This is a neoreaction blog. Before anyone else feels the need to point that out.
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.
"The neoreactionary movement (a.k.a. neoreaction, NRx, the Dark Enlightenment, the alt-right movement) is a loosely-defined cluster of Internet-based political thinkers who wish to return human society to forms of government older than liberal democracy"
A faction of intellectual or pseudointellectual bloggers (depending on your opinion) - it is probably easier to say what they are against progressive politics and modernity, than what they are for - but at times they have openly or covertly advocated wanting to do some/all of bring back monarchy, return to traditional gender roles, abolish the distinction between church and state, isolationist foreign policies, racial segregation or "scientific racism" and so on.
So, its pretty easy to see why they are quite controversial.
They're only controversial because some of them have money. When normal people spout these kinds of opinions, nobody hesitates to simply label them wrong and be done with it.
I had some success in my life and got to met pretty successful people, the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of different fields.
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.
This article resonates with me. I find myself very often in this situation of trying to find meaning in what I do. When you tie this to evolution and what more or less appears to be biological machines trying to eek out some meaning in otherwise meaningless life, nothing seems to make sense any more. What's the point of anything at all? We try so hard to reason and find it hard when we reach the boundaries of reasoning and enter the domain of faith and beliefs, but choose to ignore them because they aren't scientific enough. I believe a much simpler notion is to treat yourself as an artist or an entertainer and look at your work as a means of enriching someone's life - not because of its utility or function or what not but just because its beautiful and brings out joy to people in your world, however small the number might be. We keep thinking about the whole world and forget about our own small world, when in reality, it's our small world that gives us all of our joy and happiness.
The existentialists[1] made some of the most thoughtful treatments of the human condition (among them, my favorite sub-group is the absurdists, who regard the human condition as absurd). Existentialism, however, offers a rather naive view of humanity, as possessing an inherent essence (they were essentialists), like reason, or disparate personal essences to which one can and should be "authentic". Nevertheless, their texts serve as the basis for much of modern philosophy (yet they are very entertaining).
[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.
Sartre also said that existentialism is humanism, which is a load of crap, so what Sartre said of existentialism isn't necessarily what it is. What complicates matters further is that existentialism is many things -- it is basically "the philosophies of those called existentialists". Still, many existentialists emphasize authenticity (to one's nature), which is impossible if there is no essence (authentic to what?).
Wait. To our best knowledge we don't know whether there is a meaning of life, right? And it would be irrational to act based on a conjectured purpose if there isn't solid evidence for it. So even if we will burn in hell if we don't destroy ourselves, there is no solid evidence for that, so it would be irrational to do so. The best way of proceeding is then to keep our options open as long as possible. Our quasi-purpose is to find out whether there is a purpose in the first place.
Well, we do know about evolution, and you can make some inferences about the utility of life and that of our species based on that. Would it be based on partial information? Maybe. The point is - you can give any meaning that you want to your life, but meaning isn't just something that you choose one day and stick to it. Every reason that you make will essentially be bound to this ultimate purpose that you assign yourself to. It takes years of conscious effort before your "choice" reflects your "life".
I mean that we are obliged to look for meaning just so that we consider the possibility that there indeed is meaning, so that we can act accordingly to avoid ending up in hell (or a similar place). And by that I don't mean the introspective, philosophical, non-falsifiable kind of meaning, but meaning somewhere encoded in the laws of physics, say, we are in a simulation and our creator will punish us if we destroy our planet.
If there's a heaven and a hell, who goes there? Will you go there? Will I go there?
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.
It's a mass of particles the whole time. It's a bread roll when it plays the causal role, or set of such roles, which we term a bread roll. It's "I" when it plays the causal role we term "I".
Sure, but then the question becomes... Where does "I" start and end? For example, the air in your lungs, is that part of "I"? If it is, where does it stop being part of "I"?
This reasoning immediately follows from an agnostic, scientific epistemology. A hypothetical theory of 'I' is 'a collection of elementary particles brought forth by evolution due to certain dynamics that are best described by quantum field theory and general relativity'. Who goes to hell depends on the particular situation we find ourselves in. Perhaps environmentalists would be spared.
I would describe myself as agnostic, but I don't believe science has anything meaningful to say about spiritual/philosophical matters. Science is concerned with what's testable/measurable, we're not talking about anything testable/measurable.
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?
No, I'm only talking about the testable and the potentially testable. I mentioned hell and God just as an example of a potential reality which imposes meaning on our existence. I'm referring to a literally testable God through some scientific experiment.
Okay, so let's say that we've proven beyond reasonable doubt that God exists. Let's also say we've managed to prove heaven and hell exist. The question still remains, what part of you goes to heaven or hell?
This is really poor reasoning and is just making up magical conditions. What if we figure out it's a simulation and our creators get upset because it's no longer fun for them and torture us?
A "meaning of life" in the sense you're referring to implies two things...
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.
How can you prove, though, that meaning is neither singular, preset and nor condensable to a single goal? What if god does exist? Then it would be rational to act in a way that pleases god and thus it should be our goal to find out whether that is the case.
Let's explore that idea, what if a god exists... A god that designed us for a single purpose...
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?
In any sense. Why should we assume that our creator is sane? Perhaps they sell toy universes at the counter in grocery stores and we are in the hands of some cruel teenager in our host universe. Perhaps they run simulations to find a particular outcome of evolution. Maybe we are in some sort of digestive organ of a god which feasts on evolutionary structures which perform complex computations.
If the creator is insane, and is silent, then it seems unlikely anything you could do would reliably appease it.
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?
If we could establish a communication channel to the creator we could perhaps negotiate a transfer of all consciousnesses on Earth to the host universe. Maybe the creator isn't even aware of us and would simply shut us down if we wouldn't establish contact.
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.
There's another possibility that the universe doesn't need a creator, it has always existed, going through a cycle between 'big bang' and 'big crunch'. That doesn't exclude the possibility of higher powers within the universe (or multiverse if that idea floats your boat).
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?
I agree. That's why I'm agnostic. We're not able to determine whether God exists or not, so I accept the possibility that it does exist as well as the possibility that it doesn't. Instead of looking for answers to impossible questions, seems better to explore the possibilities of the existence we can experience.
That's not what I mean. I mean that we need to actively look for intrinsic meaning of our existence, just to have the case covered that there really is a grand purpose and that we will be disadvantaged if we don't act in accordance to it.
From an evolutionary perspective, meaning is simply a tool that worked well enough to carry the genes that created it into subsequent generations (the same can be said for joy and happiness). Pondering our obsession with meaning and points might be more useful than trying to find them.
Yes, I was making a point about how my thoughts always end up in that kind of a question and I was proposing a way to look at life that might avoid such depressing situations.
There is an individualistic notion here that you, personally, need to be the leader of a project to change the world. Or if not the leader, one of the founders. Perhaps that's inherent in founding a startup. There are not many people involved, so if it's going to succeed, it's up to you. (Sort of. It's also up to your customers.)
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.
One of the often-overlooked opportunities to change the world is to empower others to change the world in their own small ways, to lift them up and open their eyes to the possibility of their own capabilities, and build and provide them the tools to succeed in their own missions of good.
That's really just my own take rather than a formal philosophy, but I think it's at the essence of the leadership offered by history's "liberation" teachers for example. The following is my interpretation:
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...
Nope, I just interact with fine folk like you in real life and on the internet. You are a powerful person like many in this world, we simply don't necessarily understand that until we have someone remind us!
> "There is an individualistic notion here that you, personally, need to be the leader of a project to change the world."
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.
But perhaps someone else is working on the same ideas you thought of already? If you found someone like that, would you want to join them? And perhaps you'll find someone with better ideas than yours, so their project would be a better use of your time?
This really resonates with me. On the one hand, you have the desire for greatness and importance, and on the other, the sobering realization that unless you do something completely absurd - inventing free energy, for instance, or getting us into contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence - your work can only have an impact on a limited number of people, and will almost certainly be unknown to the vast majority of humans.
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.
They pursued The Work, whatever that might have been for each individual, not because being known to many humans was important. Let go of your Ego and your works will flourish and spread even a bit more light in the world.
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.
I'm with you. While I agree with most of what the article says, too many people use the reason of the article as a copout. There are so many problems that would get better fast without new technical or social inventions but only needing a critical mass of people with courage and the willingness to sacrifice for the greater good.
This reads like a self parody. "We're making the world a better place...[1]".
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.
Who said making the world a better place had to be linked to commercial products?
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
I think it's good people have an honest desire to make the world a better place. But it's not always going to be the responbility of your specific app or business to do just that. Bringing internet to people who can't even get water without a trek to a well isn't best place to start sometimes, internet will be needed eventually, but basic needs are needed first. There are many, many, many great NGOs that you can donate to and make a huge impact. I was just looking at UNHCR the other day, and they have some really important projects going on in a world where some 30 million people are displaced.
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!
With regard to your first paragraph, it's often the other way around; trying to cater to people's material needs from several thousand miles away through multiple layers of agency problems often ends up doing more harm than good, distorting local economies, encouraging corruption and undermining the efforts of developing countries to build a stable society. If people have literacy and Internet access, they have access to all the world's knowledge and a better chance of helping themselves; if you would send gifts, send those.
I agree entirely with your second paragraph, however.
I have to admit my own goals are absurdly ambitious, but those are the ones that excite me so I'm sticking with it.
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.
> even if you only accomplish a small portion of it, you're still really successful.
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.
Right now I'm trying to build something kinda like Ted Nelson's Xanadu. There are lots of degrees of success on this one...anything from a useful tool for an individual, to a system for workgroups, to a global network that makes much of the web obsolete. I hope to bootstrap by making something that works at all these levels.
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.
That sounds like the flawed reasoning behind every business that says "The X industry is Y billions. If we can just grab a tenth of a percent of it, we'll be super rich!"
That's not flawed reasoning in and of itself. It's just an unrealistic expectation passed off as a realistic one. It implies that capturingb x% of the market share is only x% as difficult as capturing all of it.
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."
> "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.
Personally I got depressed before I seriously started to try. I kept picturing myself at an old age wondering what could have been. So I at least know I'm avoiding that, and if I do succeed to any extent that'll be a big bonus.
Money is the great change agent, get enough of it and you might be able to do some change that impacts widely. If you can somehow get markets invested in the direction you want to change it, it may happen. If you can't do that, you can also impact others around you in good ways.
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.
Well, two comments: First, it's hard, but never before a single person or small company could at least technically reach millions of people with feasible investment. Now you can.
Second, by the time people who do paper work got to position that can make change, many already confirmed to their system bureaucracy and traditional point of view and interests. You need the people who don't take that way.
A positive development, overall. Based on my conversations, I think a lot of tech people are closeted neoreactionaries, but maybe the climate has developed that we can come out?
Given that tech is as anti-autoritarian as it is (and given that it has to be) I don't believe it is a good thing.
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.
Of course, a disturbingly large amount of tech people are uncloseted neoreactionaries, for a profession that simply cannot work at all without the scientific mentality of the Enlightenment.
What number or fraction is acceptable before it becomes "disturbingly" large?
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.
>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.
Scientists who speak publicly about racial / geographical correlations with almost anything "interesting" (e.g. athletics, intelligence) are swimming in extremely dangerous waters. We saw this in the past couple of years with the media tarring-and-feathering of Harvard psychologist Jason Richwine, and geneticist James Watson. Nobody wants to go near that area - it's the 3rd rail of biological and psychological science.
If even politicians are unable to differentiate extremism in thought experiments and science vs. actual action, then how bad must it be among the general population? Doesn't that consideration justify placing certain things under a taboo?
>If even politicians are unable to differentiate extremism in thought experiments and science vs. actual action, then how bad must it be among the general population?
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.
But you can work in this industry and do good in the world. You may not make as much or have a big payout though. I originally focused my career on healthcare and first wrote software used by biotech/pharma companies to support their communications with doctors. Then I focused on privacy issues and worked for PGP. I then went 180 degrees may have added some evil to the world and worked on NSA/military projects for awhile (only defensive projects though).
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.
> 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.
I hope you might be willing to give me some advice. I read your comments on the Aereo SC decision and was intrigued with the prospects of providing content to my 67 apartment tenants in a small town in North Carolina. I would like to market the apartments as having free access to 100Mbps internet and free access to any movie, TV show, etc available on the internet. ... Or, something like that. Imagine a server in the clubhouse as a gigantic time shifting gadget. I'd raise the rent, of course, the same for all units. I am considering a dedicated fiber link to the backbone (2000ft) and wiring every unit with fiber as well. Thoughts?
Haven't we already learnt that the world reacts badly to 'being saved'? I cite religious battle.
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.
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.