Hacker News Reader

Comment by syrrim | Hacker News Reader

There was a commentary somewhere that while someone in france had discovered the cure to smallpox in the form of variolation, the king of france was dying of it. The reason he died was not because no cure existed, but because his doctors weren't aware of it and thus didn't know to apply it. The spread of knowledge is not magical. It will happen over time, but in that time knowledge will be lost. Variations of variolation have been used for thousands of years, but smallpox was only eradicated after galbraith wrote his book. The application of capital to the spread of useful knowledge can still happen even when the knowledge ought to be obvious and important to everyone that encounters it.

View on HN

Sure but do we need a push or pull based model. Ads are pushed into our attention. Google searches and "research" are pull based. If you solve the pull based model the king's doctor just looks it up, discovers something exists, and obtains the treatment.

Recommendations are similar to ads in this regard as well. Maybe blurring the lines between the two depending on how the algo is designed. I'd personally be in favor of recommendation type approaches with combinations of human curation, and an adjustable spectrum of push/pull based results; and the ability to swap between these on a whim as needed.

Pull only works if you know what you're looking for. You'd end up researching race horses when you needed a moped.

Are you seriously saying that we need modern "push" marketing because doctors can't be trusted to google a cure for smallpox?

I agree that sometimes it's true that people need marketing to discover solutions, but, in the vast majority of cases I've encountered, marketing is self-serving, manipulative crap. For a concrete example, see cigarette advertising, corporations funding climate change denial, or most political advertising.

They probably work for Google, because they did seriously say that and it is seriously ridiculous.

How does that adage go?

> It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It

Not only that but it implies that specifically targeted forms of advertising (ie aanti privacy) are the ideal. Certainly an interesting perspective

On the creator side, it is not so easy. If I think that someone is interested in my knowledge or product, I will write a book or produce it. But it only comes available until it lands in some shelf where it can be found. Hence, this is a push.

Alternatively, I could have waited until someone noticed my advertisement to start to write the book or produce the product. Pull.

So where is push and where is pull better?

I wasn't looking at this through the lens of creating content but rather starting from the point you "land in some shelf where it can be found". From this point it's about getting customers/audience which is where push/pull comes into play.

I see ads as purely a push based model; to the GP point, if it was worth looking for why wouldn't you already be looking for it via a pull based method. But you obviously don't know what you don't know. Either 100% push or 100% pull won't be optimal. This is where I see recommendations and being able to swap between a spectrum of XX% push and YY% pull algos is helpful.

For example physical music, i can walk into a record store and decide to buy a handful of records; the store owner can then see those records and recommend more that I could also enjoy and even ask me questions to make those more accurate. This isn't 100% push or pull and also has an element of human curation that inherently doesn't scale but is possibly the most effective approach. I can do the same thing online via discogs and get some automated recommendations. I have a choice between the two and depending if it's a genre I'm familiar with (human recommendation might give me something new) or a new one I'm trying to explore (most popular records recommended by discogs are a good starting point) i can choose one or the other.

I see solving this problem as a key one for the whole creator long-tail, 1k fans, etc... problem-space. Don't have the answers but those are some general ideas.

I'd argue that you definitely need a push-based model for preventative measures: vaccines, smoke detectors, Personal Protective Equipment to reduce the spread of disease.

If you don't know how serious a danger is, you won't start doing research on it until it actually occurs, at which point it is too late. It doesn't do much good to remind someone they need to have smoke detectors and check them regularly after the house burns down, or that a vaccine is available after they're infected.

The issue with this is that advertisements don't exist to answer a question, or provide useful information. They exist to sell a product - whose efficacy, usefulness or appropriateness to the buyer is orthogonal to the effectiveness of the advertisement. Anything can be advertised, from a crooked demagogue to a placebo herbal remedy. The only difference is the budget and the regulation. Advertising is not about the spread of knowledge, it's about the promotion of a good or service that's being sold, period.

Although some advertising is fairly useless or harmful, this ignores a lot of gray areas. For example, companies write interesting and useful blogs to both inform people and sell product.

Wouldn’t it be better to “push” or “advertise” these things science and medical journals though ? That’s what I’m assuming they’re for.

So it’s not advertising rather journalism which is required.

Comparing "The application of capital to the spread of useful knowledge" to 99% of modern day advertising with a straight face makes me wonder if some people ever use the Web.

advertisers don't solve the transitory period problem, which is what you're describing.

There are lots of things that exist that doctors are not aware of and advertising may fix that for a few projects, it's not going to fix it for more than a few.

There ARE other solutions, but those solutions involve peer review and journals and require doctors to consume the material.

And who says doctors are going to meaningfully consume advertising?

Similar thesis with Goodburn, Klien, Rumpfhuber Till - "The Design of Scarcity". A short, kooky but enjoyable read.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com