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I don't think people assume there is literally zero signal. I think their intuition is that the repurchase rate is low. Low enough that that if the advertiser knew the purchase was made, then the advertiser would serve something else with a higher predicted chance of getting a click.

It's easy to assign a straw-man a belief there is zero signal and talk down to it. The more nuanced idea that is less obvious goes like this: advertising is such a boondoggle that the aforementioned weak signal actually does represent a higher click-through than everything else in their ad inventory.

Advertisers working in predictive targeting like to tell tall tails about their analytical genius. That story about the Target ad campaign predicting someone was pregnant is their ur myth. The basis for their big swinging statistical analysis prowess. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to their carefully crafted image if they had to admit the peak of their profession is hoping people need a 2nd of something that's usually a less-than-once-a-year purchase.


From the jump the premise seems reasonable. Having a too much of an ego is a source of all sorts of self-imposed problems or create roadblocks in interacting with others. But this literally brings up saintlike detachment as "not far from the truth" in describing the extent they're advocating for.

I'm thinking maths are kinda fucked rn.


> I for one would love to be able to experience Godzilla Minus Zero interactively.

So would I. But I don't not want to experience it as a movie. It'd be something separate. Not an upgrade.

Which makes Sam's comment the inane blather of a pitchman. We don't need to bend over and try to steelman marketing dross. He doesn't care if that statement means nothing, why should we?


Oh, I see your point. I didn’t think of “movies becoming video games” as meaning there’s no such thing as a movie anymore. Kind of like the false argument about evolution, “if we can from monkeys why are there still monkeys?”

Movies come from books, but people still read.

But I get the point.


>audio-like music

My favorite kind of music.


> then the current and near-future capability of AI is being severely overstated

captain_renault_casablanca.gif


I think the fact we take the temperature of the market and label it as a "strong" or "weak labor force" is a counterfactual to the idea there's equivalent exploitation.

It's mutually beneficial (otherwise one party or the other would terminate the contract), but that a wide window for the balance of benefits to shift.


That sounds like a just so story invented by motivated reasoning.


>It would rather pursue more business opportunities.

You're agreeing with parent poster that they don't care to fight on principle (in the unlikely chance they hold any principle in the first place). You're just using avoidant terminology that skips the criticism inherent in parent's framing.


I'm commenting on how non-US laws may affect businesses, descriptively speaking, without prescriptively stating what I think that the law ought to be.

I am a US citizen and I approve of US-style free speech protection. If anything, I think that the US still has too much restriction on speech (e.g. DMCA limits on "anti-circumvention" software.)

However, I also approve of democratic government. If people in other countries vote to treat speech differently than the US, I wouldn't want to live under those laws, but I also wouldn't say that they are incorrect. I think that democratic principles mean implementing the will of the majority, even if I think that the majority is foolish. There are some things that I would fight against (not just lament) even if approved by the will of the majority; I can't fully reconcile my conflicting impulses, but I acknowledge them. All of this would have been a long and distracting aside to my original point, which was that most American businesses of note operate under multiple countries' jurisdictions.


> the feared bottom of the slope was never reached

Hard disagree. Sometimes it's avoided, any other time we just go into cope mode. We discover on the ride down that the bottom isn't so bad. Turns out our collective control mechanisms didn't fail ourselves if the initial assessment was wrong.


> “No AI” is too simplistic.

In practice it's serviceable first-pass filter.

Of course it's a different dimension than "is this game worth the time and money?" But so are all the other datapoints meant to help consumers weigh a game purchase decision. They all have false positives and false negatives compared to actual enjoyment. Right now, people are voicing that the AI line is a relevant piece of selection criteria they believe they'd find useful would like to more easily automate.

No amount mental masturbation over false negatives will change that. It'll just make someone look defensive. Because the consumers that don't care to use AI as a selection criteria will just ignore that data point. Similar to how a content rating doesn't enter your head when you're not buying for a child.


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