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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#121

Post by xkcd1963 »

skyyler wrote: post #102
xkcd1963 wrote: post #44

"A substantial fraction of the world’s most brilliant, competent, and empathetic people ... spend their lives serving Marl" that is a logical fallacy because smart people don't waste their time on something as useless as that.

Surely you understand the underlying message about perverse or mis-aligned incentive? Are you familiar with the fallacy fallacy?

Do you mean that the author meant it in a sarcastic way? My impression was that the author meant it in a literal way.

You are saying I shouldn't describe the whole sentence as fallacy because in any case, part of it is true? I don't know that doesn't go well with writing sneering comments.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#122

Post by michaelmrose »

xapata wrote: post #47
postmodest wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should also be noted that match.com knows that it's business isn't "connecting people in stable relationships" but "luring people to pay for match.com by promising them connections that never work out." OKCupid had a model that increases the likelihood of matching with someone and ...never using OKCupid again. Match.com realizes that fundamental flaw. For their business to survive, they HAVE to be bad at the servi…

Contracts can help. Knowing that marriage is at least somewhat likely for happy couples, site users could sign an agreement that they'll pay the site $1k in the event that they become married to someone they meet through the site. Of course this could lead to freeloaders who try to avoid triggering the agreement, but that just means the contract may need optimization. Freemium models can work.

Alternatively hear me out you could have people who actually care about other people make a website that treats people like they want to be treated charges a modest per month fee to users looking to do a good job and turn a profit. Unless you've already signed a deal with the devil with people who don't give a fuck about other people it doesn't have to be a maximal profit per user it just needs to be more than the cost to run the site.

If you don't constantly redesign your site or feel compelled to use the most expensive hosting possible, or cosplay as google it doesn't even have to be that expensive. A single actual physical computer could serve a hell of a lot of people for a modest amount of money. The $20 OK cupid charges per user could trivially pay for the oh so complicated task of allowing people to find and message like minded users.

A doctor doesn't need to work around the market economics of not making people sick so you can cure them they have agency they can choose just to be a good doctor and most of them do.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#123

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

bdcs wrote: post #98

The tyranny of the marginal user reminds me of population ethics' The Repugnant Conclusion.[0] This is the conclusion of utilitarianism, where if you have N people each with 10 happiness, well then, it would be better to have 10 N people with 1.1 happiness, or 100 N people with 0.111 happiness, until you have infinite people with barely any happiness. Substitute profit for happiness, and you get the tyranny of the ma…

Many versions of utilitarianism never specified the function to compute the sum for the many. Your example assumes that the function is simple addition, but others have been proposed that reflect some of the complexities of the human condition a little more explicitly (e.g. sad neighbors make neighbors sad).

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#125

Post by nonameiguess »

bwanab wrote: post #63
postmodest wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should also be noted that match.com knows that it's business isn't "connecting people in stable relationships" but "luring people to pay for match.com by promising them connections that never work out." OKCupid had a model that increases the likelihood of matching with someone and ...never using OKCupid again. Match.com realizes that fundamental flaw. For their business to survive, they HAVE to be bad at the servi…

I've always had the same feeling about dentists. If they really fix your teeth, you wouldn't need their services anymore. The logic goes for a lot of service type situations like auto-repair post-warranty period.

This type of logic doesn't really hold for healthcare providers, at least not in the US. The licensing restrictions is how they make their money. The demand for service so far outstrips the supply of providers that they don't really need individual repeat business. They'll do just fine with positive word-of-mouth. In the specific case of dental care, there is also the problem that "fixing" the immediate problem generally can't fix the root cause, which is some combination of bad genetics and people constantly drinking loads of nearly pure sugar. As long as those things don't change, you'll keep coming back with new problems even if they fix the old ones.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#127

Post by [deleted] »

lapcat wrote: post #8

> OKCupid, like the other acquisitions of Match.com The article seems to just glance over this crucial fact. Online dating sites have gotten worse because the Match Group monopolizes them. There's hardly any competition. Same with Google Search. Monopolies suck. They start out good, in order to attract all of the users, and then once they've acquired all of the users, they turn to unchecked profit maximization and st…

[deleted]

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#128

Post by jrvarela56 »

postmodest wrote: post #22
lapcat wrote: post #8

> OKCupid, like the other acquisitions of Match.com The article seems to just glance over this crucial fact. Online dating sites have gotten worse because the Match Group monopolizes them. There's hardly any competition. Same with Google Search. Monopolies suck. They start out good, in order to attract all of the users, and then once they've acquired all of the users, they turn to unchecked profit maximization and st…

It should also be noted that match.com knows that it's business isn't "connecting people in stable relationships" but "luring people to pay for match.com by promising them connections that never work out." OKCupid had a model that increases the likelihood of matching with someone and ...never using OKCupid again. Match.com realizes that fundamental flaw. For their business to survive, they HAVE to be bad at the servi…

Would be great if you could bid: the user signs a contract where they commit to pay $X if they get married.

The more you commit to, the more priority the algorithm gives you as it wants you to get married asap.

This could be easily gamed as the users could just commit to absurdly high amounts and never get married - while getting prioritized by the site.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#129

Post by ignite »

michaelmrose wrote: post #122
xapata wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracts can help. Knowing that marriage is at least somewhat likely for happy couples, site users could sign an agreement that they'll pay the site $1k in the event that they become married to someone they meet through the site. Of course this could lead to freeloaders who try to avoid triggering the agreement, but that just means the contract may need optimization. Freemium models can work.

Alternatively hear me out you could have people who actually care about other people make a website that treats people like they want to be treated charges a modest per month fee to users looking to do a good job and turn a profit. Unless you've already signed a deal with the devil with people who don't give a fuck about other people it doesn't have to be a maximal profit per user it just needs to be more than the co…

I think many of the dating sites started that way. That's why they were better in the beginning. But eventually, they go public, or get acquired, and end up getting run by people who are bottom line focused.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#130

Post by theresistor »

Building off of the idea in here, the margin user also underlies the explosion of software scale: the software itself (how can these apps be so big?) and the teams (why do they need so many people?).

When all that counts is gaining that N+1'th user, there's a strong incentive to pile on one-off features and special cases to ensure that every potential new user has a tailor-made first experience to hook them in. Facebook and Uber both lean heavily into this, for example.

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