Jonathan's Card Experiments And Outcomes
sam.odio.com
sam.odio.com
As pointed out by HN readers, absolutely everyone here knew the experiment could be broken, so nothing was proven or gained by doing what any of us could have.
I was given an EcoSphere (a glass ball containing a supposedly self-sustaining ecosystem) as a boy. For a kid, it's a fascinating experiment to see if it works over time.
"One possible outcome" is to drop the glass ball on the floor. Not a particularly inventive or interesting outcome, and if you do that in front of a class of kids, you'll get the same reactions.
A lot of people were enjoying being kids again, watching the glass ball's energy supply surge and fall, till Odio broke open the EcoSphere protesting that's valid science too. In a large enough classroom, there's always at least one.
Nothing in Sam's comments about this lead me to believe he's a bad guy, just that he's missing something about this particular scenario. On the contrary, spotting rules begging for breaking is a very helpful trait for an entrepreneur – as most here know, the YC questionnaire asks for examples of "hacking the system for your own gain". (Though the PG "no jerks" rule[1] implies hacking that's not at someone else's expense.)
”There's always one“ who's constantly challenging conventions, and when that one zeros in on the line between audacious and antisocial, 20 years later he often winds up running things.
For more human background, this Washington Business Journal profiles the Odio brothers.[2]
1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1632477
2. http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2010/10/11/foc...
[1] Yes, and even this latest pseudo-apology is poorly handled. He should have just stuck to a simple "didn't think that through, sorry to those I've offended, I've cancelled the auction and will return the money to any starbucks card Jonathan nominates" message but sometimes it can be hard to admit you've screwed up, particularly when you're getting a kicking for it.
Not sure that would've helped in this case, though, since Odio still doesn't seem to get it.
I felt immediately that I got the why and a co-worker and I used two drinks on the card. We talked about it and the concept of the goodwill behind it. We definitely didn't feel like yuppie developers and we talked more about how different the world would be if more things were like this. Even about startups along these lines and what bigger ideas like these could change the world. Yes, a fantasy, but we felt that's what this was about.
Anyway, Odio's OP felt very much like business as usual in a cynical world vs. JC's actually doing something positive (even if it is just yuppie coffee). Odio's recent apology seems hollow and in my mind the damage has been done.
Tweets like this: https://twitter.com/#!/sodio/status/102435437930479616 are ridiculous.
"@sodio Sam Odio Starbucks gift card now up to $660. I've offered to sign it if that increases anyone's willingness to donate. cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d…"
Sure but then there's infamy which has value. And this could potentially give him minor celebrity with traditional media. People make fools of themselves on reality tv all the time. And some of the fools end up way ahead in the game.
Sam's not Tiger Woods or anything. He's not going to lose any endorsements.
Maybe the "hack" was not such a good idea after all, but I am willing to believe that it was not done in a mean spirit, but simply to experiment.
Come to think of it, perhaps in this way the whole experiment (Card+iPad hack) brings out other, more ugly facets of humans than the desired altruism. Like the tendency to gang up on other people - and sometimes people who want to make the world a better place are the most aggressive ones.
My feeling is: if this was actually an "experiment", as people claimed -- and not some lame attempt at proving people are really fluffy teddy bears inside -- then what happens in context of that experiment should stay in that context. We shouldn't be making stabs at this guy's character for doing something that was basically part of the game.
The experiment was asking "what will happen if we do this". We got our answer: "someone will take advantage of it". At least the guy that took advantage of it was willing to fess up, and we all (should have) learned something.
Everyone on hacker news knew that what he did was possible technically and that it would put an end to the experiment. He basically said so himself in his original blog post. He didn't like the experiment and decided to end it by donating it all to charity.
I don't ascribe any particular moral judgment on Odio. He was a part of the experiment and his actions only confirmed my belief that any exploitable system will be exploited.
An interesting additional outcome from this social experiment to me was how 'the community' reacted to Odio. Like adultery, what Odio did was one of those rules that he wasn't supposed to do, but he did anyways. We can't throw people in jail for cheating on their wives. So what do we do and have done for thousands of years? We shame them. And that's exactly what's been happening to Odio here and I'm assuming on Facebook too.
When you're dealing with strangers' money, an unspoken "social contract" is entirely inadequate. You need an explicit contract, real enforcement, and oversight. This is why charities have things like mission statements, operational guidelines, and independent audits, and why the law gets involved when there's misappropriation of funds. This is why we have things like Charity Navigator.
When you don't have those things, you get a situation like this -- funds get directed to causes the donors did not intend. As misappropriations go, this one was relatively tame; rather than giving coffee money to starving children, someone might use "feed the children" money to bomb a bus in the Middle East, or "stand up for the Constitution" money to fund McVeigh type domestic terrorism.
Some sort of abuse was inevitable with the way Jonathan's Card was set up. I'm sad that Sam chose to abuse it, since he's a valued member of this community and it sucks to see him alienate so many. But I'm also glad that he's the one who abused it, as many others would've actually bought themselves an iPad instead of sending the money on to charity.
I'm pretty sure it looked like the card had been running for a good while, maybe a few weeks, before it went viral. It looked like it was working out pretty well. A few hours in, I checked out the twitter feed again and it was a mad house. $30 would show up one minute and be gone the next, donors were getting thanked long after the money was spent, and people were chatting about how you could turn it into a money laundering scheme or if it was all gorilla marketing. I imagined people rushing up to the counter shoving their phone at the barista before it got emptied again. It felt as unsustainable as a politician on a coke binge.
Now I'm sure lots of you didn't see it that way, and I'm not saying I'm right. But it was that same feeling that made me feel like throwing a wrench in the gears somehow, and I'm sure I'm not completely alone. Internet wisdom says you're pretty lucky it didn't end up with someone taking the money, loudly and publicly donating it to the KKK then inviting half of 4chan over to rub it all in.
One insight might be that wild, unchecked growth can end up really hurting things. I wonder if it was going a fair bit slower would Sam have bothered? Or maybe he'd have just gotten $70 and that would have felt like an easier thing to just shrug off. Maybe Jonathan would have split it into a few cards, so it could all be a little less chaotic and more personal. For me I associate that pretty strongly with the 90's tech boom. My friends worked at netscape and my gf at a yahoo purchase and people were paper loaded. The vibe was sketchy but it all rubbed off and I left a profitable old school startup for what turned out to be a worsening series of disasters culminating with watching $260M get turned into a $20M firesale with nothing much to show for it. And predictably the place with real, lame customers managed to make it through the downturn without laying anyone off.
Crazy growth can feel amazing but it can also make you lose sight of things, and the psychology of a crash can be that much worse. Switching gears, society operates within a complex system of morals, laws and customs. Those aren't symbols of the weakness of humanity - I think they show our ability to organize and keep our faults in check, allowing us to achieve more together.
Most rules and disincentives exist to help good people stay good. The lock on my neighbors door wouldn't stop a determined burglar, but if it wasn't there people would get nosy from time to time and sneak in guiltily. Jonathan's card looked to expose a bit of whimsical generosity and faith in humanity. But with no checks in place and a growing volume of cash it instead became a test. With one person able to fail the test for everyone it was practically inevitable that it all would end in tears.
I think you could see the experiment as a pretty decent success. Pretty much everyone turned out to be good, even the great villain seems more good and misguided than evil to me, I believe his plan really was to help folks who don't have enough. Plus scumbags don't stick around apologizing and asking where the money should go.It'd be easy to turn this story from a tragedy to a triumph. The best way to demonstrate people's continued faith in humanity and generosity would be to come back with just as much positive energy.
It was classed as an experiment, and you shook out a bug. Maybe if you could retain the fun and spirit but with a bit of a safety net. Say two cards existed one getting donations and transferring manageable amounts to the public card every few minutes. Maybe encourage a picture or thought from people who got a cup, just to humanize it a bit and make a few connections while discouraging abuse.
(PS I hate starbucks)
I often wish that was the term! FYI, it's guerilla.
It wasn't really a fair experiment if you wanted the outcome to be positive. This is how it works. There might have been many who were gaming it; Odio is facing the backlash only because he admitted to it.
Experiment as in experimental and beta, novel, new, interesting. Not experiment as in 'how much pressure can I apply to this before it breaks'. A misunderstanding that causes these name calling now..
I think that it is possible to believe that Sam’s action was part of the experiment and also repugnant.
It would only have been repugnant if Jonathan requested people not to do what Sam did. But the game had no rules and what is deemed a good or bad outcome is purely subjective. Who's to say free coffee for some is better than charity with this experiment?
Just because the majority dream this specific experiment to be something that it isn't doesn't mean someone who comes along and dashes those dreams is an asshole.
If you want his actions to be deemed repugnant, then setup a new Jonathan's Card experiment, define the rules the way you want with the no-scraping clause. Then wait until Sam breaks those rules. Then you can call his actions repugnant.
EDIT: I'll admit it's probably not the nicest thing to do if he knew that people (wrongly) assumed their donated money would go to buying coffee for others. But the risks were clearly defined and anyone donating money should have realized that their money is actually going to the experiment, and not necessarily to buying coffee for someone.
We have to disentangle asshole/nice guy from legal/illegal. Being an asshole in business is legal. But that doesn’t mean it’s not repugnant. Sure, we can say that Sam has not broken Jonathan’s law, and we can argue that he doesn’t need to reverse his transactions legally.
We can also argue that he was or was not acting like an asshole. Perhaps he wasn’t. But the question of whether his actions were in accordance with the “rules of the game” has very little bearing on whether they are repugnant.
>But the question of whether his actions were in accordance with the “rules of the game” has very little bearing on whether they are repugnant.
If you break an explicit rule or request, then it's clear that you knew you were being an asshole, doing things other people don't want. When that rule is not explicit, it's hard to say if you knew you were being an asshole. The rules weren't explicit, and could have very easily specified not to scrape.
If Sam took advantage of anyone it would have been naive experiment participants who donated money under the false assumption it would be used for a specific purpose. But even then, Sam's actions could be interpreted as Robin Hood-esque by some.
There is NO DOUBT, from the view point of the supposed victims that Sam's actions are repugnant because they go against what they wished, but so did the people who Robin Hood robbed from I bet. However, from a more global perspective, who's to say they're repugnant? Assume some of that Stark Card money actually reached some unfortunate children in the third world and made their lives slightly better... Would a non-victim really believe that to be a worse appropriation of that money than buying coffee for some first-world person (assuming the money actually reached those kids)? Many would argue that is a better use of the money, regardless of what the original experiment participants expected the money to be used for, because the experiment participants wrongly assumed in the first place.
From what I've read I do think this guy would have broken an explicit request concerning scraping; he seems like just another crook that believes they are innocent and always has an excuse.
There is no law against slamming the door close before the person behind you can enter. Are people wrong in believing that such behavior is rude?
I think the belief that only following rules is enough to earn the right to never be perceived as an asshole is fundamentally flawed. There is nothing wrong with being disgusted by Sam’s actions, even if there weren’t any rules telling him not to do what he did.
What he did was repugnant and part of the experiment. My reaction here is also part of the experiment.
So why do they keep letting players do that? Are they requested not to do that? If so, then it is slightly different from Sam's situation. It would be similar if Jonathan had requested people not to do what Sam did. Not punished != not a rule.
> There is no law against slamming the door close before the person behind you can enter. Are people wrong in believing that such behavior is rude?
You shouldn't assume such behavior has ill intentions. If you don't like it, ask the person to stop doing it. Then and only then if he/she keeps doing it, you can call him an asshole.
Someone is not an asshole simply for doing something you don't like. You have to dig into the intentions.
In the case of the door, just imagine you had eye contact with the person who slammed the door and he grinned. At that point I’m perfectly willing to infer the intention and consider the behavior rude.
Sam Odio has written a lot about his intentions, those aren’t really the issue. They are public and clear and I’m disgusted by them. Simple as that. “But it’s an experiment” completely misses the point.
And the reason for that is because things considered repugnant by some may not be to others!
> In the case of the door, just imagine you had eye contact with the person who slammed the door and he grinned. At that point I’m perfectly willing to infer the intention and consider the behavior rude.
You'd still be guessing. Confront him. Unless he's mentally retarded you'd probably get a clear response from him if you did so. Don't be passive aggressive.
If you donated money and Sam used them in ways you did not approve of, then you can consider his actions repugnant.
From an outside perspective, I do not find his actions repugnant. I believe his re-appropriation of the money to be better than buying coffee for others and really there was no indication that people would respond so negatively to money helping save the children...
Imagine if I were walking down the street and there is this box filled with cash right next to a ferris wheel, implying (to most people) that I should take this generously donated money and experience the ferris wheel for free. However I instead take that money and give it to some homeless people.
To the people who donated money thinking it would pay for the ferris wheel, I'm an asshole. To others, it's a much grayer area depending on whether or not ferris wheel is better than homeless people.
Not only did Sam not break explicit rules, but he didn't do something universally repugnant. If he had actually bought and kept an iPad, that would probably be universally repugnant. Coffee for strangers >> iPad for self. But Coffee for strangers > saving the children? Gray area. If you don't want the money to be donated to third world children, then just ask. But if you don't make such clear requests then you can't claim such an alternative outcome (which to some is actually a better use of the money) is an asshole move.
Hitler probably didn't like Americans (for attacking him), that doesn't make Americans assholes just because the Americans had an aggressive attitude.
(I don't know how that correlates contextually, but I feel there should be a connection).
Regardless, Odio acted like an utter douchebag, IMHO. And he is just making it worse with his un-apology apologies.
this reads like he's working for airbnb.
A little more "I understand now why so many people were pissed off", and a little less "someone else would have done it" would work better, but maybe he's writing what he thinks, and not just what he thinks the best PR move would be. It's hard to honestly admit you were wrong.
At the end of the day I just ask myself "what the hell was that about?" and the idea of donating an iPad to the poor is the most idiotic use of diverted coffee money. With all that philosophy you're going to give one kid an iPad and add to the bottomline of one of the richest corporations in the world. Much better than strangers buying each other coffee. Way to change the world.
"With all that philosophy you're going to give one kid an iPad and add to the bottomline of one of the richest corporations in the world." seems to indicate that you believe that he's buying (or bought) an iPad to send it off to the 3rd world. That's - erm - quite wrong.
From all I can tell he
- wrote a script to tell him that more than $ X is on the card
- transfer money to a gift card by going to the counter (he was sitting in a StarBucks)
- repeat - he said he got $625 (on two cards, it seems those top out at $500)
His initial blog post used the iPad 2 as link bait and said 'You could buy an iPad with that cash!'. Afterwards he put these gift cards on eBay and claimed he'd give the return to charity.
No iPad in sight. No money to Apple.
So - posts like yours are showing that this is a very emotional thing. It's not helpful to jump in and bash people though, especially if you misunderstand the situation. Correct me if I failed to understand you?
At least if there were formal written rules on proper usage, you could make an argument that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act should cover misuse of a card number, when the user agreed to an EULA in order to acquire it. Though I think that approach of turning EULAs into criminal law is also dangerous.
He apologized, but kept the money. That's silly.
[1] Look at his comment history, especially his two comments on the original Jonthan's card post. He's admitted that, since the 7th, he's been skimming off the top of the card, yet on the 8th he said "That would imply that the card is currently being used as intended" and explained $25 vanishing from the card as him buying food for two homeless people. Even if he wasn't intentionally misdirecting people or lying, it certainly looks suspicious.
Now that he's in the spotlight, if he manages to leverage his new found fame, the coffee incident will not matter much.
This post is already a step in the right direction.
I wish him all the best, but I cannot become a customer!
First, why was the idea so popular to begin with? Collective funds aren't new, nor is using Twitter as an API for tracking things in the real world. I don't have any good guesses here.
Second, why has the community reacted so passionately? Even here on Hacker News, mostly made up of people who put reason over emotion, have been extremely upset. One: Having the money taken broke people's faith in the greater good of humanity, so indignation naturally follows. Two: Diverting funds was akin to telling people what to do, and nothing makes people angrier than being forced to do things against their will.
People got very emotional over what, in perspective, isn't that much money. $625 could get you an iPad... or a really lousy computer. If somebody had that much stolen from a home break-in, that wouldn't even make local news, let alone Hacker News. It's very curious. Also, it shows money not just as a means of gaining goods and services, but as a way for people to make a mark on the world; 'voting' for things they believe in by giving money, and denying it from things they don't.
I don't approve of what Sam did, but it's better to step back and really see what's going on here, rather than just being a mob about it.
Jonathan's card was in the same spirit as a hacker space, which is [bluntly]: if we all pitch into this, and we're all nice about it, we can have something that's pretty freaking cool.
Assume that instead of a starbucks card, we were talking about a hackerspace. What Sam Odio did was the equivalent of showing up, then taking a bunch of the the tools so that he could sell them and donate the money to homeless people. To take it a step farther he then used his website to encourage other people to do the same thing.
He tried to destroy the community (and succeeded). Hackers love communities, and they tend to hate the people that destroy them.
My 2¢ is that Sam seems to process social norms in an unconventional way and it occasionally gets him into a pickle. It also leads to good things. More good than bad, I'd bet.
You began from the assumption that Sam is not one of us, the "highly community-driven" hackers. That's factually wrong. He's practically a prototype of the community-minded hackerspace type which you extol.
I don't agree with you that people are upset because they care about communities. A readier explanation is just garden-variety sanctimony. (I'm not referring to your comment here, but others.)
Now he is saying that it was all just an experiment and he didn't understand the outcome of his actions.
Which one is it gonna be Sam?
I see a lot of irate comments on Jonathan's blog and the card's Facebook wall from people who likely cannot appreciate the ease with which money could be siphoned from this card. As far as I'm concerned Sam demonstrated an obvious and intrinsic security hole and then owned up to it, but most of the complaining crowd are convinced that his Evil Genius alone is the reason their feel-goodery has to come to an end. The alternate conclusion I see is that unknown agents would take advantage of this card until the experiment because too unpleasant to continue and then no one would feel anything.
It seems like what most people wanted was a "challenge". I don't have any issue with that, but call a duck a duck. If this really was a social "experiment", you have to expect people to behave as they would in society, including leaches.
This experiment is a reminder of why we can't have nice things on an honor system. There will _always_ be actors who game the system - typically for personal gain, but sometimes for the lols.
To write off somebody's lack of understanding of social mores because "we were all just ants" is disingenuous.
That said, this whole thing has actually been very interesting to watch from the outside, and there is little doubt Odie made it far more interesting (if not somewhat dishearening).
"Jonathan's Card is an experiment in social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones ...," he wrote on his site.
Jonathan's Card was only succeeding temporarily because it was novel. People behave differently around novel things. If these things worked long-term, then there would be more of them around.
Edit: Downvotes without comments? Pretty uninspiring, HN.
> about a card that lets rich people buy overpriced coffee for other rich people! (And let's be completely clear, if you are in the position either to use Jonathan's card or have it used for you, you are almost certainly quite well-off.)
The exact thing being shared is irrelevant to the principles involved because if you got it work, it could scale. Something that starts by providing the public good of coffee-sharing might grow to provide other public goods. If the idea isn't strangled in its crib by a wise-ass.
Related analogy: the internet might once have best been described as something that "lets overeducated rich people talk to other overeducated rich people! (And let's be completely clear, if you are in the position to make use of the internet or have it used for you, you are almost certainly quite well-off.)"
When I used to use "mapquest" to print directions or use "google" to find answers to some question, that was once a novel thing that only strange nerdy people did. But because the people who used it benefited back then, everyone benefits today. Almost every new innovation helps "the rich" or well-connected before it helps the masses. At the time silk stockings were invented, the queen of england was among the few who could afford them. TVs were only for rich people when they were invented; ditto VCRs, radios, microwave ovens, cars... So saying "this only helps well-off people!" as an excuse to dismiss an innovation is something most nerds just intuitively reject. So obviously wrong as to be not worth explaining. Hence (I suspect) your downvotes.
The examples you give do not convince me that my statement, "this only works because it is novel", is not correct. People obey traffic signals out of habit and / or fear that there may in fact be someone around (and even if they didn't, it would be out of concern for safety, nothing to do with this give-some-get-some principle); the "pay what you want" restaurant in London was a month-long promotion (and it now charges again), and many other incarnations struggle (see this NY Times article for information on several failed versions of the scheme: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/us/21free.html); the vast majority of church funding (millions of dollars!) does not come from collection plates, and, even if it did, collection plates are dissimilar to this example because everybody watches what you do with the plate -- the social cost of stealing is far more obvious and pronounced (and, unlike Jonathan's Card, taking from a collection plate is unequivocally stealing, making the example even less relevant); and, finally, if there are musicians who make "a decent living" out of selling free music (as opposed to a profitable sideline) then I don't know of any. One counter example is Radiohead's "In Rainbows", where 62% of the people downloading paid nothing at all (see: http://www.globalnerdy.com/2008/10/16/radioheads-in-rainbows...). The album still made money, due to Radiohead's brand power, but they have not continued the experiment with new albums.
There are no good examples of a Jonathan's Card-type scheme working for any length of time in the real world.
The problem with the response in general, and I think your response in particular as well, is this quote from you:
> If the idea isn't strangled in its crib by a wise-ass.
The very fact that the idea was strangled in its crib by a wise-ass, coupled with the dearth of similar ideas out there in the real world, seems to demonstrate fairly well that this is not a good idea.
You then give a bunch of examples of expensive technology which eventually became cheap technology (stockings, the Internet, cars, etc). This is a completely unrelated to Jonathan's card -- nobody is going to deny that expensive technologies become cheaper and, in doing so, benefit more people! However, Jonathan's card doesn't rely on expensive technology -- it relies on all participants being altruistic. And in the real world, given a sufficiently large number of participants, not all of them will be altruistic. Jonathan's Card is particularly bad in this respect because one "wise-ass" can take so much value from the system -- contrast this with a hypothetical successful musician putting her album online, where the worst that a single defector can do is take the album for free.
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/wiki/Chiron_Beta_Prime
> The very fact that the idea was strangled in its crib by a wise-ass, coupled with the dearth of similar ideas out there in the real world, seems to demonstrate fairly well that this is not a good idea.
Whether something "is a good idea" depends on context, which changes. This wouldn't have been a good idea a few decades ago because the technology wasn't there to enable it. As society gets wealthier and smarter we can afford to support more free-riders and it becomes less and less important to rigorously charge for stuff. "serve yourself" soda refills is an example, as is the institution of unlimited free napkins, toilet paper, and use of the restroom. Any of those could be crippled by wise-asses too.
> a hypothetical successful musician putting her album online, where the worst that a single defector can do is take the album for free.
Something a single defector can do that's worse than that would be to (1) take the album for free, (2) put up a website encouraging others to do the same and expressing contempt for all the suckers who choose to pay, (3) get this website highly ranked on social media sites.
If that happened and nobody spoke out against it, it would significantly harm the prospect of name-your-own-price albums. That's basically what happened here.
Jonathan's Card is nothing like free soda, free napkins, or free restroom time. If someone sits in McDonald's and repeatedly takes all the napkins from the dispenser, he will be asked to leave, and if he persists he may have to deal with the police; the economic cost to McDonald's is minimal, and the inconvenience to other customers minor and localised. Ditto someone choosing to sit in the restroom all day, someone coming in and siphoning all the soda out of a machine, etc. For each of these examples, there is minimal economic cost or inconvenience to other patrons or the business involved, but a lot of inconvenience for the defector -- he has to physically gather up the items, sit in the restroom, etc, for minimal benefit to himself (what, he's going to eBay a million napkins?)
Compared with this, the Jonathan's Card scam provided an effective income of $130 per hour, at a cost of sitting in a comfy couch at Starbucks drinking coffee. There is no immediate social censure (unlike what would happen to a dedicated napkin-grabber) and indeed the defection is undetectable unless the person involved chooses to blog about it. And, as hinted above, it is easy and convenient to convert Starbucks gift cards into money.
These circumstances make defection a lot more tempting. Let's recap:
1) No social censure (unless you decide to tell people)
2) The return is not just fungible but is easily converted into actual money
3) Low effort required
4) Low time investment
5) High per-hour return
The confluence of these factors makes Jonathan's Card a bad idea -- far worse than free soda.
Which brings us back to the analogy: A committed vandal could easily do $130/hour worth of damage to random companies or people with minimal risk - if, as Sam did, they had no intent of personally profitting from it. That's what Sam was: a vandal, more than a thief. Like the teen who throws a rock through a window when nobody is watching or destroys bathroom fixtures.
An awful lot of what makes civilization work is our tacit agreement to the code immortalized by Wil Wheaton: "don't be a dick." The fact that you can do something nasty and damaging to other people doesn't mean you should. The fact that in some circumstance it's particularly easy to steal from others doesn't give you a moral obligation to do so; quite the reverse.
Some people are very trusting. They might leave doors unlocked or purses unguarded. They choose to go out in public without armed guards and trust that a random stranger on the street isn't going to be a mugger or rapist or kidnapper.
When somebody who is especially trusting gets taken advantage of by someone unscrupulous, people generally find that especially worthy of criticism. The first thing we think of isn't to blame the victim for being too trusting, but to blame the scammer or thief for taking unfair advantage of trust.
"For those who are hurt, angry, or frustrated with the role I played, I sincerely apologize. Had I known so many were so invested in this, I would have certainly done things differently."
a "regret outcome"? That's part of the blog entry and the 'sincerely apologize' part is bold and hard to miss.
I know, I know, Odio's moralising is irritating. But people are acting as though he's taken our capability for altruism. I assure you, people are able to be nice without Jonathan's instruction.
Sorry enough to make a new card, and fill it with the money you lifted?
A lot of the backlash focuses on his dubious claim to the moral high ground. I, once more, invite Sam to explain how much of his OWN time and money he donates to charity. Being a moralising prick is easy, after all, when stacked up against children starving in Somalia, almost any other use of money that doesn't pertain to basic survival can be viewed as frivolous.
His apology post is basically nothing more than a "Sorry you all got upset about it, if I'd know you cared that much I wouldn't have done it". In his mind he hasn't really done anything wrong - he feels that if he doesn't agree with the aims or the social value of something, he can suborn it to his own ends.
There's nothing wrong with being nice to other people - it might not save the world, but one of the issues we face in the so called developed nations is the erosion of basic social courtesies - the ability to be polite to each other and not act like dicks.
EDIT: I also stand by my offer to hook Sam up with some contacts in Uganda who would love to have time with a geek to help with real problems.
Because the card would likely still be alive if you wouldn't act like a dick?
> For those who are hurt, angry, or frustrated with the role I played, I sincerely apologize. Had I known so many were so invested in this, I would have certainly done things differently.
A hint for you: create Asshole's Card with the $625 you stole and continue the experiment. You shall add even more funds and give some back to Jonathan himself.
Please stop the name calling.
He apologized that silly emotional people got upset at the obvious outcome of this entire stunt.
A sincere apology takes three words. When those three words are buried in hundreds of words of qualifications and context its no longer an apology.
The entire thing is redolent of a condescending tone. Sam, you see, is a scientist! Anyone who questioned his behavior is just an having an emotional reaction and does not understand the real world - where there is always a Sam to piss in the well.
The thing is, most of use knew this already, and his demonstration did not teach anyone anything other than about Sam's character.
EDIT: Oh, I don't care about the gift card. I am simply commenting on the 'apology.'
For me, I can't see these things. Someone else already said that he should've apologized first, unqualified - and I agree that this would make a difference.
On the other hand, I'm not sure if I'd have started like that - it feels natural to me to explain first, reason about my actions and end with an apology. We're not talking about a company here (see the AirBnB comparison), we're talking about a random guy as far as I'm concerned.
Lastly: I guess a lot is getting lost in translation for me. Lots of advices on this forum are hard to get for me, because they are about nuances of English words, implied meanings, 'tone' and cultural rules. While it might very well be possible that you/most of the posters and Sam are sharing the same standards and therefor 'better' understand the content or see a subtext: I cannot.
Apologies that start with an explanation are very often more of a personal justification (coping mechanism) than a real apology. It frames the conversation in a way so as to reduce the cognitive dissonance between your actions and the social norm you violated (reason for apology), as well as reducing the discomfort in the act of apology.
It also makes people think you are apologizing to appease, instead of expressing genuine regret.
Secondly, is he still stealing money from it?
I thought Jonathan's card idea was funny, but unbelievably stupid (in the common tragic kind of way). Being morally outraged at the result reminds me of those of you who like to say Communism should work in theory, then point the finger after the mass murders, saying it could have been different if it hadn't been for that one guy who ruined everything.
If the answer is no, then it should be clear that there was no malice in Sam's intent because it was clearly within the rules and clearly recognized by him as so.
I'm sure lots of people are angry that they made donations assuming it would go to the specific purpose of buying coffee for others, but the risks were clear and the experiment rules were laid out. Granted, Sam probably knew this and still appropriated the money to charity which was probably a bad move.