Pondering advertising

One of my personal favorite posts talks about the process of making money, which I think is about what other people want, and key in that process is letting them know you can give it. Which is where I think advertising naturally fits.

That is, if you have something that you know people might want, like a great new something, you need to let them know you have it. But how?

In the future I think most advertising will be targeted to people who actually may want that something which gets into all kinds of important things like privacy, as how do you know they may want it?

But for those who think advertising can go away, just find something they want, and ask them how they found out about it. Maybe a friend advertised it for them, and yup, that's called word-of-mouth advertising, and I thought I'd just link to Wikipedia on the subject like normal. But instead found an article talking about how businesses try to use it.

However, I think few people are concerned about honest word-of-mouth where friends point something out that they like because they actually do like it! And not because some business entity is manipulating them into recommending it.

To me that's like, yeah! Now we can focus on the difference. And to me it's simple: companies try to push things on you to buy because they want you to buy, not necessarily because you want or need something. And they can even try to develop a need, just to sell you something. That can be really irritating.

IN essence, a business entity may just want to use and abuse you for their own profit, and rely on advertising to trick you into buying at their benefit and not your own.

That is despicable behavior.

To me that kind of covers it: your friends can have genuine interest and appropriate knowledge about you, and make a desired recommendation. Even if it IS off you know their intent is good.

But a business can try to exploit you, and trick you into buying something for their benefit, with no real concern or interest in your benefit.

So I conclude that advertising in and of itself is not a bad thing. Without some kind of advertising, how can you know some entity has something you want?

But pushing things on people that they don't want is irritating.

The web can chase a different model though because the scale can be so huge. If you have a product that people in a dozen countries might want and can get from you, then it hardly pays to irritate lots of other people. And is actually kind of hard.

Marketing in the US for instance could be national for lots of products. But marketing to the world is a formidable challenge. It hardly pays even if you could to show an advertisement to lots of people globally who have no interest in buying that something.

My guess is there is a sharp difference between marketing for global products versus local ones where national or smaller is local.

And had to come back and edit and add, as I'm like, but what about web search? And reality is, yeah, it's great if people can search on things they want and get sent to something you have out there saying you have what they want. But what are the odds, really?

Other people have to DO something for you to get there.

It's open source and freely available, so not something for people to buy, but maybe still it's informative that back when I first put my project on SourceForge over a decade ago, it somehow began to appear in thousands of directories. I just put it on SourceForge, sat back, and lots of other people did things like putting it in those directories. And I'm very thankful they did.

So yeah, web search doesn't change the dynamic: to get to a high enough level for web search to get people to that something you have they might want, something has to be done by you, which I'm thinking has to be some kind of advertising to get that something noticed, or done by others, which I'm sure involves some kind of referral.

Been discussing on this blog various ideas about social media based on referral versus what I think are content based ones of today, and that may get closer to friendly referral, and let you punish for what I will call predatory referral.

Interesting. Will ponder further.


James Harris

Considering pressure to be successful

There is a way I think the web can impact negatively when it comes to its connectivity, which lets me get into the subject of Internet trolls, as reality is it can take a while for things to work out for someone. But you can get feedback from people from the start who may become aware of your dreams or passions long before you've broken through to real success!

That's where the web can be a bit harsh unless you shift your perspective, and realize that for most people, real success as most understand it, takes several decades, as in, about 20 years.

That's not entertaining though.

What people want to believe is overnight success, and yes, there are people who are achieving celebrity at least, rather rapidly, where the web is a big factor.

But they're not typical.

However, feeling the need to not look like a loser can make one susceptible to people, yup, calling you a loser! Which they will actually do even if you somehow manage that rapid rise to success. But at least then they can be counterbalanced by vast numbers of voices cheering you.

Early on though you can find yourself hearing nothing but negatives. And yup, will admit I have heard quite my share about me and my work. So yes, I need the perspective I'm giving here. It's actually how I manage it all myself. My view is focus on what's important to you, and ask yourself, do you wish to be ruled by others?

Why should their opinion matter more than your own? Who are these people? (Yes, literally, find out if you can. If they're anonymous it's just useless.) And why are they so interested?

One of the strangest things I've pondered is when people loudly proclaim your work is absolutely not of interest though by doggedly voicing their opinion they're declaring their own interest! And they can stalk you too! That's so irritating, and weird. You know like there are plenty of things not of interest to me in this world where I can't name a single one off-hand, because those things do NOT interest me enough for me to remember. Not like I'm going to stalk someone on the web who is doing, um, I'm reaching here...still pondering...giving up, got nothing. To me not interesting means, not interesting.

My own view is that control is often the actual aim. And reality is, you shouldn't be controlled by jeers, or cheers. You should be free I firmly believe.

However, if you DO draw attention then there may be people who can see value in trying to control you, and one of the classic things they may try is to tell you that you're worthless. Weird, eh? Find someone you think is of great worth to you and begin manipulating them by telling them they're worthless? So harsh. If you can be so convinced then that person may begin ordering you to do things.

Never let anyone else convince you anything about your own intrinsic worth, as human beings we are all equal in critical ways. We all get here the same way, from a mother, and eventually we all go, in death. In-between people will tell you things, but who told them?

Finding your way regardless takes effort. And we must rely on other people.

You can't just figure it all out on your own. Believe me, I've tried. Failed utterly. It can't be done. So much is given to us by human beings like us, who build on what was learned by human beings like us, over thousands of years. They were all for the most part trying to do their best, working to learn, and live.

People succeed all the time. It's why we're here. Others had to succeed before us.

And remember people keep moving the benchmark. The more you do, the more they will expect of you, as they know what you can do! That's great and can push you higher. You don't get to the major leagues by just being ok. You have to be one of the best of the best.

So yeah, these are things I tell myself. Sharing to see how they sound. You can say all kinds of things to yourself, which doesn't make them true. Somehow talking them out seems to help.

And yeah, for people who wonder how I keep doing things, yeah, here in this post is a lot of the answer. These are the things I tell myself, over and over again.

And expect success. Early on is frustrating as failures may be typical. Eventually you can get to kind of ok, and maybe muddle along with doing decent most of the time. But at some point you should be winning most of the time.

At which point you will know. Takes about 20 years to get there for most. Yes there are people who get there much more rapidly but do they have as much fun? Maybe. I don't know. So I do pay attention to such people to see if that question will get answered. Reality is where it matters. Which is why it's important to study successful people in the real world, and check things! Don't just trust what people tell you on the web. Verify.

The web helps you there too, thankfully. So yeah, those connections can be for good or ill, so it helps to think out how you can get the most good out of them, and avoid the negatives.

Positives are SO much more fun.


James Harris

Trying to define entertainment

One of those things I like to do is find what I call functional definitions, which are functional in that I can use them all over the place in the real world. Like to me, a functional definition of science would mean I have a process for determining if something is a science or not.

And recently I realized I wanted a functional definition for entertainment.

Talking things out helps me critique them, as hey, it could be wrong. And this one has me a bit more fascinated than usual.

entertainment (noun): any socially accepted activity chosen in order to alter mood in a desired way which is unlikely to bring harm in any way.

If that's not what you expected, good! To me my functional definitions tend to head off in a direction different from others, like where's the fun?

Trying to go more formal from the start in a prior post.

James Harris

Our need for experts

Our world is so complicated but I think often it's easy to think you kind of have the gist of how something works, but as I type I'm looking at my laptop screen aware that I'm not quite clear on those liquid crystal things which are showing me the words as I type. Sure I could read up on them, again, but do I need to do that really? No. They work just fine whether I understand why or not.

And I have a good bit of medical knowledge, and even worked for years as a technician in a large medical facility, but yeah, if I have a medical problem, I go to a doctor and look for an expert assessment.

Experts are critical for us all, including experts themselves, who will tend to specialize in a particular area in order to know as much as they do.

Thankfully that expertise works incredibly well, or our modern world could not function.

Yet I've found myself pondering areas where I know expertise exists, looking for simple principles, and worked out some things for myself which works for me. I'm looking for functional tools in order to do things. But if I'm serious about it, I need to figure out why these are not part of established expertise.

My first guess has to do with norms. For instance I wrote a post that mentioned controversy with doctors who resisted washing their hands despite one doctor figuring out that such behavior could cut down on death for women after giving birth. But those high death rates which would be unacceptable today were simply the norm at the time.

So it occurs to me that experts may have problems in areas where established norms are challenged by some knowledge, and will tend to resist while sticking with norms, which makes sense! If I see, for instance, a cow float by, will suspect there are wires or something going on to explain something which is well outside of norms I am certain are true.

In economics, then I think we can assert that there are established norms for a lack of predictability consistent with times in human history when vast amounts of data was difficult to collect and very difficult to process, but today advanced electronic systems can process huge amounts of data from all over the world that is quickly collected.

Shifting from the norm may have escaped economists for the moment, while a more informed public is more aware of their failures in actually explaining what is going on in economies or helping when things go badly like in the Great Recession.

With limited information and processing ability, overly complex economic theories about money and economies might have seemed better than nothing. And modern economics may be weighted down with huge amounts of useless baggage in the form of ideas that could not be adequately tested until our time with our modern computer systems.

Like, how would you test my simple ideas that money is just an abstraction for a favor in the past? It may seem like a simple idea, but I make hypotheses about global economies with it, relying on data that I read from people who are connected to experts who are pulling in and processing vast amounts of information.

Actually I've seen a lot of areas where the real power of modern computers seems to be ignored by experts relying on norms established before them. And think it is the single biggest cause of expert failure across our planet. Computers are simply underappreciated as tools, or shoe-horned into wrong roles to sustain norms in thinking established before they gave the ability in many more areas to determine how the real world actually works.

The other problem I think with expertise can be tradition outside of norms, and the weight of complex social structures, like religion, which can weigh in against useful ideas.

For instance, with science I focus on prediction. But for many prediction is associated with religion, as a province of God, or with the supernatural, as a charlatan area, and science is seen as against such things.

That social feel that science is antagonistic to religion and especially charlatanism, could push people to reject the word "prediction" when it comes to science even though it leads to a very natural and simple definition for science which is useful in determining when it is being done.

And that covers enough for me to have a bit of framework to try and understand why I've found myself pondering such broad areas as money and science, and also why I can have some confidence in my own musings.

After all, we have no choice but to depend on people who have done the work to deeply understand things, especially in our very complex world. But we should get worried if we find areas where what they say just fails, and fails, and fails, and fails.

Seems to me that computers have pushed things far more greatly than many experts are yet willing to accept, and that vast areas of human understanding can be reworked where for the first time we have tools which allow us to keep up with so much more.

They simply have to be fully used, and useless norms must be dropped as new ones emerge.

Like with pregnancy, few women today would tolerate doctors not washing their hands, and few societies would accept the death rates during and after childbirth which were just the norm for much of human existence.


James Harris

Mood control and entertainment

With ideas that seem to apply best to things not entertainment I started asking myself what do I mean by that word. And eventually came to a somewhat surprising conclusion, but before I give my latest attempt at a functional definition will talk a bit around the subject.

Like did a web search on the word, and as usual found the definition that popped up immediately to be insufficient, especially as it emphasized enjoyment and amusement, which I had thought of initially too. But what about those things where things are dark, like with Greek tragedy?

Going to the Wikipedia--which I do a lot I'll readily admit--it emphasizes holding attention at the start, and switches to focusing on enjoyment by the end of that first sentence. Can't imagine easily doing posts like this one without the Wikipedia. It gives me such quick and easy reference allowing me to focus on my original thinking, versus working on giving background as well.

My own conclusion is that entertainment allows us to attempt to control our own moods.

Like if you need cheering up? There is entertainment for that. Want thrills and chills? Yup, there's entertainment for that as well. Wish to be scared? Of course, there is entertainment that will try! Want something calming? Yes, there is entertainment that will try to calm you.

I like that last one as I don't think it seems at first blush to fit as easily, so definitely need to include it.

Contrast say, with a learning activity. Or a working activity. These may be enjoyable or not, but most would not call them entertaining I'm sure.

Yet there also is a component of accepted behavior for use of variations on the word "entertain" with lots of mood altering things falling outside of it.

But I can get functional there as well, as harm is the issue I think.

So then functionally, I say that entertainment is any socially accepted activity you choose designed to alter your mood in a desired way which is unlikely to bring you harm in any way.

So now can judge entertainment easily: you go into a situation wishing "thrills and chills" and that's what you get, then yup, that was entertaining.

So yeah, if you want something dark and brooding, and it's cheerful and light-hearted then it was NOT entertaining to you, while someone else who wanted that thinks it was.

And you can entertain friends with a cup of coffee, or tea, where many may think that requires conversation, when in actuality it does not.

Interesting. Can do a lot with this thing I think.

Can even entertain yourself with quiet, coffee and great location.

James Harris