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‘Your Map Is Wrong’

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Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#51

Post by filesystem »

m0llusk wrote: post #47

The product that lifted Apple out of mediocrity and into the public eye was the iPod. The iPod, especially in its initial release, had a feature list that was explicitly derived from the failings of competing products. The idea was to take and dominate the mobile music player market. All of the biggest power moves Steve Jobs made were about eating someone else's lunch.

This implies that the MP3 market was already sufficiently large or saturated by the time the iPod came on the scene, which is false. The MP3 market at the time was mostly an intersection of tech-savvy individuals and musicians. Everyone else was still using portable CD players or walkmans.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#52

Post by falcolas »

jedimastert wrote: post #20
lucideer wrote: post #11

> Wealth is not a fixed pie (PG). I've read a fair bit of PG's writing but hadn't dug into The Pie Fallacy referenced here. Wow, what utter nonsense. I've certainly not agreed with everything PG comes out with but this is a new logical low. And it's not just the usual problem of an oversimplified analogy not accurately representing more complex systems, the analogy[0] isn't even internally consistent with itself. [0]…

I'm also curious to know where you think he goes wrong, it's pretty well acknowledged at this point that economics is generally not a zero-sum game

Where is all this extra money coming from, if not from someone else? Inflation - the one action that actually creates more money - accounts for a pretty small part of it.

Without creation of additional money, every dollar earned is someone else’s dollar spent.

And yes, I’ve heard theories that the commodities purchased with a dollar are worth more than that dollar, but if that were true, the item would be sold for more; a “rational” capitalist would sell it according to its actual worth.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#53

Post by PeterisP »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #28
balsam wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“None of us knew that we needed sexual intimacy until we s-tumbled into porn.”

Let me translate that: "None of us knew that we needed privacy until it was taken away from us by Steve's devices, Facebook, Google and others."

And now this can be a new profitable market to sell some privacy back to you!

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#54

Post by eloeffler »

filesystem wrote: post #51
m0llusk wrote: post #47

The product that lifted Apple out of mediocrity and into the public eye was the iPod. The iPod, especially in its initial release, had a feature list that was explicitly derived from the failings of competing products. The idea was to take and dominate the mobile music player market. All of the biggest power moves Steve Jobs made were about eating someone else's lunch.

This implies that the MP3 market was already sufficiently large or saturated by the time the iPod came on the scene, which is false. The MP3 market at the time was mostly an intersection of tech-savvy individuals and musicians. Everyone else was still using portable CD players or walkmans.

At the time, portable CD/MD players and walkmans were competing products to the iPod. mp3 players weren't a separate market. There were even portable CD players that could read mp3s off a CD.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#55

Post by cupofpython »

mlatu wrote: post #9
cehrlich wrote: post #4

Zuckerberg is fundamentally right [1], and I think it's a good observation that many people fail to make. But I think it's companies other than Facebook/Meta that are creating the new value. [1] https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-kno...

he is right in a way that makes it hard to see what facebook is turning into profit: the users attention. sure they are creating a space without taking away volume for other people to build there, but nobody will care about the other things because a proper map of the internet is not concerned with what is there, but what a given user spends their attention on.

>but what a given user spends their attention on

I want to point out, since I have not seen it elsewhere in this thread, that user's do not need to be on the internet at all. Does no one remember what it was like to be bored? With respect to living everyday lives, social media addiction is becoming an issue. Instagram specifically is a huge item.

So it would be contradictory to say Meta is responsible for manipulating its users and successfully furthering people's addiction to social media in general, while also claiming that people are using meta products with time and attention that would have been spent on the internet anyway (0-sum).

Are they or are they not incentivizing people to spend more time on social media than they otherwise would have?

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#56

Post by carbadtraingood »

> There is this beauty of economics – you don’t have to make anyone poorer in order for you to become richer.

At any appreciable scale I disagree with this, or at least believe this ignores a whole lot of complexity.

Like, it totally ignores how profits are allocated within a company, for instance. Jeff Bezos got richer by making his employees poorer, for instance. He could have chosen to make his employees richer at the expense of making himself poorer.

It also seems to ignore the extractive elements of companies. Whether we are extracting raw minerals, agricultural products, or manufacturing capacity.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#57

Post by cupofpython »

eloeffler wrote: post #54
filesystem wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This implies that the MP3 market was already sufficiently large or saturated by the time the iPod came on the scene, which is false. The MP3 market at the time was mostly an intersection of tech-savvy individuals and musicians. Everyone else was still using portable CD players or walkmans.

At the time, portable CD/MD players and walkmans were competing products to the iPod. mp3 players weren't a separate market. There were even portable CD players that could read mp3s off a CD.

anecdotally, I had CD player first then I moved to iPod and downloaded limewire

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#58

Post by imtringued »

jedimastert wrote: post #20
lucideer wrote: post #11

> Wealth is not a fixed pie (PG). I've read a fair bit of PG's writing but hadn't dug into The Pie Fallacy referenced here. Wow, what utter nonsense. I've certainly not agreed with everything PG comes out with but this is a new logical low. And it's not just the usual problem of an oversimplified analogy not accurately representing more complex systems, the analogy[0] isn't even internally consistent with itself. [0]…

I'm also curious to know where you think he goes wrong, it's pretty well acknowledged at this point that economics is generally not a zero-sum game

What is economics? Physical capital? Financial capital? Land? The human sphere of influence?

If you are generous and argue that humans help plants grow, then e.g. harvesting plants is beneficial for plants and humans and physical capital is not zero sum despite the fact that humans are intentionally killing plants and depriving them of their body.

Financial capital is zero sum, when you borrow money, you create money and debt simultaneously. Pay off all debt and you end up with zero money. Money is zero sum.

Land is zero sum. If one person owns all the land on the planet, everyone else must rent from that person or be homeless.

The human sphere of influence? I would argue that this is zero sum because a hypothetical tribe of neanderthals wouldn't be welcome in this modern world, we would never let them take over the planet, hence our domination over the planet comes at the expense of other species.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#59

Post by Pr0ject217 »

iammjm wrote: post #3

”We’re building value, not just taking it away from someone else.” Bullshit. Meta's whole business is predation on user's attention. If I am scrolling their stupid page, then I am not scrolling some other stupid page. This is as zero-sum as it gets.

I share your distaste for Meta/FB; however, if their investment to advance the 'meta-verse' leads them to invent technologies that end up being used in different contexts by other companies/industries (charting more of the uncharted map), then all the better.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#60

Post by xdennis »

dan-robertson wrote: post #25
cehrlich wrote: post #4

Zuckerberg is fundamentally right [1], and I think it's a good observation that many people fail to make. But I think it's companies other than Facebook/Meta that are creating the new value. [1] https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-kno...

Very strongly agree. If you work in tech in general you should probably be thinking about most decisions with this kind of positive sum mindset where one person’s gain is not another’s loss. For one thing, I think it feels better, but it is also very typically true.

I think you think that because you want to.

But it's simply not true. Internet classifieds destroyed newspaper ads. Apple destroyed Nokia. It is a zero sum game to a certain degree.

I'm not saying you should feel sorry because you improved things, but sometimes your success is someone else's downfall.

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