Certainly an aside, but either everyone in the crowd's scared of cooties and self-segregates by gender or there are few women to be found in YC W14. Innovation! Disruption! Democratization!
This entire thread is like a WebMD page. Somehow a food coma resulted in a Celiac disease diagnosis. Not that it's impossible, but it's certainly implausible.
Sounds like your lunches include a bunch of carbs, too much sugar, and/or maybe a drink or two. If it happens frequently, habits form.
You win the prize for the most ignorant question of the week!
First, a science tests and explains natural phenomena. I'll draw from all walks of life to display the good it's done for human kind:
- Personal Finance: How do we know diversifying your investments gives you the optimal risk-reward in a given timeline?
- Public Policy: Why do governments prevent monopolies from forming?
- Jobs: Why do you have a specific job title instead of being a Jack of All Trades?
- (American) Football: Why do most coaches punt on fourth down, even when they shouldn't? (risk aversion)
- Population: Why has the birth rate been declining?
Second, your analogies make little sense. The architect doesn't build the house, the construction crew does. Regardless, each specialty (hmm, that specialization again?) plays an important role in building a house.
It's very disappointing to see such a smart community bicker about a topic they clearly know little about and have done even less research to back up their comments. Let's cut the crap about Bitcoin, building esoteric Facebook apps to broadcast message, and A/B testing funding effectiveness to prove a point.
An article from Humanosphere (full disclosure, I work with this organization) http://www.humanosphere.org/2013/04/unicef-sweden-wants-your... actually digs a little deeper into the topic. Regardless of what you think of The Atlantic's article, the UNICEF campaign is fully integrated with press ads, tv spots, radio commercials, digital material, and PR. An integrated campaign on this scale is (unfortunately) relatively unheard of in the development community due to funding issues and uproar whenever any non-profit's seen to be spending excessively on initiatives that don't directly go to the task at hand.
I personally think the campaign is effective; UNICEF is going against the grain by calling out the shortcomings of social media when most other non-profits (I've had experience working with a couple) are all using likes, retweets, and pins as KPIs (but clearly don't have a perfect correlation with the bottom line)