Comment by raverbashing
12 years ago
"SpaceX provides almost no current value to anybody."
Well, someone payed SpaceX for a delivery flight to the ISS the other day, they're certainly providing value in that context
12 years ago
"SpaceX provides almost no current value to anybody."
Well, someone payed SpaceX for a delivery flight to the ISS the other day, they're certainly providing value in that context
This discussion is in terms of value to WhatsApp users ( average-joe user) to SpaceX users ( niche rich-audience / billion dollar agency )
A naive way of looking at it:
Benefit to humanity = Number of people it affects * Impact per person.
The advancement of science is of quite significant benefit to humankind in the long run and it affects everybody in a way a brand product implementing a known design does not. In fact, if it staves off extinction, even if it only matters in the far far future, the number of people affected could well be more than the one hundred billion who have lived on earth for the past 40,000 years.
Maybe so, but does SpaceX really advance science in a significant way? That is, compared to the best next alternative?
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I totally agree. WhatsApp right now affects a lot of people a little. SpaceX right now affects small amount of people a lot, but if that satellite project pans out this will turn into affecting a lot of people greatly. SpaceX has a much, much bigger prospect for benefiting humanity than WhatsApp can dream of.