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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

nothinghuman.substack.com

651–660 of 840 posts

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#651

I worked at OkCupid from 2013-2017 and totally resonate with the author that mid-2010s OkCupid was a really special product, and that it took a steep decline as the decade went on. It's not entirely fair to say that the Match acquisition immediately caused that decline; I started a couple years after Match got the company in its hands, and only two of the original founders were still focused on OkCupid full time. But…

Met my wife of 13 years on OkCupid. Data-driven matching works and I just want to say thank you for helping design such a great product.

I’m sad to read that it’s gone downhill since it moved into new ownership.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#652
post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that just Eternal September? At least in the internet

Smartphones was the final nail, after that close to 100% of young adults are active online participants. The good thing is that things aren't getting worse at least, all the idiots are already online.

But OKCupid joining the race to the bottom was a choice. They decided to drop the high-IQ / literary customers.

They could have remained as the high-end of dating. 90% of men don’t enjoy using Tinder, and for women it’s just a utility service when being bachelor.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#653
post #478

This is a hilarious read but I think the author is too optimistic about the state of humanity. Marl isn't the "marginal" user, Marl is the "average" user. If the average user actually cared about deep and meaningful content, then any A/B test that throws her under the bus in order to please Marl will show bad data, and the proposed change would be killed. Yes, the author tries to hand-wave this away as "product is st…

A/B tests, as they are run by current software companies, are inherently flawed. I have never, in my entire career, ever heard of an A/B test that ran for a year, let alone 3-5 years. That’s where the true power of statistics comes alive, and nobody is financially incentivized to even consider that fact.

When I worked on ads at Google we had many A/B tests that had been running that long, generally holdbacks where a feature was almost entirely but not 100% launched.

It was relatively rare that the holdback would show markedly different results than the initial A/B test we used in deciding to launch. If that had happened more often we would have run more long tests and been slower to move to launch.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#654
post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we reverse Eternal Eptember? Can we create IQnet just for nerds?

Sure, just make something that has a barrier to entry that will filter out non-nerds. From what I can tell Ham radio is basically just a chatroom with an entrance exam, for instance. Anything done in a constructed language like Esperanto would be another filter. There's nothing stopping anyone from making a website duplicating the original OKCupid method. It's just that it requires someone willing to say "no" to the…

What is Ham radio?

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#655
post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that just Eternal September? At least in the internet

Smartphones was the final nail, after that close to 100% of young adults are active online participants. The good thing is that things aren't getting worse at least, all the idiots are already online.

All the idiots already were, unless bikeshedding category theory in IRC while m$ and friends pulled the rug under general computing was The Thinking Man's Choice.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#656
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your candor. Though I am upset, I realize this is the kind of thing that would be hard to see coming.

huh? the top point is that more users usually lead to a worse product, no?

Speaking specifically to the short-sighted nature of business objectives and the enshittification of good services via acquisition and repurposing.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#657
post #478

This is a hilarious read but I think the author is too optimistic about the state of humanity. Marl isn't the "marginal" user, Marl is the "average" user. If the average user actually cared about deep and meaningful content, then any A/B test that throws her under the bus in order to please Marl will show bad data, and the proposed change would be killed. Yes, the author tries to hand-wave this away as "product is st…

> The only way to escape this is to take on a huge pay cut and work at a company that doesn't care about growing profits. Go ahead, you first. Gladly! Where do I sign up?

What's your background, and what are your skills?

I did this in 2022 [1] and have really liked my new work. There are a lot of nonprofits doing important things, and I think it's likely you could switch to one.

[1] https://www.jefftk.com/p/leaving-google-joining-the-nucleic-...

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#658
post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually feel really bad for the younger generation, actually. There's a whole bunch of teenagers who have no idea how good and useful computers can actually be, because all they ever have known is the shitty watered down mobile version of computing. Even desktops aren't as good as they used to be (thanks, Electron), but they're still a damn sight better than mobile. But if one grew up thinking that a phone/tablet…

This is a ridiculous out of touch take. Of course young people know what desktop computing is like: they use it at school for class and use it at home for gaming. Have you considered that people might prefer mobile is preferable because it’s, well, mobile and you don’t have to lug a big ol’ machine around?

Most schools use tablets or Chromebooks, especially in the early years. Neither gives access to a system which has desktop level capabilities. Both are locked down consumption platforms.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#659
post #149
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.

I suggest in general, when approaching a conclusion of a field that you find unintuitive or overcomplicated, to try to recognise that thought pattern and swallow your pride. Its an incredibly common reaction of educated people in one area to see another area and be like "wow why are they overcomplicating it so much they must all be blind to the obvious problems" as though literally every new student in that field doesn't ask the same questions they're asking. Heck I do it all the time, most recently when starting learning music theory.

You may feel so certain that they're just too wrapped up in their nonsense that they can't see what you see. But at the very least you will have to learn it the way they learned it if you want to be effective at communicating with them to articulate what you think is wrong and convince people. And in doing so you'll likely realise that far from some unquestioned truth, every conclusion in the field is subject to vigorous debate, and hundreds and thousands of pages and criticisms and rebuttals exist for any conclusion you care about. And for it to get as big as it is such that you, a person hearing about it from outside, there must at least be something interesting and worth examining going on there.

For a prime example, see all the retired engineers who decide that because they can't read a paper on quantum physics with their calculus background, the phsyicists must be overcomplicating it, and bombard them constantly with mail about their own crackpot theories. You don't want to be that person.

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