Comment by weitendorf

I guess my meta-point is that "marketing" shouldn't be such a dirty word, because done well enough, it's effective communication that gives people what they want/helps them AND makes them feel good. My own comment basically does the same thing I said he did, lol.

The point of calling it marketing is that this blog post is explaining hooks, basic content marketing (ie be entertaining or interesting), progressive disclosure, and understanding your target audience: standard marketing concepts. You can find a lot of info if you research them by those terms.

Gwern's audience, in an ironic twist of fate, think that being marketed to = being tricked or manipulated by an evil person, so here he is explaining basic content marketing concepts to the people his blog is marketed towards, who hate marketing and believe themselves immune to it.

AI does the same thing to you because 1. most of the web is marketing 2. why shouldn't it be nice to you AND help you? 3. you keep coming back for more, right? And is that necessarily a bad thing?

I highly recommend a deep dive into signalling theory if you're interested in learning more, it's completely changed how I think about communication and behavior, even my own.