Cause and Effect Fallacy: The By-product Does Not Make The Product | Hacker News Reader

Cause and Effect Fallacy: The By-product Does Not Make The Product

times.jayliew.com

66 pointsjayliew10 comments

I expected a better response. The author seems to be confusing a successful product with a great product (which Zach was trying to say). Both are sadly different goals.

One could have a mediocre product that generates a lot of revenue through better marketing. However, I don't think that would be what someone like Zach (or many hackers) would like to work on.

The right combination of team, product, and market is fundamental to many businesses. However, in technology products the right team makes a lot of difference compared to other industries. A good team can grow only in a good culture. Hence the importance of both.

I honestly don't think that the Cause Effect post was meant to be feel-good. It actually addressed the pain points of what's wrong with most dysfunctional companies and has good suggestions for improving the situation.

Where is it that Zach implied that what he's talking about there is only applicable if you've decided to build a "great" product, but if you're aiming to build just a "mediocre", "successful" (but not "great"), then what he's saying is completely irrelevant and not applicable to you?

I realize you don't speak for him, but I'm curious if I legitimately misunderstood something here.

Calling "Cause and Effect Fallacy" on some slides without having proof at hand is just as fallacious. Both are opinion pieces. Please don't give something a "scientific spin" if you are just stating yet another opinion with anecdotal evidence at best.

There should be another fallacy name for exactly what this article does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_envy

Especially with social sciences, there's this thing called "physics envy". In physics, experiments can be repeated consistently in a pristine lab-like environment gather lots of data, to then to prove and disprove stuff, at marginal cost. It's many times impossible to do in other areas of science.

Nobody has yet been able to definitely prove a theorem, but it does not mean that existing hard won lessons today should be ignored until they can be "proved". Startups have to make decisions with incomplete data all the time.

Deleted comment

I get suspicious whenever someone uses that image to preface a response. It serves no purpose in a debate, and just makes the author seem smug.

edit: since the parent deleted his response, I am referring to the xkcd image that is currently at the top of the blogpost.

Hi, author here. I didn't see the comment that was deleted that you responded to (it wasn't me). I guess I just slapped it up there because it captured the moment of how I felt when I read the post I was responding to. Did not mean to come off as smug, I just thought that it was funny that reading something on the internets got me feeling so strongly that I wanted to respond to it.

Update: decided to just remove the XKCD comic

It just reminds me of watching two people bickering at each other in comment threads, justifying themselves with that comic. Plus it I think it is overused.

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22someone+...

The now-deleted parent comment wasn't complaining, he just said you didn't cite the source as xkcd.

ha, I guess that comic is pretty popular, and I was totally being not-original. XKCD provides a link specific for hotlinking to all their comics, and I just used that link that was officially provided.

I think it's an admission and warning that you might be ranty, and there's probably not a good-enough reason for it.

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