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I like and read Ben's stuff regularly; he often frames "better" from the business side. He will use terms like "revealed preference" to claim users actually pre

I like and read Ben's stuff regularly; he often frames "better" from the business side. He will use terms like "revealed preference" to claim users actually prefer bad product designs (e.g. most users use free ad-based platforms), but a lot of human behavior is impulsive, habitual, constrained, and irrational.

Cheer2171 11mo ago
[flagged]
- biophysboy 11mo ago
  I think its more subtle; they fight for regulations they deem reasonable and against those they deem unreasonable. Anything that curtails growth of the business is unreasonable.
  - computerthings 11mo ago
    [dead]
  - wubrr 11mo ago
    Which is entirely unreasonable, and there's no need to make excuses or explain away this borderline psychopathy.
  - sph 11mo ago
    There is a term in biology for things which decide to grow uncontrollably, to the detriment of the surrounding ecosystem.
    - mykowebhn 11mo ago
      The non-biological term would be "billionaire".
      - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
        The non-biological term would be "publicly-traded corporation". If anything their behavior is worse when there is no controlling founder.
        breppp 11mo ago
        This thread is an exaggeration. Disney could have operated Micky Mouse themed casinos on its premises with probable success, it could also lobby to change regulation that is associated with that. However companies have balancing factors which are other than maximizing short term profits, such as moral image
        amarcheschi 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        breppp 11mo ago
        maybe these tech companies do not subscribe to your notion of modern day gestapo (an organization that was involved in killing 10+ million people in horrible ways) or a "genocide" that is minuscule in comparison to american bombings in Japan, which were similarly in the context of war and actually targeted civilians Maybe your use of these hyperboles are just an artifact of speech deficiencies of our social media engineered reality?
    - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
      It's called life. All life grows and consumes as much as it can. It's what makes it life. "Control" happens when there's more life contesting the same limited resources, and usually involves starvation, but if the situation persists on evolutionary timescales, then some life adapts to proactively limit growth. Then, if some of that adapted life unadapts itself, we call that "cancer", which I think is what you were going for.
- bloppe 11mo ago
  To be fair, businesses should assume that customers actually "want" what they create demand for. In the case of misleading or dangerously addictive products, regulation should fall to government, because that's the only actor that can prevent a race to the bottom.
  - gmd63 11mo ago
    The folks who succeed most in business are the type who have an intuition for what's best. They're not some automaton reading too far into and amplifying the imperfect and shallow signals of "demand" in a marketplace.
  - mistrial9 11mo ago
    To be fair, organized predatory behavior is to be expected? joke- The World Council of Animals meeting completes with morning sessions with "OK great, now who is for lunch?"
  - baobabKoodaa 11mo ago
    Because all people everywhere are psychopaths who will stab you for $5 if they can get away with it? If you take that attitude, why even go to "work" or run a "business"? It'd be so much more efficient to just stab-stab-stab and take the money directly.
    - lmm 11mo ago
      > Because all people everywhere are psychopaths who will stab you for $5 if they can get away with it? Not all people everywhere, but most successful businesspeople. > It'd be so much more efficient to just stab-stab-stab and take the money directly. It isn't though? If you do that then you get locked up and lose the money, so the smart psychopaths go into business instead.
    - bloppe 11mo ago
      I'll indulge your straw man because it's actually pretty good at illustrating my point. 99.9% of people are not psychopaths. But you only need .1% of people to be psychopaths. In a world where you get $5 and no threat of prosecution for stabbing people, you can bet that there will be extremely efficient and effective stabbing companies run by those psychopaths. Even normal people who don't like stabbing others would see the psychopaths getting rich and think to themselves "well, everyone's getting stabbed anyway, I might as well make some money too". That's what a race to the bottom is. And that's why the government regulates stabbing.
RoddaWallPro 11mo ago
I agree that is what he is doing, but I can also justify adding fentanyl to every drug sold in the world as "making it better" from a business perspective, because it is addictive. Anyone who ignores the moral or ethical angle on decisions, I cannot take seriously. It's like saying that Maximizing Shareholder Value is always the right thing to do. No, it isn't. So don't say stupid shit like that, be a human being and use your brain and capacity to look at things and analyze "is this good for human society?".
- biophysboy 11mo ago
  I agree - I think Ben tends to get business myopia. I read him with that in mind.
- chii 11mo ago
  > It's like saying that Maximizing Shareholder Value is always the right thing to do. No, it isn't. it is, for the agents of the shareholders. As long as the actions of those agents are legal of course. That's why it's not legal to put fentanyl into every drug sold, because fentanyl is illegal. But it is legal to put (more) sugar and/or salt into processed foods.
  - dozerly 11mo ago
    No, it’s not. The government, and laws by proxy, will never keep up with people’s willingness to “maximize shareholder value” and so you get harmful, future-illegal practices. Reagan was “maximizing shareholder value”, and now look where the US is.
    - chii 11mo ago
      you have to show this 'future-illegal' action is harmful first by demonstrating harm. That's why i used the sugar example - it's starting to be demonstrably harmful in large quantities that are being used. I am against preventative "harmful" laws, when harm hasn't been demonstrated, as it restricts freedom, adds red tape to innovation, and stifles startups from exploring the space of possibilities.
ElFitz 11mo ago
> to claim users actually prefer bad product designs One could argue many users seem to prefer badly designed free products over well designed paid products.
jomohke 11mo ago
In this quote I don't think he means it from the business side. He's claiming more data allows a better product: > ... the answers are a statistical synthesis of all of the knowledge the model makers can get their hands on, and are completely unique to every individual; at the same time, every individual user’s usage should, at least in theory, make the model better over time. > It follows, then, that ChatGPT should obviously have an advertising model. This isn’t just a function of needing to make money: advertising would make ChatGPT a better product. It would have more users using it more, providing more feedback; capturing purchase signals — not from affiliate links, but from personalized ads — would create a richer understanding of individual users, enabling better responses. But there is a more trivial way that it could be "better" with ads: they could give free users more quota (and/or better models), since there's some income from them. The idea of ChatGPT's own output being modified to sell products sounds awful to me, but placing ads alongside that are not relevant to the current chat sounds like an Ok compromise to me for free users. That's what Gmail does and most people here on HN seem to use it.

Cheer2171 11mo ago

[flagged]

biophysboy 11mo ago
I think its more subtle; they fight for regulations they deem reasonable and against those they deem unreasonable. Anything that curtails growth of the business is unreasonable.
- computerthings 11mo ago
  [dead]
- wubrr 11mo ago
  Which is entirely unreasonable, and there's no need to make excuses or explain away this borderline psychopathy.
- sph 11mo ago
  There is a term in biology for things which decide to grow uncontrollably, to the detriment of the surrounding ecosystem.
  - mykowebhn 11mo ago
    The non-biological term would be "billionaire".
    - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
      The non-biological term would be "publicly-traded corporation". If anything their behavior is worse when there is no controlling founder.
      - breppp 11mo ago
        This thread is an exaggeration. Disney could have operated Micky Mouse themed casinos on its premises with probable success, it could also lobby to change regulation that is associated with that. However companies have balancing factors which are other than maximizing short term profits, such as moral image
        amarcheschi 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        breppp 11mo ago
        maybe these tech companies do not subscribe to your notion of modern day gestapo (an organization that was involved in killing 10+ million people in horrible ways) or a "genocide" that is minuscule in comparison to american bombings in Japan, which were similarly in the context of war and actually targeted civilians Maybe your use of these hyperboles are just an artifact of speech deficiencies of our social media engineered reality?
  - TeMPOraL 11mo ago
    It's called life. All life grows and consumes as much as it can. It's what makes it life. "Control" happens when there's more life contesting the same limited resources, and usually involves starvation, but if the situation persists on evolutionary timescales, then some life adapts to proactively limit growth. Then, if some of that adapted life unadapts itself, we call that "cancer", which I think is what you were going for.
bloppe 11mo ago
To be fair, businesses should assume that customers actually "want" what they create demand for. In the case of misleading or dangerously addictive products, regulation should fall to government, because that's the only actor that can prevent a race to the bottom.
- gmd63 11mo ago
  The folks who succeed most in business are the type who have an intuition for what's best. They're not some automaton reading too far into and amplifying the imperfect and shallow signals of "demand" in a marketplace.
- mistrial9 11mo ago
  To be fair, organized predatory behavior is to be expected? joke- The World Council of Animals meeting completes with morning sessions with "OK great, now who is for lunch?"
- baobabKoodaa 11mo ago
  Because all people everywhere are psychopaths who will stab you for $5 if they can get away with it? If you take that attitude, why even go to "work" or run a "business"? It'd be so much more efficient to just stab-stab-stab and take the money directly.
  - lmm 11mo ago
    > Because all people everywhere are psychopaths who will stab you for $5 if they can get away with it? Not all people everywhere, but most successful businesspeople. > It'd be so much more efficient to just stab-stab-stab and take the money directly. It isn't though? If you do that then you get locked up and lose the money, so the smart psychopaths go into business instead.
  - bloppe 11mo ago
    I'll indulge your straw man because it's actually pretty good at illustrating my point. 99.9% of people are not psychopaths. But you only need .1% of people to be psychopaths. In a world where you get $5 and no threat of prosecution for stabbing people, you can bet that there will be extremely efficient and effective stabbing companies run by those psychopaths. Even normal people who don't like stabbing others would see the psychopaths getting rich and think to themselves "well, everyone's getting stabbed anyway, I might as well make some money too". That's what a race to the bottom is. And that's why the government regulates stabbing.

RoddaWallPro 11mo ago

I agree that is what he is doing, but I can also justify adding fentanyl to every drug sold in the world as "making it better" from a business perspective, because it is addictive. Anyone who ignores the moral or ethical angle on decisions, I cannot take seriously. It's like saying that Maximizing Shareholder Value is always the right thing to do. No, it isn't. So don't say stupid shit like that, be a human being and use your brain and capacity to look at things and analyze "is this good for human society?".

biophysboy 11mo ago
I agree - I think Ben tends to get business myopia. I read him with that in mind.
chii 11mo ago
> It's like saying that Maximizing Shareholder Value is always the right thing to do. No, it isn't. it is, for the agents of the shareholders. As long as the actions of those agents are legal of course. That's why it's not legal to put fentanyl into every drug sold, because fentanyl is illegal. But it is legal to put (more) sugar and/or salt into processed foods.
- dozerly 11mo ago
  No, it’s not. The government, and laws by proxy, will never keep up with people’s willingness to “maximize shareholder value” and so you get harmful, future-illegal practices. Reagan was “maximizing shareholder value”, and now look where the US is.
  - chii 11mo ago
    you have to show this 'future-illegal' action is harmful first by demonstrating harm. That's why i used the sugar example - it's starting to be demonstrably harmful in large quantities that are being used. I am against preventative "harmful" laws, when harm hasn't been demonstrated, as it restricts freedom, adds red tape to innovation, and stifles startups from exploring the space of possibilities.

ElFitz 11mo ago

> to claim users actually prefer bad product designs One could argue many users seem to prefer badly designed free products over well designed paid products.

jomohke 11mo ago

In this quote I don't think he means it from the business side. He's claiming more data allows a better product: > ... the answers are a statistical synthesis of all of the knowledge the model makers can get their hands on, and are completely unique to every individual; at the same time, every individual user’s usage should, at least in theory, make the model better over time. > It follows, then, that ChatGPT should obviously have an advertising model. This isn’t just a function of needing to make money: advertising would make ChatGPT a better product. It would have more users using it more, providing more feedback; capturing purchase signals — not from affiliate links, but from personalized ads — would create a richer understanding of individual users, enabling better responses. But there is a more trivial way that it could be "better" with ads: they could give free users more quota (and/or better models), since there's some income from them. The idea of ChatGPT's own output being modified to sell products sounds awful to me, but placing ads alongside that are not relevant to the current chat sounds like an Ok compromise to me for free users. That's what Gmail does and most people here on HN seem to use it.