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More and more people I respect are becoming skeptical of Silicon Valley, or at least the attitudes attributed to it, to the point where I don't think convincing

by hoaw 8y ago

More and more people I respect are becoming skeptical of Silicon Valley, or at least the attitudes attributed to it, to the point where I don't think convincing people is necessarily the problem any more. What is lacking is a solid plan of what to do instead.

nwhatt 8y ago
My takeaway from talk is basically "go slower". He points out that history can be a good guide. In academic fields you need to get IRB approval for human subjects. A similar system might make sense for models applied to people, for example the system used for sentencing prisoners probably should have some kind of third party oversight.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > In academic fields you need to get IRB approval for human subjects. On the other hand, that has its own problems: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ It seems like the real issue is the information asymmetry. You can build hot garbage in five days but it takes the customer five months to figure it out, by which point they've lost all their data to malware. Meanwhile on day zero the carefully-designed application is $50 and the hot garbage is "FREE*", so which does the user choose without any other way to tell the difference?
- hoaw 8y ago
  I get what they are usually saying and I generally agree. For example DHH has a ton of material on how to do things differently, or more sane if you so will. It is just, now that I am convinced then what? I can try and incorporate some things, but it doesn't change much overall. So while I can appreciate the "gospel", there needs to be a path for people who are already on board. Maybe a organization, methodology, role or even a damn certificate. Because there are thousands of people learning "growth hacking", "agile" or whatever every day.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> What is lacking is a solid plan of what to do instead. One of the issues is that surveillance capitalism is a collective action problem. If companies have more data about people like you then they can capture more of the consumer surplus when they sell you things. But they don't need data about you specifically for that, only aggregate data about people like you. So if you don't sell your privacy but someone else does, you don't get the free services but you still pay the higher prices. So everybody sells out. Europe tried to address this with the GDPR, but the amount of friction that creates is problematic. What might work better is that instead of regulating collection, regulate third party distribution. Put Equifax out of business because they can't have a giant data breach if no one can give them any data. And if there are no more credit scores and it's harder for people to get a loan, housing prices would come down to what people could afford without having to pay interest on half a million dollars to the bank for thirty years. Probably a good thing. Combine that with a big honking tax on advertising revenue to reduce the profits from collecting the data for that purpose and you reduce the incentive to collect data on everyone, without affecting smaller companies that don't sell advertising or user data to anyone. But that would be a huge political feat. You'd be going after multiple hundred billion plus dollar companies in addition to the banks. The other alternative would be for enough individuals to recognize the collective action problem and selflessly help their neighbors by not patronizing these companies, but that's not a trivial feat either.
- hoaw 8y ago
  I don’t disagree. I am talking even smaller scale though. A lot of people would risk being deemed a poor performer and getting fired if they did things correctly. Because what they would be delivering wouldn’t be valued. There needs to be a path where you can join an organization, take a course, go to a conference, get a certificate or whatever so people can differentiate. I essentially think those influential in this area are overestimating “will” over “way” in “if there’s a will, there’s a way”. Today, with information proliferation, if there’s a way people will come to you. Maybe it could be as simple as a six hour work day. That isn’t somehthing most companies would do without thinking about it.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago

by hoaw 8y ago

nwhatt 8y ago

My takeaway from talk is basically "go slower". He points out that history can be a good guide. In academic fields you need to get IRB approval for human subjects. A similar system might make sense for models applied to people, for example the system used for sentencing prisoners probably should have some kind of third party oversight.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> In academic fields you need to get IRB approval for human subjects. On the other hand, that has its own problems: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ It seems like the real issue is the information asymmetry. You can build hot garbage in five days but it takes the customer five months to figure it out, by which point they've lost all their data to malware. Meanwhile on day zero the carefully-designed application is $50 and the hot garbage is "FREE*", so which does the user choose without any other way to tell the difference?
hoaw 8y ago
I get what they are usually saying and I generally agree. For example DHH has a ton of material on how to do things differently, or more sane if you so will. It is just, now that I am convinced then what? I can try and incorporate some things, but it doesn't change much overall. So while I can appreciate the "gospel", there needs to be a path for people who are already on board. Maybe a organization, methodology, role or even a damn certificate. Because there are thousands of people learning "growth hacking", "agile" or whatever every day.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> What is lacking is a solid plan of what to do instead. One of the issues is that surveillance capitalism is a collective action problem. If companies have more data about people like you then they can capture more of the consumer surplus when they sell you things. But they don't need data about you specifically for that, only aggregate data about people like you. So if you don't sell your privacy but someone else does, you don't get the free services but you still pay the higher prices. So everybody sells out. Europe tried to address this with the GDPR, but the amount of friction that creates is problematic. What might work better is that instead of regulating collection, regulate third party distribution. Put Equifax out of business because they can't have a giant data breach if no one can give them any data. And if there are no more credit scores and it's harder for people to get a loan, housing prices would come down to what people could afford without having to pay interest on half a million dollars to the bank for thirty years. Probably a good thing. Combine that with a big honking tax on advertising revenue to reduce the profits from collecting the data for that purpose and you reduce the incentive to collect data on everyone, without affecting smaller companies that don't sell advertising or user data to anyone. But that would be a huge political feat. You'd be going after multiple hundred billion plus dollar companies in addition to the banks. The other alternative would be for enough individuals to recognize the collective action problem and selflessly help their neighbors by not patronizing these companies, but that's not a trivial feat either.

hoaw 8y ago
I don’t disagree. I am talking even smaller scale though. A lot of people would risk being deemed a poor performer and getting fired if they did things correctly. Because what they would be delivering wouldn’t be valued. There needs to be a path where you can join an organization, take a course, go to a conference, get a certificate or whatever so people can differentiate. I essentially think those influential in this area are overestimating “will” over “way” in “if there’s a will, there’s a way”. Today, with information proliferation, if there’s a way people will come to you. Maybe it could be as simple as a six hour work day. That isn’t somehthing most companies would do without thinking about it.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago