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Well...of course? If I pretend my blog post is written by Bill Gates, more people will read it. This is basic human nature. We can try to prevent plagiarism an

Well...of course? If I pretend my blog post is written by Bill Gates, more people will read it. This is basic human nature. We can try to prevent plagiarism and improve our detection of it, but there's nothing wrong or disappointing with the fact that people prefer to listen to Bill Gates than a random blogger.

tivert 3y ago
> Well...of course? If I pretend my blog post is written by Bill Gates, more people will read it. This is basic human nature. I think the tragedy is that the attention doesn't follow quality or value, it follows fame and gimmicks. In your example, Bill Gates's stupidest brain farts will get 1000x more positive attention that an objectively-better tour-de-force that almost anyone else posts.
- testmasterflex 3y ago
  That’s the unfairness about power laws and the reason why YC wants to hear if you have any unfair advantage in your application.
- JCharante 3y ago
  Should reputation not matter? A lot of people would read something published by the NYT but not Buzzfeed
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I think the tragedy is that the attention doesn't follow quality or value, it follows fame and gimmicks. It is, but also... welcome to life. This is how it works. What determines success is very often more about things other than the quality of the product. For evidence, just look at the most popular products at the store. Very rarely are they at the top of the quality scale.
  - tivert 3y ago
    >> I think the tragedy is that the attention doesn't follow quality or value, it follows fame and gimmicks. > It is, but also... welcome to life. This is how it works. So what? That it works that way doesn't make it any less of a tragedy* or any more fair. * The word chosen by someone else upthread.
    - _piif 3y ago
      Yes, life isn't fair and I don't think anyone argues otherwise. That's just human nature. People have to live with it.
      - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
        Why is it such a pastime for comments like this to be made?
        therealdrag0 3y ago
        My guess is some ppl get tired of the moaning about things you can’t change. So short circuiting the topic is avoiding the annoyance and maybe an antivirus to prevent one’s own thoughts from spiraling negatively.
        _piif 3y ago
        Exactly that. I already went down that spiral many times and the result is nothing but sadness about the many injustices of the world. But ultimately it's out of my hand. It's out of your hand. The ball is in no one's court. Focus on the better aspects of life. Take care of your loved ones. Do your best to improve your local community. Contribute to a better state of the world, no matter how small the contribution may be. Pray to a higher being if you believe in one. That's ultimately all you can do.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  It can’t follow quality because signal to noise is too low in subjective fields.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Attention cannot follow quality because you have to pay attention to determine quality. So what attention follows is a heuristic of quality: has this person exhibited quality in the past. That's not a tragedy or sad or anything. In fact, that's normal in a marketplace where you have to pay before you benefit. Rarely, something novel will arise and another heuristic of quality will be present: virality. I think this is actually perfect and there is no tragedy.
  - nullstyle 3y ago
    These heuristics for quality being discussed and alluded to, especially over time, suck far worse than just sticking to personal recommendations and keeping your tastes disconnected the internet. It is not perfect; culture on the internet is just bad these day across many dimensions and getting worse. Next I expect to see some try to equate profitable with quality.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      No. It has nothing to do with the Internet. It is simply a property that you cannot describe a thing accurately without observing the thing. You can only use heuristics. One such heuristic is personal recommendations (which I would place in the viral transmission mode). Another is creator.
      - nullstyle 3y ago
        I'm not disputing that claim of yours, but you're missing the point. I'm saying the heuristics for quality you presented, when taken in the context of our internet, tend to press culture towards shit quality, or as some parent comment mentioned "fame and gimmicks." For the record, the type of personal recommendation I'm talking about cannot be viral, in any useful context for the word. I'm talking about recommendations delivered one on one and as an ongoing conversation over many moons; Not recommendations that I see in my Facebook Feed as a Facebook Post from my Facebook Friends to their Facebook Followers. These mediums are insufficient and grow worse, IMO.
- eldritch_4ier 3y ago
  It's really hard to evaluate everything by yourself. If you wanted to listen to some good music, you'd find something you like much faster by scrolling through the top 1000 most listened songs than a random shuffle of the maybe billions of songs that have ever existed. "A lot of other people like this" is a pretty good filter for things you'll probably like given how similar we all are (especially when we're stewing in the same culture).
confoundcofound 3y ago
Most HN commenters do not understand or flat out dismiss that kind of intangible value. Probably an engineer thing.
winternett 3y ago
The venue it's published on also matters... If music is published (for profit) on official services like iTunes or Spotify and it isn't exactly clear that it's AI generated content, then there is a certain level of misrepresentation involved in it all... If the music was posted to somewhere that it's normal to expect non-serious content (like Reddit or social media) but still properly credited as Ai generated on a non-profit basis (standard practice of course), then that would have been far less offensive.
BeFlatXIII 3y ago
> We can try to prevent plagiarism and improve our detection of it, but there's nothing wrong or disappointing with the fact that people prefer to listen to Bill Gates than a random blogger. Except when Mr. Gates and the random blogger are both out of their areas of expertise, people still believe Mr. Gates because he was successful elsewhere instead of applying proper skepticism.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Except they have good reason to apply less skepticism because they know Mr. Gates has a lot more to lose if he's caught making things up or lying or messing with folks on the record. Whereas random bloggers are fly-by-night operations in comparison.

tivert 3y ago

> Well...of course? If I pretend my blog post is written by Bill Gates, more people will read it. This is basic human nature. I think the tragedy is that the attention doesn't follow quality or value, it follows fame and gimmicks. In your example, Bill Gates's stupidest brain farts will get 1000x more positive attention that an objectively-better tour-de-force that almost anyone else posts.

testmasterflex 3y ago
That’s the unfairness about power laws and the reason why YC wants to hear if you have any unfair advantage in your application.
JCharante 3y ago
Should reputation not matter? A lot of people would read something published by the NYT but not Buzzfeed
JohnFen 3y ago
> I think the tragedy is that the attention doesn't follow quality or value, it follows fame and gimmicks. It is, but also... welcome to life. This is how it works. What determines success is very often more about things other than the quality of the product. For evidence, just look at the most popular products at the store. Very rarely are they at the top of the quality scale.
- tivert 3y ago
  >> I think the tragedy is that the attention doesn't follow quality or value, it follows fame and gimmicks. > It is, but also... welcome to life. This is how it works. So what? That it works that way doesn't make it any less of a tragedy* or any more fair. * The word chosen by someone else upthread.
  - _piif 3y ago
    Yes, life isn't fair and I don't think anyone argues otherwise. That's just human nature. People have to live with it.
    - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
      Why is it such a pastime for comments like this to be made?
      - therealdrag0 3y ago
        My guess is some ppl get tired of the moaning about things you can’t change. So short circuiting the topic is avoiding the annoyance and maybe an antivirus to prevent one’s own thoughts from spiraling negatively.
        _piif 3y ago
        Exactly that. I already went down that spiral many times and the result is nothing but sadness about the many injustices of the world. But ultimately it's out of my hand. It's out of your hand. The ball is in no one's court. Focus on the better aspects of life. Take care of your loved ones. Do your best to improve your local community. Contribute to a better state of the world, no matter how small the contribution may be. Pray to a higher being if you believe in one. That's ultimately all you can do.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
It can’t follow quality because signal to noise is too low in subjective fields.
renewiltord 3y ago
Attention cannot follow quality because you have to pay attention to determine quality. So what attention follows is a heuristic of quality: has this person exhibited quality in the past. That's not a tragedy or sad or anything. In fact, that's normal in a marketplace where you have to pay before you benefit. Rarely, something novel will arise and another heuristic of quality will be present: virality. I think this is actually perfect and there is no tragedy.
- nullstyle 3y ago
  These heuristics for quality being discussed and alluded to, especially over time, suck far worse than just sticking to personal recommendations and keeping your tastes disconnected the internet. It is not perfect; culture on the internet is just bad these day across many dimensions and getting worse. Next I expect to see some try to equate profitable with quality.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    No. It has nothing to do with the Internet. It is simply a property that you cannot describe a thing accurately without observing the thing. You can only use heuristics. One such heuristic is personal recommendations (which I would place in the viral transmission mode). Another is creator.
    - nullstyle 3y ago
      I'm not disputing that claim of yours, but you're missing the point. I'm saying the heuristics for quality you presented, when taken in the context of our internet, tend to press culture towards shit quality, or as some parent comment mentioned "fame and gimmicks." For the record, the type of personal recommendation I'm talking about cannot be viral, in any useful context for the word. I'm talking about recommendations delivered one on one and as an ongoing conversation over many moons; Not recommendations that I see in my Facebook Feed as a Facebook Post from my Facebook Friends to their Facebook Followers. These mediums are insufficient and grow worse, IMO.
eldritch_4ier 3y ago
It's really hard to evaluate everything by yourself. If you wanted to listen to some good music, you'd find something you like much faster by scrolling through the top 1000 most listened songs than a random shuffle of the maybe billions of songs that have ever existed. "A lot of other people like this" is a pretty good filter for things you'll probably like given how similar we all are (especially when we're stewing in the same culture).

confoundcofound 3y ago

Most HN commenters do not understand or flat out dismiss that kind of intangible value. Probably an engineer thing.

winternett 3y ago

The venue it's published on also matters... If music is published (for profit) on official services like iTunes or Spotify and it isn't exactly clear that it's AI generated content, then there is a certain level of misrepresentation involved in it all... If the music was posted to somewhere that it's normal to expect non-serious content (like Reddit or social media) but still properly credited as Ai generated on a non-profit basis (standard practice of course), then that would have been far less offensive.

BeFlatXIII 3y ago

> We can try to prevent plagiarism and improve our detection of it, but there's nothing wrong or disappointing with the fact that people prefer to listen to Bill Gates than a random blogger. Except when Mr. Gates and the random blogger are both out of their areas of expertise, people still believe Mr. Gates because he was successful elsewhere instead of applying proper skepticism.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Except they have good reason to apply less skepticism because they know Mr. Gates has a lot more to lose if he's caught making things up or lying or messing with folks on the record. Whereas random bloggers are fly-by-night operations in comparison.