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Comment by yock | Hacker News Reader

I think I'd be uncomfortable with this not because of approaching random strangers but rather approaching them with false pretenses. You're essentially fooling people into listening to your ill-formed business plan by lying to their face about non-existant siblings in non-existant danger. Whatever happened to being honest with people?

"Hi. Can I buy you a cup of coffee in exchange for some feedback? Five minutes is all I want."

People will either blow you off as a scummy salesman or listen to you. You can sleep well at night with the knowledge that you didn't make someone late to work by toying with their emotions.

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I think even complete strangers will be predisposed to give you positive feedback if they know it's your idea. If they think it's somebody else's idea, and you're priming them to think negatively about it, then you'll be more likely to get the negative opinions you were looking for.

Obviously I'm not addressing the morality of it, just the effectiveness.

Especially at a coffee place where anybody not wearing earphones is likely there expressly for the idle chatter that happens there.

I have ethical qualms about it too. I'm not sure I could get comfortable enough with them to do it. But you're totally spot on that the negative priming (he's making risky decisions, upsetting his family) and the distancing (it's my brother, not me) are very important to the effectiveness. If you say it's your own idea, and don't prime the pump of negativity, I'd expect significantly better feedback.

People can't help it. No one likes to say your baby is ugly, or those pants do indeed make your butt look fat.

I agree with your qualms, but isn't the easy answer to have your brother or sister do the testing? :) Or just a friend. The fear that you won't get an honest answer if people think they are criticizing you seems valid, but you don't need much distance before people can be honest.

My main worry is that you what you should be looking for is not popular validation of your idea by people who've never considered the details, rather you should be searching for hurdles that you've never even considered. The danger is that you conclude that the business idea is good when in reality it's just 'cool'.

I have to ask - is doing scientific experiments where you lie to some of the people in the study also dishonest to the point where you're uncomfortable?

It seems that most here had a really harsh reaction to the idea of lying in order to get honest feedback. And I honestly don't understand why. The lying is only there to give people the psychological distance they need from you in order to answer honestly - you're not lying to take advantage of anyone, you're not lying to get someone to buy something from you, you're only lying to make them comfortable in telling you the truth.

Note: I'm specifically speaking only about saying that your brother had the idea. I'm not talking about saying "I'm worried about my brother" to get them to talk to you, which I also think is wrong.

As nollidge says: they will be predisposed to give positive advice (also because you've just given them something and because these people are already interested in chatting, which usually doesn't last long when they are negative about you(r idea)).

However, aren't there intermediate paths that are acceptable, even though they contain white lies? You can tell them it's the idea of a friend who's asked you to invest. You're thinking about it, but want feedback from others, because you have all kinds of worries. That way, you're not getting into the conversation under false pretenses and you're just setting up the story to neutralize their predisposition towards the idea.

Approach it like they do in psychological studies: given their initial consent, deceive them if you like, but give a debriefing afterwards.

yock, I was happy to see your comment the first one in this thread.

The deceptive approach seems awful in every way.

Not only is this person asking for honest feedback from a stranger, he cannot even be honest with that person at their first meeting.

How does this business approach scale to when you have to talk to potential customers? What clever-ass story will you trick them with then?

"how's that working out for you? being clever?"

I thought the same thing - half the setup is educating us on the backstory of the brother - then says "focus on the idea and not the backstory"

I am inclined to think that the brother backstory will skew the results. You have lured the person in with an emotional backstory that would make them be more inclined to act a certain way, in that their inclination will be to give the best advice they can based on their perspective of the brothers about to lose money/make money on this idea.

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