I think it's reasonable to be happy that someone is not getting paid to do something you hate. In fact, if you're suffering unwillingly, you probably want as few people as possible to benefit.

OpenAI is getting paid to do it.

Yes, but a lot less than if a person were getting paid to do it, so still less money is changing hands.

I don't know which of "5 randos getting a living wage by spamming me" and "Altman getting filty rich by spamming me" is worse. I'm inclined to say the latter, though of course it's quite close.

Wish SV would stop thinking anything that makes money is great, no matter the crap it inflicts on people. Guess I'm asking for way too much.

I don’t think so. Marketers don’t send X amount of spam because X is the right amount of spam they want to send. They are limited by how much money they want to pay in salaries and management, which defines how many people they can hire to send spam.

If the people they employ today suddenly became twice as productive, the company wouldn’t fire half of them - they just would enjoy twice the profit. The same applies to AI.

Getting peed at a couple times a day isn't a problem if the pee-ees miss 99% od the time, right?

Small acts of malice are still acts of malice. Not everyone wants to live in a caveat emptor, dog-eats-dog society.

Having tried to start a business and known other business owners, I will die on this hill: sales and marketing are not "acts of malice". Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today.

This is like the irrational hate some developers have for recruiters, despite them finding jobs for many people that they otherwise would never have known about.

> This is like the irrational hate some developers have for recruiters

It's not like that. As a business owner, be honest with us and yourself: just how much of sales and marketing you did was just bullshit? Exaggerated claims bordering on lies? Manipulative patterns? Inducing demand?

Approximately all marketing is that. It is that because it works, and those who refuse to do it get outcompeted by those who don't. Doesn't mean the world should be like that, or that I'd like to be subjected to it.

I also question the "we wouldn't live in the world we lived today" bit. In a competitive environment, marketing is a zero-sum game[0]: there's only so many people around, with so much money and time available; most of the marketing spend ends up being used to cancel out the efforts of the competition, and that race can consume all surplus of a company. Red Queen's race and all.

--

[0] Or negative-sum, if you account for externalities.

Marketing is fundamentally aimed at changing people's opinions. This can be done

1. covertly (why do you need to do it covertly? Would people mind if they knew? Doesn't that indicate you're doing them a disservice?)

2. overtly, against people's will. (Again, doesn't that indicate you're doing them a disservice?)

3. overtly, with their consent (express or assumed). How often have you seen this happen?

The "indicates" vs "shows" distinction above deals with the edge case of "interacting with covert/unwanted marketing is actually good for them, even if they don't know it". I dare you to make that argument...

The logic in 'Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today' doesn't really support the point you are trying to make.

Consider that without thieves we also wouldn't live in the world we live today. That should not be read supporting theft, only an acknowledgement that it exists and that we have designed our lived environment in response.

> Having tried to start a business and known other business owners, I will die on this hill: sales and marketing are not "acts of malice". Without salespeople we wouldn't live in the world we lived today.

That's exactly the reason why we hate them.

Many of these emails promote products that can inly be described as scams

And you're qualified to declare this because?

Are we supposed to silently suffer because capitalism says so?

Spammers and salespeople are pretty much on the same level as criminals in my book. Heck, whenever someone calls me for some sort of unsolicited survey or similar, I think "these people have such low standards, they would also sell heroin on the street if they had any source."

Suffering is "the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship".

Having to delete the occasional marketing or sales email that get past your spam filter is hardly any of these. Annoying or frustrating, yes. Suffering? Really?

Are you working in marketing, perhaps?

Because maybe, just maybe — those people will find some other jobs, and those jobs will be more socially beneficial this time? One can dream.

They can maybe get jobs for Microsoft and call people up to tell them they've noticed something is wrong with their computer!!

“maybe, just maybe”

“One can dream.”

You’ve either used these sarcastically, or accurately. I think you’ve done the former, but the truth is the latter.

I am absolutely serious. Any employment has opportunity costs: a person who writes and sends out cold call spam e-mail for 8 hours a day is a person who could be spending those 8 hours on something else, but isn't. Yes, switching jobs is not very easy, and it's stressful but humans, thankfully, are not (yet) a species of highly-specialized individuals, with distinct morphological differences that heavily determine the jobs they potentially can or can not do.

So I was right, you did use it sarcastically, since you are still naive