Comment by kevin_thibedeau

1 day ago

Better to stop playing the game.

--WOPR

“The game” is an emergent property of the human species at scale

Human society cannot exist at this scale without this nested social complexity structure given the biological constraints

So something has to give

  • Revenue generation via advertising is an emergent property of humanity?

    • 100%, but it's not a direct 1:1 relationship.

      First you need agriculture so people tend to settle in one place. After ag comes more specialization, farmers need houses, graineries, and as society grows social specialists in which we'd call government.

      These things in an area typically cause the area to grow because of their stability. As they grow you get more than one person/business doing the same line of work and you get more people than fit in ones monkeysphere. At that size you may not know a person that knows what you need to know and start looking further. This is why as cities grow advertising itself becomes an emergent property. Just go to a Roman city and look for dick pavers for example. Then someone will think "Hey, I can give some poor kids a board with a message on it and have them cry out to go to the place that people pay me to advertise" and suddenly you have an emergent property of humanity.

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