[guylhem]

> Isn't it my moral duty to do that?

No, there is no absolute "moral duty" to anything or anyone. There is a thing called "guilt", that some people try to induce (moral manipulation), when you don't do the things they want you to do. You only duty is to do things that you think are right.

> Could I have saved Kristie, or if not her, others like her?

Saving her - quite unlikely, unless you manage to find a cure for the kind of terminal cancer she has, in less than the survival expectation that were given.

Saving others - unlikely, unless you manage to find a cure for any cancer. There seems to be many people working on that.

I would say this is a battle you have <0.01% of winning. In such case, the wise thing to do is not to enter in this battle.

>if this is really the "right" thing to do

That being said, considering death is a final state, you may want to spend some time with the dying person instead of working on your project. If you don't, you may have regrets later on. You won't be able to interact with the person after death. I'd suggest stalling the IDE work, unless you have very compelling reasons to prioritize that.

Don't fight the battle, but instead, provide care and comfort to the dying person.

>I'm doing this because I believe that this is the greatest contribution I can make

Good statement. You do with the cards you are dealt with. Just make sure to take the right decisions to avoid regrets.

[rquantz]

No, there is no absolute "moral duty" to anything or anyone.

That is a very limited understanding of morality.

There seems to be many people working on that.

Not enough.

I would say this is a battle you have <0.01% of winning. In such case, the wise thing to do is not to enter in this battle.

By this logic no one should ever work on really hard problems.

[dm2]

>> By this logic no one should ever work on really hard problems.

Maybe the key is that not just anyone should work on really hard problems, if you have an advantage or enough capital then nobody is stopping you. Someone with a PhD in clinical research has a much higher percentage "chance" of succeeding at a difficult medicinal problem than >99.999% of the rest of the population. Maybe the best approach would be to help funnel funds to specific cancer research groups.

If you start with nothing and have the goal of curing cancer, it just isn't going to happen (<0.001% chance of success or even progress).

[toufka]

It gets weirder too. In SF I can make substantially more money working for a random social startup than I can working as a postdoc directly on cancer-curing science. I have the capacity to work on such science at a high level, or a social startup at a pretty moderate level. But society has worked its compensation out such that being a highly trained PhD is far less compensated than someone working on the tech scene.

[andys627]

Last year I was with a family member in her final months... mostly spent in a hospital. Working was a sort of refuge that allowed me to focus on something else. When I returned I was a much better support. You will go crazy if you do nothing but sit at the hospital listening to beeping machines and watching basic cable. You'll want to sit there with her all the time but you need to take care of yourself as well.

[acjohnson55]

It's a cold world if you try to reduce everything to logic and probability.

There's nothing about what the author wrote that struck me as though he had some tremendous guilt weighing him down. There's guilt and there's humble recognition of one's own privilege. They aren't the same thing. He strikes me as someone who understands the opportunity cost of what he's chosen to do, and not only appreciates the fact that he has a choice, but feel conviction that he made the right one.

I'm sure you intended your pep talk out of a genuine desire to help, but I think you missed the point of why the author wrote what he did, at least my perception of it. He's trying to bring a little perspective, through the lens of his own experience.

We romanticize what we do in the startup world like we're living on the edge. He's comparing one sense in which working on a startup pales in comparison to other challenges people face, versus the sense in which you truly are out there on the edge. There's truth on both sides of the coin.