Unfortunately so many top achievers are working exclusively in internet advertising, simply because the economy is not so fair and in the US at least its extremely easy to fall into economic insecurity.

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads" - said by Jeffrey Hammerbacher in 2011 is still incredibly poignant today.

All the more reason to celebrate the acceleration of ad blocking and the downfall of the internet driven by ad revenue.

Sure, let them eat cake.

>It can make it seem like sinking time and effort to make meaningful changes is just futile because of how many things are messed up. And that kind of mindset saps happiness in a hurry.

A parallel to analysis paralysis. Sometimes being less familiar with all the options is best. Instead of having to make a decision on what to work on, you have a task and you have a tool and you use the tool to complete the task.

If you're aware of all the problems in the world, of all the places that have issues, how do you decide which one to apply your time and talent to?

Or maybe it's actually the truth, and maybe smart individuals are more aware of their very small amount of power to change things for unworkable opportunity costs.

Emphasis on "seem".

So youre saying smart people should ignore the information and feedback they are receiving and blindly follow an ambition to meaningfully change the world, even though their intelligence tells them this will not work?

So smart people should be dumber?

They should work smarter. Individual ability to effect change is negligible in the global scheme. Aggregate ability is what matters. People who seem able to effect global (or large-scale) change are better (or more successful) at combining the abilities of others. Any individual doctor in Doctors without Borders is ineffectual. The combined actions of their organization have real, positive, impact.

So instead of wasting their time on individual efforts that go nowhere or have no lasting effect, smart people should contribute their resources to a collective organization. Either by assembling such an organization and managing it, or by being a part of such an organization and providing skills/competency to it.

How do you define "fair"?