Hacker News Reader

Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

"Or am I alone in thinking that helping a stranger find their next caffeine fix is not what we should be worried about in today's world?"

sigh This is such a silly, stupid point to make:

Buying an iPad? What about world hunger!? Going to the movies? What about the modern slave trade!? Painting a picture? Women in Sudanese refugee camps can't go to the bathroom at night without fear of rape, and here you painting a picture. The way you take your privilege for granted makes me sick, you selfish bastard!!!!

Yes there are problems in the world. Does this mean no one is allowed to do anything frivolous until they are all solved? In my opinion, no.

Get off your high horse, OP.

EDIT: Neat project tho! Took the originator's project in a new, unexpected direction, which makes it even more interesting. Kudos!

View on HN

Think of all the fresh water the author could have pumped from a well in an impoverished village in the time it took him to write that blog post.

Perhaps he is admitting to us that "he thinks self-righteous blogging is more important than starvation and a lack of clean water".

Eh, I found Jonathan's "Buying yuppies coffee will improve the world!" naivete far more offensive.

I didn't see OP as criticizing frivolity, I saw him more criticizing Jonathan's suggestion that this game was meaningfully altruistic.

Eye of the beholder I guess.

>>Eh, I found Jonathan's "Buying yuppies coffee will improve the world!" naivete far more offensive.

heh... fair enough! In fact, I totally agree. I don't actually know much about the original project, besides the mechanics of it. Perhaps Sam could explain this in the post? as it is he just comes off as condescending for no clear reason.

Not forgetting, of course, that it was all an elaborate (or not) marketing campaign by somebody connected to Starbucks.

It wasn't. Jonathan denied it, Starbucks denied it. The "proof" was flimsy at best.

As the man in orthopaedic shoes said ... I stand corrected

He's free to criticize the initial experiment all he wants, but to hijack it and abuse it as he sees fit can't be objectively interpreted as anything but pure douchebaggery.

The whole "Buying yuppies coffee will improve the world!" was obviously tongue in cheek. It's hard to believe some people don't see that.

Read this: http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/199704--.htm

It's about utilitarianism, I think you'll like it, it's making the same point you are.

(It's called "The Shallow Pond and The Drowing Child - By Peter Singer")

edit: (If you read the paper, it's discussing exactly what parent was describing, and is completely relevant to the discussion)

Seems pretty silly. A child, when rescued from a university pond, returns to a safe stable situation.

I guess it is just hard for some people to not force their particular values on other people

I know what you mean, but the original Jonathan's Card thing made it seem like buying someone Starbucks was the height of charity when it's actually quite frivolous. At least this idea is real charity. It's still in the spirit of Jonathan's Card, but actually does some small amount of good for the world.

No it didn’t. Where did you get a crazy idea like that?

We do have to remember that this was a social experiment that was not just about giving and receiving sbux coffee, but how a society reacts to a open public commons.

As I said before if the experiment was really only about the coffee and not about the money on the card then Jonathan should have his tweets update with units of coffee, not quantity of money.

The experiment was set up in a way where money was front and center and coffee was only secondary.Also, if it was just about coffee why have an API?

With this twist Jonathan's experiment is even more brilliant.

I expect there's still at least one twist left. rjett [0] and I [1] noticed two more interesting things:

1) Sam commented in the previous thread about buying food for homeless people from the card [2]

2) Sam's brother Daniel was one of the first to mention the possibility of the card being hacked [3]. His startup also funneled close to $600 into the card [4].

The whole thing started as a social experiment. Sam clearly considers what he's doing a part of the social experiment. I think it's still ongoing -- I fully expect another post, possibly later today or tomorrow morning, detailing the different reactions to his "I bought $25 of food for the homeless" comment and his "I bought $675 worth of food for starving kids in Africa" comment. Couple that with "me and my brother actually paid in what we took out" and we've got the makings of quite the experiment!

[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878622 [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878196 [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2857712 [3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2858120 [4] http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=danielodio -- $100, $49, $300, and mentions of a total of $85 on twitter

Indeed: @Socialize has paid $625 to @Jonathanscard to promote our SDK Speed Challenge. That's enough for an iPad, @sodio! http://besoci.al/q2I0QE http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878875

That genuinely is great, but whose brothers are going to pay into @Jonathanscard to cover the results of posting the exploitative code used to fund iPads that enables laypeople to do so on their own?

That script isn't any more exploitative than one that `curl`s weather.com to make sure it isn't raining outside.

I think a lot of people read into Jonathan's Card as a charity thing, and reading the HN comments that always struck me as a gross misinterpretation of Jonathan's initial sentiment.

There is a difference between Random Acts of Kindness (Jonathan's card) vs charity.

I'm not sure why the difference is necessary in this case.

I think making someones day a brighter place can have a tremendous knock-on effect. If an anon gave me a cup of coffee, I might be more willing to donate to charity for anons benefit. To "pay it forward"( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward)

I don't find it convincing the suggestion that it would have been more effective to donate that coffee as charity, as opposed to promoting a society more amiable to giving.

My thought is, what if instead of a starbucks card, Jonathan gave out a card for a little family owned coffee shop somewhere accessible? Then it's helping specific people make a living rather than 'the man' making more money. Maybe starbucks is good, maybe bad. But his objection was yuppies buying yuppies coffee, not against starbucks itself, or the coffee industry.

I'm definitely not a yuppie, I like starbucks coffee. Maybe I want to get a coffee every now and then. I would be interested in participating in Jonathan's experiment. But somebody like Sam would ruin it for me. It just doesn't add up to me.

What makes the experiment so interesting is the anonymity factor. Since there are a functionally-unlimited number of Starbucks locations, you have absolutely no way of knowing who else is using the card and on what.

If it was for a small locally-owned coffee shop, it's a given that the folks charging/refilling the card are the same people frequenting the shop with you every day. I can't imagine this wouldn't drastically affect the way the experiment turned out; the social obligation is much stronger when you can connect anonymous people to faces or names, even if you don't know exactly who is participating.

Did you read the article? He is donating to a charity focused on world hunger...

Did you read his comment? His point was that the OP seems to think we can't indulge ourselves occasionally and must always work towards solving those big problems. We're human. We should allow ourselves to have some fun once in a while.

That's not the context of the quote. He's wondering if people will bid over the face value of the card, or if no one thinks that charity is more important than caffeine. He's not dissing on Jonathan's Card, he's wondering about his auction.

He should do that with his own money. Not stolen funds.

If people don't bid it up, I'd say the appropriate conclusion to reach is not that people don't think charity is more important that coffee, but that people don't trust a thief.

Yeah I think that's great. Honestly I think it's awesome how he's redirecting this money from Starbucks to a worthwhile cause. BUT he can do that without the holier-than-thou attitude; the latter is not a requirement for the former. :)

Basically I've heard that line before ("how can you X when Y is going on in the world??") and it's basically just a way to feel morally superior and boost your ego, it doesn't actually achieve a useful end. You can use this line on basically anything people are doing that can be considered art, and unless you're suggesting that all artful pursuits be indefinitely suspended until the world is free of problems, it's an inconsistent, nonsensical argument.

tl;dr: I like the project, I dislike the attitude.

That's a valid point. But is pursuing art (or whatsver) admitting to yourself that you value art more than world hunger? After all, that's how you're allocating your resources.

Fwiw, anyone who knows me know I don't have a holier-than-thou attitude (though I took one for this post). This was mostly meant as an edgy/controversial twist to the social experiment: how do peoople react when someone takes the money (which is a public good) and imposes their own morals on it (even if it's for good)?

I don't know you, but you come off as quite pretentious.

I work for a charity/non-profit but that doesn't prevent me from seeing the value in a shared good experiment.

Asides from the myriad of other issues in your post, the most important one is that you completely ignore the fact that many people may donate quite a bit to charity, but also may wish to involve themselves in a thing like Jonathan's card. The two are not mutually exclusive, and deriving value from the latter may encourage someone to do more of the former. It looks like you were too short-sighted to actually think any of this through though in your attempt to make a selfish point.

And you come off as a person with a holier-than-thou attitude.

What's wrong with thinking about an experiment that hacks the original experiment? I thought this was Hacker News.

There is nothing wrong with thinking about an experiment that hacks the original experiment. There is however something wrong with the statement "is pursuing art (or whatsver) admitting to yourself that you value art more than world hunger? After all, that's how you're allocating your resources."

That something is that it is pretentious as fuck.

short-sighted is the perfect word here. Its possible that without his deliberate abuse this small project would have encouraged people to be more charitable to causes like the one he wants to donate to. The value of those donations over a lifetime could well have exceeded his little cash grab several times. Instead this has just made people distrust the idea of giving money away a little bit more.

Do you consider Hacker News threads more important that working to end world hunger? ;)

Wether or not I consciously consider it the case, at this time my actions betray my true belief.

> "how do people react when someone takes the money (which is a public good) and imposes their own morals on it (even if it's for good)?"

Not well?

You know nothing about the people you judged except that they threw a coffee into a virtual 'give a coffee / take a coffee' tray. And from that, you've extrapolated that they care more about art than world hunger.

That's as illogical as it is self-righteous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com