks of Kindness was founded in 2009 in partnership between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank."
Johnny Long founded Hackers for Charity in 2008: http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ - see announcement talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CWrzVJYLWw
Hack for Change (http://hackforchange.com/) might be interesting as well.
Not sure if the group is still active though.
I'm glad that someone is thinking about this instead of a new way to sell ads.
To answer your question directly:
Find a problem that affects people of all 'levels' of society and do your best everyday to solve for it.
[1] https://www.socialfortress.com - The site is sparse on technical information but expect that to change in the coming weeks. Any specific questions can be directed to feedback@socialfortress.com
My favorite way to justify my work is that I'm interested in making things and events that make life worth living.
While I do this, I try to minimize the extent tow which my actions are connected to the exploitation of others. When it comes to computers and other complex technologies, I try to "concentrate firepower", which means to use high-tech tools only in situations when it will have a significant effect. Otherwise I use simple tools.
You may not realize it, but you are often contributing to the greater good on a daily basis simply by doing your job. It's sometimes hard to visualize this because we are often many degrees of separation away from the "end user".
You don't actually have to be physically building that home for the homeless or providing food for the hungry; the work you're already doing may be helping someone to help someone else to do that.
I've even thought that the best way to put your technical skills to the greater good is through your day job, not instead of it.
Some of my days jobs have been to write software to ensure that:
You don't need to do charity work on the side in order to contribute to the greater good.On the other hand, if you don't think that the work you do during the day contributes to the greater good, then maybe you should consider doing something else with your valuable time.
Do good and get paid. You can do both at the same time.
[1] Although I have never directly contributed to a reduction in human misery, I still take a great deal of pride in things like http://cocoacontrols.com, which have, hopefully, made many iOS developers happier and richer, and many end-users generally happier.
a great talk about it
TEDxWarwick - Noam Kostucki - Making Money From Doing Good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gRaHyHJjrg
Nonprofits are ultimately financially unustainable; they survive on donations and government grants (tax) rather than direct contributions from customers. As such they usually can't scale to employ many people or make a worldwide impact.
There are exceptions in the information age; Wikipedia, Khan Academy, and perhaps over time Document Cloud. But these too are only useful for people who have computers, not people who lack food.
In general countries only drag themselves out of poverty through capitalism and industry. India and China had decades of foreign aid before they turned to capitalism; now there are many industries in which they are net exporters.
It's certainly not an unpopular opinion on HN, home to hordes of corporation-loving, free-market worshiping libertarians.
If you disagree with his, in my opinion correct, assumption then please argue such so that we can all be smarter.
Thank you.
I don't think that the parent post is supposed to be an attack on the opinion, but pointing out that it's actually popular.
It is still necessary to think about "morals" (I don't like morals, because I think they are only necessary if you don't understand what is really going on). Otherwise, why not join the Mafia and make millions selling drugs?
For corporations, there's often a gap between financial performance (particularly short-term) and real shareholder/owner value.
It's ethically important to see not just private gain (compensation) but also try to honestly assess one's positive impact on the world (though this does not discount, for example, donations to charitable causes, or the contribution to public goods through taxation).
Paul pollack , and his non-profit IDE, got 20 million people out poverty by offering radically affordable irrigation technology and building private markets for such products.
There have been new kinds of non-profits that combine a non-profit goal + financial sustainability. They appear to work better in some cases.
For those who are interested in sucssesful non-profit business models and organizations, nextbillion.net is a good site.
Different domains of problems: a NFP (not for profit) org may not be as _efficient_ as a FP org pursuing the same goal, but you are ignoring that many goals will never be pursued by a profit-seeking entity.
Provision of many "social goods" like shelter for the homeless, health care for poor children, or help for people with severe disabilities (components of the "safety net") will simply never yield a profit margin by virtue of the nature of the underlying problem. This is precisely because if we want to provide such services for people who lack the _ability_ to pay for it, there will be no demand for it.
So, instead, NFPs make a value proposition to _philanthropists_ who want to provide the goods there is no market incentive to provide.
In the public sector corollary, politicians make value propositions to voters, and whichever programs they like (through the mucky, revealed-preference process we call democracy), and the social goods demanded via that process are then implemented through public financing (spreading costs among everyone).
It is the underlying problem -- not the organization type -- that governs whether a venture can be profitable, or even sustainable.
Kiva - http://www.kiva.org/jobs DonorsChoose - http://www.donorschoose.org/docs/software-engineer.htm GlobalGiving - http://www.globalgiving.org/aboutus/jobs/software-engineer-f...
The internet is my world. Therefore all my ideas are The Next Better Widget (tm). I think I need to go on an internet diet for a month.
Will have to think about this, thanks for giving me personally dangerous ideas DotOrg.
Step two: Just take it from there.