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How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

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Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#31

Post by rogerbinns »

> “Research on persuasion shows the more arguments you list in favor of something, regardless of the quality of those arguments, the more that people tend to believe it,”

[1] has some different research which claims that people average the arguments made, rather than summing them up, which most expect. It won't make any difference if you have a whole bunch of low value arguments, but will if there a combination of strong points and weaker ones.

[1] http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/the_presentation_mistake_you...

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#32

Post by vacri »

mindslight wrote: post #21
sokrates wrote: post #16

> You've seen them. No. AdBlock.

It's truly amazing the amount of mental energy people will apparently spend dwelling on advertising, even worrying that if they accidentally click it their life could be forfeit to a scam, but yet they won't spend the five minutes it would take to simply install Adblock.

I use flashblock instead of adblock. Advertising pays for much of the internet, so I feel it's reasonable to let some of it through. Flashblock kills the worst offenders, and given I also run noscript (which isn't for everyone), the rest of the bad ones are taken care of as well. Simple images are allowed through, and these kinds of ads aren't particularly distracting. In the rare case there is a bad animated .gif, hitting 'esc' stops them cycling.

Adblock just feels like bad faith to me - there is no 'give and take', it's just 'take'.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#34

Post by aspensmonster »

patmcguire wrote: post #25
CGamesPlay wrote: post #6

http://www.oneweirdkerneltrick.com/

Oh my god, how deep are there fake links?

They're this deep:

http://www.oneweirdkerneltrick.com/polytope.pdf

>Abstract

>Pyramid schemes are a well-known way of taking bundles of money from suckers. This paper is not about them. Although on first inspection, this paper sounds like it is about pyramid schemes, we promise that it is not.

And a little further down...

>1. Introduction and Related Work

>This is not a pyramid scheme. This is an easy way for you to make money. It is not related to a pyramid scheme because it is a polytope scheme. For a comparison, please see Fig.2

>If you want guaranteed fi nancial freedom and personal fulfillment from algebraic geometry, sign up now to invest in our gift-giving invest- ment scheme.

All laid out in beautifully typeset LaTeX. Brings a tear to my eye.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#35

Post by throwawayg99 »

I work with a dozen or so people who are involved in this sort of work. I think it is very interesting to see how they rationalize and deal with their moral compass internally.

One of the guys is the most caring, liberal, loving person you'd ever meet; he justifies being involved in this sort of skeezy marketing work as "I can take a small amount from a lot of people and amplify the result to do good with a lot of money."

He genuinely believes this. A lot of the other guys simply try not to see the "punters" (potential customers [1]) as real people, they are disconnected through the impersonal nature of the internet.

[1] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/punter_2

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#36

Post by Tloewald »

aspensmonster wrote: post #34
patmcguire wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, how deep are there fake links?

They're this deep: http://www.oneweirdkerneltrick.com/polytope.pdf >Abstract >Pyramid schemes are a well-known way of taking bundles of money from suckers. This paper is not about them. Although on first inspection, this paper sounds like it is about pyramid schemes, we promise that it is not. And a little further down... >1. Introduction and Related Work >This is not a pyramid scheme. This is an easy way for you to…

The paper is truly awesome and fractally hilarious. Thanks for the link.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#38

Post by bravura »

aspensmonster wrote: post #34
patmcguire wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, how deep are there fake links?

They're this deep: http://www.oneweirdkerneltrick.com/polytope.pdf >Abstract >Pyramid schemes are a well-known way of taking bundles of money from suckers. This paper is not about them. Although on first inspection, this paper sounds like it is about pyramid schemes, we promise that it is not. And a little further down... >1. Introduction and Related Work >This is not a pyramid scheme. This is an easy way for you to…

Found a typo:

"You do not want to be pursuing some Ph.D. when all your friends are pouring crystal all over benjamins in the Cayman islands."

"crystal" should by "Cristal", the much hyped bubbly in hip-hop lyrics.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#39

Post by MBCook »

vacri wrote: post #32
mindslight wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's truly amazing the amount of mental energy people will apparently spend dwelling on advertising, even worrying that if they accidentally click it their life could be forfeit to a scam, but yet they won't spend the five minutes it would take to simply install Adblock.

I use flashblock instead of adblock. Advertising pays for much of the internet, so I feel it's reasonable to let some of it through. Flashblock kills the worst offenders, and given I also run noscript (which isn't for everyone), the rest of the bad ones are taken care of as well. Simple images are allowed through, and these kinds of ads aren't particularly distracting. In the rare case there is a bad animated .gif, h…

I used to skip adblock for the same reason. Using Flashblock used to be good enough. I just wanted to avoid animated crud and auto-play audio, and it worked great.

Two years ago (or so) I installed adblock and set it to only block those annoying little social share buttons which started infecting everything. Eventually I had to turn the main rules on. As more sites started to put more and more obnoxious "Take our survey!" and "Hey, why not sign up before you view the site!" pop-ups and JS-hover-ads and such, I couldn't stand it any more.

I make an effort to support the sites I like. I have subscriptions to Ars, Reddit, LWN, and a few other sites. I turn the ad-blocking off on sites that act reasonably (Reddit and LWN are two examples).

It amazes me to use other people's computers (or my own iPad) sometimes. I'll go to a site I see links from now-and-then and realize just how much ridiculous crud is getting filtered out by AdBlock.

I understand your point of view, I still largely feel that way. But things were getting so intrusive I finally gave in. I like that AdBlock has a "good ads" program, I hope it succeeds.

Re: How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet

#40

Post by surement »

aspensmonster wrote: post #34
patmcguire wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, how deep are there fake links?

They're this deep: http://www.oneweirdkerneltrick.com/polytope.pdf >Abstract >Pyramid schemes are a well-known way of taking bundles of money from suckers. This paper is not about them. Although on first inspection, this paper sounds like it is about pyramid schemes, we promise that it is not. And a little further down... >1. Introduction and Related Work >This is not a pyramid scheme. This is an easy way for you to…

Incredible; love the coupon at the end "Yes, I want stress-free personal financial freedom via Algebraic Geometry!!!"
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