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When did this community get so thoughtlessly cruel? What value does sadism have for you for them or even for the market? Shame on you.

grosjona 9y ago
Cruel? What about the other people with an actual useful project who didn't get a chance to raise money because OP was distracting the same investors with a silly idea. OP used their pitch presentation skills to divert opportunities away from other actual hard working people who might have used the money to do something useful for society.
- jack_pp 9y ago
  Other people with useful projects probably didn't have access to the people OP used. You are implying that OP manipulated people to give him money while knowing that he had a bad idea, if this were true why would he want to give money back and why post here? If he were a conman he wouldn't ask for advice on how to proceed. Even if you had a great idea there's countless ways to lose 100k. If you don't hire the right people you just lost money; if you're a toxic manager or just don't know how to assign tasks to people the whole startup will burn for it. If you hire 3 people with a 5k per month salary you burn 45k in 3 months, idk where you're from but 100k isn't a lot of money for a startup in the US.
  - grosjona 9y ago
    I'm a consequentialist so the intention doesn't change anything for me. All I'm saying is that this is really bad and OP should accept that they will have to suffer through the consequences.
    - tibbetts 9y ago
      If you have access to an oracle that protects you from making these kind of mistakes, I encourage you to start a venture fund. Or start an international charity. Or ask your oracle what the best thing to do is and then do that. The answer is probably not harshing on people asking for advice.
    - javajosh 9y ago
      I am sorry for you that you have this kind of voice in your head, so strong that it actually speaks with your mouth. It's an angry, judgemental voice that demands success and holds contempt for failure. How could you possibly attain any level of success in any endeavor with such a voice running, commenting, hurting you? I (we) are only subject to it in this thread, but you subject yourself to it every day. Try something new. Try having as much compassion for those that try and fail as you apparently do admiration for those that try and succeed. The difference between these two groups is far less than you think. Your current voice antagonizes both groups, that relatively tiny group, the ones that tried at all.
    - analognoise 9y ago
      'I'm a consequentialist so the intention doesn't change anything for me.' It also doesn't provide any useful predictive results, noe is it a complete and sustainable philosophical system. If you think sitting on the sidelines and taking pot-shots at people who try and fail is good because the successful ideas were 'obvious', you underestimate the degree to which luck and timing influences success - the saying is 'hindsight is 20/20' - it's very easy to see something fail and say, "well obviously!". It's the same trap for cynics - if you take the easy path to being 'right' because 'everyone knows', it becomes a lazy and self defeating intellectual exercise. It isn't superior, it's a shell covering an inferiority complex whereby you 'win' by not playing. It's harmful to yourself and others. I suggest some exercise, a yoga class, maybe make a few friends irl. I'll be your friend if you need one. People aren't that bad; but we're all close to sanity's edge, and we all actually need each other. Please reconsider, friend.
    - dtech 9y ago
      > I'm a consequentialist so the intention doesn't change anything for me. What does that even mean? If you buy a lottery ticket and you win then it was a good idea, if you lose it was a bad idea? That is absurd, sometimes an idea pans out, sometimes it doesn't. There's no way to tell beforehand. You're also making it sound like investors losing 200K on a failed startup is some kind of crime against humanity. It's not, it's the risk that investors take.
- lucio 9y ago
  It's impossible for all projects to succeed, and it's also impossible to know which ones will succeed from the 1000 pitched every week. The winning solution from Capitalism is "let's fund them all", and after a year or two you'll have: 1 wild success, 99 good to barely-profitable companies, and 900 failures. And no, you can't tell beforehand which one will be the wild success.
jack_pp 9y ago
The community isn't "thoughtlessly cruel" as evidenced by the immediate downvotes and comments not agreeing with parent. It is unwise to judge a whole community based on a random comment from an anonymous actor with no reputation whatsoever.
- grosjona 9y ago
  I don't understand how I'm the cruel one. This person contributed to wasting 100K... How many lives could have been saved for that money if it had been donated to charity (for example)? I merely wrote a few lines of text on some website.
  - jack_pp 9y ago
    And Marx merely philosophised on the merits of communism, an idea which resulted in the death of hundreds of millions of people. Money wasn't exactly lost, it wasn't dumped in a garbaged bin and literally set on fire, people were compensated for their work, that money was used to buy goods and services so the money was merely recicled back into the general economy, the investors more than likely can tolerate the risk they took and can take the hit while others won ( the people hired by OP ) Do you dedicate your life to being ultra efficient to make huge sums of money in order to save those countless lives that OP failed to save? If not then you're a hypocrite. How many lives are being lost by us wasting time commenting in this thread? 1 hour of wasted time by us could've been worth atleast 50$ which could've spared someone more than a week of suffering from starving, are you willing to take responsability for that?
    - grosjona 9y ago
      If my comments can help to disincentivize just one future failed wannabe entrepreneur from raising money for their useless project then it was all worth it.
      - jack_pp 9y ago
        Telling people they shouldn't do obvious bad thing is pointless because those with good ethics wouldn't have done it regardless and the others won't care about your comments. Your consequentialist view is valid but you can not demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt that it's the best and most useful perspective. If you think your way of thinking is so much more superior then start your own startup, be successful, donate to charity and then write a blog post proving us all wrong. The reason I'm investing time into this discussion is because I believe your way of thinking is toxic and very dangerous because you actually believe you're more virtuous for the beliefs that you hold. The most atrocious events in history have been done in the name of good, please remember that or you risk increasing mind share in toxic and evil ideologies.

grosjona 9y ago

Cruel? What about the other people with an actual useful project who didn't get a chance to raise money because OP was distracting the same investors with a silly idea. OP used their pitch presentation skills to divert opportunities away from other actual hard working people who might have used the money to do something useful for society.

jack_pp 9y ago
Other people with useful projects probably didn't have access to the people OP used. You are implying that OP manipulated people to give him money while knowing that he had a bad idea, if this were true why would he want to give money back and why post here? If he were a conman he wouldn't ask for advice on how to proceed. Even if you had a great idea there's countless ways to lose 100k. If you don't hire the right people you just lost money; if you're a toxic manager or just don't know how to assign tasks to people the whole startup will burn for it. If you hire 3 people with a 5k per month salary you burn 45k in 3 months, idk where you're from but 100k isn't a lot of money for a startup in the US.
- grosjona 9y ago
  I'm a consequentialist so the intention doesn't change anything for me. All I'm saying is that this is really bad and OP should accept that they will have to suffer through the consequences.
  - tibbetts 9y ago
    If you have access to an oracle that protects you from making these kind of mistakes, I encourage you to start a venture fund. Or start an international charity. Or ask your oracle what the best thing to do is and then do that. The answer is probably not harshing on people asking for advice.
  - javajosh 9y ago
    I am sorry for you that you have this kind of voice in your head, so strong that it actually speaks with your mouth. It's an angry, judgemental voice that demands success and holds contempt for failure. How could you possibly attain any level of success in any endeavor with such a voice running, commenting, hurting you? I (we) are only subject to it in this thread, but you subject yourself to it every day. Try something new. Try having as much compassion for those that try and fail as you apparently do admiration for those that try and succeed. The difference between these two groups is far less than you think. Your current voice antagonizes both groups, that relatively tiny group, the ones that tried at all.
  - analognoise 9y ago
    'I'm a consequentialist so the intention doesn't change anything for me.' It also doesn't provide any useful predictive results, noe is it a complete and sustainable philosophical system. If you think sitting on the sidelines and taking pot-shots at people who try and fail is good because the successful ideas were 'obvious', you underestimate the degree to which luck and timing influences success - the saying is 'hindsight is 20/20' - it's very easy to see something fail and say, "well obviously!". It's the same trap for cynics - if you take the easy path to being 'right' because 'everyone knows', it becomes a lazy and self defeating intellectual exercise. It isn't superior, it's a shell covering an inferiority complex whereby you 'win' by not playing. It's harmful to yourself and others. I suggest some exercise, a yoga class, maybe make a few friends irl. I'll be your friend if you need one. People aren't that bad; but we're all close to sanity's edge, and we all actually need each other. Please reconsider, friend.
  - dtech 9y ago
    > I'm a consequentialist so the intention doesn't change anything for me. What does that even mean? If you buy a lottery ticket and you win then it was a good idea, if you lose it was a bad idea? That is absurd, sometimes an idea pans out, sometimes it doesn't. There's no way to tell beforehand. You're also making it sound like investors losing 200K on a failed startup is some kind of crime against humanity. It's not, it's the risk that investors take.
lucio 9y ago
It's impossible for all projects to succeed, and it's also impossible to know which ones will succeed from the 1000 pitched every week. The winning solution from Capitalism is "let's fund them all", and after a year or two you'll have: 1 wild success, 99 good to barely-profitable companies, and 900 failures. And no, you can't tell beforehand which one will be the wild success.

jack_pp 9y ago

The community isn't "thoughtlessly cruel" as evidenced by the immediate downvotes and comments not agreeing with parent. It is unwise to judge a whole community based on a random comment from an anonymous actor with no reputation whatsoever.

grosjona 9y ago
I don't understand how I'm the cruel one. This person contributed to wasting 100K... How many lives could have been saved for that money if it had been donated to charity (for example)? I merely wrote a few lines of text on some website.
- jack_pp 9y ago
  And Marx merely philosophised on the merits of communism, an idea which resulted in the death of hundreds of millions of people. Money wasn't exactly lost, it wasn't dumped in a garbaged bin and literally set on fire, people were compensated for their work, that money was used to buy goods and services so the money was merely recicled back into the general economy, the investors more than likely can tolerate the risk they took and can take the hit while others won ( the people hired by OP ) Do you dedicate your life to being ultra efficient to make huge sums of money in order to save those countless lives that OP failed to save? If not then you're a hypocrite. How many lives are being lost by us wasting time commenting in this thread? 1 hour of wasted time by us could've been worth atleast 50$ which could've spared someone more than a week of suffering from starving, are you willing to take responsability for that?
  - grosjona 9y ago
    If my comments can help to disincentivize just one future failed wannabe entrepreneur from raising money for their useless project then it was all worth it.
    - jack_pp 9y ago
      Telling people they shouldn't do obvious bad thing is pointless because those with good ethics wouldn't have done it regardless and the others won't care about your comments. Your consequentialist view is valid but you can not demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt that it's the best and most useful perspective. If you think your way of thinking is so much more superior then start your own startup, be successful, donate to charity and then write a blog post proving us all wrong. The reason I'm investing time into this discussion is because I believe your way of thinking is toxic and very dangerous because you actually believe you're more virtuous for the beliefs that you hold. The most atrocious events in history have been done in the name of good, please remember that or you risk increasing mind share in toxic and evil ideologies.