ellius · HackerTrans

I'm not sure this is a counterargument, but if a company did this in an open way I could trust, I would buy EVERYTHING from them. Fridge, washer, dryer, dishwasher, televisions, small electronics, cars, whatever. You name it I'd buy it. I don't have enough information to determine how many people are like me, but the profit you could make on me as a customer would be ridiculous. You'd get the kind of platform loyalty that Amazon and Google dream of. I'd probably even be happy to share some personal information with you in a way that I controlled that you could turn around and sell. The sense of autonomy, privacy, and control is that valuable to me.

ellius

7 年前discuss

I think people also have a very hard time conceptualizing the amount of time it took to evolve human intelligence. You're talking literally hundreds of millions of years from the first nerve tissues to modern human brains. I understand that we're consciously designing these systems rather than evolving them, but nevertheless that's an almost incomprehensible amount of trial and error and "hacking" designs together, on top of the fact that our understanding of how our brains work is still incomplete.

ellius

7 年前discuss

In my book if you don't have authority, including to hire and fire and affect compensation decisions, then you aren't a manager. In that situation you're half glorified babysitter and half scapegoat. And I agree this is how most organizations are designed, and why they're so anemic. I very much like flat hierarchies and consensus decision-making, but at the end of the day someone is in charge or they aren't. If they aren't, their capacity to effect cultural change is severely diminished.

ellius

7 年前discuss

I mix eBooks and physical copies, and I agree with your list, but here are a couple advantages of eBooks:

1. Space -- I have an entire closet full of books. Every time I buy another physical book, I am slowly crowding myself out of a little more space in my apartment. Electronic copies take up no physical space.

2. Can read anywhere (using my phone). I don't like this for every book, but some books are good for reading in little bite-sized chunks. I read a page here and a page there while I'm taking a break at work, waiting at the post office, whatever. The constant availability makes it a lot easier to increase my reading bandwidth vs. trying to always have a physical book on me. Plus variety--I have hundreds of books in my pocket at any given moment, and can choose whatever I'm in the mood for.

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