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Comment by SHOwnsYou | Hacker News Reader

This is a very disturbing question. Why do you want control over other people, especially with regard to casinos, betting, and porn? All of those are consensual indulgences.

What is an ethical limit and who decides where the line is drawn?

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Those are great questions. For one, I think companies in these industries have so much data on individual usage, that they could potentially draw some ethical limit.

For example in the case of casinos and gambling, when one enters the addiction phase and takes unnecessary risks we could be nudged, at least, towards no ruining his life.

How would that work, exactly? I imagine you could extend the concept to anything that humans do in excess, which is just about everything. And then you would be monitoring every aspect of their lives for that point in time when they overindulge. In the meantime, you would have all of their actions mapped in your database, enough to determine their likes and dislikes, their wants and desires to the point where you can do so before they know what they want. And then you can stop it before it happens. With a nudge.

Build things that help people do what they want to do. Don't build stuff to stop people from doing what they want. Unless they want to stop doing those things, in which case build things to help them stop doing those things.

If you are building stuff to stop people from doing what they want and they didn't ask you to, well then you are treading on questions ground. Unless you want to, in which case, well, build it, because you want to.

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