Comment by piazz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by piazz | Hacker News Reader

Jeez, this strikes me as such an unnecessarily harsh and critical self analysis.

The biggest issue I have with this take is that the author's distinction between moral "competence" and "incompetence", from what I've read, doesn't really have anything to do with a moral or ethical system. It seems like his morally incompetent have admirable moral intentions (help depressed people with CBT), but suffer basically from implementation failures. They don't know how to help effectively, and are taking all of wrong lessons from working in tech (searching for direct & measurable impact, searching for technological solutions etc) and could probably be gently taught how to help more effectively. Dividing the world of people who want to help into binary 'competent' and 'incompetent' groups will just serve to discourage people who want to help but don't know how.

I also don't feel like I have a sense of what a 'morally competent person' actually does, or how they design strategies to help effectively. The article feels like a lot of unfortunate self-flagellation for being 'morally incompetent' and not as much constructive dialog about how to actually help better.

Edit: To OP - maybe there is a perspective where you don't have to be so down on yourself here? Maybe this idea 'failed' from a cashflow & user acquisition perspective, but if it helped all of the people who downloaded and used the app, didn't you do good in the world? Maybe you didn't do good at billion dollar scale, but does that matter if you improved people's lives?

> The article feels like a lot of unfortunate self-flagellation for being 'morally incompetent'

That's an acceptable thing to do for catharsis, but not so much fun when your diary entry lands on hacker news.

The problem is that the person reading the blog (like me), reads it in our own voice and the division between "working to cure cancer" vs "curing cancer" seems to be one of consequence not intention or effort (merely "wanting to" is weird).

Because being congratulated for trying-so-hard sucks, when you know you are failing instead. So much harder on your ego to tell people "I can't do this", while they're patting your back for almost doing it. Or maybe, I read it like that because as a parent of a newborn + working from home, I'm going through this somewhat.

I read the "morally incompetent" as just short hand for "not being honest about current state of mind".

But y'know what, that sort of honesty can kill things because everyone who succeeded knows the dark times where everything seems hopeless until something out of your control drops in to give you a push forward. To broadcast "I don't have it in me" usually prevents such serendipity.

> “ I read the "morally incompetent" as just short hand for "not being honest about current state of mind".”

That’s a great way to put it. I think “incompetent” is the correct term because aside from not being honest with one’s self on these “do good” issues, people can also just be very ignorant about it.

Being ignorant about the actual, measurable, demonstrable humanitarian side-effect of your beliefs and actions is rightfully seen as moral incompetence and should be harshly criticized.

I like a quote from Robin Hanson about this (paraphrased):

> “I wish people felt more of a social obligation to believe accurately and less of a social entitlement to believe whatever they want.”

Nope, have a look at the NGO space.

Many, many in this space care more about developing careers, brands, technologies, etc than helping people. Helping people is a side effect that's published as a purpose.

It's not really a fault. It's actually quite like open source. Most open source contributions are ultimately for selfish-but-harmless reasons, and that's completely ok.

This really wasn't supposed to come across as harsh, and I'm really not down on myself, though thank you for the concern! I think the context of the word "incompetent" is what's doing it here. Maybe "effective" and "ineffective" would be better.

"So in order to continue Quirk, Quirk needed to make people feel worse for longer. "

You really ought to say something else. I know you don't mean it, but some mental health professionals read that a little sideways. I get it -- the folks who have a need for sustained engagement with therapy were difficult to reach or require more intensive efforts or something. So why not say that?

Hmm I agree, this isn't really what I meant. I was concerned we had a business model that treated success stories as failures (folks feeling better unsubscribing) and failures as successes. While we had some early success with folks, the overall direction we were going was getting worse, not better. It felt naive to assume that the forces of the business model wouldn't drive future us (or potentially people we hired) towards doing more bad than good, even though that wasn't what we wanted to do then. And so while we still had absolute control of the company and weren't blinded by a survival instinct, we pivoted.

You're not incorrect at all.

Your app can succeed. Maybe you just didn't know the secret of successful behavioral health businesses. If half your clients are not indigent then you're doing it wrong. I know -- this doesn't seem to make sense. Oh but it does, because the economic value of assisting a bipolar person hold down a job or helping some 12 year-old show up to school is much much higher than getting a suburban family to ratchet their anxiety down a notch, and value eventually drives revenues in various ways. Would be happy to chat about it sometime. Your new project is cool too, but honestly the impact of gathering healthcare data heretofore not previously available would be much higher.

> doesn't really have anything to do with a moral or ethical system

Philosophical ethics typically divide into utility-based, rule-based and virtue-based ethics. OP is clearly lamenting some utility-based failures and claiming that virtue without any utility isn't a whole lot of good (but also no harm, so hey).

> unnecessarily harsh and critical self analysis

Where? The article starts with "we pivoted our YC startup" and then claims that some behaviors are "morally incompetent"...

...to justify the pivot.

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