> We aren't mindless zombies buying whatever we see on TV.
But we are. I don't want to turn this into a political slap fight but it became apparent to me the extent in which people are swayed by advertising when I read an article that talked about how one party in the US was concerned that the other was going to win an important seat becase the other party had done a recent spending surge on ads in last few days before election day and they were concerned that they couldn't match it.
That article right there forever changed my view of the average person on the street. In a highly polarized campaign and political environment with months to years of knowing who the candidates and policies are and they can still be swayed by millions in TV and radio ads? Like it sounds like these people could literally be on their way to vote for a candidate and then switch their mind at the last second because they hear an ad on the radio as they're pulling into the polling station.
That's absurd -- but it's real.
People are completely enthralled by advertisements to the point where they'll buy a stupid truck that they can't fit anywhere, that they need a ladder to climb into, that has terrible sight lines, simply because advertising tells them to.
If you don't want to make this about politics, use a product advertising example instead of politics which is not even comparable.
Advertised products will sell more, but only to a certain point. Like someone who wants an SUV and knows nothing else might buy the one from Chevy instead of Mitsubishi because of advertising.
Nah, it's not real. Your claim isn't supported by the data. Political advertising can help a bit at the margins but in the 2016 Presidential election the losing campaign spent about twice as much on advertising as the winner. Very few voters were swayed by last second radio ads.
(I would support a Constitutional amendment to restrict campaign contributions and effectively overturn the Citizens United v. FEC decision.)
Again, I don't want to get into a political slap fight here, I want to keep this on the subject of advertising.
It sounds to me like you're confusing the magnitude of advertising spending with effectiveness of advertising techniques.
Some people have found more effective ways to advertise to people, we know all this, it isn't uncharted conversation territory. We all know about micro-targetting based on personalized data, dominating certain niche mediums like AM radio to target people when they're driving and coordinated pushes with people in industry.
The point is that advertising works. It works disconcertingly well.
This is why people buy stupidly impractical automobiles that they don't need.
Like who is the intended audience and what purpose does this serve?
I can't imagine that this will have the same powerful effect that Google's 'don't be evil' stuff did all those years ago.
People are just too cynical and have enough experience being burned by big tech companies. You might think that I'm speaking from a place of age and experience but I think this applies to everyone, young and old -- we're all using these devices and services from the cradle now it seems and we've all been burned by them or know someone who has been burned by them -- kids know the big tech rug pull just like they know they rug that they crawl on while sucking on a pacifier.
So what's the point of this? Is the intended audience internal? Like is it just for the people who work at openai to distract them from the news the stories that they hear in the news about their companies and the stuff they hear people say about them in social gatherings before they admit that they work for openai?
In light of the two recent attacks on his domicile, maybe the reasoning is to narrow top of funnel of skeptics. I don't see how anyone in this day and age would buy it but then again, I've known folks who just live their lives in profound ignorance of politics...
That's the wrong way to look at it. People still drink and drive because the deterrents aren't heavy. It's a bit tautological but if they were heavy enough then by definition they would be deterrents, but they aren't, so they aren't.
The correct solution to this kind of problems and others is to fix the obviously broken fine system. The first fine for anything should sting and it should make anyone who gets it think twice about doing the thing that they did to get the fine. subsequent reoffenses should make it uneconomical for anyone to reoffend.
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
There are standards for interoperability and user-friendliness with all kinds of devices, and we should expect the same from modern devices.
It would have been pretty peculiar and unacceptable if your telephone in the 80s couldn't call your neighbour because the telephone company just decided to not make them interoperable, why shouldn't it be the same here?
It sure isn’t the 1920s, it’s the 2020s so things like digital money are ephemeral and whimsical.
The bigger question is how much food and medicine is there in the supply chain buffers? If all production was to stop immediately — how many calories are on the continent? How many grams of insulin or penicillin?
In a crisis how will those things be distributed? Will it be based on immediate need or social class?
What’s keeping the system going anyways? Why do ships continue to come with consumer goods from China? Why do farmers send their grain to market?
It’s kind of neat to think about what will happen in this sort of scenario. I wonder how long the data centres will keep running, churning out models that don’t have a market an aren’t quite good enough for AGI.
Why do we need new legislation for this instead of just existing legislation? If an individual was to do what these companies do against another individual it would rightfully be considered creepy as fuck and they'd be charged with stalking.
That shouldn't change even if someone buys a modern papal indulgence[0] yet somehow it does.
The way I see it is that sousveillance is the correct response to surveillance.
If people feel threatened by this organization and the people who make it up they should start doing to them what they're doing to everyone else.
Who specifically works at Palantir? What do they look like? Where do they live? What kind of vehicle do they drive? How do they spend their free time? Who do they associate with?
These are all very interesting questions.
Questions that can be answered and answers that can be distributed online, forever.
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
I've brought this up many times online and people usually reply with something like "lots of people who have no income on paper but are wealthy speed" and a recent solution that I've seen posted is to scale the fine to the value of the vehicle.
Quite often fines are a pretty limp and ineffective way of modulating an individual's behaviour which is ultimately a choice by society.
We can make a better choice there to induce the behaviour that we want from antisocial people.
> escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
My country - Poland - implemented this part a couple of years ago. Specifically a reoffense in the same category within two years results in a higher tier fine - about twice the usual amount. Fines were also adjusted for inflation after over 20 years of being nominally the same.
The rate of cars passing me doing 180km/h+, so 40km/h+ above the local 140km/h limit, fell drastically.
Particularly speeding cars in poor condition (like dangling linkages etc.) vanished. Nobody wants a ticket that's worth more than the car.
It's really not, especially on a highway. Makes me sad to read about more and more speed restrictions - there is nothing wrong with those in areas there cars and pedestrians cross, but seeing a highway with a 110 (or sometimes even 80) speed limit just feels stupid. Sometimes I'm happy to live in a place with relatively modest speeding fines (also, you have to speed A LOT to loose your license over it, it's a very rare occasion).
It looks like it changed in 2011? The trend was already decidedly downward from 2000 to 2011, so it’s hard to say what if any impact raising the speed limit had. Xkcd 552
Yes - the interesting bit is that this downward trend was stronger than the effect of this legislation.
Truth be told a lot of this has to do with most fatalities being that of pedestrians. Personally I witnessed two such accidents, fortunately minor ones. Both times it was a pedestrian crossing on their green, but the car turning right also having green.
For Americans, 120 kph is ~75mph and 140kph is ~85mph. I think there is a single road in the US with an 85 speed limit, and only some states use 75-80.
I’ve definitely driven 85mph on the I10 in texas. The roads are flat and straight, so it almost makes sense - but you have basically zero margin for error at those speeds. If I recall, the road fatality numbers for texas aren’t exactly good.
But we are. I don't want to turn this into a political slap fight but it became apparent to me the extent in which people are swayed by advertising when I read an article that talked about how one party in the US was concerned that the other was going to win an important seat becase the other party had done a recent spending surge on ads in last few days before election day and they were concerned that they couldn't match it.
That article right there forever changed my view of the average person on the street. In a highly polarized campaign and political environment with months to years of knowing who the candidates and policies are and they can still be swayed by millions in TV and radio ads? Like it sounds like these people could literally be on their way to vote for a candidate and then switch their mind at the last second because they hear an ad on the radio as they're pulling into the polling station.
That's absurd -- but it's real.
People are completely enthralled by advertisements to the point where they'll buy a stupid truck that they can't fit anywhere, that they need a ladder to climb into, that has terrible sight lines, simply because advertising tells them to.
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