[tptacek]

Ok, Corporal A. Gumbo: Write it better.

Do it and I'll donate $1000 that I promise I was not going to donate anyways to Partners In Health.

There's an idea common to forums that I don't frequent that I recently learned of called an "ideological Turing test". The idea is to take a group of people divided along a controversy, and to get each side to anonymously write a coherent argument that capture's the other side's perspective. Then everyone tries to tell, "which is the real argument, and which is the cunning fake?".

In that spirit: if you think you understand what 'grellas is trying to say so well, go ahead and take a whack at saying it better, and demonstrate that you actually grok his perspective.

[corporalagumbo]

Okay, here you are:

People should stop trying to make entrepreneurs feel guilty for not living up to their personal ethical standards. One of the advantages of our free society is that people can choose to work on weighty issues or fluffy diversions. As long as you abide by the law, you should not be criticised for the style of business you decide to pursue. If a lot of people can make money from social networking then that is definitionally a good thing (i.e. a good thing is a thing which makes some people money.)

[grellas]

Here is my shortened version:

"What I choose to call 'Founder's Guilt Complex' is a false sense of guilt imposed on founders who are told that the only worthwhile venture is one aimed at shaking up the world - I say, relax and use your talents to build the business you want. Keep it legal and do aspire to more in life than that. But forget about the censors. Like the Puritans of old, they would put you in a straightjacket for no good reason. And for this reason too, though there may be bad actors, there is not a thing wrong with social networking as a worthwhile business endeavor."

Does this short version achieve the same goals as the original? Yes and no. Context matters a lot in writing (see, e.g., my thoughts on legal writing: http://grellas.com/articles.html). The original here is flawed in that it is in the nature of a first draft (which is the case with all my posts at HN) and could be streamlined. But when one seeks to advance an idea that is bound to meet resistance among readers who are not used to hearing it, it is important to develop it and not simply state a summary of it. If this is misplaced for the forum (my posts do seem to generate a lot of meta-discussion about "walls of text"), then that is one thing. But there is no doubt that a merely summary version of such an argument will not have the same impact as one that is illustrated and developed.

By the way, I am not thin-skinned. I have appreciated your comments in this thread as well as those of others who have taken me to task on this or that point. We can disagree and still appreciate each other.

[larrys]

"it is important to develop it and not simply state a summary of it."

One suggestion I do have to help with readability (and with someone deciding whether they want to read the entire comment) is to place a summary (longer than a sentence) at the beginning of what you are writing if it is long and detailed.

I've found that this practice is helpful not only when writing to customers, but when writing to "important people" who most likely aren't going to want to take the time to read an entire detailed CYA type email with my opinion on something they have asked me about. That way if they want, they can dig further. And if anything happens it's on them if they did not read the fine print and only followed the summary to make a decision.

[tptacek]

I think that when you condense your original comment, you lose a lot of it simply due to politeness. A point that you can make softly and persuasively, for instance by allusion to the social value of reading Latin, would necessarily read a bit more cuttingly if sharpened down to its essence.

[david927]

Well done. Now let's see if tptacek puts his money where his mouth is. :-)

And for fairness sake I'll try to summarize your argument, Gumbo:

Endeavors that either add relatively nothing or have negative consequences, such as negative productivity, simply for pure financial gain, are not noble endeavors.

To paraphrase Gérard de Nerval, our industry is a hovel and a place of ill-repute. I'm ashamed that God should see me here.

How many great engineers are working on sites that allow people to share pictures of their cats? How many of our most talented minds don't even know who Ivan Sutherland is? How many are trying to tackle hard problems, and how many are trying to get rich putting what we know in a new dress? It's a rhetorical question but answer it to yourself anyway, because it's so sad.

[tptacek]

As you can see, not only did you miss his point, you injected two points that he didn't make. It is also very hard to rationalize how your version is "better" than his; in particular, it does an extremely poor job of making its point. "As long as you abide by the law, you should not be criticized"? Approximately 0% of all HN readers agree with that, including George Grellas, who has written persuasively on HN against things like patent trolls.

PIH is a great charity. A great, great charity. Do you want to try again? I think if you ask around, you'll find at least a few people on HN who will tell you that I am not completely full of shit about this. But you have to actually do the thing I challenged you to do.

[larrys]

"Do you want to try again".

You said:

"Write it better.

Do it and I'll donate $1000"

Perhaps you could state the specifics of who is the judge, or the definition of "better".

Quickest way of course would be to have PG be the judge but I'm guessing that's not your idea.

[tptacek]

All I want is a good faith attempt. I don't want a judge. I just don't want to feel like a chump for not spelling out in detail exactly what the terms are.

If you want to be the judge (I know you didn't ask) --- there you go. Poof! You're the judge. If he makes a real good faith attempt at articulating the points Grellas tried to make and you judge it as such, I'm good for the money. :)

[corporalagumbo]

Okay sure, I'll try again. I see what you're saying - I thought you meant a quick distillation of the key argument, but you were asking for a restatement in an equally convincing, albeit clearer, voice.

"What right does Greenspan have to condemn Facebook on the grounds of social value? Just because Greenspan finds Facebook distasteful, does that mean Mark Zuckerberg and those who work at Facebook are wrong to do so, or wrong to find pleasure and satisfaction in their work - or that those who use and enjoy the site and its services are fools? Facebook breaks no laws, and the terms of our society clearly stipulate that, provided we recognise the law, we are free to choose what we value and the paths we follow. We all have our own definitions of value, and clearly many people find Facebook both useful and a source of pleasure in their lives. Who is Greenspan to say that they are wrong?

Indeed, what right do sideline critics in general have to spurn the work of entrepreneurs simply because they "fail" to meet their personal defintion of social value? I propose a label for such efforts to enforce one's own moral standards through guilt: Founder's Guilt Complex. I think this is hokum. Sure, some entrepreneurs may choose to tackle the "big" problems - poverty and disease, for instance (and bravo for them) - but there is plenty of space in our society for ostensibly less "high-minded" ventures. I am all for noble endeavour, but I believe the boundaries of what we consider worthwhile are and must be wider. After all, much that is good has come from unexpected sources.

Life is complex, and we all have our own ideas about value. You may think that something I enjoy (such as reading Latin) is frivolous, and vice versa, but our mutual opinions do not negate the fact of our mutual pleasure. So, unless there is active harm, please leave your judgement and criticism at the door."

[tptacek]

There it is! You can shoot me your email address for the confirmation. Mine's in my profile. Thanks!

[dumb_dumb]

Totally unconvincing. Perfect. :)

[kamaal]

>>If a lot of people can make money from social networking then that is definitionally a good thing

A lot of people make money selling drugs too.

Demand, doesn't automatically make the item in demand good.

[tatsuke95]

>"A lot of people make money selling drugs too."

And a lot of people enjoy taking drugs, but face the same problem of other people pushing their personal morals and ethics on them.

If I want to smoke pot and design shitty Facebook games, leave me to it.

[kamaal]

Well you didn't get the point of his argument at all. The point really isn't against 'Pursuit of happiness'. It really is a very general term. And let me tell you criminals are pursuing their happiness too.

The point is photo sharing, status sharing, killing pigs with birds turned out to be made such a valuable thing that people felt it worth investing billions into it. That's fair too, because you are diverting investments towards where the demand is. But the core of the problem was that the 'actual innovations' got the short end of the stick.

When I look at Elon Musk, I see a person with a mission. As much as it may sound unpractical at times, the person worked on things that have solved genuine problems. Problems like making payments online easy, building electric cars, building cheap vehicles for luggage delivery into space. When I see Bill Gates, I see somebody who radically changed the desktop industry. Who is now investing time and energy fighting diseases, hunger an poverty around the world. All these great men, built business that genuinely changed things around us. Though I use Facebook, I feel no such respect for Zuckerberg. I am jealous of his money. But if I have to be that rich someday, I want to be doing work for a better cause.

I understand that games and stuff like that have their own value. But when they are glorified so much to make genuine work utter useless, unrewarding activity. Things begin to look bad.

[intended]

We have the freedom to build what we see fit - without the need to to justify the act by saying it improves humanity.

If it doesn't improve humanity like a cure for cancer, but ends up creating happiness in the lives of its users, is that wrong?

I tried to get the spirit of the words. How did I do?

Quibbles: I thought several issues were conflated in the original post by grellas, so honestly I don't think I could possibly do justice to all the unstated assumptions.

[doktrin]

The challenge was not directed at me, but I'll take a brief stab at it :

"It is morally acceptable for some of the brighter minds of a generation to invest their time, effort and energy into developing social products - including but not limited to Facebook. These are fully legitimate free market business ventures, and we need to stop collectively pontificating about what may or may not constitute a socially worthy business goal."

This is, I believe, a more concise summary of the parent's perspective. It meets a different need, and I don't view it as being "better" per se.

[YuriNiyazov]

Sorry, I am being dense: and, given the two possible results of the Turing test (population correctly/incorrectly guesses which is real/fake for each side), what are the implications for the argument, if any?

[cuergas]

One implication is that people making arguments do not necessarily have to believe in them. And that anyone with adequate rhetorical skills can make any argument, even one that is not consistent with what they truly believe.

Example: Readers might believe some rambling gibberish about there being no need for any startup founder to have a conscience, and they might attribute it to the poster's own beliefs (it's ok not to have a conscience), when truthfully the poster might believe otherwise (he does not really believe in screwing people over, to the point of having no friends or a lifelong reputation as a con artist) and might just be advancing an idea that would benefit his business: the more social networking startups and the more money flowing into them, the better for those who take a cut.

The other implication is that you have to first understand a position in order to argue it effectively. The claim here is that one commenter does not actually comprehend the other commenter's position. And an easy way to show this is to ask each commenter to argue for the other's position, instead of against it.