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"Success" is to achieve the intended goal, without causing new problems that outweigh the benefit of reaching that goal.

Reaching the goal is not a moral measurement, it is all about efficiency. If you don't reach the goal, your efficiency is zero. The moral question is what new problems are acceptable. That's where reasonable people can disagree.



success without morals is exactly how we got into this age of enshittification. We got customers on lock, easy "success" to make a Big Mac $8 and mine data from an app, or retroactively increase our subscriptions from $10 to $20/month.

Maybe we should integrate that social value into "success" more often. Facebook was probably the most successful company, so successful laws are being made to reel their patterns in. It wasn't illegal before though, so success?




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