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Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

> "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?

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.

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