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Flip side of this: People who say this are usually folks trying to justify the fact that they're resorting to underhanded, abusive tactics to compete with talen

Flip side of this: People who say this are usually folks trying to justify the fact that they're resorting to underhanded, abusive tactics to compete with talented, successful people who are not. It is the battle cry of the mediocre, the hallmark of scammers, the ultimate admission of the untalented and unworthy. I know a lot of folks in fintech and blockchain, and we've all skated the outer edge of what's defined by law. The folks who give a damn about setting sustainable policy and not exploiting customers? Those are the folks who are still around. Even big US national banks, notorious for their immunity to law and enforcement, are starting to feel the pressure. Rumor is, Customers left Wells Fargo in droves after the last kerfuffle and new account opening went down substantially at Citi after their money laundering fine. The hidden cost of bad optics is immense. And as data science makes the formerly invisible behaviors of the world visible, society's going to get a whole lot more capable of identifying "bad behavior" and punishing it. To say "The law is all that matters", in the context of these industries, is beyond naive. It's not just wrong, but it's leaving money and opportunity on the table. It's bad business AND bad optics. > (so long as I'm still chasing the 'fuck you money', morals are great after you have it). If this ethos is so effective, why are you still "chasing?" Or is this the rhetorical we? Or the royal we? I can never tell here.

cheeze 9y ago
> blockchain sigh
- KirinDave 9y ago
  Plenty of people are doing legitimate things in this space. One need only look. Legitimate NON-currency (token or integrity) applications abound. In a very real sense, github was an early blockchain startup. Do you type "sigh" on an internet forum when people talk about github?
  - theoh 9y ago
    The "hub" aspect of GitHub takes a decentralised protocol and adds a trusted third party (github). The whole point of blockchain is to avoid creating trusted third parties, something people like Nick Szabo identified a long time ago as a problem for protocol design.
    - kbenson 9y ago
      But all this is irrelevant to his original point, and how blockchain was referenced within it. People are reacting to the word and their preconceptions and ignoring the point, which is a real shame because those same preconceptions actually strengthen the point being made.
      - theoh 9y ago
        There's no need to police the direction the conversation takes. I was responding only to the GP, as a matter of fact.
        kbenson 9y ago
        You're right, my comment was better aimed farther up-thread than yours. I wasn't attempting to police the direction, just note that the tangent started with little explanation and possibly some misinterpretation.
        KirinDave 9y ago
        Theoh is trying to derail because he has religious objections to the idea that github uses "blockchain technology." You're not "policing", you're resisting someone trying to take an offtopic turn to an existing conversation. Please be proud of this, I thank you for it.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      > The whole point of blockchain is to avoid creating trusted third parties Nonsense. The "point" of "blockchain" is to commit blocks to merkel trees with an agreed upon protocol. Your value judgement are just as unwelcome as the previous post's. You're also wrong about github, as its only a point of centralization for specific UI services. It need not be canonical, it's simply privileged. Please stop policing the direction blockchain conversations go with religious anecdotes.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
whatshisface 9y ago
"Lots of accounts leaving after public relations disaster," is not really something that you need data science to detect. A chart, maybe.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Which is about what a lot of people claiming to be data scientists can do.
kerkeslager 9y ago
> Those are the folks who are still around. Even big US national banks, notorious for their immunity to law and enforcement, are starting to feel the pressure. Rumor is, Customers left Wells Fargo in droves after the last kerfuffle and new account opening went down substantially at Citi after their money laundering fine. The hidden cost of bad optics is immense. There are two parts to a cost/benefit analysis, and you're only talking about the cost part of unethical behavior, as if the benefit doesn't exist. With Wells Fargo, Citi, Experian, Bank of America, etc., when their scandals went down, did they lose more money in the scandals than they gained from their antisocial behavior? I haven't tracked all of these cases til their end, but at least with Wells Fargo, they did not. More importantly, did the individuals who made the antisocial decisions, who are protected by limited liability, lose money? I doubt it. Maybe they're not "still around", but they're happily retired in mansions and there are plenty of newcomers willing to do the same thing to get the same reward. It's not 100% of the time: there are cases when bad behavior actually results in a net loss. But I'd say these are anomalies and not the norm. And even if they weren't, antisocial behaviors are profitable enough of the time that some percentage of antisocial behaviors have a positive expected value when looked at probabilistically.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > With Wells Fargo, Citi, Experian, Bank of America, etc., when their scandals went down, did they lose more money in the scandals than they gained from their antisocial behavior? Wells: Yes, almost certainly. Citi: Good question. Every I've talked to from Citi seems to think it was a disaster that hurt the business bottom line. BofA: Not sure which BofA problem we're talking about here. Experian: They walked away. They're a great example of how the government SHOULD have come in and made it more expensive and then given that money back to people they hurt. On Experian, I do know that their scandal with fake credit scores direct to customer hurt that business badly. > More importantly, did the individuals who made the antisocial decisions, who are protected by limited liability, lose money? I doubt it. In some cases yes, in some no. > But I'd say these are anomalies and not the norm. We could make it the norm :)
  - kerkeslager 9y ago

cheeze 9y ago

> blockchain sigh

KirinDave 9y ago
Plenty of people are doing legitimate things in this space. One need only look. Legitimate NON-currency (token or integrity) applications abound. In a very real sense, github was an early blockchain startup. Do you type "sigh" on an internet forum when people talk about github?
- theoh 9y ago
  The "hub" aspect of GitHub takes a decentralised protocol and adds a trusted third party (github). The whole point of blockchain is to avoid creating trusted third parties, something people like Nick Szabo identified a long time ago as a problem for protocol design.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    But all this is irrelevant to his original point, and how blockchain was referenced within it. People are reacting to the word and their preconceptions and ignoring the point, which is a real shame because those same preconceptions actually strengthen the point being made.
    - theoh 9y ago
      There's no need to police the direction the conversation takes. I was responding only to the GP, as a matter of fact.
      - kbenson 9y ago
        You're right, my comment was better aimed farther up-thread than yours. I wasn't attempting to police the direction, just note that the tangent started with little explanation and possibly some misinterpretation.
        KirinDave 9y ago
        Theoh is trying to derail because he has religious objections to the idea that github uses "blockchain technology." You're not "policing", you're resisting someone trying to take an offtopic turn to an existing conversation. Please be proud of this, I thank you for it.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    > The whole point of blockchain is to avoid creating trusted third parties Nonsense. The "point" of "blockchain" is to commit blocks to merkel trees with an agreed upon protocol. Your value judgement are just as unwelcome as the previous post's. You're also wrong about github, as its only a point of centralization for specific UI services. It need not be canonical, it's simply privileged. Please stop policing the direction blockchain conversations go with religious anecdotes.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

whatshisface 9y ago

"Lots of accounts leaving after public relations disaster," is not really something that you need data science to detect. A chart, maybe.

TallGuyShort 9y ago
Which is about what a lot of people claiming to be data scientists can do.

kerkeslager 9y ago

> Those are the folks who are still around. Even big US national banks, notorious for their immunity to law and enforcement, are starting to feel the pressure. Rumor is, Customers left Wells Fargo in droves after the last kerfuffle and new account opening went down substantially at Citi after their money laundering fine. The hidden cost of bad optics is immense. There are two parts to a cost/benefit analysis, and you're only talking about the cost part of unethical behavior, as if the benefit doesn't exist. With Wells Fargo, Citi, Experian, Bank of America, etc., when their scandals went down, did they lose more money in the scandals than they gained from their antisocial behavior? I haven't tracked all of these cases til their end, but at least with Wells Fargo, they did not. More importantly, did the individuals who made the antisocial decisions, who are protected by limited liability, lose money? I doubt it. Maybe they're not "still around", but they're happily retired in mansions and there are plenty of newcomers willing to do the same thing to get the same reward. It's not 100% of the time: there are cases when bad behavior actually results in a net loss. But I'd say these are anomalies and not the norm. And even if they weren't, antisocial behaviors are profitable enough of the time that some percentage of antisocial behaviors have a positive expected value when looked at probabilistically.

KirinDave 9y ago
> With Wells Fargo, Citi, Experian, Bank of America, etc., when their scandals went down, did they lose more money in the scandals than they gained from their antisocial behavior? Wells: Yes, almost certainly. Citi: Good question. Every I've talked to from Citi seems to think it was a disaster that hurt the business bottom line. BofA: Not sure which BofA problem we're talking about here. Experian: They walked away. They're a great example of how the government SHOULD have come in and made it more expensive and then given that money back to people they hurt. On Experian, I do know that their scandal with fake credit scores direct to customer hurt that business badly. > More importantly, did the individuals who made the antisocial decisions, who are protected by limited liability, lose money? I doubt it. In some cases yes, in some no. > But I'd say these are anomalies and not the norm. We could make it the norm :)
- kerkeslager 9y ago