Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#891

Post by kuschku » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #889

kuschku wrote: post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a GfK Study from April 2021, asking 1001 Germans between 18 and 74, the largest influences on purchasing decisions were: - personal recommendations from friends (35,5%) - independent comparison tests (30,5%) - amazon reviews (23,2%) - media reports (13,7%) - corporate information, including advertising (10,0%)

Many of those can include advertising, such as Amazon placement and reviews, media reports (many PR firms exist to push your product onto media outlets), personal recommendations, and even independent comparison tests (people see an ad, and research it more thoroughly including seeing how it fares on comparison tests, and perhaps tell their friends too). I am not saying that the tests themselves are not independent,…

> such as Amazon […] reviews

> many PR firms exist to push your product onto media outlets

> personal recommendations

Half of that is fraud, the other half is at least unethical. Reviews may only be the personal opinion of people who provably purchased the product. False reviews are fraud and explicitly a criminal act. Placing ads in media without explicitly marking it clearly and obviously an ad, so-called “native advertising”, is explicitly a criminal act.

> the prevalence of advertising is such that you cannot disentangle its influence from every other.

My original argument was that advertising isn't necessary. I think after this discussion it's become obvious that there are many other working and prevalent ways to discover products.

In fact, all advertising does is distort and corrupt those existing methods, trying to get me to spend more money than necessary on a worse product. Every cent spent on advertising could've been spent on improving the product instead.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#892

Post by satvikpendem » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #891

satvikpendem wrote: post #889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of those can include advertising, such as Amazon placement and reviews, media reports (many PR firms exist to push your product onto media outlets), personal recommendations, and even independent comparison tests (people see an ad, and research it more thoroughly including seeing how it fares on comparison tests, and perhaps tell their friends too). I am not saying that the tests themselves are not independent,…

> such as Amazon […] reviews > many PR firms exist to push your product onto media outlets > personal recommendations Half of that is fraud, the other half is at least unethical. Reviews may only be the personal opinion of people who provably purchased the product. False reviews are fraud and explicitly a criminal act. Placing ads in media without explicitly marking it clearly and obviously an ad, so-called “native a…

> Half of that is fraud, the other half is at least unethical.

Not really. Yes, ads must be clearly stated, but oftentimes news outlets are just looking for stories to run, which are not compensated with free product or money, and thus are not subject to such advertising laws (in the US). With regards to reviews, I don't mean that reviews are paid, rather that Amazon charges companies to be "sponsored" and if people buy those and review them, their review was at least partially influenced by buying the top sponsored product. Same with personal recommendations, not sure how you can construe it as fraud or unethicality if I see a Coke ad, buy it, and recommend it to my friends.

> Every cent spent on advertising could've been spent on improving the product instead.

It is clear that you don't work on any products that make money, or at least aren't in any of the non-technical sales or marketing roles, or are not a founder who must necessarily do both the technical and business side. I used to think the same way, that ads are bad, but if I build a product and I want people to use it, I must necessarily tell people about it in some way, Twitter posts, telling a local reporter or tech blog, cold outreach to people, all of that is advertising in some respect. If I build it, they do not come, automatically, of their own volition, they don't even know I exist! Us engineers do not exist in a vacuum, we code for the goal of businesses to make money. Such black-and-white thinking as yours is not conducive to actually making and selling a product.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#893

Post by kuschku » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #892

kuschku wrote: post #891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such as Amazon […] reviews > many PR firms exist to push your product onto media outlets > personal recommendations Half of that is fraud, the other half is at least unethical. Reviews may only be the personal opinion of people who provably purchased the product. False reviews are fraud and explicitly a criminal act. Placing ads in media without explicitly marking it clearly and obviously an ad, so-called “native a…

> Half of that is fraud, the other half is at least unethical. Not really. Yes, ads must be clearly stated, but oftentimes news outlets are just looking for stories to run, which are not compensated with free product or money, and thus are not subject to such advertising laws (in the US). With regards to reviews, I don't mean that reviews are paid, rather that Amazon charges companies to be "sponsored" and if people…

I was co-founder in the past, and I run a few open source projects. My partner specializes in SEO, and my neighbor is in a leading position in an ad agency.

I understand the advertising industry perfectly well, but that's exactly why I hate it so much. All advertising does is help incumbents, because they can afford to waste money on excessive marketing budgets. So many products are sold on buzzwords, false claims and promoting a lifestyle instead of on merit.

Advertising, especially false advertising, needs to be at least heavily regulated if not banned entirely. Even the slightest exaggeration from the truth needs to be punished harshly. It's impossible to compete honestly in a market when your competitors are selling based on AI Cloud Blockchain Smart Industry 4.0 IoT buzzwords.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#894

Post by satvikpendem » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 3:45 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #893

satvikpendem wrote: post #892

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Half of that is fraud, the other half is at least unethical. Not really. Yes, ads must be clearly stated, but oftentimes news outlets are just looking for stories to run, which are not compensated with free product or money, and thus are not subject to such advertising laws (in the US). With regards to reviews, I don't mean that reviews are paid, rather that Amazon charges companies to be "sponsored" and if people…

I was co-founder in the past, and I run a few open source projects. My partner specializes in SEO, and my neighbor is in a leading position in an ad agency. I understand the advertising industry perfectly well, but that's exactly why I hate it so much. All advertising does is help incumbents, because they can afford to waste money on excessive marketing budgets. So many products are sold on buzzwords, false claims an…

Sure, I hate false advertising as much as the next person, but by banning all advertising, I'd make no money from my product if I couldn't even tell people my product existed, which is the effect such bans you advocate for would have.

To get back to a prior question you asked (which I did not answer it seems) as to why banning advertising would protect incumbents, it's because people already know about them while they wouldn't know about upstarts. Again with the Coke example, a new soda brand would find it exceedingly difficult to gain a foothold if everyone simply defaults to Coke normally. Same as in software, imagine if a new search engine competing with Google came about, but since everyone already uses Google and since the new search engine could not advertise themselves (with such a ban as yours), they will likely fail, even if their product is superior.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#895

Post by kuschku » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #894

kuschku wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was co-founder in the past, and I run a few open source projects. My partner specializes in SEO, and my neighbor is in a leading position in an ad agency. I understand the advertising industry perfectly well, but that's exactly why I hate it so much. All advertising does is help incumbents, because they can afford to waste money on excessive marketing budgets. So many products are sold on buzzwords, false claims an…

Sure, I hate false advertising as much as the next person, but by banning all advertising, I'd make no money from my product if I couldn't even tell people my product existed, which is the effect such bans you advocate for would have. To get back to a prior question you asked (which I did not answer it seems) as to why banning advertising would protect incumbents, it's because people already know about them while the…

Google did not grow through advertising, but through word-of-mouth because they were actually better than the competition. I discovered the soda brands I'm now primarily drinking (Fritz, Premium) the same way.

So much of human society works through word-of-mouth. In fact, I'd argue that the type of megacorporation that can only exist grow through advertising is in fact damaging to society in itself. Small, localised SMBs is how we should go into the future.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#896

Post by carapace » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #868

icepat wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've skipped pretty much most of my argument, but I'll humour you nonetheless. There's no such thing as science being out of the loop. Read my other comment, if you're pushing this unverified "technology" as a cure for depression, you're doing something dangerous and immoral. Just because you found value in this, does not mean it's an alternative to evidence-based, and tested methods. I also solved my depression by…

> You've skipped pretty much most of my argument, Well, it wasn't very good... Frankly, comparing NLP to Scientology or homeopathy is silly. > but I'll humour you nonetheless. I appreciate it. This isn't my first rodeo talking to scientific skeptics about NLP. Like I said, usually the best I can hope for it that the person I'm talking to is willing to admit they don't have any first-person experience with NLP. (They…

I just found the paper:

https://doi.org/10.2478/V10059-010-0008-0

"Thirty-Five Years of Research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP Research Data Base. State of the Art or Pseudoscientific Decoration?"

Polish Psychological Bulletin, 2010, vol 41 (2), 58-66

Oh, but I saw that on the paper itself the author's name has an asterix:

Tomasz Witkowski*

This leads to a footnote at the bottom of the first page that says:

*Klub Sceptyków Polskich [Polish Sceptics Club]

(Followed by a physical address and an email address.)

So he's a Skeptic. In other words, he's probably strongly biased against NLP from the outset, eh? I'm no longer sure that reading this wouldn't be a big waste of my time.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#897

Post by _dain_ » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

berniedurfee wrote: post #801

_dain_ wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have links to those articles/videos?

Here are a couple videos that provide most of the insight… https://youtu.be/4T9UQ4FBVXI https://youtu.be/Bmjr4Q6je8I Basically, you can’t bench with elbows straight out, because you’ll hurt your shoulders. So you tuck your elbows a bit, but that means you’re fighting some leverage because the bar is no longer above your shoulders. To fix this, you arch your back, which rolls your shoulders back and puts the bar back…

Makes perfect sense, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#898

Post by satvikpendem » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #895

satvikpendem wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I hate false advertising as much as the next person, but by banning all advertising, I'd make no money from my product if I couldn't even tell people my product existed, which is the effect such bans you advocate for would have. To get back to a prior question you asked (which I did not answer it seems) as to why banning advertising would protect incumbents, it's because people already know about them while the…

Google did not grow through advertising, but through word-of-mouth because they were actually better than the competition. I discovered the soda brands I'm now primarily drinking (Fritz, Premium) the same way. So much of human society works through word-of-mouth. In fact, I'd argue that the type of megacorporation that can only exist grow through advertising is in fact damaging to society in itself. Small, localised…

Small, localized SMBs were the ones most hurt by advertising changes such as between Apple and Facebook. But, let's agree to disagree, I don't think we'll change each other's minds in this conversation. Have a good day and happy new year.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/small-businesses-cou...

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#899

Post by 16Sinker » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

satvikpendem wrote: post #815

latexr wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the vast majority of adults don’t read books because as kids they were forced to read “classic” works they didn’t identify with nor enjoy and have thus been conditioned to see books as boring and worthless. Perhaps the solution is to not force specific books on anyone. If kids want to read Twilight for class, let them. Maybe it’s more important (and effective) to have them read anything and enjoy it than crammi…

> Perhaps the solution is to not force specific books on anyone. If kids want to read Twilight for class, let them. Maybe it’s more important (and effective) to have them read anything and enjoy it than cramming “high literature” down their throats. We had two separate classes in school, one for English, and one just called "reading". In it, we could read whatever we wanted, as long as we read for the entire period.…

I would actually really have enjoyed "reading" class. Free periods where we got to read whatever were always the best in middle school, wish those continued. I'd just read whatever if I could anyway - and hell, sometimes that was the classics after all.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#900

Post by 16Sinker » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 6:05 PM UTC

grogenaut wrote: post #701

therealdrag0 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of adults read almost 0 books. I think there’s some value in forcing classic cultural capital when we can even if it’s lost on some.

There's always "that book" for everyone. That one they finally click with. And then they can't shut up about it, such as the davinci-code... or outliers (my daughter's first)... but so few books hit you like lightning... I think part of it is just trying to get to that point where one hits you so expose people to books, who know what will stick. Worked for my daughter. For me it was axctually the first novel I read.…

My dad did the same, and I have to thank him for that. It may have been expensive but no more so than doing some equivalent with video games or the like, none of which would have aided me as much as reading did.