5 ms·
Why are you happy that people are out of a job here? You still suffer the ills of the product, now infinitely more incessant, at a marginal cost of $0.
by jeauxlb 2y ago
Why are you happy that people are out of a job here? You still suffer the ills of the product, now infinitely more incessant, at a marginal cost of $0.
- ronsor 2y agoI think it's reasonable to be happy that someone is not getting paid to do something you hate. In fact, if you're suffering unwillingly, you probably want as few people as possible to benefit.
- crabmusket 2y agoOpenAI is getting paid to do it.
- ronsor 2y agoYes, but a lot less than if a person were getting paid to do it, so still less money is changing hands.
- lucianbr 2y agoI don't know which of "5 randos getting a living wage by spamming me" and "Altman getting filty rich by spamming me" is worse. I'm inclined to say the latter, though of course it's quite close. Wish SV would stop thinking anything that makes money is great, no matter the crap it inflicts on people. Guess I'm asking for way too much.
- maronato 2y agoI don’t think so. Marketers don’t send X amount of spam because X is the right amount of spam they want to send. They are limited by how much money they want to pay in salaries and management, which defines how many people they can hire to send spam. If the people they employ today suddenly became twice as productive, the company wouldn’t fire half of them - they just would enjoy twice the profit. The same applies to AI.
- davedx 2y ago[flagged]
- TeMPOraL 2y agoGetting peed at a couple times a day isn't a problem if the pee-ees miss 99% od the time, right? Small acts of malice are still acts of malice. Not everyone wants to live in a caveat emptor, dog-eats-dog society.
- davedx 2y agoHaving tried to start a business and known other business owners, I will die on this hill: sales and marketing are not "acts of malice". Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today. This is like the irrational hate some developers have for recruiters, despite them finding jobs for many people that they otherwise would never have known about.
- eesmith 2y agoThe logic in 'Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today' doesn't really support the point you are trying to make. Consider that without thieves we also wouldn't live in the world we live today. That should not be read supporting theft, only an acknowledgement that it exists and that we have designed our lived environment in response.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago> This is like the irrational hate some developers have for recruiters It's not like that. As a business owner, be honest with us and yourself: just how much of sales and marketing you did was just bullshit? Exaggerated claims bordering on lies? Manipulative patterns? Inducing demand? Approximately all marketing is that. It is that because it works, and those who refuse to do it get outcompeted by those who don't. Doesn't mean the world should be like that, or that I'd like to be subjected to it. I also question the "we wouldn't live in the world we lived today" bit. In a competitive environment, marketing is a zero-sum game[0]: there's only so many people around, with so much money and time available; most of the marketing spend ends up being used to cancel out the efforts of the competition, and that race can consume all surplus of a company. Red Queen's race and all. -- [0] Or negative-sum, if you account for externalities.
- Joker_vD 2y agoBecause maybe, just maybe — those people will find some other jobs, and those jobs will be more socially beneficial this time? One can dream.
- bryanrasmussen 2y agoThey can maybe get jobs for Microsoft and call people up to tell them they've noticed something is wrong with their computer!!
- bowsamic 2y ago“maybe, just maybe” “One can dream.” You’ve either used these sarcastically, or accurately. I think you’ve done the former, but the truth is the latter.
- Joker_vD 2y agoI am absolutely serious. Any employment has opportunity costs: a person who writes and sends out cold call spam e-mail for 8 hours a day is a person who could be spending those 8 hours on something else, but isn't. Yes, switching jobs is not very easy, and it's stressful but humans, thankfully, are not (yet) a species of highly-specialized individuals, with distinct morphological differences that heavily determine the jobs they potentially can or can not do.
- bowsamic 2y agoSo I was right, you did use it sarcastically, since you are still naive