

Lack of wealth through lack of empathy — Can you produce what you can’t consume? - blasdel
http://www.yosefk.com/blog/lack-of-wealth-through-lack-of-empathy.html

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anigbrowl
The punchy guy is an asshole. I've encountered the type many times; most often
they have a burning compulsion to show me outrageous porn videos as some sort
of weirdo masculinity test. There's not much you can do other than roll your
eyes. And watch your back...I personally think this kind of behaviour is a
sign of incipient sociopathy. If he screws up and is at risk of losing his job
he'll cheerfully say you put him up to it.

Happily these types are a minority. Get a newer phone and before long you'll
think of something fun and useful to do with it. Don't let episodes like this
send you into a depression - I understand your frustration but people who are
amused by meanness or fart jokes usually have sad shrivelled inner lives.

Of course, you could ask to try it out using him as a subject. Then keep
'punching' him way longer than appropriate. After which he's likely to avoid
you for a while.

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philk
I know it's peripheral to the article but that punching app sounds creepy as
hell.

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waterlesscloud
I'm surprised that it apparently fits Apple's vision more than women in
bikinis do.

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DLWormwood
> I'm surprised that it apparently fits _people who complain to Apple's_
> vision more than women in bikinis do.

FTFY.

Seriously, this is just another manifestation of how USA mores are more
permissive towards violence than sexuality. Apple's an American corporation
under US laws and community standards; what did you expect?

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obfuscate
"an inexplicably moronic hit app"

Tip: Empathy is easier if you don't describe the people you're trying to
empathize with using negative-affect terms.

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blasdel
I think that's him 'showing' instead of 'telling'; consciously or not.

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fnid2
As someone who builds tools for developers, my interest was initially to make
it easier for me to build apps myself. I didn't quite know what I wanted to
build, but I knew I wanted to build it fast, so I built a company around web
development tools.

Then came the task of proving that it was capable. That it actually could
build apps, so I had to build some apps on it myself. How? Which? Why?

Well, so to do that, I have to become someone else. I have to become someone
else who needs software. Ironically, software developers have the least use
for software of anyone. Our life, as the OP states, is filled with developing.
So stop being a developer.

Since then, I've taken up gardening. There are tens of thousands of plants.
Searching through them to find the right one for you is almost impossible.
It's like finding stocks... there's another app!

So get a hobby find something you like outside developing and get into the
mind of someone whose life is as filled with that hobby as your life is filled
with developing. Yes, that means you'll have to stop developing a bit, not
really though. You'll mostly just be developing something for your _other_
self. The other self with the hobby outside developing -- plants or stocks or
camping.

It doesn't really matter. For every topic there is, there's probably an
improvement to the process.

Imagine if I, someone who needs a plant app, and someone with algorithmic
identification algorithms got together and built a plant identification system
that would work on uploaded photos. I'd love that. I'd love to know what kind
of plants are in my yard and I guarantee others would like it too.

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Tichy
I can relate to some degree, certainly some of the big hits on the iPhone seem
completely useless to me. But not all of them - just find something useful and
implement that. Not everybody has to write fart apps.

On the other hand, as I recently started Android programming, of course the
idea of a fart app occurred to me. But to make it "cool" (if it ever could
be), I was thinking it should become some kind of fart synthesizer, with lots
of knows to twist to find the right fart sound. Not sure if the iPhone apps
already do that, they just might. Off the top of the head, I wouldn't even
know how to code it, would first have to read about wave table synthesis,
Fourier analysis or whatever would work best. So at least I would learn
something along the way.

Meanwhile somebody else will probably become rich by just playing back a
recording of his own bowel movements...

Anyway, luckily I have lots of other ideas, so I don't think I'll tackle the
farting problem soon. Maybe better to not have that on one's CV.

Edit: just checked in the marketplace, and some of the fart apps have creative
ideas. One has timers for time bombs, and can even be triggered by SMS.

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10ren
So... if you find you have some empathy for something that is non-standard for
a developer (and even non-standard for the mainstream), you should cultivate
it.

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potatolicious
I think it's very difficult to build something that you yourself don't want to
use - and this is IMHO a great reason for being "well rounded". The more
demographics and groups you can identify with and understand, the more
versatility you have as an entrepreneur.

For one thing, your "cred" with that demographic would be real, and you won't
have to hire half-assed "insiders" who may or may not know better than you.

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cmars232
I've been struggling with this issue of empathy myself. I'm constantly bugged
about being very capable of building things for an employer, but having no
idea how to make something people want.

How does one cultivate this empathy?

