Although I like to update the quote to:
"I saw the best minds of our generation writing Snapchat filters."
Because that is where he decided to work. I imagine he could find a role elsewhere focused on the areas you mentioned if he wished with those qualifications.
I don't doubt for a second that VCs fund a shedload of shite and that the social media world has pernicious effects that we are only just starting to understand, but in your example I don't think the tech industry can be blamed for your friend wasting his life building widgets.
Guess where I am in now? Machine learning consulting, left science - doing work that finally pays my bills and gets my kids to a first-class school.
However, I have observed friends seemingly get caught in a pattern: go to a top school, so you can have a high-paying job, so you can afford to send kids to a top school, so they can get high-paying jobs, so that...
In some folks' lives, the value of the "top school" seems to have a circular definition (not true for all folks, of course). It's a little sad, because by breaking out of that pattern, many more possibilities open up (like working in important and fascinating science for lower pay).
But yes, I totally understand what you are referring to - having my kids go to a private school means we have a number of those "circular types" you described to cope with...
It is an unfortunate outcome, but how would you change the systems (e.g. capitalism) that produced this outcome?
Already done for a long time (and still doing). It does not change anything since most other people do not change their behavior.
Yes, me too. It has been a process.
> It does not change anything since most other people do not change their behavior.
I disagree. People do change their behaviour. You did. I did. There are many, many others. It's just not reached a critical mass yet, but give it time, it will. There are whole communities out there that didn't exist ten or fifteen years ago that are kicking back at the system because it gives them a better life.
Keep doing what you are doing, keep the faith, look for ways to accelerate change (something I've become increasingly interested in). It will happen.
You don't have to believe me though - research it yourself, if you want further proof that the current system is not working look at suicide rates, rates of medication use, self-medication (drugs, alcohol, food) and so on. We are living in a very sick, literally, society. Pick anyone of these and you will see trends near exponential.
I am not suggesting anything new or something that is not currently being done, right now, by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, and it does, slowly but surely, change things. I am not saying we are anywhere near there yet though.
There was a great discussion of this problem in 2007: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_...
The previous decades were all cool, and the system keeps optimizing for fun innovation but there are other issues right now
To pretend this is isolated to SV is ignorant. This is what you get in capitalism
The market is going to buy a warp-drive when someone makes it.
In my friend's case he was simply not able to get sufficient funding for his core research. In the end he gave up and got a job and I don't blame him for that.
> The market is going to buy a warp-drive when someone makes it.
It won't happen if our best brains are figuring out how to make you click on ads and concocting the most effective form of fake news. It is a massive diversion of raw talent and resources away from, say, that nuclear fusion reactor.
But also, there is much more in nursing then compassion. It reqires a lot of self control and knowledge.
"In his talk, Palihapitiya criticized not only Facebook, but Silicon Valley’s entire system of venture capital funding. He said that investors pump money into “shitty, useless, idiotic companies,” rather than addressing real problems like climate change and disease."
Amen brother. Nailed it.
I caught up with a friend the other day. He has a first class honours degree in Physics from Cambridge University. He went on to do a PhD in Quantum Mechanics. He is the smartest person I have ever met. He works for a company that trawls social media looking for "trends". This is a guy who could probably be building the warp drive, or a nuclear fusion reactor - instead he spends his days writing code that helps clients sell people shit they don't need - because that is what this insane "market" puts value on. It is a terribly toxic culture exacerbated by social media. I did a "hard break" from social media a year or two back and have never regretted the decision.