> Also, that specific point makes me think of sales which just makes me shudder
Yeah. I maintain that currently, the marginal RoI on sales&marketing is greater than on actually doing something useful - it's too easy to bullshit people into giving you money, so making money is only weakly correlated with doing something useful.
(I know this hinges on the definition of "useful" and I haven't put enough time to clarify it even for myself, but roughly: for me, something useful means making people happier or suffer less, or increasing the pool of knowledge about the world humanity has. Making people suffer, or part with their money for very suboptimal reasons, has negative utility.)
> Also, that specific point makes me think of sales which just makes me shudder
Yeah. I maintain that currently, the marginal RoI on sales&marketing is greater than on actually doing something useful - it's too easy to bullshit people into giving you money, so making money is only weakly correlated with doing something useful.
(I know this hinges on the definition of "useful" and I haven't put enough time to clarify it even for myself, but roughly: for me, something useful means making people happier or suffer less, or increasing the pool of knowledge about the world humanity has. Making people suffer, or part with their money for very suboptimal reasons, has negative utility.)