Post by Admin on Jan 20, 2024 0:51:30 GMT
Capitalism in the Digital Era of Language Models
It’s easy to subscribe to business gurus and generic finance tips that don’t address the fundamental question of how to achieve an authentic and fulfilling existence in this world.
ritona.substack.com/p/capitalism-in-the-digital-era-of
Companies are constantly trying to be at the vanguard of digital marketing and, every day, a new business strategy is launched. The endurance of Capitalism relies on our belief that our financial endeavors will be successful if we put in the hours and learn to utilize all these digital tools, which are constantly changing and multiplying.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been the darling tool of digital marketing for the past few years, until it was, since 2019, proverbially replaced by BERT, a Google language model which relies less on keywords and terms by interpreting more context. But by the time a tool is democratized (meaning, made widely accessible), it in essence ceases to be effective. The capitalist market, just like google searches, needs the competition for limited top spots.
This race to show up on the top of the 1st google page of a search is interesting, because you either need to insert yourself into a searchable trend, or manufacture one. Either way, it’s not a reliable scientific process where the input guarantees the result, though the myth of capitalist meritocracy relies on the belief it is. In reality, the success of a business venture is a gamble that requires plenty of initial investment before (and if) there are any returns.
In poker, a player needs to start by putting money into the game. Once they do, there is careful calculation of the odds of winning, and how to handle these odds depending on the opponent and the player’s equity. Just because there is calculation, it doesn’t mean it’s not a gamble, and the same goes for digital marketing and the success of a capitalist endeavor. The more money the endeavor has to start with, the more likely the calculations are to eventually turn a profit, and also for luck to strike.
It’s hard to accept that we are trying to make a living within a global market that’s a Casino. Instead, it’s easy to subscribe to business gurus and generic finance tips that don’t address the fundamental question of how to achieve an authentic and fulfilling existence in this world. When we believe there is a formula, and success is all personal merit, we are more likely to continue trying to reproduce what we have seen work for others, and that’s within the category of following trends.
Google how to be relevant on Google
The BERT model is the thing that predicts the end of your sentence on Gmail. If you type “Happy New”, a ‘tab’ will add in “Year” for you. Or “Looking forward to h”, tab, “earing from you”, etc. The results of this auto-complete text function are not only predictable and unoriginal, they are also not always factual.
Google searches, which use this model, interpret context and also predict and generate content based on massive data sets. To rank high on a search with this method, we need to be a predictable followup to a key term or question asked on Google. What we end up with is a large amount of content and business endeavors which ride the wave of trending searches – all of them competing for a top spot. Here you will find lots of clickbait, and overall unoriginal products and takes that follow a digital marketing formula for subjects that have already proven to be popular.
An example of this can be seen in the tip from the “Amazing Money Marketer” Sherri Norris, on how to make 90k selling notebooks through Amazon KDP. In this reel, Sherri shows how a black notebook sold 6 thousand units for about 15 dollars, and with “simple math” we can see the person made (6000x15) 90k. Then she goes on to explain how to create a PDF on Canva, upload it to Amazon KDP, and reap the rewards.
Her calculation doesn’t account for Amazon’s sizable cut of the profits for printing, shipping, and handling. Above all, it doesn’t account for the fact that without a considerable initial marketing investment, you will just not sell a single copy, buried under a hyper saturated market for notebooks on Amazon. This was pointed out by people in the comments, who tried and failed, and the solution pitched to them was “you have to alter your SEO strategy”, or “Do some research on the internet on how to market KDP low content books”.
For trend following endeavors that follow this logic, this means there is no exact science for standing out from the crowd or remaining relevant in the long run. Most importantly, this logic doesn’t address the reality that to make money, we need to already have time and money. In Sherri Norris’ own words, from her fine-print disclaimer on her “website”:
“As stipulated by law, we can not and do not make any guarantees about your ability to get results or earn any money with our courses, events, affiliate program or free video trainings. The average person who buys any “how to” information gets little to no results.” (emphasis added.)
It’s easy to subscribe to business gurus and generic finance tips that don’t address the fundamental question of how to achieve an authentic and fulfilling existence in this world.
ritona.substack.com/p/capitalism-in-the-digital-era-of
Companies are constantly trying to be at the vanguard of digital marketing and, every day, a new business strategy is launched. The endurance of Capitalism relies on our belief that our financial endeavors will be successful if we put in the hours and learn to utilize all these digital tools, which are constantly changing and multiplying.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been the darling tool of digital marketing for the past few years, until it was, since 2019, proverbially replaced by BERT, a Google language model which relies less on keywords and terms by interpreting more context. But by the time a tool is democratized (meaning, made widely accessible), it in essence ceases to be effective. The capitalist market, just like google searches, needs the competition for limited top spots.
This race to show up on the top of the 1st google page of a search is interesting, because you either need to insert yourself into a searchable trend, or manufacture one. Either way, it’s not a reliable scientific process where the input guarantees the result, though the myth of capitalist meritocracy relies on the belief it is. In reality, the success of a business venture is a gamble that requires plenty of initial investment before (and if) there are any returns.
In poker, a player needs to start by putting money into the game. Once they do, there is careful calculation of the odds of winning, and how to handle these odds depending on the opponent and the player’s equity. Just because there is calculation, it doesn’t mean it’s not a gamble, and the same goes for digital marketing and the success of a capitalist endeavor. The more money the endeavor has to start with, the more likely the calculations are to eventually turn a profit, and also for luck to strike.
It’s hard to accept that we are trying to make a living within a global market that’s a Casino. Instead, it’s easy to subscribe to business gurus and generic finance tips that don’t address the fundamental question of how to achieve an authentic and fulfilling existence in this world. When we believe there is a formula, and success is all personal merit, we are more likely to continue trying to reproduce what we have seen work for others, and that’s within the category of following trends.
Google how to be relevant on Google
The BERT model is the thing that predicts the end of your sentence on Gmail. If you type “Happy New”, a ‘tab’ will add in “Year” for you. Or “Looking forward to h”, tab, “earing from you”, etc. The results of this auto-complete text function are not only predictable and unoriginal, they are also not always factual.
Google searches, which use this model, interpret context and also predict and generate content based on massive data sets. To rank high on a search with this method, we need to be a predictable followup to a key term or question asked on Google. What we end up with is a large amount of content and business endeavors which ride the wave of trending searches – all of them competing for a top spot. Here you will find lots of clickbait, and overall unoriginal products and takes that follow a digital marketing formula for subjects that have already proven to be popular.
An example of this can be seen in the tip from the “Amazing Money Marketer” Sherri Norris, on how to make 90k selling notebooks through Amazon KDP. In this reel, Sherri shows how a black notebook sold 6 thousand units for about 15 dollars, and with “simple math” we can see the person made (6000x15) 90k. Then she goes on to explain how to create a PDF on Canva, upload it to Amazon KDP, and reap the rewards.
Her calculation doesn’t account for Amazon’s sizable cut of the profits for printing, shipping, and handling. Above all, it doesn’t account for the fact that without a considerable initial marketing investment, you will just not sell a single copy, buried under a hyper saturated market for notebooks on Amazon. This was pointed out by people in the comments, who tried and failed, and the solution pitched to them was “you have to alter your SEO strategy”, or “Do some research on the internet on how to market KDP low content books”.
For trend following endeavors that follow this logic, this means there is no exact science for standing out from the crowd or remaining relevant in the long run. Most importantly, this logic doesn’t address the reality that to make money, we need to already have time and money. In Sherri Norris’ own words, from her fine-print disclaimer on her “website”:
“As stipulated by law, we can not and do not make any guarantees about your ability to get results or earn any money with our courses, events, affiliate program or free video trainings. The average person who buys any “how to” information gets little to no results.” (emphasis added.)