Houses are built with lumber,
Carpenters nail up lumber with hammers,
I live in a house with nailed framing.
The individual who invented the hammer likely died in his home cave.
The thing is that tools and the use of those tools both create value. But economically the production of things using tools is valued more than the existence of tools. There are outliers, such as in my case where the value of all the test equipment I own is probably double the any amount of economic value they might generate over my remaining lifetime.
This fallacy is very closely related to the value of "ideas" versus the value of executing on the idea. The latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
Rhetorical questions are only rhetorical if they are based on correct premises and if the answers to those questions clearly and logically lead to the answer that the rhetorical questioner wishes to convey. Used correctly they are indeed a powerful rhetorical tool as they not only illustrate the concept vividly, but they also create an "aha!" moment in the listener. Used incorrectly, they can still be a useful tool despite the initial intention, as it allows the answerer to correct faulty premises or logic, and the questioner to receive updated knowledge that may change their supposition, so the questions can still fulfill a good purpose.
However, this does require that the questioner maintain sufficient humility and open mindedness as to benefit intellectually from the exchange. I would humbly suggest embracing a hearty dose of humility at all times and to re-examine your beliefs when faced with a contradictory reply, rather than doubling down and resisting the new information. It can truly be difficult to do as we humans have evolved to win arguments by any means, not solely through logic[1]. Nevertheless I believe it to be very worth it as the only full path to enlightenment is an unmitigated embrace of logic and truth, and a mental adaptation and change of position whenever it is warranted.
The merit of your questioning was good, so please don't feel as though you didn't add value to the conversation, because IMHO you did!
[1] this is discussed by Robert Sapolsky in "Behave", a book and author I heartily recommend
> Is there something surprising, incongruous here?
You responded:
> Not really, consider this restatement for example:
...
> This fallacy is very closely related to the value of "ideas" versus the value of executing on the idea. The latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
My question was rhetorical -- I was saying the same thing you did. A reader was supposed to look at the situation of the huge difference in dollars, be tempted to conclude that, yes, there was
> something surprising, incongruous here
and then remind themselves of the very well known point you reminded us of:
> latter has tremendous economic value, the former, not so much.
Or, for one more, whatever is the truth about life and reality, Kahn contributed so much and got paid comparatively so little. That's reality we all know, and I'm not crusading against it, but it's still a big difference.
As was pointed out elsewhere, being rhetorical depends on context. And in this case the context is "What is the general belief system of the readers." What I think happened here was that your context was actually the inverse of what I would expect a reader to be thinking here (given your questions). As this population is heavily 'startup' and 'make a big dent' oriented, if you had said "I find it incongruous that someone who contributed something so fundamental wasn't nearly as well rewarded financially as others who came after and used their contribution."
I think that point of view would gather a lot of support here as the community abounds in examples; my favorite being Gruber inventing markdown to make blog writing easier and people like Github turning it into a key feature of there service offering.
This is because this community is acutely aware of the mismatch between effort invested and the relatively randomness of the financial rewards. That is also why a common dismissive comment to a submission touting the big raise of some startup with "I just don't get it, I could write that product in a weekend" (or some variation on that theme). It's the idea that 'fairness' involves reward commensurate with impact.
As a result of this, your comment hit exactly the opposite tone, which is to say that I read it (and I'm guessing others did as well) that you were implying that somehow Bob Kahn had been "ripped off" or otherwise harmed unjustly because his contribution was not as well rewarded as far as its impact (which was large) went.
My restatement was an attempt on my part to reflect back to you the way your comment sounded; I did this using an even more extreme example of the separation between the invention of something, and the economic exploitation of that something.
It probably wasn't the nicest way to do that, for that I apologize.
I find that communication, especially written communication without all the cues that come from things like body language and facial expressions, is really hard to do well. I also find that different communities have completely different customs, for example a comment that might get upvoted here could get mercilessly down voted on Reddit. Or a tweet that might get likes goes no where in a different forum. It's tough to do humor and rhetorical questions here, there is an extremely fine line between it being okay and it being down voted into oblivion.
Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged.
Uh, on your point about startup, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that
> Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even zero, why my comment was flagged.
In that time I would expect it to become clear that anyone, at any time, has a fixed set of options when responding to a post:
1) Ignoring it.
2) Voting on it "up" or "down"
3) Flagging it (which generally brings it to the attention of moderation)
4) Commenting on it.
(note that 2, 3, and 4 are not mutually exclusive, you can flag, downvote, and comment all one the one thing).
Generally the reason for down voting or flagging is how your comment was 'heard' by the person reading it. Some folks down vote when they disagree, some when they feel it doesn't add anything to the conversation, sometimes because they feel it disparages or insults something they value. There an innumerable number of ways people can feel when they read something.
Thanks. I have, or had, no idea, not even up to zero, why my comment was flagged.
Uh, on your point about startups, gee, early on in my post I mentioned that also
===>>> I <<<===
> big dent' oriented
and a member of the club, at least with attitudes of the club.
I'm not a joiner of clubs: In high school I was not getting a lot of invitations to clubs and gave up then. Uh, there's the old joke "Any club that would have me as a member I wouldn't want to join." But at least, no way, was I suggesting that Kahn was getting ripped off or that the billionaire founders were guilty of some transgression.
On facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, I wasn't at the head of the class on those and regarded them as poor quality information.
Here at the risk of rubbing more fur the wrong way are some old sayings:
Girls pay attention to people. Boys pay attention to things.
Girls work hard to learn how to please people. Boys work hard to learn how to do things.
It is not 100% this way, but, warning, if try to change either of these two, may encounter difficulties beyond overcoming or prior expectation -- take this as a grand understatement. Some of my evidence is 6 feet under.
E.g., there is the movie Armageddon where a daughter tells her father that she was more mature (or some such) than him when she was 10 years old -- in my experience that's not unrealistic!
Now, back to facial expressions, tone of voice, ...: Girls can do a lot better than boys at making that input quality information.