I'm commenting solely on the factual incorrectness of saying the above was not a deal, when it very clearly was, assuming "deal" means a more economical choice. That's all.
> I'm commenting solely on the factual incorrectness of saying the above was not a deal, when it very clearly was, assuming "deal" means a more economical choice.
And again, this assumes that all channels are equally valuable to you. Spending more money on things you do not want is not more economical.
They do have the same value, and that value is "do I want to pay for this channel?"
The person I replied to said there were 10-20 channels worth paying for, and then complained about the cost of those channels, despite the fact that they were undeniably cheaper than anything the person could get individually.
I hope you realize I have no dog in this fight, and am merely commenting based on internal argument consistency. The argument the above poster made was incorrect, internally. That's all I'm pointing out.
We've now spent the better part of 3 hours talking about this. Consider for a moment the possibility that this isn't a very important distinction, and that your continual insistence on the issue is perhaps detrimental to the greater conversation and HN in general.
> They do have the same value, and that value is "do I want to pay for this channel?"
By that logic, all items in the world have the same value and that value is "do I want to pay for this item"?
They each have a different value based on "what do I want to pay for this channel". It is not a binary option of "I WILL PAY NO MATTER THE COST" and "I WILL NEVER PAY NO MATTER HOW CHEAP".
> The argument the above poster made was incorrect, internally. That's all I'm pointing out.
And all I'm pointing out is that your argument is incorrect.
> We've now spent the better part of 3 hours talking about this.
Which is odd, since all I've been saying is that the choice:
More expensive & more channels vs less expensive & fewer channels
has no clear winner without agreeing on what each particular channel is "worth". This is a classic case of multi-objective optimisation. I'm quite interested in finding out why this is such a disagreeable concept to you.
> Consider for a moment the possibility that this isn't a very important distinction, and that your continual insistence on the issue is perhaps detrimental to the greater conversation and HN in general.
And yet your continual insistence is beneficial? I'm a little confused, it's worth your time to try and point out a problem in someone's thinking, but not worth anyone else's time to point out problems in yours?
I'm unsure as to why pointing out problems in your argument is against the spirit of HN. Perhaps you want a hackernews where we all misquote each other and logical flaws are left unchallenged. I'd hoped we'd all try and at least have sound arguments, which is what prompted you to post your original sarcastic comment.
I'd hoped that through discussion we could straighten it out, but that seems futile now as I've repeated myself enough times in different ways. Instead I'll just ask that you look at the honestly look at the claims you've made and see if you find any problems with them.
And finally, in case it isn't clear, I think that both you and urda are wrong.
10-20 channels worth buying at a price of $3.25-$6.50/channel is a better economical choice than 1-2 channels worth buying unbundled at a price of $17.50/channel.
Everything else here is you making HN a worse place to be. That's it.
> 10-20 channels worth buying at a price of $3.25-$6.50/channel is a better economical choice than 1-2 channels worth buying unbundled at a price of $17.50/channel.
It's simply not the case that spending more money to get more channels is always more economical just because the cost per channel goes down. Which is more economical depends on the value you associate with each channel.
If one channel cost $20, or I could get that channel and 9 others for $40, which is better for me? It depends on whether or not those 9 channels are worth $20 to me. If they're not, then it's not a better deal. Just because I might be willing to pay some money for those 9, doesn't mean I'm willing to pay $20 for them. If those channels are worth more than $20 to me, then it may well be a good deal for me.
Therefore, packages are good deals for some, unbundled channels are good deals for others.
The person I replied to set the value of the 10-20 channels at "worth paying for" at the price set, so the value beyond that is irrelevant for this discussion.
"Worth buying" is a boolean. It's either "worth" or it's not, because we've already establish that "worth" channels are willing to be paid for at $17.50, so less than $17.50 is still within any pricing range that might exist.
Would it be easier for you to grasp if we called them "quality" channels? 10-20 quality channels? Paying for 10-20 quality channels that are bundled together is more economical than paying for each quality channel on its own, based on the values given by the commenter.
Your "scale" idea is just a pointless intermediary step towards deciding if a channel is "worth" or not. While yes, you could decide what cost you're willing to pay for each channel, you will still arrive at a "yes/no" decision for each channel (a decision that will only get more generous the less expensive the cost of the individual channel), which will be the "worth" value I've been talking about.
> "Worth buying" is a boolean. It's either "worth" or it's not, because we've already establish that "worth" channels are willing to be paid for at $17.50, so less than $17.50 is still within any pricing range that might exist.
What part of their comment did you interpret as them thinking each of those 20 channels is worth $17.50 on their own?
We have only established that two specific channels were worth that much. Not any of the others. This is an absolutely vital distinction.
> . While yes, you could decide what cost you're willing to pay for each channel, you will still arrive at a "yes/no" decision for each channel (a decision that will only get more generous the less expensive the cost of the individual channel)
Right, so if I'm willing to pay $17.50 for HBO, I'm obviously willing to pay $5 for HBO. But being willing to pay $17.50 for HBO doesn't mean I'm willing to pay $5 for a different channel.
> based on the values given by the commenter.
urdu did not specify how valuable those channels were to them. They just said that it was 20 (let's call them "quality channels") for $65 and that wasn't much of a deal.
> Would it be easier for you to grasp if we called them "quality" channels? 10-20 quality channels? Paying for 10-20 quality channels that are bundled together is more economical than paying for each quality channel on its own, based on the values given by the commenter.
And the decision is not "buy them all on their own or buy them all together" it's "buy some on their own and not others or buy them all together". Nobody here is arguing that buying the same items at a higher price each is better value, they're arguing that buying a subset of them at a higher price each can be better value overall.
This should be obvious if we split out the two channels like so:
Package A: Two channels at $17.50 each
Package B: Eighteen channels at $1.67 each
If I don't value the channels in B enough, it is more economical to me to only buy package A rather than package A and package B.
It's still $30 more, so if those extra channels aren't worth $30 to you then it's much better.
Besides, I'm not sure what you get if you have a larger cable package. The HBO $14.99 appears to be for a big back-catalogue.