Jonathan Stark responds to Sam Odio • Hacker News Board

Re: Jonathan Stark responds to Sam Odio

#71

Post by mentat » Sun, Aug 14, 2011, 2:33 PM UTC

jsavimbi wrote: post #68

uname_pword wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly don't think Sam is going to get much heat over this from people who matter in his life I agree with you there. Although as an outsider looking in to Sam's life with only this one saga to judge him by, I'd call him a morally bankrupt snake (emotionally charged - yes, but my truthful gut reaction).

I'm going to go ahead and disagree. Sam's a disruptor, in this case on a huge scale, and there are plenty of pople out there willing to bet on someone who can disrupt a market with a combination of guile, foresight, skill and a complete and sociopathic lack of moral solvency.

It doesn't look like you're disagreeing except perhaps as to his likelihood to get hired. If this industry really is about hiring anyone who can get the job done regardless of their ethical standpoint, then I'm really in the wrong place.

Re: Jonathan Stark responds to Sam Odio

#72

Post by jmilloy » Sun, Aug 14, 2011, 2:35 PM UTC

johnfn wrote: post #9

I'm finding myself in a significant minority here, which is always an interesting time to stand back and reflect. I hope this post doesn't come off as a troll; I am genuinely curious where my beliefs diverge from the majority. I cannot understand why Sam's charity raising has raised such an outrage. Here is why. First, what he did was within the bounds of the experiment. Johnathan provided the Starbucks card to be us…

> Johnathan provided the Starbucks card to be used in any way people saw fit.

I don't think this is true. I think the only thing he says you can use the card for is to buy a coffee. He certainly failed to prevent the card from be used in any way people saw fit, and maybe that amounts to the same thing.

Re: Jonathan Stark responds to Sam Odio

#73

Post by kaichanvong » Sun, Aug 14, 2011, 2:38 PM UTC

napierzaza wrote: post #59

johnfn wrote: post #9

I'm finding myself in a significant minority here, which is always an interesting time to stand back and reflect. I hope this post doesn't come off as a troll; I am genuinely curious where my beliefs diverge from the majority. I cannot understand why Sam's charity raising has raised such an outrage. Here is why. First, what he did was within the bounds of the experiment. Johnathan provided the Starbucks card to be us…

If you have a take-a-penny-leave-a-penny jar, and somebody comes and takes 500$ worth of pennies. Do you think they are possibly abusing the system? Or if someone said "Hey guys I brought this cake in for everyone to have some." and then someone later said "Oh, I stole the cake because I have some friends who wanted some cake. In fact they wanted the cake more than you guys, so I'm glad that you didn't get any".

You're spot on with that analogy. This is in the same way that if you were given an invitation to a party, you would hopefully not turn up with 50 of your own guests.

Well you'd hope that wouldn't happen. Because when it does, it's normally through Facebook and people gaming/cheating the tools it gives you to a similar point. Because people can.

Re: Jonathan Stark responds to Sam Odio

#74

Post by mentat » Sun, Aug 14, 2011, 2:42 PM UTC

sgentle wrote: post #57

What makes me sad is the severe case of analogy fever going around. It's not just this situation, it's everywhere; when people hit a novel ethical challenge it's like it's too hard to confront it on its own terms, and it has to be dragged back down into being "just like" something less interesting. The world is changing in fascinating ways with brand new ideas and challenges to understand, and we're punting to tradit…

I'm unclear on how you're drawing the scope of donors vs "everyone". It's, for all practical purposes, impossible to make a judgment about the moral impact of an action for everyone. There are so many secondary effects of every action that instead you're choosing two points in that space of impact and saying coffee vs orphans, which is really conceding the whole point. Sam took money intended for one purpose and used it for another. The purpose was embodied in the will of the donors and no other people.

Take for instance a simple second order impact, someone gets a free coffee of the card and decides that while it was a good coffee, he or she should instead donate 10x that to feed orphans. If more than 10% of people using the card do this, then there's a 1:1 follow on donation effect to the orphans. That is essentially the idea of "pay it forward" as far as I understand it. Sam decided that betting on his fellow humans wasn't a good one (perhaps knowing his own moral failings) and decided to short circuit the process and make decisions for others. This is the essential problem and why it's not part of the "pay it forward" experiment. The theft was not paying it forward, it was paying it out. It was removing the opportunity for others to be inspired to give.

Re: Jonathan Stark responds to Sam Odio

#75

Post by ravisarma » Sun, Aug 14, 2011, 2:47 PM UTC

There is much talk of honour systems and social contracts. None of us sign a literal social contract; it is a way to name an arrangement of affairs that we semi-willingly enter into (if you buy into it; on the other hand you may not: a baby born dependent on the world has neither the ability nor the wherewithal to enter into contracts - but that's another debate).

Sam can be seen to be acting as an agent of those in the periphery of the social contract, those who participate in it not because of mutual gain but because of implicit or explicit threat. The central question, IMHO, is one of what their claims are on our moneys (or social experiments). Sam quotes Mill and (again IMHO) legitimately raises deeper ethical considerations. In that sense, Sam's experiment is a deeper and significantly more interesting version of the original one, and the results (including the response) deserve examination - at least once the built-up rage is spent.