One way you can try thinking of these things is if universalizing a behavior leads to a logical contradiction. For instance, if everybody broke their promises, then the entire social facility of promises would cease to exist - promises are only possible when most people keep them. It's logically impossible for everybody to break promises - so you shouldn't break promises.

As for people, instead of thinking of people as means to an end, you can think of them as ends in themselves.

Why should the survival of the species be the ultimate ethical goal?

Because I am a human.



Have a good night.

So, logically speaking then, people who don't believe in the survival of the species are not human..

Doesn't that contradict your claim that all human life is precious?

How does considering all hyman life precious promote a higher chance of survival?

...or are we dancer?

LDS ftw

My beliefs do not affect me being human or not, neither do theirs. Being human is an empirical fact.

One group considering a different group of people subhuman because of different skin color / ethnicity / religion / [insert bias] is therefore self-destructive behavior, in my opinion. From the perspective of the human race.

I believe in goodness, kindness, love, in our ingenuity and compassion. I also believe in our evil, violence, and capacity for hate. Where there is light, there must be darkness. But overall, I think we humans are awesome.

awe·some
adjective
extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.

By reducing the instances of killing each other en masse every time we can't agree on how to split our colored papers and liquid dinosaurs.

Well since overpopulation and use of liquid dinosaurs are going to assure our destruction, it seems like the best chance for survival is in being okay with some culling.

That's a sad philosophy.

I hope we will become an interplanetary / interstellar species one day.

But for that to happen, we need to radically change the way we see each other and the world around us.

Psychological studies concerning pricing showed that people are willing to pay a premium for products with familiar branding and demand a discount for products with unfamiliar branding (or are unwilling to buy the product entirely).

High quality brands like Apple are even enough to convert a product to Veblen good pricing, even when there is a ready supply of commodity prices alternatives.

It's not a big secret of the market or anything.

There was no evidence that drinking fruit juice cured cancer, but that didn't stop Steve Jobs from picking it over chemotherapy. There's no evidence that monetary policy does anything, either, but, still, we have central banks. There is snake oil, and people buy it.

The reason there is no evidence for advertising is because you cannot test what would have happened if you had done things differently. You would need to look into another universe. Since we cannot do that, we can only guess whether an advertising campaign actually did anything. Either way you fall on this issue, the unfalsifiability to advertising is a very well documented problem in the business literature.

For one data point, when Pepsi et al. canceled their Google campaigns, it had no effect on sales. But is that because their campaigns were bad, or because advertising doesn't work for big businesses, or because Google ads are uniquely bad? Nobody knows.

Koobie, here's the thing. I've been doing product development for a long time, so I know what I know and I'm confident enough to openly discuss my opinions and debate these subjects. Meanwhile, you keep saying how much more experienced you are than I am, but you've never actually done anything to prove it.

Can you at least appreciate how it makes you sound when you post this kind of thing?

For someone who doesn't want to make things personal, you are very bad at it.



Do authors and game developers buy a lot of books and games, then? I'm guessing not.

This is like the #1 most common mistake I see in the indie games market, indie debs pushing their game to their friends (other indies) instead of their audience. It's a silly thing. Being friends with a lot of devs isn't going to get you sales.

I put the odds that humans are going to slowly destroy our environments, leading to the entire extinction of the race at about 99.999999%.

We are both bad at it.

I've been doing product / software development too (in the sphere of clinical trials) for 5 years. I was a manager, not a developer, so our experiences vary, but I do not rely on that knowledge when talking about games and books. I have been writing all my life. I have been writing full-time / professionally for 3 years so far. I do not have much experience in making video games from scratch, but I have worked on at least a dozen titles over the last few years.

I really do consider myself more experienced in the sphere of writing fiction and video games. I am 100% sure I am way less experienced in many other fields. I did not intend to make you feel bad, but it's just that it seems to me you take your expertise in one field and try to apply it to another, and that, I believe, is not always correct.

Your guess would be wrong. Most game developers buy a lot of games because they're gamers first, developers second. Same for writers. They're the biggest readers. In fact, the majority of the SF magazine subscription bases consist mostly of writers.

My point was that 99% of the "successful creatives" I'd met did not write to some magical market. They just wrote a book they wanted to read, or made a game they wanted to play. And then they did it again, and again, and again because they loved the process, finishing the project, or, on occasion, both.

Why does every thread that Koobie participates in ends up being about Koobie?

It's a philosophy far more likely to ensure survival than thinking that having as many people as possible who want to flare the **** out of ancient swamp juice (mostly not dinosaurs) is workable. Luckily it is not my philosophy so people will still like me. We don't need to do any culling since the typical four horsemen will do their work on a big scale at some point.

But the point is that considering all hymen life precious is not necessarily something that ensures survival. Several (most) interpretations of that are definitely going to cause extinction, so I don't think it's a particularly true statement.

You should check the Anything Bats thread.

It is about bats.

"No, Jon, I do not understand how it makes me sound."

Advertisements are regularly tested against something called "control copy". You do not look into another universe, you compare one campaign to another.

I have not read much "business literature" but I have read several books on writing selling copy / making ads on the account of having (co)written a number of ad videos.

So either we live in different universes, or one of us is wrong.

"Yes, Jon, I understand that me thinking that I know more than you about something makes me sound like an ******* to you."

Thanks for playing. It's been entertaining.

Have a good night (for real this time -- I've got things to do, aaaah!). Again, I did not intend to hurt your feelings, and, hopefully, I haven't. You most certainly haven't hurt mine. Let's regroup tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure you don't have to worry about having hurt anybody's feelings.

Less talk, more bats, RJ.

To be blunt, it's posts like this one that make you come across as overly sensitive. Lighten up and you won't have to worry about anybody holding a grudge (we don't).

Stop talking about me, RJ. Bats await!

But in all seriousness, I am rather chilled, and I've been having fun. I am a big advocate of not assuming, but in some cases, I make exceptions. I guess I just read the "No, Jon, I do not understand how it makes me sound" line as "You've hurt my feelings" before I registered that it was a convoluted way of trying to call me an *******, considering I'd addressed the concern (of experience) in full. So it's all good.

I *am* an *******.

And like John Lennon said, "I'm not the only one."

Honest question: what is so interesting about bats that I can't find on Tumblr?

Honest answer: it was a pun on "Anything Bets." And it needs more bats.

I can't imagine anybody else reading that post as an invitation to post a CV.

All I was trying to say is that in my opinion you do not have a very good understanding of the business of writing fiction, making video games, or advertising, yet you seem to be genuinely convinced that you know everything there is to know, and that your opinion is the final say on the matter.

Have you heard of the Dunning–Kruger effect?

Behold! The knowledge of "subjct" matter.

I do not mind that our "opinions" differ.

What I mind is your attitude, which I think is counter-productive to learning.

****. My life is over.

I've wasted hours and hours of my life pouring over what I thought was wisdom in Jon`C's posts, when in fact he is just spouting off non-sense.

What is distressing to me is that it wasn't easier for me to see this.

Perhaps you should have read more Nietzsche.

I'm cozy right now. It just rained and there's crickets outside. No cicadas. I went to the math department today and reviewed group theory, covered group actions and the Sylow theorems. I just ate some cherries. I like my memory foam mattress.

Oh, is this all a bunch of personal information you weren't asking for? Oops.

All these years and I'm still at point A.

Let me quickly clear something up for you, now that you've posted your CV.

I have more product development experience than you.

That doesn't mean I am always right, and that you are wrong. Being more experienced doesn't mean you know everything. It also doesn't mean you shouldn't post your opinion, because you are free to do so as long as the operator of this site has patience for it. You are not a bad person just because you forcefully asserted your opinion to a person who has more experience than you do.

My concern - which, to emphasize this point, was not about your lack of experience - isn't even that you assumed you were more experienced, despite not knowing anything about me or my work. I certainly don't care about your career, and even if I did, I would be disinclined to believe any summary you posted (an outlook we likely share). My concern is that you assumed you were more experienced and therefore always right. I wouldn't tolerate a tech lead using his resume as a cudgel to win a debate, and even if I were your junior, I wouldn't tolerate a mid-career writer using his to win an online debate, either.

This kind of thing is why we never got along, Koobie. Your attitude actually is destructive. I hope you think to read this thread again in a few years after you've had a chance to mellow out.



Hours? Why? Are you doing a deep reading, or something?

Everybody should in earnest, but I say that lightheartedly.

If you gaze long into a ******, the ****** will gaze back at you.

Come the **** on, goatse is censored? What is this, 2001?

Haha, well you do write some brilliant stuff here Jon, but actually I was talking about cumulative time spent.

Jon'C, I don't think I'm always right. But I know someone who does.

I'm very mellow. I just think that your attitude is destructive way more than mine. I mean, that's what I'd just said. My "destructive attitude" is basically just thinking you're wrong if I understand correctly. It's like we're back to saying no, you, but yes, this is why we never got along, you're right. I think you think you know everything. You think that I think I know everything (that is not the case). I simply think that you have a very limited knowledge of some subjects, and you refuse to admit it because of (in my opinion) your blackhole-mass ego. Instead of taking a step back and immersing yourself into the subject at hand if you are truly interested in it, you seem convinced the better tactic is to attack me, often referencing "experts" whose articles you might have read, calling me a bad person, etc., etc.

Posting my actual LinkedIn was an error, I'm a bit sleepy, but my entire point was that my "product development" experience at Oracle does not translate to writing fiction or writing for video games / narrative design. You keep saying you have more experience in "product development." Fine. Why do you think it makes you know more about writing / games development / ads better than somebody who writes video games / ads / fiction for a living?

I mean, you do understand where I'm coming from, right?

Anyhows, did I just win an argument over the internet?

OMFG.

(please, no goat se)