Re: People paid to create arguments

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> when there is economic gain to be had for exploiting this
>> relationship, it will be exploited.
>
> My point was that there's no need for an economic gain

sorry, i wasn't clear.  i should have said "economic gain by those
setting up the stadium" rather than by those in the stadium.  most in
the stadium will actually pay to be part of the event (for whatever
reason), but *if* the event has a chance of looking under-attended when
televised, the organizers gladly seed the stands (perhaps by giving away
tickets or w/ group discounts).

the economic gain comes from diverting everyone in the stands from
competing with (or scrutinizing or doing whatever that may slow down)
the organizers).

for sports, this is difficult to see (analogy not entirely appropriate),
but for software, not so difficult.  if "office automation" were widely
recognized to be easy (eg, via a bit of (disciplined) shell-script
hacking) and profitable (intimately customizable / less down-time / more
*control*), that would be a disaster for proprietary software vendors.

if i were a marketing exec for usloth (for example), i'd hire someone to
troll c.l.lisp constantly, simply because that's where a lot of (perhaps
self-delusional :-) potential competition may be breeding.  this person
would work w/ the shepherds hired for c.l.visual-basic (or whatever).
the budget for a dozen such "community liasons" has better returns than
for a single programmer.  the name of the game is delay the inevitable,
and the prevailing mindset is: "sure, the fans take care of themselves,
but why risk everything to chance?"

> [...]

this sounds like "victims identifying w/ abusers", or something like
that (i'm afraid the best i can do is venture pop psychology terms i've
heard bandied about).

anyway, the connection between money and opinions expressed is always in
question.  we'll probably see lots of sophistry in the next few years as
the connection between opinions expressed and codified thought becomes
more contentious.  w/ this vague hand-waving, i bow out of the thread
now.  thanks for reading this.

thi



p.s. btw, i picked c.l.lisp only because i see poorly executed trolling
     behavior there that seems to be what usloth would hire.  maybe they
     direct their more skilled people to c.l.python or some other place
     i don't frequent (or maybe IHBT expertly :-).