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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#741

Post by zbentley »

mhb wrote: post #407
Sharlin wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like a layman can have a good idea of whether a dentist has done a good job, except in cases where the job was clearly botched. People can't realistically make an informed choice based on dentist competence, so soft metrics like patient comfort and general bellyfeel dominate. Moreover, people hopefully don't need dental services very frequently, so gathering enough data takes a long time.

OK. But a single payer addresses none of those issues.

Well, it tries to. Whether or not it succeeds is the subject of lots and lots of debate, but single payer systems I'm aware of have accountability models driven by (usually public-sector) audits and quality controls that try to optimize for health outcomes. The rationale being that the payer (government) spends less overall, and is more likely to be supported (voted for), if the population has good health outcomes in areas that the government can influence via the healthcare system.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#742

Post by zbentley »

krisoft wrote: post #115
fidotron wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely could do market based dating where people can bid how much a date with the other would be worth and you match everyone every few days based on the highest sum of bids, collecting the difference. So if A wants to date B and bids 60 and B will pay 40 to date A the match will cost A 20 plus fees. This would cut to the chase amazingly fast, which isn’t what people want.

> This would cut to the chase amazingly fast, which isn’t what people want. I think you just reinvented sex work, but somehow made it more icky? The main and big problem with this if anyone would consider it for dating for real, which probably they wouldn’t so no big worry, is what is in the price? So A just paid 20 dollars for the pleasure of having a date with B. What did A buy? Does B have to stay at the date for…

Yeah. I think the problem is with an underlying assumption in GP's post: that because dating as a system sometimes behaves game-theoretically it is therefore equivalent to a system of economic transactions.

I think that is only sometimes true, usually in situations where relationships are mainly economic decisions. As prosperity increases and pay/power differences between genders shrink, it is becoming less frequently true, and less true on a per-relationship basis, over time.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#743

Post by dredmorbius »

jefftk wrote: post #657
grishka wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

OT: what's your blog based on?

I looked for a colophon / about site page with no joy.

Source suggests it's simply hand-coded HTML?

Hrm... Apparently, plus some webscripts?

https://www.jefftk.com/p/designing-low-upkeep-software>

https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/makers...>

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#744

Post by ecshafer »

ChefboyOG wrote: post #721
zmmmmm wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's an interesting counter narrative then to the currently in vogue idea that you can stop individual ad targeting and instead target people based on their high level interests. Reddit is like a distillation of that, the logical end point of it ... if that is a dead end, Google is in for a rough time with the pathway they are pursuing with Chrome.

My experience with Reddit ads (years ago now) wasn't that subreddit-level targeting was bad—there's a reason sponsored content is such a big marketing channel, after all—but rather that the ads platform just never worked very well. And by "never worked very well," I don't just mean "We ran ads without good results." The whole experience was just sort of confusing and underwhelming, especially when compared to other c…

So the targeting wasn't just you choosing to run ads on /r/coffee and /r/programming? In my head the ads should be so easy to sell with how niche it is. But I also believe reddit could screw it up.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#745

Post by Fripplebubby »

Fripplebubby wrote: post #732
bluefirebrand wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do they do with that money? They spend it, which grows the economy. Our economy, not some other country's economy. I'm going to guess you've never spoken to anyone who is sending money back to their family in their original country with every paycheck. Not really the point of this conversation I guess but... yeah. It does happen more than you probably think. To the point where malls in my area have kiosks for…

I agree this happens a lot, but isn't this an area of financial life that is regulated, governed, and monitored by states today? I am not familiar with the policies or regulations in play here but this seems very addressable by the institutions and regulatory bodies that exist today in most (all?) countries. A solved problem, in other words.

For example the income tax or other taxes already capture a portion of foreign workers' incomes that the state wants to capture without discouraging workers too much and working elsewhere, according to their economic models and policies.

I suppose different countries have different strategies on this, rich countries are trying to benefit from foreign labor and capture some taxes from them while less rich countries are trying to increase their haul by encouraging their citizens to become foreign workers (example: Philippines).

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#746

Post by sanderjd »

mato wrote: post #615
sanderjd wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to see how this is responsive to my comment. Was it meant for someone else?

I was responding to your comment, but should have used less cut and paste. You wrote: > This is why I like to pay for things. This dynamic only really exists for things that are given away for free. Navionics Boating is a paid application, and it's not cheap. There is no free tier, just a 14-day trial period. Despite that, it seems to have gone down the same route of Marl-ifying the interface as a free app would have…

Ok yeah I get it now! Thanks for clarifying.

So, I guess it would require a lot more research to make a real argument about this, but to me, this just sounds like an application that isn't very good, but I don't think is the same phenomenon described by the article. I definitely don't think charging money is any kind of guarantee of quality. Software is hard to make and lots of software sucks just because it sucks.

But the difference I see is that I think Navionics Boating has an incentive to make that app better. That if they make improvements for users like you, that will likely impact their bottom line positively, because they'll attract and retain more users like you.

But free mass-market consumer apps have the opposite incentive. They are incentivized to dumb things down to the lowest common denominator, because there will always be > 1 user that they attract with that approach for every 1 user like you that they alienate.

Basically: I think free business models can ignore retention, whereas for-pay subscription models can't, and that's why I prefer them.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#747

Post by jefftk »

dredmorbius wrote: post #743
jefftk wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

OT: what's your blog based on? I looked for a colophon / about site page with no joy. Source suggests it's simply hand-coded HTML? Hrm... Apparently, plus some webscripts? https://www.jefftk.com/p/designing-low-upkeep-software > https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/makers... >

That's right: I draft each post in HTML, then have some scripts which add indexes, headers, footers, and css, and make an RSS feed.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#748

Post by strbean »

dimal wrote: post #285
Night_Thastus wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone here is completely missing the point. It wasn't the API change, the 'new reddit' UI change, or frankly any other individual change. Those are symptoms of a greater problem - Reddit is social media that succeeded . This exact same fall happens to any and all social media that succeeds, and is not in any way unique to Reddit. It grows, and with growth comes complexity and greater expenses to keep it all proppe…

It succeeded for a long time without becoming enshittified. It was the front page of the internet and it was great. Then they took VC funding. That changed everything. That was the driver for all the enshittification that followed. The VCs need to get a 10x return and they only have one playbook — the one you describe. But if they hadn't taken VC funding, maybe they could have found a different path.

Eh, I think the reason reddit was resilient against this effect was because of the balkanization resulting from the subreddit model. If you look at an individual subreddit, unless it is incredibly fringe, it will follow the 'social enshittification' model perfectly. Reddit has the advantage that a portion of users can migrate to a newer, still-fringe subreddit as a replacement.

Over time, though, the namespace starts to get cluttered. You have to go to r/realTrueSubreddit2 to find a decent community now. Also, r/realTrueSubreddit1 was taken by nazis/trolls who were mad at getting banned for using slurs.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#749

Post by munificent »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #523
bcrosby95 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty interesting statement. I used to be fine with "microboredoms" and think about other things, such as a book I'm reading, a game I want to play, or even work. I noticed these days that I spend more time during those "microboredoms" on my phone. I have 10 seconds? Check out reddit! I've been trying to kick this habit, enjoy my surroundings more, or get lost in my head like I used to.

Carrying around a fidget toy has helped me with this. Part of the urge to scroll on my phone is just to do something with my fingers. If my fingers are occupied with a bit of string or a finger-trap, my mind is more free to wander.

I started cross-stitching again for exactly this reason. Lately, I've been learning to knit, which is even better for scratching this itch.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#750

Post by fader »

a-dub wrote: post #560
carabiner wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they started off in Boston and were MIT/Harvard grad students. And the backend was a DARPA project. So not really Brooklyn at heart, though some millennial New Yorkers pretended it was. They even had a personality trait for how much a user reminded them of Harvard girls. Like many "only in New York!" things it was really something that had mass appeal and gave a sense of quirkiness that was actually widespread i…

> And the backend was a DARPA project. the similarity/CF stuff? what was the DARPA project? other than that it seemed a rather ordinary consumer webapp?

I think they're referring to the Internet.
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