[GrumpyYoungMan]

>The best minds of the previous generation were thinking about how to kill Russians. I'd say it's an upgrade.

At least the results of the previous generations research went (largely) unused, whereas the results of ad clicking research is targeted against and used on people on a daily basis, to their considerable detriment. An upgrade? If so, it seems kind of dubious at best.

[debaserab2]

Only on HN would someone compare starting a nuclear war to click advertising.

[ben_jones]

Well only one of those two things actually happened (thankfully).

[J_Darnley]

Global nuclear war sounds immensely more fun than the present.

[rwallace]

To quote Douglas Adams: "No, not really."

[placeybordeaux]

Surely you're joking.

[J_Darnley]

No. I only hope I live long enough to see the apocalypse.

[wpietri]

As somebody who lives a mostly ad-free life, I totally agree. I think it's somewhat hard for people used to ads to appreciate how pervasive and manipulative they are. And it seems impossible to get people in the industry to see that maybe, just maybe manipulating people for a living is kinda sinister.

Even if it weren't, it's certainly wasteful. Advertising is mostly an arms race. Pepsi spends to challenge Coke. Coke spends even more to maintain hegemony. Neither is informing consumers, the perennial econ-theory justification for advertising. We all know those products exist. If we banned advertising tomorrow, consumers would be no worse off, and all those people could be doing something actually useful.