Re: [tlug] [OT] Say _no_ to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

[Edward Middleton <edward.middleton@example.com>]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> emiddleton@example.com writes:
>
>  > Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>
>  >> People *don't* say "no", however, precisely because the closed
>  >> software, dependency and all, is better for their purposes than
>  >> the open software.
>
>  > Because there no information asymmetry? and we always make decisions on
>  > the basis of what is best for us[1]?  I think both a lack of information
>  > and psychology have a far greater role when it comes to software.
>
> The information asymmetry is accounted for; people will discount for
> uncertainty about closed source that can be resolved by opening the
> source: it's worth less to them.
>
>   
> If you're talking about the fact that OSS doesn't buy TV ads to run at
> the World Cup or the Superbowl, well, that's part of why proprietary
> software is theoretically maybe a good thing -- to pay for telling
> people about the product.  (I'm not saying all advertising is
> informative; it's obviously not.  But to say that "people buy Windows
> because they don't know about Linux" indicates that Linux needs to get
> its shit together, scare up some revenue, and buy some persuasive ads
> with it, not that people are making bad decisions.)  

I presume you are talking about People in general because a lot of
people do say no.  Thus we are talking the average person, who doesn't
get down and read the source.  The uncertainty isn't about whats in the
source so much as whether it is the best product to fulfill their
needs.  I don't believe most users are well enough informed to make that
kind of decision about software most of the time.  Advertising does
nothing to help this situation, it is almost exclusively emotive rather
then informative, and its primary goal is to sell a product,
irrespective of whether it is the most suitable.  Microsoft like
marketing departments tend to develop a completely new technical
vocabulary with every business cycle which adds to further confuse and
bewilder anyone trying to become informed.  Do we really need this kind
of thing for Linux.

> As for psychology, you'll have to say what you mean here.  I can
> always simply say, "taking the person's psychological state and
> process as given, we assume that what he thinks he wants is what he
> wants, and as good liberals, we must accept his judgment that that is
> good for him".  Obviously that position is too extreme, but if we look
> at actual behavior, we find that most situations where people make bad
> decisions can be accounted for by (1) a small fraction of actually
> insane or cognitively impaired people and (2) information asymmetry.
>   

Is obesity (1) or (2),  is gambling (1) or (2),  is living off debt (1)
or (2), or are these all "good for him"?

> So despite the enormous attraction of behavioral economics for people
> who dislike conventional economics, the biases[1] that evidence
> strongly suggests actually affect ordinary people (from the janitor to
> the CEO) in real life are few and small.  The most important ones seem
> to be second order (eg, the Allais paradox).  The Kahnemann-Tversky
> "prospect" theory doesn't seem to have any behavioral predictions at
> the market level that can be distinguished from ordinary risk
> aversion, for example, although it is clearly verified by
> introspection, and weakly confirmed in laboratory experiments.

Am I right in saying that the crux of this argument is that risk
aversion not irrational biases are the basis for consumer software
purchases?  If so, is there any evidence of this.  How many users that
purchased the original Microsoft word instead of WordPerfect would have
been better served by it.  Was this consumer decision based on risk
aversion or perceived risk aversion and irrational biases?  How many
windows sysadmins list security as a reason for not deploying Linux?  Is
this risk aversion or irrational bias.

Edward