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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#231

Post by pxc »

hyggetrold wrote: post #141
efitz wrote: post #31

The article doesn’t mention a number of contributing problems such as monopoly power. I want to highlight growth as such a problem. Perhaps Ycombinator is the wrong place to bring up such a point, but the idea of constant growth in user base as the source of value in a company almost certainly contributes significantly to the problems discussed in the article. What happened to community? The businesses I like to deal…

If you read the writing of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, he calls out growth as the underlying cause of these issues. Our current economic system is oriented around growth and the assumption that it can continue indefinitely.

> Our current economic system is oriented around growth and the assumption that it can continue indefinitely.

It's worse than that. For the present system to function correctly, growth must continue indefinitely. Even just a slower pace of growth constitutes a crisis under our current economic system.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#232

Post by jabroni_salad »

worble wrote: post #91
robert_tweed wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be fine with shorts if they didn't disable the normal player controls.

Every time I view one I think to myself "I really should make a userscript that changes the '/short/' to '/v/' in the url" but I never view them often enough that this annoyance has manifested itself in action.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/452282-youtube-shorts-use-...

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#233

Post by tristanMatthias »

As other people have commented, seems like the West's addiction to never ending growth at all costs could be a strong driver of this. Reminds me of this TED talk, A healthy economy should be designed to thrive not grow: https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_sho...

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#234

Post by gipp »

xkcd1963 wrote: post #65
gipp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what a logical fallacy is

"A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that occurs when invalid arguments or irrelevant points are introduced without any evidence to support them." invalid argument => x people doing y where x is "brilliant" and y is "serving Marl". Serving Marl is not brilliant. It doesn't count to work for a FAANG company to be considered brilliant, at least by my standards and view on how time is well spend.

Yeah, that's cool and all, but

a) a logical fallacy is a particular pattern of invalid argument, not just an argument that is invalid. So just on like a semantic level, an individual argument can't be a fallacy, though it can commit one.

b) fallacies are invalid inferences by construction. You just don't agree with the premise in this case (and are also implicitly proposing a second premise that doing something not-brilliant means a person is not themselves brilliant)

And most importantly c) whether or not working for a FAANG company is "brilliant" is entirely a question of your opinion.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#235

Post by AlbertCory »

efitz wrote: post #31

The article doesn’t mention a number of contributing problems such as monopoly power. I want to highlight growth as such a problem. Perhaps Ycombinator is the wrong place to bring up such a point, but the idea of constant growth in user base as the source of value in a company almost certainly contributes significantly to the problems discussed in the article. What happened to community? The businesses I like to deal…

As I said, my anti-growth example is the local family restaurant, that's hugely successful and profitable, popular, provides steady employment to new family members, and is not trying to take over the world.

If it throws off profits, those can be invested in other businesses, not in growing the restaurant.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#236

Post by AlbertCory »

bad_user wrote: post #218
hyggetrold wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the writing of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, he calls out growth as the underlying cause of these issues. Our current economic system is oriented around growth and the assumption that it can continue indefinitely.

Growth means prosperity. Also, the idea that the economy requires growth is BS, it's just that economic stagnation or recession currently means some people are going to be starving. And if you actually look at the world, with its still growing population in some countries, or an aging population in others, it's pretty clear why people starve when growth stops, and it has nothing to do with capitalism, or The Man.

Granting that for the sake of argument:

That applies to the economy as a whole. It doesn't mean that every single corporation in the economy has to grow, beyond the general rate of GDP growth.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#237

Post by WD40forRust »

freedomben wrote: post #6

> Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about the marginal user. Let’s call him Marl. The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headline, otherwise he’ll swipe back to TikTok and never open your app again. This is hilarious and sad because it fe…

>Open source seems like the only real hope there.

You know how the saying goes: The best things in life are Free Software!

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#238

Post by oatmeal1 »

mvdtnz wrote: post #149
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…

Why would anyone think that a large overall pool of happiness is somehow better than a high per capita happiness? This seems like the kind of thing that's incredibly obvious to everyone but the academic philosopher.

First, the phrasing is confusing, because it's not clear whether people with very low happiness measured in terms of N are what we consider unhappy/sad, which is actually negative utility. I believe with this measure, positive N means someone is more happy than they are unhappy.

Second, what's "obvious to everyone" is just based on how you're phrasing the question. If you suggested to people it would be better if the population were just one deliriously happy person with N=50, vs 5 happy people with N=10.1, people would say obviously it would be better to spread the wealth and increase overall happiness.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#239

Post by joe_the_user »

efitz wrote: post #31

The article doesn’t mention a number of contributing problems such as monopoly power. I want to highlight growth as such a problem. Perhaps Ycombinator is the wrong place to bring up such a point, but the idea of constant growth in user base as the source of value in a company almost certainly contributes significantly to the problems discussed in the article. What happened to community? The businesses I like to deal…

Yeah, this certainly isn't on the users. The change is monopolies but perhaps even more, the end to the growth of the Internet. Both of these imply that each company needs to leverage each user it has. And that basically means pushing the users to make choices in every single situation where the user can be pushed.

Here, you have various ideologies of user interface. One is approach that users are idiots/"easily confused" and need to be treated-as-such/"given clear direction. Another seems to this reference to the marginal user - that our product is craptasm of dark pattern 'cause we have to satisfy the least common denominator (it's Google, so maybe we're just on dark gray patterns currently).

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#240

Post by saltminer »

nonameiguess wrote: post #125
bwanab wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gener…

> They'll do just fine with positive word-of-mouth.

Sometimes you don't even need that.

If you ever want to feel depressed, go to your city's subreddit and search for "what business will you never go to again?" I remember one popped up on my city's sub recently, and it made me incredibly thankful for my dentist. The sheer amount of shit some get away with (while having ritzy offices in expensive neighborhoods) is incredible. And sure, such a thread is bound to attract people who have had negative experiences, but the sheer quantity of complaints some places had (with nobody chiming in to defend them or say something to the effect of "I've never had any problems like that") spoke for itself.

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