But also perhaps not conflating “success” with morally positive outcomes.

Being efficient at destroying the planet is to successfully destroy the planet.

I think the original point was precisely to separate the concepts that make something successful - to be successful at what you do - from a judgement on the outcomes - the thing that you are doing.

> But also perhaps not conflating “success” with morally positive outcomes.

The reason why I would conflate them is that success had a positive social implication. You get respect if you're successful. In order to separate these concept, I'd use language that doesn't have positive connotations. "Efficient" is more than accurate.

The scope of “success” under examination in this guide is tailored for an artificial economic organism that wants to survive and capitalize in a particular competitive marketplace (YouTube).

It is almost certainly not generalizable advice for achieving “success” in the cooperative game of life on earth.

That's probably why we need some morals to come in and balance stuff. You want quick and easy money, you run drugs or sell your body. I'm sure you can be very successful in both if you optimize to be successful in those ventures.

But those are not only societally looked down upon but illegal is most US states. Your success here also lies on the ability to operate discreetly out of the eyes of the law. Would that be a success? (even if I personally believe they should be legal).

Why should I adhere to some loser definition of morals?

You do know Taliban, Karl Marx and Christians can all make moral arguments to argue against something

"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?

> If anything we need to go slower and gentler (environmentally, socially, economically), not "faster"

Do you think we should move slower when it comes to saving the planet? From what I can tell your main issue is with the goal, not with efficiency itself.

> Being efficient at destroying the planet is NOT success

For some businesses being efficient means there is a side-effect of destroying the planet. For others it's causing customers/employees long-term health effects like cancer. Many industries that are considered highly profitable have these types of things -- think pharmaceuticals (legal or not), lending, gambling.

"Success" in a business generally means being profitable. Usually this requires being "efficient" but being efficient isn't the goal. Neither is "Net good for society/humanity at large" -- at least not the main one, taking priority over being profitable.

well maybe they should. That's why we have so much reguation. And why instead of following regulation they lobby to remove such restrictions.

Can I really say a company lobbying for worse people/worker/world conditions to be a "success"? The cigarette metaphor is apt here. if you wanna go more extreme, children in mines would be the best success; employees who can't talk back, can be paid peanuts, and are easily replacable is peak success.

I wasn't sure how MrBeast can "set viewers' expectations" so efficiently and mine so many minds with this formula until I recently witnessed a friend's children log into their YouTube Kids account and immediately be suggested a selection of choice MrBeast cuts. The six-year-old had the remote and went for several inane MrBeast videos in close succession but his older sibling was not impressed. But the bottom line is, children are involved in the equation, and in terms of interest in his customers' minds he is getting close to being the anti-Mister Rogers.