How does that make advertising a bullshit job? The only way advertising won't exist or won't be needed is when humanity becomes a hive mind and removes all competition.
Countries can just ban advertising, and hopefully we will slowly move towards this. There are already quite a few specific bans - tobacco advertising is banned, gambling and sex product advertising is only allowed in certain specific situations, billboards and other forms of advertising on public spaces are often banned in large European cities, and so on.
No. They can ban particular modes. They can’t stop people from using power and money to spread ideas.
In the US hedge funds are banned from advertising and all they did is change their forms of presentation to things like presenting at conferences or on podcasts.
If there was a socialist fantasy of a government review board for which all products were submitted before being listed in a government catalog. Then advertising would be lobbying and jockeying that review board to view your product in a particular way. Or merely to go through the process and ensure correct information was kept.
The parts that are only done to maintain status quo with a competitor aren’t productive, and that’s quite a bit of it. Two (or more) sides spend money, nothing changes. No good is produced. The whole exercise is basically an accident.
Like when a competing country builds their tenth battleship, so you commission another one to match them. The world would have been better if neither had been build. Money changed hands (one supposes) but the aim of the whole exercise had no effect. It was similar to paying people to dig holes a fill them back in again, to the tune of serious money. This was so utterly stupid and wasteful that there was a whole treaty about it, to try to prevent so many bullshit jobs from being created again.
Or when Pepsi increases their ad spending in Brazil, so Coca Cola counters, and much of the money ends up accomplishing little except keeping things just how they were. That component or quality of the ad industry, the book claims, is bullshit, on account of not doing any good.
The book treats of several ways in which a job might be bullshit, and just kinda mentions this one as an aside: the zero-sum activity. It mostly covers other sorts, but this is the closest I can recall it coming to declaring sales “bullshit” (the book rarely, bordering on never, paints even most of an entire industry or field as bullshit, and advertising isn’t sales, but it’s as close as it got, as I recall)
See what I mean? What you see as a bullshit job is just completely misunderstanding how human beings work.
- Which products get included in the candidate list? Every product in existence which claims use?
- how many results can it return? And in what order?
- which attributes or description of the product is provided to the llm? Who provides it?
- how are the claims in those descriptions verified?
- what if my business believes the claims or description of our product is false?
- how will the llm change its relative valuations based on demand?
simiones|12 days ago
groundzeros2015|12 days ago
No. They can ban particular modes. They can’t stop people from using power and money to spread ideas.
In the US hedge funds are banned from advertising and all they did is change their forms of presentation to things like presenting at conferences or on podcasts.
If there was a socialist fantasy of a government review board for which all products were submitted before being listed in a government catalog. Then advertising would be lobbying and jockeying that review board to view your product in a particular way. Or merely to go through the process and ensure correct information was kept.
bubblewand|12 days ago
Like when a competing country builds their tenth battleship, so you commission another one to match them. The world would have been better if neither had been build. Money changed hands (one supposes) but the aim of the whole exercise had no effect. It was similar to paying people to dig holes a fill them back in again, to the tune of serious money. This was so utterly stupid and wasteful that there was a whole treaty about it, to try to prevent so many bullshit jobs from being created again.
Or when Pepsi increases their ad spending in Brazil, so Coca Cola counters, and much of the money ends up accomplishing little except keeping things just how they were. That component or quality of the ad industry, the book claims, is bullshit, on account of not doing any good.
The book treats of several ways in which a job might be bullshit, and just kinda mentions this one as an aside: the zero-sum activity. It mostly covers other sorts, but this is the closest I can recall it coming to declaring sales “bullshit” (the book rarely, bordering on never, paints even most of an entire industry or field as bullshit, and advertising isn’t sales, but it’s as close as it got, as I recall)
groundzeros2015|12 days ago
Is it a waste of effort when two companies try to make the best electric car?
If it is wasteful what does aw orld look like where nobody ever spends resources on a goal which overlaps with someone else?
wiseowise|12 days ago
groundzeros2015|12 days ago
- Which products get included in the candidate list? Every product in existence which claims use? - how many results can it return? And in what order? - which attributes or description of the product is provided to the llm? Who provides it? - how are the claims in those descriptions verified? - what if my business believes the claims or description of our product is false? - how will the llm change its relative valuations based on demand?