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MrMind comments on Open Thread March 21 - March 27, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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In the last few days, a few people have newly joined LW, posting only in a welcome thread and in articles about Gleb_Tsipursky's "Intentional Insights" work. Their comments have been very enthusiastic about II.
Now here's the thing. Intentional Insights is based in the US. Everyone on its leadership team (I think) and advisory board is in the US. Most of its activity, so far as I can see, is focused on promoting ... whatever exactly II promotes ... in US-based media like the Huffington Post. But it just happens that two of these people are a brother and sister (I think) from Nigeria, and a chap from the Philippines. The last person I recall turning up on LW and gushing about how great II is and how wonderful GT's articles are was also from the Philippines. Isn't that odd?
(For the avoidance of doubt, of course there's nothing in any way wrong about being from Nigeria or the Philippines. I'm just asking: isn't this a rather improbable sequence of events?)
Now, Gleb has an answer, sort of:
It's not clear what range of organizations Gleb is referring to, but the specific one he names (AAI) is indeed an international organization -- but I don't see any sign that it's more active in (say) Nigeria than in the US. And none of these II fans who have turned up on Less Wrong has said anything about hearing of either LW or II through any other organization.
I think there is another obvious explanation, which is that these people are being paid to publicize II, and that the reason why the II-fans we see on LW come disproportionately from developing countries is that it's much cheaper to buy publicity from people in developing countries than from people in, say, the US or Western Europe.
Am I too paranoid?
... Oh, look. Twitter feed of LW user Sarginlove. The description on the Twitter account says "works for Intentional Insight". Take a look at Sarginlove's comments and tell me this isn't a deliberate attempt to look like someone not affiliated with II who's just seen their material and been impressed by it.
I don't know quite what Gleb is actually trying to do with II, but I think this goes beyond "weird and creepy" (the usual complaint on LW hitherto, I think) to "actively deceptive".
Maybe I'm cynic, but it's pretty commonplace for business to hire fake social supporters. Considering that we do not have certainty that those are of that kind, and that it is plausible that LW gets attended from all over the world, what is your suggested course of action?
What would you suggest that people do?
So, is InIn a business that hires fake social supporters? And is LessWrong one of those "social media channels" that they "manage"? Inquiring minds want to know.
I wasn't suggesting any particular course of action, unless you interpret "action" broadly enough to include this: I suggest that LW participants who encounter newcomers raving about how great Intentional Insights is or how wonderful Gleb's articles are should be aware that they may be raving only because they've been paid to do so, in which case their ravings give pretty much exactly zero evidence of anything either effective or appealing in II's material or Gleb's articles here.
Au contraire, they do give evidence.
To quote Maggie, "it's like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't." And if you have to hire people to shout at street corners that you're a lady... X-)
Hmmm.... Only the true messiah denies his divinity?
I've got a visceral contempt for advertising, but I also think that's me being irrational. Plenty of good stuff needs paid promotion to get noticed. There are good ideas that spread on their own, but I don't think that spreadiness <=> good.
Good marketing isn't about saying: "Hey look at me I'm the greatest."
What about 'Coke is it!', or Muhammed Ali?
I'm sure there are more. I know nothing about marketing, but these seem to have worked.
That statement doesn't contain any direct value judgement about Coke. It's about making Coke a default.
Simon Anholt recounts in one of his talks about how Nike's "Just do it" brand is a tool for Nike to spend less time in meetings to discuss puchasing decisions for office furniture. It allows any manager to just buy the "Just do it"-desk, so they don't have to hold a meeting about whether to buy a more classy or a more hip desk.
Muhammed Ali is a special case. When he says "I'm the greatest" people might think that's he's an arrogant asshole but he's an arrogant asshole that can beat up everyone. That's a persona that's interesting for the media to talk about. He was antifragile against journalists considering him to be an arrogant asshole.
In the case of Intentional Insights there no reason to polarize people the way Muhammed Ali polarized by claiming he's the greatest and generally doing his own press interviews instead of letting his managers do them.
I have never drunk Coke or watched a boxing match, but my impression is that Coke's and Ali's slogans were only able to be effective because (1) lots of people already really liked drinking Coke and (2) Muhammed Ali was in fact a really good boxer.
I think the "real thing" / "Coke is it" slogans were adopted exactly because other companies were making their own competing products that were intended to be like Coca-Cola. So they were aimed at people who already liked Coca-Cola, or who at least knew that Coca-Cola was a drink lots of people liked, saying "That thing you admire? It's our product, not any of those inferior imitations".
So perhaps we can amend CK's comment to something like this: Good marketing isn't about saying "look at me, I'm the greatest" except in some special cases where people are already looking at you and at least considering the possibility that you might be the greatest.
I still don't know whether it's right, though. I would be entirely unsurprised to hear of a product that had a lot of success by going in with a we're-the-best marketing campaign very early in its life.
[EDITED to remove superfluous parentheses.]
The critical difference here is between good promotion and bad promotion. It is quite possible to promote the idea that you're a lady, it's just that it does not involve hiring people to shout at street corners.
Just to clarify, I have no interest in marketing InIn content to Less Wrong. That would be stupid, everyone on LW but the newbies would benefit much more from more complex writings than InIn content. InIn is an outward-facing branch of the rationality movement, not a (mostly) inward-facing one like CFAR. I'm trying to get InIn participants involved in LW to help them grow more rational after they already got familiarity with InIn content and can go beyond that, to venues such as ClearerThinking, CFAR, and LW itself.
It's not surprising that folks who come to LW from InIn would appreciate both InIn content and stuff that looks like InIn content, namely beginner-oriented materials. However, as I mentioned above, due to Eliot's suggestion, I will wait to get more InIn audience members involved in LW until it has a newbie thread.