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One of the things that has had the most profound influence in my life was to apply for and get a fellowship that paid me graduate studies in the US. The only re
by euyyn 8y ago
One of the things that has had the most profound influence in my life was to apply for and get a fellowship that paid me graduate studies in the US. The only reason I learned of its existence was my mom seeing an ad of it on the newspaper.
- teddyh 8y agoAh, anecdotes. “My grandfather smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and he lived to be a 110.”
- euyyn 8y agoWhat a ridiculous argument. I didn't get that fellowship despite the ad, unlike your grandfather who reached an old age despite smoking. I got it thanks to the ad.
- teddyh 8y agoYou got the fellowship from the ad despite the vanishingly small chance that anyone would see it.
- euyyn 8y agoYou must realize that what you're saying is an argument for better targeted ads. If you don't, I don't know how to help you see it.
- teddyh 8y agoBetter targeted ads for some truly unequivocally beneficial things like scholarships might be a good thing, all else being equal. But: 1. Targeted ads requires enormous machineries of surveillance and file-keeping. Having too much information in closely related form is akin to having too much uranium in close proximity; it causes problems all of its own almost just by merely existing. 2. Ads in general, even the beneficial ones are, by definition, distracting from whatever content we were trying to read. See: São Paulo’s “Cidade Limpa”.