Dan Ariely

This is a type of discussion that comes up often. There are some very important things to consider to avoid causing unintentional harm.

First, understand the difference between social norms and market norms (I like this overview: http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%80%93-the-cost-of-social-norms/) and how the introduction of market norms crowd out social norms (this is a good overview: https://natewkratzer.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/market-norms-are-crowding-out-social-norms-and-society-is-poorer-as-a-result/).

Now that you have the necessary context, you can understand why I'm extremely doubtful that VC's can realistically have a large positive impact on the open source community.

Open source projects need donations in talented engineer time, not in money. There isn't enough money available to compensate for the man-hours invested in open source projects.

Open source projects are successful because they motivate contributors with social capital rewards of some kind and because they allow many different actors to combine human resources to eliminate shared costs/problems.

If some kind of wealthy supervillain wanted to destroy open source the best way to do it would be to inject a lot of money into the system, get everyone to start thinking in terms of how much they will be paid per hour to contribute to the project. It would be peanuts. Now the market norms would eclipse the social ones and they would mostly stop contributing. It would probably…

For me, I find it easier to do something that I personally want. I am a user that I know well. I have accurate data on what I actually spend money on. I can identify people like me. This sequence is a good seed. I know all the places my money goes, so go to those places and ask people who are there.

If you make something that you like, but other people (similar to you) don't like - don't pursue that.

If you make something that you like, and others like you also like it and want to give you money for it, then go go go.

I made http://traxda.com because I wanted a 3" lift kit and not a 6" lift kit. 10 years later, so have 120,000 other people. (found people at auto related places)
I made http://sascase.com because I wanted to protect my Ipad from my kids. 3 years later, so have 3000 other people. (everyone has a phone, did nothing but have the case on mine)

I once bought 27 truck loads (48 foot trailers) of old man truck accessories. $2,000,000 worth of product for $150,000. The only problem is that it was product that I would never, ever, ever, buy. So while the values were correct, and I sold a lot of it ($1M before I gave up, net loss of money -150K), it was a market that I didn't understand, I didn't like and I did not know enough to even ask the right questions. It was a huge disaster, one that lasted 5 years before I gave up. Lost time was worse than the lost money. Stupid stupid stupid of me. I got the basic business equation right, but I did not get the subtle…

I think if you ask most people battling health issues or have eating problems whether they could force their future selves for the next month to be not allowed to order dessert, they would choose to. They wouldn't trust themselves in the heat of the moment.

There's a fundamental disconnect we have between our short term and long term interests, and it manifests in all kinds of problems people end up with, including their health, finances, and relationships. There's an overwhelming body of psychological evidence that suggests that these issues are real, prevalent, exploitable and exploited.

To give an example, there's evidence that shows that we're more likely to succumb to temptation when we're mentally exhausted. If that's not bad enough, actively resisting temptation is exhausting! [1] That's why putting a snack bar full of M&Ms, Snickers, and apples near a bunch of stressed out engineers leads to a more unhealthy workplace (guess which snack is always left over). You can say that the engineers are free to not partake, and I say there's more freedom to focus on other things in their absence.

To bring it back to this topic, I think computers need mechanisms to help people with self-control, and a great first step is to curtail software that exists to exploit people with poor impulse control.

There's a saying that I am reminded of:

"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."

1) http://danariely.com/2012/08/15/understanding-ego-depletion/

It is pretty simple if you watch or read Dan Ariely:

http://danariely.com/2011/10/06/upside-of-irrationality-chapter-9/

It is a known problem in behavioral economics called the identifiable victim effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect

Basically "Vivid, flesh and blood-victims are often more powerful sources of persuasion than abstract statistic". Most people love Lions and think they are awesome, and hate seeing them caged in zoos. Now we hear about this one lion minding it's own business being lured from a preserve and being killed by some rich American guy .... the lion becomes the flesh and blood victim. Problem like hyperinflation and massive death, while obviously much worse (and horrible) are much harder for the human mind to understand and just become a statistic.

It is extremely scary that this is a problem but it is fairly well known and studied. Stalin even knew about the problem:

"one man's death is a tragedy, a millions deaths are a statistic"

I obviously agree with you, just pointing you to why it is happening.

Coming from a psychology background myself, I would say yes, we definitely underestimate how external factors affect our decision-makings. Peer pressure is one obvious influence, but I would personally say the biggest influences come from factors we're not even aware of. Some I can think of at the top of my head are the way we're influenced by:

- our fear of loss
- our first impressions (which usually influence all subsequent decisions/habits)
- our sense of ownership of an idea/opinion/product
- our self-fulfilling expectations (something you expect to be great will usually be great)
- and so much more we're usually not aware of

For more on the topic, a very readable and engaging book on behavioral-economic influences is Predictably Irrational. At his blog, he shares some of the book's interesting ideas and findings about different factors: http://danariely.com/the-books/

"It's not a gender thing, it's an effort thing."

Then why are there vast asymmetries along gender lines in virtually all aspects of dating? Look at OkTrends (http://blog.okcupid.com), or Dan Ariely's posts on the subject (http://danariely.com/tag/dating/), or this post from a woman http://www.alternet.org/why-online-dating-sucks-men) which indicates high dating success for women putting in low effort. Are men and women just putting in different amounts of effort? The question is then, why is that the case? And that case arises from historical gender roles. It is a gender thing.

Your "many people ..." statements are platitudes that are true no matter what follows ("Many people are smart; many people are dumb."), and do nothing to support what you "suspect."