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I posted: > Is there something surprising, incongruous here? You responded: > Not really, consider this restatement for example: ... > This fallacy is very

I posted: > Is there something surprising, incongruous here? You responded: > Not really, consider this restatement for example: ... > This fallacy is very closely related to the value of "ideas" versus the value of executing on the idea. The latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much. My question was rhetorical -- I was saying the same thing you did. A reader was supposed to look at the situation of the huge difference in dollars, be tempted to conclude that, yes, there was > something surprising, incongruous here and then remind themselves of the very well known point you reminded us of: > latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much. Or, for one more, whatever is the truth about life and reality, Kahn contributed so much and got paid comparatively so little. That's reality we all know, and I'm not crusading against it, but it's still a big difference.

ChuckMcM 3y ago
That's fair, it would seem you stepped into a trap that I myself have stepped into many times which is to be clear in your own mind what you're saying without first considering the context of the reader. As was pointed out elsewhere, being rhetorical depends on context. And in this case the context is "What is the general belief system of the readers." What I think happened here was that your context was actually the inverse of what I would expect a reader to be thinking here (given your questions). As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, if you had said "I find it incongruous that someone who contributed something so fundamental wasn't nearly as well rewarded financially as others who came after and used their contribution." I think that point of view would gather a lot of support here as the community abounds in examples; my favorite being Gruber inventing markdown to make blog writing easier and people like Github turning it into a key feature of there service offering. This is because this community is acutely aware of the mismatch between effort invested and the relatively randomness of the financial rewards. That is also why a common dismissive comment to a submission touting the big raise of some startup with "I just don't get it, I could write that product in a weekend" (or some variation on that theme). It's the idea that 'fairness' involves reward commensurate with impact. As a result of this, your comment hit exactly the opposite tone, which is to say that I read it (and I'm guessing others did as well) that you were implying that somehow Bob Kahn had been "ripped off" or otherwise harmed unjustly because his contribution was not as well rewarded as far as its impact (which was large) went. My restatement was an attempt on my part to reflect back to you the way your comment sounded; I did this using an even more extreme example of the separation between the invention of something, and the economic exploitation of that something. It probably wasn't the nicest way to do that, for that I apologize. I find that communication, especially written communication without all the cues that come from things like body language and facial expressions, is really hard to do well. I also find that different communities have completely different customs, for example a comment that might get upvoted here could get mercilessly down voted on Reddit. Or a tweet that might get likes goes no where in a different forum. It's tough to do humor and rhetorical questions here, there is an extremely fine line between it being okay and it being down voted into oblivion.
- graycat 3y ago
  > As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged. Uh, on your point about startup, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that
  - ChuckMcM 3y ago
    Charitably, your profile indicates you have been 'subscribed' (or what ever they call it) here for 10 years. During that time you've posted reasonably often and received a varying amount of engagement. > Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged. In that time I would expect it to become clear that anyone, at any time, has a fixed set of options when responding to a post: 1) Ignoring it. 2) Voting on it "up" or "down" 3) Flagging it (which generally brings it to the attention of moderation) 4) Commenting on it. (note that 2, 3, and 4 are not mutually exclusive, you can flag, downvote, and comment all one the one thing). Generally the reason for down voting or flagging is how your comment was 'heard' by the person reading it. Some folks down vote when they disagree, some when they feel it doesn't add anything to the conversation, sometimes because they feel it disparages or insults something they value. There an innumerable number of ways people can feel when they read something.
- graycat 3y ago
  > As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even up to zero, why my comment was flagged. Uh, on your point about startups, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that also ===>>> I <<<=== was doing a startup based on the Internet. Sooooo, I should be regarded as also > big dent' oriented and a member of the club, at least with attitudes of the club. I'm not a joiner of clubs: In high school I was not getting a lot of invitations to clubs and gave up then. Uh, there's the old joke "Any club that would have me as a member I wouldn't want to join." But at least, no way, was I suggesting that Kahn was getting ripped off or that the billionaire founders were guilty of some transgression. On facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, I wasn't at the head of the class on those and regarded them as poor quality information. Here at the risk of rubbing more fur the wrong way are some old sayings: Girls pay attention to people. Boys pay attention to things. Girls work hard to learn how to please people. Boys work hard to learn how to do things. It is not 100% this way, but, warning, if try to change either of these two, may encounter difficulties beyond overcoming or prior expectation -- take this as a grand understatement. Some of my evidence is 6 feet under. E.g., there is the movie Armageddon where a daughter tells her father that she was more mature (or some such) than him when she was 10 years old -- in my experience that's not unrealistic! Now, back to facial expressions, tone of voice, ...: Girls can do a lot better than boys at making that input quality information.

ChuckMcM 3y ago

That's fair, it would seem you stepped into a trap that I myself have stepped into many times which is to be clear in your own mind what you're saying without first considering the context of the reader. As was pointed out elsewhere, being rhetorical depends on context. And in this case the context is "What is the general belief system of the readers." What I think happened here was that your context was actually the inverse of what I would expect a reader to be thinking here (given your questions). As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, if you had said "I find it incongruous that someone who contributed something so fundamental wasn't nearly as well rewarded financially as others who came after and used their contribution." I think that point of view would gather a lot of support here as the community abounds in examples; my favorite being Gruber inventing markdown to make blog writing easier and people like Github turning it into a key feature of there service offering. This is because this community is acutely aware of the mismatch between effort invested and the relatively randomness of the financial rewards. That is also why a common dismissive comment to a submission touting the big raise of some startup with "I just don't get it, I could write that product in a weekend" (or some variation on that theme). It's the idea that 'fairness' involves reward commensurate with impact. As a result of this, your comment hit exactly the opposite tone, which is to say that I read it (and I'm guessing others did as well) that you were implying that somehow Bob Kahn had been "ripped off" or otherwise harmed unjustly because his contribution was not as well rewarded as far as its impact (which was large) went. My restatement was an attempt on my part to reflect back to you the way your comment sounded; I did this using an even more extreme example of the separation between the invention of something, and the economic exploitation of that something. It probably wasn't the nicest way to do that, for that I apologize. I find that communication, especially written communication without all the cues that come from things like body language and facial expressions, is really hard to do well. I also find that different communities have completely different customs, for example a comment that might get upvoted here could get mercilessly down voted on Reddit. Or a tweet that might get likes goes no where in a different forum. It's tough to do humor and rhetorical questions here, there is an extremely fine line between it being okay and it being down voted into oblivion.

graycat 3y ago
> As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged. Uh, on your point about startup, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  Charitably, your profile indicates you have been 'subscribed' (or what ever they call it) here for 10 years. During that time you've posted reasonably often and received a varying amount of engagement. > Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged. In that time I would expect it to become clear that anyone, at any time, has a fixed set of options when responding to a post: 1) Ignoring it. 2) Voting on it "up" or "down" 3) Flagging it (which generally brings it to the attention of moderation) 4) Commenting on it. (note that 2, 3, and 4 are not mutually exclusive, you can flag, downvote, and comment all one the one thing). Generally the reason for down voting or flagging is how your comment was 'heard' by the person reading it. Some folks down vote when they disagree, some when they feel it doesn't add anything to the conversation, sometimes because they feel it disparages or insults something they value. There an innumerable number of ways people can feel when they read something.
graycat 3y ago
> As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even up to zero, why my comment was flagged. Uh, on your point about startups, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that also ===>>> I <<<=== was doing a startup based on the Internet. Sooooo, I should be regarded as also > big dent' oriented and a member of the club, at least with attitudes of the club. I'm not a joiner of clubs: In high school I was not getting a lot of invitations to clubs and gave up then. Uh, there's the old joke "Any club that would have me as a member I wouldn't want to join." But at least, no way, was I suggesting that Kahn was getting ripped off or that the billionaire founders were guilty of some transgression. On facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, I wasn't at the head of the class on those and regarded them as poor quality information. Here at the risk of rubbing more fur the wrong way are some old sayings: Girls pay attention to people. Boys pay attention to things. Girls work hard to learn how to please people. Boys work hard to learn how to do things. It is not 100% this way, but, warning, if try to change either of these two, may encounter difficulties beyond overcoming or prior expectation -- take this as a grand understatement. Some of my evidence is 6 feet under. E.g., there is the movie Armageddon where a daughter tells her father that she was more mature (or some such) than him when she was 10 years old -- in my experience that's not unrealistic! Now, back to facial expressions, tone of voice, ...: Girls can do a lot better than boys at making that input quality information.