[malloreon]

incompetence is bad. gross incompetence is bad on a widespread and surprising scale. incredible gross incompetence is shockingly bad on a widespread and surprising scale.

"Incredible" doesn't mean good, by definition - it means unbelievable.

[pareci]

Why is incompetence bad? I have no ego and don't have a way of judging things like this. I think I am unusual in not having an ego. I can't assert that anything is "bad" or "good", including incompetence. I understand "incredible" here. I also understand "gross", although "surprising" is a bit difficult. I have no ego, so no reference of what is surprising. For those with egos, surprising is usually in reference to the ego.

For example, a tebibyte of RAM is surprising to an OSX programmer. A tebibyte of RAM is not surprising to someone working on seismic simulations for oil extraction.

[gallopingcomp]

I do see your point. But I think you are being too pedantic... By saying it's incompetence and "bad", the poster probably meant that the people at Amazon aren't doing a great job (in achieving whatever goals they want to achieve or we customers want them to achieve, in this case keeping the scammers out). Maybe the poster is just frustrated with Amazon not doing its job. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with egos in the sense that the people at Amazon are pathetic idiots that that we should scoff at or that we can indulge in a sense of superiority. It's simply about solving a problem.

Also, I don't think you were fully correct in saying that surprising is usually in reference to the ego. I think it's simply in reference to what you've seen before, what you are used to seeing, what you expect to see or would like to see. It's not necessarily ego-related. But yeah, having an open mind and not being limited by what you've seen is important. But I digress.

[pareci]

Please remove you ego and try again.