[hypertele-Xii]

Sounds like advertizing gospel to me.

It implies that people aren't actively looking for better solutions to their problems, which is just blatantly false.

If industries spent all of their marketing budget on research and development, we'd live in a very different world. Maybe even a better one. A world where companies aren't asking "how can we fool people into buying more of what we're already making" and instead ask "what can we make that's so good it practically sells itself?"

Quality always rises to the top. That's a law of nature.

[coldtea]

>It implies that people aren't actively looking for better solutions to their problems, which is just blatantly false.

No, they don't.

The majority go with the defaults, and most of the rest stick to the first thing that "works for them".

If they try something else it's usually because of either mass promotion (like with Java in the late 90s) or hype by a smaller team of early adopters (like with Node and such), not by patiently looking and evaluating solutions alone.

>Quality always rises to the top. That's a law of nature.

That's not even close to a law of nature.

In fact, "crap rises to the top" might be closer to being that. I mean, if you want a blatant example, see the music top-10.

[bruce511]

Indeed, marketing beats quality everytime. Vhs/beta, windows/Linux/OS2 and so on infinitum.

[baxtr]

This topic is well researched. Those who actively look and are open to new solutions are called “Early adopters” and are just a tiny minority of the entire target audience.

But even they won’t find you if you don’t have an SEO-optimized page, for example, to give you a somewhat extreme example. Just doing nothing and waiting for someone to come is not an option.

[baxtr]

PS: I just realized that doing a project and not telling people is in essence just like having an idea in your head.

[arinlen]

> It implies that people aren't actively looking for better solutions to their problems, which is just blatantly false.

Not really. Think about it for a moment: are there more people actively searching for better solutions to each and every single problem they may or may not know they have? Or are there more people like you and me who go about their day just fine completely oblivious that there might be out there a far better way of doing things, or not even bothering to spend a second to address some nuisance they have?

> If industries spent all of their marketing budget on research and development, we'd live in a very different world.

Yes, it would be a world where fortunes were spent on R&D whose outcome benefitted no one at all because no one ever heard about the outcome.

Also, as a corollary to your anti-marketing stance, multiple redundant R&D projects would be wasting resources developing stuff that was already developed and reinventing the wheel primarily because no one knew that it was already done.

[hypertele-Xii]

It's almost as if you believed that a world without advertizing wouldn't propagate any information.

[arinlen]

> It's almost as if you believed that a world without advertizing wouldn't propagate any information.

I'm sure you are able to understand that actively spreading information is far more effective in getting the message out than sitting on your rear-end expecting that people are suddenly magically aware of you and things just drop from the sky onto your lap.

[hypertele-Xii]

If your ancestors had sat on their asses waiting for food to fall from the sky, you wouldn't be here. Clearly, exploration is in our DNA.

Sitting on your ass looking at ads is what advertizers want you to do. And it's in their interest to foster the belief that you couldn't survive without it.

[throwaway4good]

“ Quality always rises to the top. That's a law of nature.”

That is definitely not a law of nature.

[Jensson]

Depends on how big the quality difference is, if it is big enough then your product will grow exponentially via word of mouth, like Google did for example. That is just simple math, if you are good enough that people want to tell others about it then it will grow.

Problem is that today most technological needs are already filled by good programs so adding significant new value to peoples lives is extremely hard, so it is very unlikely that you can make naturally growing programs today on a tiny budget.

[necovek]

Google initially targetted a niche (geeks and nerds like us) with no-fuss, no-ads search experience where weight of the result depended mostly on how many citations it had. They were very present at conferences related to free software, for instance (which I'd consider investment in marketing).

And this group was the one in charge of "fixing their relatives' computers", so we were all too happy to tell them about Google: this is how word-of-mouth worked for them.

[hypertele-Xii]

Then why do all social animals organize into hierarchies?

[watwut]

First of all, it is not correct statement about all social animals.

And second, hierarchical organization does not mean at all quality is on top.

[hypertele-Xii]

Which social animal does not organize into a hierarchy?

Social animals organize into hierarchies precisely because hierarchies bubble quality to the top.

[aoanla]

The difficulty with this argument is what we mean by "quality". It's tautological to state that hierarchies select for "qualities that enable you to be higher on the hierarchy"; it's much more debatable as to the nature of those qualities (and, indeed, that the existence of the hierarchy itself doesn't change the fitness surface, so that the advantageous qualities are different to what they might have been without it). See, eg, the amount of energy antlered deer (especially males) expend on having large, healthy antlers, purely to compete with other male deer. "Having large antlers" is a "quality" that has very little adaptive value outside of the conditions created by the fact of a hierarchy itself.

[hypertele-Xii]

> See, eg, the amount of energy antlered deer (especially males) expend on having large, healthy antlers, purely to compete with other male deer.

Deers have antlers for reasons other than competing with other deer. To defend themselves from predators.

Since they have them, they use them to settle differences in quality. In this case, quality of self-defence.

[watwut]

Lions for example - they live in aliances. Wild boars. Quite a lot of social animals live actually in families. It is hierarchy insofar adults are raising the children, but the children leave as adults and make own families. There is not much bubbling up and down.

Also, in herd animals like sheep the hierarchy consist on basically more aggressive individual eating fist and getting what they want. But, the other members dont follow them and there is no meaning of leadership. Just that, if you are stronger and beat others, you can eat first or pick place to sleep.

> Social animals organize into hierarchies precisely because hierarchies bubble quality to the top.

They don't. In business, it can be "cheapest" or "lies the most convincingly" or "has the right connections".

Even among humans, the quality that fairy often bubbles on top is violence. You see that everywhere in the world. In Chechenia it is Kadyrov and his quality was "born to correct dad and already have proven he is ruthless when dad dies". The quality that got Adolf Hitler on top was "good speaker, able to channel fear and hate".

Those are extreme examples, but I wanted something super clear. What bubbles on top is what bubbles on top. It can occasionally be quality, but it can be host of other things too.

[msrenee]

If you've ever watched a herd of horses, you'd know that's not true. Dominance bubbles to the top. Pushiness bubbles to the top. If the animal is also a decent leader, then great. A lot of the time it's insecure and too busy trying to maintain its position and the rest of the herd ends up harried and banged up.

Seen it in dogs too, seen it a million times in people. Those are more artificial situations though.

[hypertele-Xii]

You are proving my point. Strength and leadership are survival qualities to wild herd animals. The hierarchy allows those qualities to rise to the top. It is the herd that collectively decides to give space to the individual with those qualities. The "alpha horse" does not "dominate" the herd; no single individual can match the strength of an entire herd. The herd gives permission for the qualities to reach top of hierarchy, because those are the qualities the herd wants to select for.

If the animals making up the hierarchy disagrees with the individual on top, they remove it from the hierarchy. Easily. That's the whole point of herds, packs, and hierarchies. Together stronger than alone.

[vineyardmike]

Look to every world leader. Is it apparent, agreed upon, or even reasonable to assume they’re the “quality” for their locale? No, they’re the best at marketing, or “campaigning”.

[jeffreygoesto]

Counter example: VHS

[rsecora]

Not really, VHS was similar to Betamax. Beta has a slightly better recording format than VHS due to resolution (250 lines vs. 240 lines). Both same scanline ratio.

The misconception is people confuses Betamax with Betacam, (both from Sony). Betacam was the Sony format for broadcasters, and the one with high quality (sound and picture). But bloody expensive.

Betamax lost due two to reasons. (1)tapes can only record 1 hour. Not enough for most recordings. Sony addressed the wrong market. (2) Price and retail distribution.

In other words, Betamax lost because VHS has a better market fit, and the market choose the technology that allowed to have theater movies in the video rental store.

(I was a Beta owner back in the 80s).

[jeffreygoesto]

Great explanation, thank you! I did not know the difference.

Guess then the point is that there is not one single scalar "quality" and things are not one-dimensional.

[Nowado]

It would be the same world in which countries don't spend on armies. It's the same exact thing.