I think that it's great that this is on the front page of HN. There are a couple of great things we can learn from classics like this. For example, let's talk about how art can provoke some kind of emotion.
Specifically, Aristotle discusses tragedy and explains why it can be one of the best mediums in art in creating strong emotional connections with the main character. To do this, he says that the main character must be:
- Good: because if a bad thing happens to a bad person, the audience wouldn't care.
- Believable: because it would disrupt one's ability to empathize with the character if they had some unrealistic/rare flaw.
The audience needs to believe that they could have made the same decisions as the character. If you look at most classical Greek tragedies, this is true (given Oedipus's information (or lack thereof), would allow many people to make Oedipus's mistakes). It takes a masterful author to be able to predict and understand people's emotions like this on the scale of an entire audience.
I think making a product requires a similar amount of empathy. You need to ask yourself who your audience is. How many customers really need that feature? What are they primarily using your product for? etc.
Specifically, Aristotle discusses tragedy and explains why it can be one of the best mediums in art in creating strong emotional connections with the main character. To do this, he says that the main character must be:
- Good: because if a bad thing happens to a bad person, the audience wouldn't care.
- Believable: because it would disrupt one's ability to empathize with the character if they had some unrealistic/rare flaw.
The audience needs to believe that they could have made the same decisions as the character. If you look at most classical Greek tragedies, this is true (given Oedipus's information (or lack thereof), would allow many people to make Oedipus's mistakes). It takes a masterful author to be able to predict and understand people's emotions like this on the scale of an entire audience.
I think making a product requires a similar amount of empathy. You need to ask yourself who your audience is. How many customers really need that feature? What are they primarily using your product for? etc.