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On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

coldhealing.substack.com

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Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#251

Post by colinmhayes »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #102
hackerlight wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought of bumfights when writing this, and decided that no, it's not ethical, because homeless people often suffer from mental illnesses which violates one of the assumptions that I laid out.

What if the person isn't mentally ill, but doesn't reliably have enough to eat to survive adequately, and can get it by fighting for the entertainment of others (who do have plenty to eat, and more to spare). Is that ethical, because it's a rational cost-benefit analysis? There are few people in the US who don't have enough to eat to fuel their bodies, but in other countries there are more. I am not trying to describ…

It'd be unethical not to offer them the fight. That would mean they would continue to starve. If I had the choice between fighting and starving I'd probably choose fight, and if a do gooder came into the ring as it was about to begin and said "no no no, this is unethical" I'd be pissed because their actions are condemning me to starve.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#252

Post by permo-w »

Retric wrote: post #101
permo-w wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and only for the chance of winning $50k

Lower stakes might be a good thing. I think a high payout could push some people to significant psychological harm.

it’s just not at all worth that much money to put yourself through this awful torture. how long will $50k last you in the US? it’s ridiculous. the person who voiced the “AI” was probably paid more

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#253

Post by hackerlight »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #238
hackerlight wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not, it would make me sad to subject them to that. I'd also feel pretty bad if I got them them to clean my house for money if they were in need. But that doesn't mean it's unethical, does it?

You wouldn't consider it either unkind or unethical to arrange for a needy family member to fight for money, you just wouldn't do it becuase it would make you sad? It doesn't seem an unkind thing to do, really? But, yes, I think intentionally subjecting strangers to something that you wouldn't subject your loved ones to because it would make you sad, is at least a signal that something is likely to be unethical. In g…

> No matter how degrading, how awful their experience is

Correct, as long as my above assumptions are not violated. That is, no surprises post-contract signing, and so on[1].

Your actions are a net benefit to them. It can't be unethical to benefit someone, unless we're operating under a non-utilitarian moral framework.

I'd argue it's unethical to not provide them that terrible job, if the only alternative is for you to not engage with them whatsoever. You are leaving them worse off by choosing this so-called moral high ground. Society may pat you on the back for your upstanding choice, but you are leaving them worse off, so I believe it to be immoral to not provide them that job.

[1] In practice, this is fraught because of the power asymmetry -- the employer can easily introduce new conditions post-signing. But I'm assuming that the employer doesn't abuse that asymmetry. It's also fraught because people aren't rational creatures that are capable of perfectly evaluating costs and benefits. So we'd have to evaluate each situation on a case by case basis.

> You wouldn't consider it either unkind or unethical to arrange for a needy family member to fight for money

I would consider it less unethical to do that, compared to withholding the money. There's a rank order here. It's more ethical to pay them to fight (under my above assumptions) than it is to withhold the money, because you are maximizing their utility by doing so, i.e. you're helping them the most by doing that, relative to that alternative.

Of course it would be maximally good to just give them the money with no strings attached. But that doesn't imply that it's unethical to pay them to fight.

> make you sad, is at least a signal

I am highly skeptical of such evolved responses that are there because of kin selection, reciprocal altruisim, etc. If I feel bad, it means that I'm doing something that's correlated with a reduction in genetic fitness, that's it. Moral certainty based on feelings has motivated genocides, anti-sodomy laws and many other terrible things.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#254

Post by sweetheart »

colinmhayes wrote: post #226
sweetheart wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author wants to live in a world where everyone gets everything at no cost: that isn't even admiribale, it's childish. Why is it childish to want a life in which you don’t need to labor to have everything you need to be happy? It’s childish to think that human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life? Why do we need to earn those things? Are they not inherent within us?

People aren't born worthy of anything. Thinking otherwise is childish. We need to earn things because they're not unlimited. Living a happy peaceful life means consuming things, if you don't provide things back no one is going to give you anything to consume.

> People aren't born worthy of anything. Thinking otherwise is childish.

The entire fields of early childhood development and mental health counseling firmly disagree with you.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#255

Post by colinmhayes »

sweetheart wrote: post #254
colinmhayes wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't born worthy of anything. Thinking otherwise is childish. We need to earn things because they're not unlimited. Living a happy peaceful life means consuming things, if you don't provide things back no one is going to give you anything to consume.

> People aren't born worthy of anything. Thinking otherwise is childish. The entire fields of early childhood development and mental health counseling firmly disagree with you.

I'm not sure what this means. It'd be nice if people had free access to mental health counseling, but guess what, mental health counselors require payment. If you want things you need to work for them. Until robots do everything that will remain reality.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#256

Post by retreatguru »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #61

Many people are ignoring some interesting aspects of Mr. Beasts business and instead are focusing on the content which is mostly attention grabbing, silly, ridiculous game show premises. The content isn't for me or likely many HNers but I see similarities with startups and his business model. From watching a couple of interviews, things I've picked up - when his youtube videos were grossing $20-30k a month he started…

He mentioned that he pulls almost no revenue and reinvests the money he makes into the next video. He started off with a $10k sponsorship - and he just gave it all away to a homeless person. And this cycle just keeps getting bigger. So yes, very much a growth mindset.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#257

Post by blep_ »

itsyaboi wrote: post #181
snowwrestler wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a challenging time in human history because we’re now capable of producing enough food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities for every human on Earth. That will only get more true as population growth slows while innovation continues to drive productivity improvements. But we’re still culturally in the mindset you’re describing: that we must each individually wrest life out of the wilderness day by day. As a…

>we’re now capable of producing enough food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities for every human on Earth This should come with a footnote that it's only possible due to slave labor in third world countries. A much smaller subset of people would be buying iPhones if they were $5000.

iPhones are not food, clothing, or shelter.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#258

Post by Applejinx »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #172
randac wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is similar to the Rogan interview, but I figured I'd mention it here too. MrBeast was just on Flagrant with Andrew Schulz for 4 hours, a day or so ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGrk7Mzm4uo This was also an interesting and fun interview which I expected to skip over fairly quickly but ended up listening to in the entirety. Some discussion over how you would lose something like 3% of viewers if somebody sne…

Yeah the interview I saw a clip out of he or a staffer stated that any mention of peeing would drop viewership. I watch woodworking youtubers and a couple of them had a behind the scenes discussion about their channels and also came to the conclusion that any wind-down loses viewers and this affects a channel. The algorithms use metrics of how long someone watches so it makes sense to end abruptly rather than have 30…

On the one hand YouTube can tweak the algorithm at any time and stop rewarding sudden endings (anybody thinking of Michael Ellis? How about a sudden ending?)

On the other hand, think about what benefits the platform. Executing a sudden ending that leaves people engaged and ready to continue to watch, rather than a friendly sign-off that gives people permission to go about their day like a healthy human being?

YouTube inherently will be strongly motivated to keep people connected and watching, rather than happy or healthy. So it's got me wondering about sign-offs that might invoke this reality. I'll have other videos, the viewer is not guaranteed to go from mine to a MrBeast video. If I wanted to be cagey about it I could try to connect to another video of mine: I've seen this done by others.

It makes sense if you assume that YouTube will reward you for keeping the viewer from switching off, through and beyond the end of your video. You become complicit in an attention engine, with some known parameters: you are there to keep people watching. What you do isn't relevant. You could be helping or hurting them, whatever you like, so long as you keep people on YouTube, and whatever YouTube does for metrics or algorithms, you can be sure that keeping people tuned in is an existential need of theirs and you'll always be rewarded for directing people to more YouTube. of ANY kind. Doesn't have to be the latest MrBeast. If you can successfully direct people to any other video of your choice, yours or otherwise, that still counts.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#259

Post by elil17 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #231
elil17 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some dignity in doing something that has a point . Doesn't negate the need for better, safer working conditions and good pay but there's a big psychological difference between digging coal (which you know will go on to heat homes) and sitting in a circle and having the internet laugh at you.

Dollar for dollar, I'll take the circle.

Me too. I just do understand why someone wouldn't.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#260

Post by mylons »

GameOfFrowns wrote: post #134
mylons wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree —- i kept waiting for the author to spend more time on the indignity and exploitation Mr. Beast is dispensing. there are desperate people out there that will leap at a chance for this much cash. how long until we see a Mr. Beast version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(King_novel) (the arnold movie is ultra cheesey and fun too)

I think we're already halfway there with the "MrBeast Squid Game".

I don’t disagree here either, but nobody is dying yet and it’s not a recurring series :)
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