Be sure to click the "Turn bullshit on?" link at the top-right for a chuckle.
I thought that was bad, but I noticed adblock was blocking 67 things. I turned it off and it is truly awful.
Death to Bullshit
71–80 of 217 posts
Re: Death to Bullshit
#72This is by far the most ironic discussion in HN history! To be fair, i cant back up that statement with evidence...but wait, none of the comments here or for that matter content in this death to bs website are backed up by anything other than personal opinions and anecdotal theories.
You would hope that a rallying cry of Death to BS would invoke a slight bias towards withholding BS and focusing on facts that make a difference.
Do I agree that there is way too much noise online? Yes, but complaining about it is as noisy as things come!!!
Re: Death to Bullshit
#73> Now this is cheap populism I can get behind!
This is the lowest ranked comment right now, but I think it is great, and I want to rephrase it in a way that maybe more people can appreciate it (and hopefully doesn't get me downvoted like crazy)
So the reason I take offence at "advice" or a movement like this (not sure what it's supposed to be) is that it makes the speaker and everybody who associates with it look incredibly good, while it is barely bothering to offer any proof as to why it is actually good advice.
I am aware that this sounds cynical and I beg you to resist the temptation to downvote and/or ignore this comment. Instead I'd invite you to ask yourself: Could this argument have something to it despite the fact that it's pretty uncomfortable?
Going on, why does getting behind this make us look good? It shows that:
* we are not ignorant of questionable business practices in our field
* we don't prey on the (intellectually) weak in order to sustain our businesses
* we value ideals like craft more than money (ignoring that most of these practices are not driven by greed at all but are the only way to ensure the survival of some companies, which brings me to the next point, that)
* we are not afraid to "stick it to the man" (even though "the man" is probably a complete strawman and we don't have to fear any real retaliation for expressing this opinion)
Now there is nothing wrong with advice that makes us look good per se, but is it also good advice?
> People's capacity for bullshit is rapidly diminishing
Again, this may sound good, but it could have been said at any point in time and be true, the question is: Is it diminishing faster then new ways of bullshitting arise?
And maybe it is not diminishing at all. Take gambling for example. It is obviously "intentionally deceptive or insincere" in that it won't make you rich, it is in fact mathematically proven to make you lose money, yet people seem to have gambled for thousands of years and will probably go on to do so for thousands of years to come.
The attempt of linking bullshit to Sturgeon's law is also pretty weak IMO. It's not like anybody set out to put something in the bottom 90%, it's what happens to, well, 90% of things, and it's not at all clear that it was BS that put it there. In other words: Naively looking at the top 10% and saying: "None of those is doing BS" does not mean the lack of BS got them there. All it says is that "In the top 10% you don't have to BS (because you can afford not to)", or even just "BS doesn't get you any further in the top 10% (and that's why nobody is doing it)".
Finally, Buzzfeed is certainly in the top 10% of "lighthearted entertainment on the internet" and it is BS (and only BS) that got them there, because that's the kind of environment that "lighthearted entertainment on the internet" is like. No amount of shaming will change anything about that (but would still make us look good, so produce some quality content over there already!).
tl,dr: Be aware of advice that sounds good. People will like to offer it even when it is not practical at all, or only under very specific circumstances, that may not apply to you.
Re: Death to Bullshit
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that bullshit is a negative externality. It's cognitive pollution. Those who clutter the world with bullshit reap the rewards of nabbing the suckers who respond to it, but don't pay the costs of imposing those cognitive loads on everyone else. That leads to more bullshit than would be economically efficient. Take a simple example like billboards. If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose l…
That's an interesting concept, it makes the cumulative attention span of the people exposed something akin to tragedy of the commons.
It's worse. In a typical tragedy of the commons scenario, common resource eventually get depleted and the responsible parties leave. Here, you can't really deplete the commons, you can only compete for the share in it. Which means there is no limit within the system for the negative feedback loop that occurs.
Advertisers play a zero-sum game, committing more and more resources to one-up each other. They're wasting ever increasing amount of fuel, minerals and man hours on epsilon marginal benefit. Those are real, tangible costs for society.
Re: Death to Bullshit
#75Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…
>neither Amazon nor walmart advertises much... What? Amazon is googles largest advertiser and walmart outspends target almost 2:1 ... http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-tops-list-google-s-2...
That's spending on Google ads, not total ad spend. The ad industry complains that WalMart doesn't spend enough on ads.[1] Amazon's ad spending went way up in 2013, but it didn't help; too much was related to their mobile devices, which flopped.[2][3]
[1] http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/fix-walmart-s-woes-spe... [2] http://adage.com/article/agency-news/amazon-reviews-media-ac... [3] http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-loses-126-million-ma...
Re: Death to Bullshit
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work Really? People do do an awful lot of stuff which doesn't work. Is there good evidence that this stuff works?
Advertising? Yes, there is. I'm sure you can find numerous reports on its effectiveness.
Personally I do suspect it's a multi-level, recursive scam. After all, convincing you that advertising works is itself advertising from the point of view of companies that you'll pay to advertise you (note: unless you are personally going door-to-door and telling people about your product, you're always paying someone; printshops that make your leaflets and posters are a big part of advertising industry). And since so many advertising is dishonest, it stands to reason that advertising of advertising will also often be dishonest.
A corollary: I do believe that "metrics" in on-line advertising are a tool for people using them to bullshit themselves into believing their ads work. Even an average college-educated person has zero understanding of statistics, and without it, it's easy to draw any conclusion you like from any dataset.
Re: Death to Bullshit
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
-> Billboards are pretty helpful. They often tell me I can get food by taking the next exit. Usually I find the state-made info signs on the sides of freeways more informative than the advertisement billboards because it displays everything I need in one quick glance. The tiles of each "food" or gas or whatever option partitioned left or right, denoting which way I need to turn after the exit. That's just me, though.…
It's not like it's 2 alternatives of content we're talking about, one legitimate and one not. I think it's more that there's legitimate content that's constantly getting interference from this extraneous and meaningless noise. It's important to remember that such abstractions enable you to reject the content you don't personally see as meritorious as unwholesome. And that's a sure way to fool oneself. Rewind the cloc…
-> One's noise is another's music. Why is it there if no one finds it helpful?
Sure, but I'm not talking about subjective opinions about content. I'm talking about the other things interfering with my ability to consume the content I'm trying to consume. And I don't think that this is a classic "no true Scottsman" in that sense. I'm not making any statement about what is or isn't true internet content (because obviously that would be silly). Perhaps my word choice of "legitimate" was unwise in that way.
Re: Death to Bullshit
#78Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…
The savings rate being low is insufficient to justify your claim that advertising does not create net demand. It's also possible that people choose to work more to afford more goods.
I see Americans working very hard when I feel they would get more life satisfaction out of cutting expenses, primarily the big three: transportation, housing, and food.
Re: Death to Bullshit
#79I was just thinking yesterday how inundated we are by ads these days. You see ads on television, the radio, the internet, billboards, public transportation, sports stadium/jerseys, magazines, guerrilla marketing, product-placements and celebrity endorsements, and not to mention PR (which is just advertising by other means). Talk about mental pollution!
Re: Death to Bullshit
#80Unless we start paying for online content, this is going to not only continue, but get worse.