swivelmaster

That it’s possible to know the answers to these questions doesn’t mean the system is good. This is a level of complexity that most people simply do not have the time or bandwidth for.

People by and large don’t understand the second and third order effects of their policy preferences. It’s not that they don’t want those things, it’s that the world is more complicated than their mental model insists it is. Politicians could try harder to fix the fundamental problems but they don’t because the long-term solutions don’t manifest until after the next N (very expensive) election cycles.

This is an exceptionally high-quality comment. You on bsky or threads or somewhere I can follow you?

I don't understand the value proposition here for consumers.

For OpenAI, the value prop is obvious, but that's the problem with modern Silicon Valley product thinking: Company-first, consumer-maybe, with some carveouts for chronic early adopters and tech cheerleaders.

To use a very Silicon Valley term: There's no crossing the chasm here; The chasm has become too big to cross.

Douglas Adams would be proud!

At least in the goopy days it was VERY clear what was and was not a button.

You shouldn't. It was revealed later that Morgan Spurlock, the star of the movie, was also secretly drinking himself to death while he was making the documentary. Not to shame an addiction OR defend McDonalds too much here, but being a raging alcoholic and blaming your health problems on hamburgers and french fries on a massive public stage is/was extraordinarily irresponsible.

Yes, it's possible to win with less money than your opponent, but why would anyone want to take that risk?

The problem with money in politics is not that money guarantees a win, but that the presence of large donations distorts the entire incentive structure of campaigning and governing: Courting big donations means spending time with big donors (who expect access in exchange for their money) and when it comes time to govern, studies have shown that campaign contributions and lobbying are dramatically more influential to what gets proposed and passed than the preferences of the general public.

Focusing on the problems with presidential campaigns re: money in politics is missing the forest for the trees: All politicians have limited time to spend between campaigning and governing, and if they're constantly raising money the governing gets delegated to lobbyists.

(This is why people are always so shocked when politicians who don't accept corporate PAC contributions have drastically different priorities than those who do. Of course they do! They don't have to spend all their time hanging out with corporate lobbyists!)

Here's what I think is happening:

Market research says "Parents want control."

In the journey from CEO mandate "build a product that gives parents control" to developer implementation, "parents want control" somehow turns into "What parents want is extremely fine-grained controls," which isn't the same thing.

So a bunch of product managers brainstorm a huge list of ways that parents might want "control," hand that off to some developers, and voila: Everything becomes way too complicated for everybody and the company is able to say they offer "control" while abdicating their stated obligation of giving parents the "safe" product that the parents expect.

File under "technically true but not particularly useful"

Yes, thank you, exactly. It’s a culture and systems issue. Thank you for clarifying a post I wrote in the early morning while waiting for my baby to fall back to sleep!

I’m not sure that’s something we get to vote on.