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How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

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Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#11

Post by anigbrowl »

If you need to send out 200 personalized letters to sales leads but haven’t got the time to handwrite them yourself — or if your handwriting is, like mine, grotesque — then Maillift will generate them for you, using teams of genuinely carbon-based people.

That's horrible! I don't mind getting a printed letter but if I got a handwritten letter that I later found out was faked I would never, ever do business with that person again. Doing this means the very first step in an attempt to form a business relationship is an act of deception.

This is of course a classic submarine story: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Every time I feel like I have come to terms with marketing people as economic actors they manage to plumb some new nadir.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#12

Post by runarberg »

Fuxy wrote: post #10
mnw21cam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in the few years before the association is ruined, those marketers that successfully fool people into reading their junk mail will make money.

Or just piss off a lot of people for wasting their time. Everybody assumes if i see your advert I'm going to buy your product regardless how i run into it that's just plain not true. It may actually have the opposite effect I'll remember it for wasting my time and avoid that annoying company that is spending way too much on advertizing instead of doing something useful with it.

This is not how advertisements work. You're not "persuaded" by a single ad. Rather you are primed into believing it. A few days (or even hours) after you've seen an ad, you forget the source, but the content remains in your memory. The next time you see similar content, it will be more likely to stick. This goes on a few iterations, and pretty soon, out of a given population, the average individual is more likely to behave as suggested by the advertisement. What you thing during the advertisement is only secondary.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#13

Post by vdaniuk »

anigbrowl wrote: post #11

If you need to send out 200 personalized letters to sales leads but haven’t got the time to handwrite them yourself — or if your handwriting is, like mine, grotesque — then Maillift will generate them for you, using teams of genuinely carbon-based people. That's horrible! I don't mind getting a printed letter but if I got a handwritten letter that I later found out was faked I would never, ever do business with that…

"Marketing people" is one of the most egregious generalization errors on HN.

It's certainly in vogue to hate on marketers but it is not an identity, marketer is a hat that people wear. Just stop.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#14

Post by ben0x539 »

andreasvc wrote: post #3

This is so pointless. People have positive associations with handwritten letters because of the content that goes with it. If marketeers start using handwritten letters they will just ruin that association.

So? Marketeers didn't pay for that association and aren't really invested in not exhausting it.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#15

Post by philbarr »

vdaniuk wrote: post #13
anigbrowl wrote: post #11

If you need to send out 200 personalized letters to sales leads but haven’t got the time to handwrite them yourself — or if your handwriting is, like mine, grotesque — then Maillift will generate them for you, using teams of genuinely carbon-based people. That's horrible! I don't mind getting a printed letter but if I got a handwritten letter that I later found out was faked I would never, ever do business with that…

"Marketing people" is one of the most egregious generalization errors on HN. It's certainly in vogue to hate on marketers but it is not an identity, marketer is a hat that people wear. Just stop.

Hating on "marketing people" isn't just an HN thing, I think. I'm fairly sure most people hate marketers, particularly because it's their job to try and part you from your money. In fact, on HN we are probably more lenient because we are some of the people that are interested in separating people from their cash.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#16

Post by andreasvc »

ben0x539 wrote: post #14
andreasvc wrote: post #3

This is so pointless. People have positive associations with handwritten letters because of the content that goes with it. If marketeers start using handwritten letters they will just ruin that association.

So? Marketeers didn't pay for that association and aren't really invested in not exhausting it.

Sure, and it wouldn't be the first advertisement strategy predicated on fooling people. I just think that any goodwill associated with handwriting will quickly evaporate and on top of that it will make their marketing copy less legible (handwriting takes more effort to scan/skim). I'd say it's a lose-lose situation.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#17

Post by _mulder_ »

Judging from the Robot letter in the article, the easiest way to spot a robot-penned letter would be that specific words are all the same. Look at the word 'the' in the picture, or even the 'th' in 'this'. They're all identical.

The robot seems to be working from just a small pool of characters.

Some sort of randomisation algorithm would work well here, varying the size, weight and slant or jitter of each letter would at least make it appear more random, and harder to spot.

Having said that, if you are someone who works on this sort of invention, please take a long, hard look at what you're doing with your life and consider just how this invention is contributing to the advancement of mankind.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#18

Post by andreasvc »

runarberg wrote: post #12
Fuxy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just piss off a lot of people for wasting their time. Everybody assumes if i see your advert I'm going to buy your product regardless how i run into it that's just plain not true. It may actually have the opposite effect I'll remember it for wasting my time and avoid that annoying company that is spending way too much on advertizing instead of doing something useful with it.

This is not how advertisements work. You're not "persuaded" by a single ad. Rather you are primed into believing it. A few days (or even hours) after you've seen an ad, you forget the source, but the content remains in your memory. The next time you see similar content, it will be more likely to stick. This goes on a few iterations, and pretty soon, out of a given population, the average individual is more likely to…

I know that theory, but I suspect it doesn't apply to these faux personal messages. For example you might get a coupon from some company because of your birthday, and the goal is clearly to get you to use that coupon within, say, two weeks. The handwriting is thus intended as a nudge towards immediate action as opposed to mass media advertisements which prime you for brand recognition.

Re: How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

#20

Post by joosha »

As a kid, when I used to write on white paper, my lines used to slope and I used to throw them in the trash and try again. Over time, underneath the white sheet of paper, I started placing another paper that has lines and a margin, so I can see through the white paper and know where exactly I should write. The result was perfectly straight lines and a perfect margin.

I'm not a robot.

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