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The weird subtext of this article is that it's an example of a certain kind of person, the type for whom the entire point of making things is to make money, and

by ajkjk 4y ago

The weird subtext of this article is that it's an example of a certain kind of person, the type for whom the entire point of making things is to make money, and it's only by accident that it's about doing something useful. Here's a person who reads entrepreneurship books and takes notes on good ways to find business opportunities, makes an app to help people basically cheat because that's where the money is, naturally explains how it's not cheating when asked, and dismisses the obvious reaction as 'negativity'... I mean, it's cool to make something, I guess, but it's possible that your life's work is to help slowly ruin the world despite doing your "job" / following all the obvious rules of society at every step... and I kinda think this is what that mindset looks like "on the inside"?

chii 4y ago
> the type for whom the entire point of making things is to make money, not do something useful. the fact that somebody is paying for said app implies that it is useful. Noone parts with money for an exchange that they don't find useful. The idea that just because _you_ don't see it as being useful doesn't make it not useful. If you suppose that the exchange ruins the world somehow, because there's some externality that causes harm to you, then it's a case of making such an exchange illegal through some democratic process, and have enforcement. Absent of that, i think it is totally legitimate, and that the person doing the entrepreneurial endeavor is just trying to improve their own situation. One does not have to have the purpose of "improving the world" - that naturally would happen as people exchange to make their own situations better.
- ehnto 4y ago
  > Noone parts with money for an exchange that they don't find useful. I think this is true at face value, but when we consider addiction and self-destructive behaviors it is clear that while the definition of useful my still apply, the result is a negative impact on society. The easiest most inflammatory example is drugs, but a more nuanced example might be slot machines. I won't wax lyrical about the examples, but I think they show that a transaction of money doesn't imply a positive impact on society. Another example is rent seeking and fees, sometimes the transaction of money is non-negotiable, and one side is exploiting the other, or a middleman has inserted themselves (sometimes through policy lobbying) and extracts rent that no one benefits from but them.
  - chii 4y ago
    > drugs ... slot machines i would assert that drugs or slot machines both provide value - they are entertainment, and the people using them are deriving value out of it. Why is that those people's enjoyment doesn't factor into society as being positive? Are they somehow not part of society? If you imply that because they must've committed a crime to obtain the money to pay for their entertainment, then it's not the entertainment, but the crime that's negative to society. If you imply that slot machines are harmful to the players, and that they're better off not using it, then my argument is who's to say that it's harmful? Why is that there must be a negative moral attribution to using it? Edit: i would agree that "rent seeking" is bad, but it's hard to actually specify exactly what rent-seeking is, so i will leave it to someone else to discuss.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      Anyone who has spent time around addiction and those afflicted by it can tell you it causes more pain than enjoyment. There is a big difference between someome getting high for fun and someone who feels they no longer have a choice but to be high. For what it's worth I am pro deregulation of drugs. I just think it's a good example that money changing hands doesn't imply a net positive had occurred. People pay for guns they use to murder people for another on the nose example.
    - lordnacho 4y ago
      I think there's a tautology hiding here. It's unstated, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The tautology is that what people exchange for has value, but it has value because people pay for it. Specifically that it has the value people are paying or more. This is a sort of free market idea: why would someone swap for something that isn't good for them? People must be swapping for stuff they want. To a degree this is totally reasonable. Why does a guy buy a razor if he doesn't think shaving is worth it? The problem with this kind of thinking is it can never check itself. There's no independent way to give an item a value, so how do you know the exchanged values are correct? There's an assumption implicit that the market gives everything the right value, but it's not checkable without some other way to come up with a value. And there are reasons to think this value might be wrong. For instance externalities, but also plain old "consumer misjudged the value". I met a guy who exploited every trick in the book when building his business. He always picked addictive stuff. Online casinos, vapes. He would also put in fine print that people were buying a minimum subscription, so they would they surprised when they got billed a second time. On top of that he found a way to trick Facebook into showing his advertisements that were against the ToS. I doubt anyone got what they thought from this fellow, but he's rich now. This isn't to say everyone who sets out to just make money makes a mess, far from it. I'm sure there are people whose get rich quick scheme is genuinely useful to other people. But it does mean we need to keep eye on behaviour to make sure there aren't abuses.
- ajkjk 4y ago
  Well the fact that somebody pays for somebody else to show me ads is useful to all of them, but it certainly isn't useful to me... I'm not saying it's illegitimate in any legal sense. But morally it is not so clear. > doing the entrepreneurial endeavor is just trying to improve their own situation This person said they work as an engineer on growth teams in Silicon Valley, which is hilariously appropriate by the way, so they presumably have plenty of money. They're doing morally dubious things just to prove they can!
  - chii 4y ago
    > somebody pays for somebody else to show me ads is useful to all of them, but it certainly isn't useful to me... presumably the ads being shown has subsidized the usage of the app that you're using for free. So i dont think it's not useful to you - it might be an annoyance, but you've made the trade to use the app for free (or for a lower cost than it otherwise wouldve been). > They're doing morally dubious and different people ascribe different moralities. I dont think there can be one universal, objective, moral standard to which you can use to compare actions. This is why i use the legal standard - at least it's an objective standard that the majority of people agree.
    - npteljes 4y ago
      >presumably the ads being shown has subsidized the usage of the app that you're using for free That's not how it works. Ads increase sales, every ad impression of yours is not an ad impression for your competitor, every ad impression makes you more familiar with the advertised - and there are other factors, I'm sure. But ads don't subsidize shit. I'm sure it seems like that in some products, but if that would be universal, cable TV, online news, and a lot of other stuff would be free. But what ends up being is that people buy things AND watch the ads. A lot of times the incentives are aligned in a way that this makes the most business sense, not lowering the price of the product.
    - geysersam 4y ago
      The ad subsidized something, against my will. How can that be framed as some kind of "transaction"? Sure, if I can choose to direct or avert my attention to ads, like, using an app with ads. But in other less consensual cases it's difficult to make the case that ads are always a positive sum game.
- npteljes 4y ago
  >Noone parts with money for an exchange that they don't find useful. Come on, there's many. You can, for example, manipulate people to pay for something. You can get them addicted, so that they become repeat customers, despite rationality. You can lie to a lot of people, so that you will have one time customers, but you can do that to a large crowd. You can quasi-force people to buy something, if it's a prerequisite for something else. Just because people buy something, it doesn't mean it's useful. Far from it.
  - adamckay 4y ago
    > You can, for example, manipulate people to pay for something. How? > You can get them addicted, so that they become repeat customers, despite rationality. No one purchases anything to become addicted. You may download a game, find it fun and purchase in-game items. It's useful because it's entertaining. > You can lie to a lot of people, so that you will have one time customers, but you can do that to a large crowd. But you have to convince people with your lie that it will be useful and beneficial for them to purchase it. Then once purchased they'll find it was a waste. > You can quasi-force people to buy something, if it's a prerequisite for something else. So it's useful to gain access to something else? No normal person willingly spends money that they know is a waste ahead of time. There's some imagined usefulness from it, either as short or long term entertainment, increased productivity, comfort, or for another specific purpose.
    - splatzone 4y ago
      > How? This question is the foundation of the marketing industry. There are so many ways to manipulate people into parting with their money, but one of the basic approaches is to introduce and build tension in the customer that your product claims to release. This tension always exists on a deeper level than the practical value of the product. For example, if Apple want to sell a laptop, they don’t focus on selling the tech specs. Instead they promise the customer that if they buy a macbook, they’ll become a creative genius, a musician or a VFX artist - high status careers. So what they’re really selling is the promise of enhanced social standing, not technology. That’s as manipulative as it gets See also : https://garrisonmarketinggroup.com/tension-point-can-you-feel-the-tension/ https://garrisonmarketinggroup.com/tension-point-can-you-fee...
- randomsearch 4y ago
  I think the more generous reading here is that “usual” = “net positive for the world”
- geysersam 4y ago
  There are many situations where the amount someone is willing to pay does not equal the value of something. Like you point out. Anything with negative externalities is in this category. If value is derived from peoples experiences. Why would the experience of the customer count for more than the experience of another person affected by the purchase? Another problem is that we (people) are not always good at deciding what is good for even ourselves in the long run. We are not homo economicus with perfect awareness of all effects going forward into the infinite future. That doesn't (always) mean people should be forbidden from making "mistake" purchases that they will eventually regret. But it means the value of the thing wasn't what they thought when they bought it. In short: they're not the same.
- JSavageOne 4y ago
  > the fact that somebody is paying for said app implies that it is useful. False. This is a tautology, aka circular reasoning. For example purchasing and consuming heroin does not add value to anyone's life. A lot of social media consumption (eg. TikTok) doesn't improve one's life, yet people consume them out of addiction. Someone choosing to do something doesn't mean that it is valuable for them. Another counterpoint would be suicide.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Is it the weird subtext? Seems to me like someone who properly thought about what he could do, did build it and then actually sold it to customers. You know, like, the basis of proper honest entrepreneurship. Or are you concerned about the use of preflop charts? Because they are clearly allowed in the rules of most tournaments and not actually cheating.
- JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
  > Subtext The legitimacy of the preflop charts was also mentioned in the article - ya know, the actual written, non-subtexty text.
  - CaptArmchair 4y ago
    The author actually acknowledges that opinions on legitimate use of pre-flop charts in the poker community are highly divided. It's a controversial topic. > Overall, the app was controversial. Many of the Reddit comments were negative, and many accused me of making an app for “cheating.” Though there was some interesting back-and-forth because many people pointed out that high-profile famous poker players openly admit to using preflop charts. Arguably, the author wanted to build a simple app that generates sizable revenue, having your idea reviled isn't a great outlook. However, in his case, that's not a problem since his goal was to test an idea quickly, not to build a successful business: > Overall, I expected some controversy and some negativity. This app mainly was an experiment to make money and learn more about making watchOS apps. If it fails, it’s not too big a deal. The elephant in the room many have is that the author didn't start from an authentic motivation to solve an interesting problem people have, and turn it into a small business, but instead was motivated by "Hey, I want to experiment with building a business" and then started looking for a problem which was a good fit for his ulterior goal. It's a kind of thinking about building businesses that will certainly yield successful results. It's also the kind of thinking that doesn't in the slightest consider the manifold impacts of their product or service on their markets and the wider environment in which those markets reside. As one redditor duly noted: > And that's how you get watches banned from the poker table.
Shorel 4y ago
It would be actually weird if it was not so common. I would say the entire subculture of the city of Medellín is like this, for example.
JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
The only reason most people have a job is to make money. If this guy has a shitty mindset, then what of all the developers working in FAANG? What about most people that work for any large organization? Aren’t they all just cogs working for somebody else with the same type of mindset? At the very least the author is forthcoming and honest about his intentions. Perhaps there is nothing more “on the inside” than what has been presented. I’d rather take that instead of the usual spin about wanting to change the world.
- nodemaker 4y ago
  Exactly! For me this guy is at a higher level of respect than anyone working for a salary!
omeze 4y ago
This is so unfair to the article author. People do things to make money because you need money to live in society! People want to be financially and creatively independent and starting a business, or learning how, is a completely fine thing to do. You can do volunteer work, contribute to open source, or whatever else for free, but why do you have to deride someone for trying to sell software?
- Kinrany 4y ago
  The need to make money is not a universal defense of anything that makes money.
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    It is a variation of the Nuremberg defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders We pretend to be rational and as soon as livelihood is affected logic goes out of the window. (not talking about the specific person, just about the logical argument)
    - jollofricepeas 4y ago
      Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. You’re making a very interesting point about capitalism and democracy that people should keep in mind. But… 1) I disagree that logic is the thing that goes out of the window, instead it’s “morality.” We sacrifice our sense of acting in the greater good and instead optimize for ourselves 2) There have been too many events in business and democratic history for me to believe that this disposal of our morality though repugnant is not just a human trait developed via evolution for some sort of greater purpose that benefits our species in a larger way than all of the disasters its caused (ie. Great Recession, Opiod Epidemic, Nazi Germany, Challenger Disaster, etc)
  - omeze 4y ago
    Cool, thats not what I said. Building software that people will buy gives you creative freedom.
romanhn 4y ago
As opposed to starting a business in order to make the world a better place? https://youtu.be/B8C5sjjhsso https://youtu.be/B8C5sjjhsso
boredemployee 4y ago
says a random internet dude who never did anything useful
daniel-cussen 4y ago
[dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by ajkjk 4y ago

chii 4y ago

> the type for whom the entire point of making things is to make money, not do something useful. the fact that somebody is paying for said app implies that it is useful. Noone parts with money for an exchange that they don't find useful. The idea that just because _you_ don't see it as being useful doesn't make it not useful. If you suppose that the exchange ruins the world somehow, because there's some externality that causes harm to you, then it's a case of making such an exchange illegal through some democratic process, and have enforcement. Absent of that, i think it is totally legitimate, and that the person doing the entrepreneurial endeavor is just trying to improve their own situation. One does not have to have the purpose of "improving the world" - that naturally would happen as people exchange to make their own situations better.

ehnto 4y ago
> Noone parts with money for an exchange that they don't find useful. I think this is true at face value, but when we consider addiction and self-destructive behaviors it is clear that while the definition of useful my still apply, the result is a negative impact on society. The easiest most inflammatory example is drugs, but a more nuanced example might be slot machines. I won't wax lyrical about the examples, but I think they show that a transaction of money doesn't imply a positive impact on society. Another example is rent seeking and fees, sometimes the transaction of money is non-negotiable, and one side is exploiting the other, or a middleman has inserted themselves (sometimes through policy lobbying) and extracts rent that no one benefits from but them.
- chii 4y ago
  > drugs ... slot machines i would assert that drugs or slot machines both provide value - they are entertainment, and the people using them are deriving value out of it. Why is that those people's enjoyment doesn't factor into society as being positive? Are they somehow not part of society? If you imply that because they must've committed a crime to obtain the money to pay for their entertainment, then it's not the entertainment, but the crime that's negative to society. If you imply that slot machines are harmful to the players, and that they're better off not using it, then my argument is who's to say that it's harmful? Why is that there must be a negative moral attribution to using it? Edit: i would agree that "rent seeking" is bad, but it's hard to actually specify exactly what rent-seeking is, so i will leave it to someone else to discuss.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Anyone who has spent time around addiction and those afflicted by it can tell you it causes more pain than enjoyment. There is a big difference between someome getting high for fun and someone who feels they no longer have a choice but to be high. For what it's worth I am pro deregulation of drugs. I just think it's a good example that money changing hands doesn't imply a net positive had occurred. People pay for guns they use to murder people for another on the nose example.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    I think there's a tautology hiding here. It's unstated, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The tautology is that what people exchange for has value, but it has value because people pay for it. Specifically that it has the value people are paying or more. This is a sort of free market idea: why would someone swap for something that isn't good for them? People must be swapping for stuff they want. To a degree this is totally reasonable. Why does a guy buy a razor if he doesn't think shaving is worth it? The problem with this kind of thinking is it can never check itself. There's no independent way to give an item a value, so how do you know the exchanged values are correct? There's an assumption implicit that the market gives everything the right value, but it's not checkable without some other way to come up with a value. And there are reasons to think this value might be wrong. For instance externalities, but also plain old "consumer misjudged the value". I met a guy who exploited every trick in the book when building his business. He always picked addictive stuff. Online casinos, vapes. He would also put in fine print that people were buying a minimum subscription, so they would they surprised when they got billed a second time. On top of that he found a way to trick Facebook into showing his advertisements that were against the ToS. I doubt anyone got what they thought from this fellow, but he's rich now. This isn't to say everyone who sets out to just make money makes a mess, far from it. I'm sure there are people whose get rich quick scheme is genuinely useful to other people. But it does mean we need to keep eye on behaviour to make sure there aren't abuses.
ajkjk 4y ago
Well the fact that somebody pays for somebody else to show me ads is useful to all of them, but it certainly isn't useful to me... I'm not saying it's illegitimate in any legal sense. But morally it is not so clear. > doing the entrepreneurial endeavor is just trying to improve their own situation This person said they work as an engineer on growth teams in Silicon Valley, which is hilariously appropriate by the way, so they presumably have plenty of money. They're doing morally dubious things just to prove they can!
- chii 4y ago
  > somebody pays for somebody else to show me ads is useful to all of them, but it certainly isn't useful to me... presumably the ads being shown has subsidized the usage of the app that you're using for free. So i dont think it's not useful to you - it might be an annoyance, but you've made the trade to use the app for free (or for a lower cost than it otherwise wouldve been). > They're doing morally dubious and different people ascribe different moralities. I dont think there can be one universal, objective, moral standard to which you can use to compare actions. This is why i use the legal standard - at least it's an objective standard that the majority of people agree.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    >presumably the ads being shown has subsidized the usage of the app that you're using for free That's not how it works. Ads increase sales, every ad impression of yours is not an ad impression for your competitor, every ad impression makes you more familiar with the advertised - and there are other factors, I'm sure. But ads don't subsidize shit. I'm sure it seems like that in some products, but if that would be universal, cable TV, online news, and a lot of other stuff would be free. But what ends up being is that people buy things AND watch the ads. A lot of times the incentives are aligned in a way that this makes the most business sense, not lowering the price of the product.
  - geysersam 4y ago
    The ad subsidized something, against my will. How can that be framed as some kind of "transaction"? Sure, if I can choose to direct or avert my attention to ads, like, using an app with ads. But in other less consensual cases it's difficult to make the case that ads are always a positive sum game.
npteljes 4y ago
>Noone parts with money for an exchange that they don't find useful. Come on, there's many. You can, for example, manipulate people to pay for something. You can get them addicted, so that they become repeat customers, despite rationality. You can lie to a lot of people, so that you will have one time customers, but you can do that to a large crowd. You can quasi-force people to buy something, if it's a prerequisite for something else. Just because people buy something, it doesn't mean it's useful. Far from it.
- adamckay 4y ago
  > You can, for example, manipulate people to pay for something. How? > You can get them addicted, so that they become repeat customers, despite rationality. No one purchases anything to become addicted. You may download a game, find it fun and purchase in-game items. It's useful because it's entertaining. > You can lie to a lot of people, so that you will have one time customers, but you can do that to a large crowd. But you have to convince people with your lie that it will be useful and beneficial for them to purchase it. Then once purchased they'll find it was a waste. > You can quasi-force people to buy something, if it's a prerequisite for something else. So it's useful to gain access to something else? No normal person willingly spends money that they know is a waste ahead of time. There's some imagined usefulness from it, either as short or long term entertainment, increased productivity, comfort, or for another specific purpose.
  - splatzone 4y ago
    > How? This question is the foundation of the marketing industry. There are so many ways to manipulate people into parting with their money, but one of the basic approaches is to introduce and build tension in the customer that your product claims to release. This tension always exists on a deeper level than the practical value of the product. For example, if Apple want to sell a laptop, they don’t focus on selling the tech specs. Instead they promise the customer that if they buy a macbook, they’ll become a creative genius, a musician or a VFX artist - high status careers. So what they’re really selling is the promise of enhanced social standing, not technology. That’s as manipulative as it gets See also : https://garrisonmarketinggroup.com/tension-point-can-you-feel-the-tension/ https://garrisonmarketinggroup.com/tension-point-can-you-fee...
randomsearch 4y ago
I think the more generous reading here is that “usual” = “net positive for the world”
geysersam 4y ago
There are many situations where the amount someone is willing to pay does not equal the value of something. Like you point out. Anything with negative externalities is in this category. If value is derived from peoples experiences. Why would the experience of the customer count for more than the experience of another person affected by the purchase? Another problem is that we (people) are not always good at deciding what is good for even ourselves in the long run. We are not homo economicus with perfect awareness of all effects going forward into the infinite future. That doesn't (always) mean people should be forbidden from making "mistake" purchases that they will eventually regret. But it means the value of the thing wasn't what they thought when they bought it. In short: they're not the same.
JSavageOne 4y ago
> the fact that somebody is paying for said app implies that it is useful. False. This is a tautology, aka circular reasoning. For example purchasing and consuming heroin does not add value to anyone's life. A lot of social media consumption (eg. TikTok) doesn't improve one's life, yet people consume them out of addiction. Someone choosing to do something doesn't mean that it is valuable for them. Another counterpoint would be suicide.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

Is it the weird subtext? Seems to me like someone who properly thought about what he could do, did build it and then actually sold it to customers. You know, like, the basis of proper honest entrepreneurship. Or are you concerned about the use of preflop charts? Because they are clearly allowed in the rules of most tournaments and not actually cheating.

JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
> Subtext The legitimacy of the preflop charts was also mentioned in the article - ya know, the actual written, non-subtexty text.
- CaptArmchair 4y ago
  The author actually acknowledges that opinions on legitimate use of pre-flop charts in the poker community are highly divided. It's a controversial topic. > Overall, the app was controversial. Many of the Reddit comments were negative, and many accused me of making an app for “cheating.” Though there was some interesting back-and-forth because many people pointed out that high-profile famous poker players openly admit to using preflop charts. Arguably, the author wanted to build a simple app that generates sizable revenue, having your idea reviled isn't a great outlook. However, in his case, that's not a problem since his goal was to test an idea quickly, not to build a successful business: > Overall, I expected some controversy and some negativity. This app mainly was an experiment to make money and learn more about making watchOS apps. If it fails, it’s not too big a deal. The elephant in the room many have is that the author didn't start from an authentic motivation to solve an interesting problem people have, and turn it into a small business, but instead was motivated by "Hey, I want to experiment with building a business" and then started looking for a problem which was a good fit for his ulterior goal. It's a kind of thinking about building businesses that will certainly yield successful results. It's also the kind of thinking that doesn't in the slightest consider the manifold impacts of their product or service on their markets and the wider environment in which those markets reside. As one redditor duly noted: > And that's how you get watches banned from the poker table.

Shorel 4y ago

It would be actually weird if it was not so common. I would say the entire subculture of the city of Medellín is like this, for example.

JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago

The only reason most people have a job is to make money. If this guy has a shitty mindset, then what of all the developers working in FAANG? What about most people that work for any large organization? Aren’t they all just cogs working for somebody else with the same type of mindset? At the very least the author is forthcoming and honest about his intentions. Perhaps there is nothing more “on the inside” than what has been presented. I’d rather take that instead of the usual spin about wanting to change the world.

nodemaker 4y ago
Exactly! For me this guy is at a higher level of respect than anyone working for a salary!

omeze 4y ago

This is so unfair to the article author. People do things to make money because you need money to live in society! People want to be financially and creatively independent and starting a business, or learning how, is a completely fine thing to do. You can do volunteer work, contribute to open source, or whatever else for free, but why do you have to deride someone for trying to sell software?

Kinrany 4y ago
The need to make money is not a universal defense of anything that makes money.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  It is a variation of the Nuremberg defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders We pretend to be rational and as soon as livelihood is affected logic goes out of the window. (not talking about the specific person, just about the logical argument)
  - jollofricepeas 4y ago
    Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. You’re making a very interesting point about capitalism and democracy that people should keep in mind. But… 1) I disagree that logic is the thing that goes out of the window, instead it’s “morality.” We sacrifice our sense of acting in the greater good and instead optimize for ourselves 2) There have been too many events in business and democratic history for me to believe that this disposal of our morality though repugnant is not just a human trait developed via evolution for some sort of greater purpose that benefits our species in a larger way than all of the disasters its caused (ie. Great Recession, Opiod Epidemic, Nazi Germany, Challenger Disaster, etc)
- omeze 4y ago
  Cool, thats not what I said. Building software that people will buy gives you creative freedom.

romanhn 4y ago

As opposed to starting a business in order to make the world a better place? https://youtu.be/B8C5sjjhsso https://youtu.be/B8C5sjjhsso

boredemployee 4y ago

says a random internet dude who never did anything useful

daniel-cussen 4y ago

[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]