3 ms·

Parasites show up in just about every complex ecosystem. Often they eventually establish some kind of symbiosis with their host. Life is chaotic and messy and

Parasites show up in just about every complex ecosystem. Often they eventually establish some kind of symbiosis with their host. Life is chaotic and messy and that is often hard thing for us to accept. Ecosystems that endure find a way to balance these competing forces.

wpietri 7y ago
That can be a useful analogy, but it's important to realize that this is only metaphorically an ecosystem. Human society is created by conscious agents with specific intent. It's a designed system. Talking about parasites can explain what is happening, and point us in the direction of solutions. But is must never be used to justify.
- cageface 7y ago
  There will always be people willing to break the rules. As much as we’d like to design systems around more optimistic expectations of human behavior reality is always more complex. It’s pragmatism, not justification.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    I'm saying the opposite of "we’d like to design systems around more optimistic expectations". Given that people are what they are, I want us to get better at breaking these cycles. But very often, statements like "there will always be people willing to break the rules" are used to act as if things like the number of people willing to break the rules and the amount of harm done when rules are broken are beyond our control.
    - cageface 7y ago
      What mechanisms would you propose to control bad faith actors?
la_barba 7y ago
Why are the powerless people the parasites? Google (and also others) is not a morally neutral entity here. They created this problem. They could stem the flow of malvertising or click-farming or spamming by hiring more and more review staff as their company has scaled, but its simply not in their DNA. I mean literally they are the richest of the richest of companies in the richest country and their owners are amongst the richest people on earth.. and the tired out cliche is still "it doesn't scale". Yeah..I'm pretty sure you can hire a few more folks to your team.. :-)
- cageface 7y ago
  They’re not powerless. They’ve simply made the economic decision that it’s more profitable for them to cheat the system then work within it. I’m not making a value judgement here. And so far Google etc have decided it’s better to tolerate this to some extent than spend the money to eradicate it, which is often the pragmatic choice.
  - la_barba 7y ago
    >They’ve simply made the economic decision that it’s more profitable for them to cheat the system then work within it. Well, a private company created an arbitrary system with arbitrary rules to make them gobs of cash, and now the entire world should "work within it"? Why? Personally I don't run an ad-blocker out of principle, so maybe I'm a bit more sensitive than the average person here since I get exposed to this garbage everyday. Google also wants to "cheat" the system by not hiring any actual humans to actually make sure that people aren't tricked with ads for dick pills with heavy metals or protein power that is toxic or ads about payday loans or whatever other crazy scam-ads people run. Google wants to automate everything and leave the rest of us wading in this garbage. How about hiring people to fix the mess they created instead of stuffing their pockets? I'm only mentioning Google here, but I don't want to necessarily single them out, all of the web advertising platforms are responsible in someway or another. Its just that Google is an easy target since they are the largest ... >I’m not making a value judgement here. Um.. I believe the use of word parasite precludes you from making any such claim :)

wpietri 7y ago

That can be a useful analogy, but it's important to realize that this is only metaphorically an ecosystem. Human society is created by conscious agents with specific intent. It's a designed system. Talking about parasites can explain what is happening, and point us in the direction of solutions. But is must never be used to justify.

cageface 7y ago
There will always be people willing to break the rules. As much as we’d like to design systems around more optimistic expectations of human behavior reality is always more complex. It’s pragmatism, not justification.
- wpietri 7y ago
  I'm saying the opposite of "we’d like to design systems around more optimistic expectations". Given that people are what they are, I want us to get better at breaking these cycles. But very often, statements like "there will always be people willing to break the rules" are used to act as if things like the number of people willing to break the rules and the amount of harm done when rules are broken are beyond our control.
  - cageface 7y ago
    What mechanisms would you propose to control bad faith actors?

la_barba 7y ago

Why are the powerless people the parasites? Google (and also others) is not a morally neutral entity here. They created this problem. They could stem the flow of malvertising or click-farming or spamming by hiring more and more review staff as their company has scaled, but its simply not in their DNA. I mean literally they are the richest of the richest of companies in the richest country and their owners are amongst the richest people on earth.. and the tired out cliche is still "it doesn't scale". Yeah..I'm pretty sure you can hire a few more folks to your team.. :-)

cageface 7y ago
They’re not powerless. They’ve simply made the economic decision that it’s more profitable for them to cheat the system then work within it. I’m not making a value judgement here. And so far Google etc have decided it’s better to tolerate this to some extent than spend the money to eradicate it, which is often the pragmatic choice.
- la_barba 7y ago
  >They’ve simply made the economic decision that it’s more profitable for them to cheat the system then work within it. Well, a private company created an arbitrary system with arbitrary rules to make them gobs of cash, and now the entire world should "work within it"? Why? Personally I don't run an ad-blocker out of principle, so maybe I'm a bit more sensitive than the average person here since I get exposed to this garbage everyday. Google also wants to "cheat" the system by not hiring any actual humans to actually make sure that people aren't tricked with ads for dick pills with heavy metals or protein power that is toxic or ads about payday loans or whatever other crazy scam-ads people run. Google wants to automate everything and leave the rest of us wading in this garbage. How about hiring people to fix the mess they created instead of stuffing their pockets? I'm only mentioning Google here, but I don't want to necessarily single them out, all of the web advertising platforms are responsible in someway or another. Its just that Google is an easy target since they are the largest ... >I’m not making a value judgement here. Um.. I believe the use of word parasite precludes you from making any such claim :)