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Optimizing for Feelings

browsercompany.substack.com

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Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#21

Post by gorjusborg »

goatcode wrote: post #5
gorjusborg wrote: post #3

Oh hell yes. The concept that we do things based on our emotions will strike a certain type of individual as wrong, simply because they've become so used to looking at things like a machine. To that person I say: you are doing it right now. You are doing things based on your emotion, and it doesn't always feel... good, but it is how humans work. Humans are highly evolved organisms, and our emotions emerge from a vast…

Probably there are as many emotional reactions to some given aspect of software as there are people. How do you optimize for every individual?

My 'angle' on this is about emotion of people working on the software project. If what you are building feels wrong, it probably is. Sure, some clever market-speak might be able to neutralize that emotion by showing a more flattering angle, but the initial reaction is usually the correct one; your conscious mind just hasn't caught up yet.

If companies and individuals followed their intuition rather than being a slave to a paycheck, we'd likely not have the many of the dark patterns and creep-tech we have now. People ultimately choose to implement their own dystopia, a few individuals cannot do it all with their own hands. People should listen to their conscience and vote with their feet.

However, it isn't solely the responsibility of the individuals involved to put the brakes on bad, unethical software. It is also up to governments to ensure that people feel safe to challenge their employer. It is also up to companies to foster a culture of doing right, then profiting, rather than profit at any cost.

I'll go ahead and give the U.S. government and corporations an F grade on that right now.

Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#22

Post by chrisweekly »

Related advice for building your professional network over the course of a career: "People won't remember what you said. They might remember what you did. They will remember how you made them feel."

Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#23

Post by pketh »

scroot wrote: post #15
pketh wrote: post #7

I would love to proven wrong but I’m skeptical that a company started 2 years ago with $18 million of Series A VC funding to repay and no shipping product is going to be able to optimize for anything but growth and getting acquired https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-browser-company

They've been keeping it close to the chest, I think. But their browser exists and I believe is called Arc.

I'm sure it exists in some form, but it's not currently a shipping product

Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#24

Post by thaway2839 »

pketh wrote: post #23
scroot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been keeping it close to the chest, I think. But their browser exists and I believe is called Arc.

I'm sure it exists in some form, but it's not currently a shipping product

I'm pretty sure people are actually using it.

Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#25

Post by golergka »

gorjusborg wrote: post #3

Oh hell yes. The concept that we do things based on our emotions will strike a certain type of individual as wrong, simply because they've become so used to looking at things like a machine. To that person I say: you are doing it right now. You are doing things based on your emotion, and it doesn't always feel... good, but it is how humans work. Humans are highly evolved organisms, and our emotions emerge from a vast…

Ignoring a person and self's irrational and emotional side is one of the most irrational quirks of so-called rationalists.

Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#26

Post by enviclash »

Feelings and emotions relate to values, which are learned at an earlier age, and cannot be easily changed. So yes to this view, but let's understand better what drives it from behind and use it in the overall frame. Are we not at all times optimizing for the values of the perceived majority?

Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#28

Post by bumby »

blueflow wrote: post #8
gorjusborg wrote: post #3

Oh hell yes. The concept that we do things based on our emotions will strike a certain type of individual as wrong, simply because they've become so used to looking at things like a machine. To that person I say: you are doing it right now. You are doing things based on your emotion, and it doesn't always feel... good, but it is how humans work. Humans are highly evolved organisms, and our emotions emerge from a vast…

Emotions are guidance, not binding. If you are not able to manage them on your own (an important aspect of adulthood), they will get into your way at some point in life. Yes, they are real, but acting on your emotions unconditionally is dangerous when you are in a position of responsibility or power.

A good piece of advice I've heard is that our goal should be to tune our intuitions so they can be reliable. Gut feelings are sometimes wrong and thus shouldn't be binding, but if we can improve their accuracy they can be extremely, extremely helpful.

Is there evidence that we can train our intuitions? I'm reminded of the expert art assessor in Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" who immediately knew a sculpture was a forgery by gut instinct. (I know Gladwell's writing isn't often held in high regard, but it's a good illustration for my question). Surely, we aren't inborn with the ability to assess art validity, implying it's a trainable 'instinct'.

Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#29

Post by Dudeman112 »

bsedlm wrote: post #17
blueflow wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emotions are guidance, not binding. If you are not able to manage them on your own (an important aspect of adulthood), they will get into your way at some point in life. Yes, they are real, but acting on your emotions unconditionally is dangerous when you are in a position of responsibility or power.

for that matter, unconditional anything is dangerous unconditional rationalism seem to lead to a meaningless life (i.e. the shitty kind of nihilism) unconditionally doing something because "rationality" demands it strikes me as mental gymnastics to let some symbolic-computable method dictate what we do... to follow this unconditionally is just as dumb as acting only on one's emotions we have (are able to do) both; so…

>doing something because "rationality" demands it strikes me as mental

It's best if we replace "rational" for "what I think makes sense" or "what I think is the best course of action", etc...

Which is, of course, self-evidently what one should do.

"Acting rational" is optimizing one's utility function to the best of their abilities and knowledge. It says nothing about the utility function itself, and using unconscious/emotional/instinctive thinking leads to better results for their appropriate places (including figuring out the utility function/what you care about)

You don't do mathematics to catch a ball thrown at you.

Re: Optimizing for Feelings

#30

Post by TuringTest »

blueflow wrote: post #8
gorjusborg wrote: post #3

Oh hell yes. The concept that we do things based on our emotions will strike a certain type of individual as wrong, simply because they've become so used to looking at things like a machine. To that person I say: you are doing it right now. You are doing things based on your emotion, and it doesn't always feel... good, but it is how humans work. Humans are highly evolved organisms, and our emotions emerge from a vast…

Emotions are guidance, not binding. If you are not able to manage them on your own (an important aspect of adulthood), they will get into your way at some point in life. Yes, they are real, but acting on your emotions unconditionally is dangerous when you are in a position of responsibility or power.

"Optimizing for feelings" as suggested by the article is not about guiding your decisions purely on emotions; it's about designing products or services taking them into account.

When you average over the range of users, conveying the right emotions is an important feature on itself, even if it's not a functional requirement; a product that elicits positive feelings will be better that one that engenders negative ones. Developers ignore this tenet at their own risk, often creating functionally correct programs that their users hate to use because of their "death by 100 papercuts" interfaces.

UX people know that emotionally positive interfaces work better than equivalent ugly and cumbersome interfaces. Marketing people live their entire careers on generating those positive feelings artificially. Integrating into product and service design the creation of positive feelings of the kind that benefit users would be something that is beneficial to all of us, rather than the usual approach of maximising profits by capturing and directing customer expectations to profit-maximising environments.

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