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Jayson_Virissimo comments on The Craigslist Revolution: a real-world application of torture vs. dust specks OR How I learned to stop worrying and create one billion dollars out of nothing - Less Wrong
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Comments (219)
Advertising is, by nature, diametrically opposite to rational thought. Advertising stimulates emotional reptilian response. I advance the hypothesis that exposure to more advertising has negative effects on people's receptivity to and affinity with rational/utilitarian modes of thinking.
So far, the most effective tool to boost popular support for SIAI and existential risk reduction has been science-fiction books and movies. Hollywood can markedly influence cultural attitudes, on a large scale, with just a few million dollars... and it's profitable. Like advertising, they often just pander to reptilian and emotional response... but even then they can also educate and convince.
What most people know of and believe about AI and existential risk is what they learned from Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Isaac Asimov, etc. If Spielberg is a LW reader (maybe he lurks?), I am much more optimistic for mankind than if ads run on Craigslist.
If you want people to support the right kind of research, I advance that it could be most effectively and humanely accomplished using the Direct Belief Transfer System that is storytelling.
Who wants to write The Great Bayesian Novel? And the screenplay?
So, how would anyone ever find out about a new product or service without advertising?
Through hearing about the product from neutral third parties. If I want to buy a computer I can read objective reviews that tell me about the pros and cons of different computers.
How does the "neutral third party" get information about the product? Surely not through the actual producer of the product or service! Why, that would be advertising!
I think that you are reading the word advertising as more general than it was intended. Craigslist is full of ads, in a narrower sense than you are talking about. And yet it doesn't have advertising in the problematic sense.