If they had rejected that clause, I probably wouldn't have put up much of a fight. I figure that if they don't want it, we should keep it.

A developer who writes an implementation of the quicksort algorithm as part of their job should usually be removed from their post for incompetence.

The interview process should be a two-way procedure which also allows the candidate to understand what is expected of them in a role (and make their decision about the job accordingly). If regurgitating quicksort is expected, then this is a fair test: otherwise, this is not how you should be presenting the job.

The positions with higher pay should be open to the candidates with better skills, wherever they happened to be born.

There are quite a lot of assumptions in this statement. You assume an efficient market (something that does not and probably cannot exist at scale, if at all). You assume information equality, which is the exact opposite of actual practice, you assume the people who make the hiring decisions have some means of separating the average from the above or below average. In practice development skill is a completely separate and unrelated skill to marketing (of one's self). Ability derives from the former, salary from the latter.

So no, unrestricted labour movement most definitely does not mean you get paid average if you are average (not that I care about this anyway: I think all developer pay should go up across the board). What it will mean is employer perception will be that they should be able to get even better talent at even lower prices. And since employers can wait literally years to fill positions and people can rarely go more than a month without a job, this will certainly drive salaries down even further.

Of course, one could imagine that eventually everything would become more efficient and companies should recognise that better developers cost more. But how many companies actually care about having better developers? For the majority of IT jobs, the hiring company doesn't care about developer quality, they care about costs. If development takes longer, so what. Everyone else in their market will be working under the same constraints so it doesn't matter.

But, taking these to a natural conclusion typically results in exactly the Dark Patterns we see here: where users are tricked or misled into agreeing to things they might not if they were offered clear, open and full disclosure upfront.

We can identify dark patterns - but in many cases, these are here because they work. At least, large international businesses such as RyanAir believe that they have a positive outcome which overwhelms any damage to the brand.

I would like to know: how can we resolve these two ideas and run ethical but viable/competitive businesses?

All other things being equal, you can't. If there are dark patterns that empirically do increase competitiveness in the market of interest at the cost of violating things you hold to be ethical principles, you aren't going to be competitive without employing them unless you have some other non-duplicated market-relevant advantage that compensates for the disadvantage of ethics, unless you can change the market context to eliminate the effectiveness of the dark patterns.

This kinda reminds me of the talk PG gave at 2008 start up school titled "Be Good." (http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7K0vRUKXKc) He outlines many ways why it's not merely ethically appropriate to be good, but also a strategically superior approach to running a startup. Ease of use, simplicity, trustworthiness--these are important qualities of a biz's reputation, both internally and in public perception. And Dark patterns tend to harm that reputation.

Edit: Addendum--obviously there are monopolies or monopoly-like situations where reputation isn't important.

If the dark patterns empirically work, then a market context shift is necessary.

> We already have a market place where people who feel tricked or duped will have a lower opinion of the company doing the duping. dark patterns have a bad edge to them too--very few of them, when noticed by the user, leave the user actually feeling good about how they were duped.

If they had enough of a "bad edge" that they didn't actually work to increase the returns realized by a business--then they wouldn't be an issue, as there'd be no incentive to use them.

2) Market won't magically shift - they work based on homo sapiens basic psychology, and that won't change so soon. However, dark patterns can (and are) reduced by making them illegal - effective consumer protection / truthful advertising laws can mitigate them. For example, if 'I agree' opt-out boxes are legally considered invalid, then it makes sense to use opt-in subscriptions; similarly for other [mis]representations.

A/B testing only tells you what works today, not what's going to keep your customers satisfied in the long run.

There is nothing intrinsically favoring honest communication or opposing dark patterns about A/B testing.

There is no way to "resolve" the fact that there are always ways to make money unethically, there are always people taking advantage of them, and if you are a human being you will always feel a twinge of regret and unfairness that you can't join in the fun.

That doesn't stop them from adding dark patterns on top. Acting with business interests in mind, airlines are practically compelled to add dark patterns. Other airlines have moved towards RyanAir's model, not away from it.

I find that frightening, as an ethical person who wants to run a business.

Lets say you have two airlines that both need to offer a flight for $300 in order to make a reasonable profit. If one shifts $15 of that cost to bag fees, then people will choose that one even though the end cost is the same. The other airlines have to follow suit or they will fail to stay competitive.

Your comment was regarding conversions and upselling (purporting it as a dichotomy to do those yet deride dark patterns), yet neither of those ever need dark patterns -- if you have a compelling pitch that makes the customer knowingly and intentionally choose the option, you have legitimate business gains.

I do not intend to use a privacy service from someone who claims it is easy (it isn't) while confusing privacy with authentication.

I may not wish to give up my password because I don't want actions to be taken in my name: this is irrelevant to privacy concerns.

Or a read-only access to whatever online service you're currently using?

By the distinction that Prof Devlin tries to make, primary school subtraction is typically taught/learned in an 'algebraic' way (logical reasoning to invert addition). This makes it difficult to understand what he is trying to say.

I most strongly doubt the claim that students who are strong in arithmetic find it harder to learn algebra. It's obvious that students with good arithmetic skills are more quickly able to find value and purpose in algebra.

For most school kids, algebra is the first place where the art of mathematics comes into play: where you are given a problem, and are not told specifically how to get from here to a solution. You have to figure that out yourself with the aid of mathematical tools.

For most people, who aren't used to the art of logical thinking, that is crushing.

It's like... you're not even trying to understand the concepts, are you?

Math students (that is, everyone) earlier learned that this sign-flipping strategy is ok and perhaps an encouraged shortcut when e.g. subtracting.

(see also that Khan Academy video - "first do the multiplication, then think about the sign")