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Ironic username, given the conversation topic. ;) While yours may be a true experience: statistics. I'm not sure a personal experience poll on an entrepreneuri
by ethbro 11y ago
Ironic username, given the conversation topic. ;)
While yours may be a true experience: statistics. I'm not sure a personal experience poll on an entrepreneurial technology news site is the best place for a representative sample of people with low willpower. And social psych findings have born out that are a lot of easily manipulated levers to reliably influence people's behavior in an intentional way.
To me, it's not about the people with Fort Knox reserves of willpower. Say instead I'm born into the genetic/epigenetic/life lottery with a crappy ticket, what's fair? (And if you don't agree that that's possible, try volunteering at your local homeless shelter a few times)
Is it fair that everyone else gets to leverage my vices to transfer my wealth and the profits of my work to themselves? Or is there something morally not right about that scenario?
I agree it's easy to go overboard with regulation, but just because it's possible to addict babies to cocaine in utero doesn't mean that's the society we should build.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Pyxl101 11y agoWhat's ironic about his username? His name's Walter Bright.
- ethbro 11y agoIronic in the context of a discussion of vices and addiction, though now understandable (apologies for my lack of knowledge of 70s games & compiler names!) echo "WalterBright" | sed 's/Bright/White/'
- WalterBright 11y ago> my lack of knowledge of 70s games Prepare for enlightenment: http://www.classicempire.com http://www.classicempire.com
- ethbro 11y agoAnd source available too! Thanks for the link.
- hackuser 11y agoSpeaking of destructive social manipulation, your game destroyed my grade in LISP (or was it C++?) when I discovered Empire on a (Sun?) workstation in the computer lab. But you probably already know all that from on the extensive profile you built on me. Thank you. :)
- WalterBright 11y ago>people with Fort Knox reserves of willpower In my case, it has nothing whatsoever to do with willpower. It's that video games bore me.
- _nedR 11y agoYou. Are. Not. The. Audience. You are just one of the costs of doing a freemium business. Like the alcohol industry, the game is really targeted towards the psychologically vulnerable who represent most of the revenues. The game is boring by design. Actually its just barely interesting enough to keep the target audience playing, but not so interesting that it stops them from paying to get their psychological reward. These games are basically crack which you can legally sell to kids. There is a great south park episode that illustrates this phenomenon. Its very well done. You should watch it. http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-free http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e06-freemium-isnt-f...
- mindcrash 11y agoFunny that they didn't make this particular episode available online. Gee, I wonder why...