Anyone who's not familiar with Matt should definitely check out his podcast. He has a lot of great interviews with real elders of gaming. The names range from Scott Adams to John Romero. And he just lets them reminisce. If you're interested in the development of your favorite classic games, or the personal histories of game design greats, or way the game industry has changed over the past 30 years, you'll get some great perspectives from watching Matt Chat.
The important thing is that in the aggregate the adverting works which is why people do it.
Does it really? How do you measure the net returns to the economy from advertising? Nobody really knows how well advertising works. All they can do is pick out a few examples where it clearly did work, and hand wave the rest away for lack of data.
The thing is, the success of advertising is judged by the advertiser. What we really should care about is the end user. Is he better off with this product he wouldn't have purchased except for the advertisement? If not, the ad was unethical. That goes for every type of ad, not just drugs.
After all, clearly they, their doctors and their healthcare provider all thought is was worth it.
Only after swallowing a heaping helping of bullshit from the pharmaceutical company.
With as many safeguards in place as there are, this issue is just a red herring.
Such as? What safeguards are there in place to stop the overprescription of non-scheduled drugs?
The real problem in these cases is with doctors prescribing drugs that people don't need, and stopping advertising won't fix that at all.
Stopping advertising won't eliminate overprescription, no. But allowing advertising certainly exacerbates it.
On the other hand, advertising, by definition, increases profits or it's a waste of money
Quite a lot of advertising wastes quite a lot of money.
Thus, advertising actually _decreases_ individual costs because they sell more units and can thus amortize the overhead costs (which are the primary costs) across more units.
What about the individual costs to the individuals who were mislead by advertising into taking drugs they didn't need?
For example, suppose your overhead is $1000, which cores things like labs, employees, trials, and other failed drugs and the cost to manufacture is $1. If you only sell 100 units, you must charge $11/each to break even. Suppose you then spend $200 on advertising and sell an additional 100. Now your break-even price becomes $7/each. The advertising money actually reduced the unit cost.
But now there's 100 people out there who are taking a drug their doctor didn't think was necessary. You've broken the first rule of medicine, do no harm.
At the end of the day, it's not the doctor's body. It's your body. It should be your choice what goes into it. Whether that's Paxil, Viagara, Cannabis, or Arsenic. It's your choice, period.
Getting white papers, case studies, etc to doctors is probably 70% of what drug reps do
Still not education, because you can't actually trust an industry representative to give you accurate data. He's going to give you the results from private industry research which always err in favor of the industry. Any results they choose to share will play down risks, and play up efficacy over an academic study.
What we need is real continuing education for doctors. With classes, and tests, and papers, oh my!
That is true, but if you don't advertise your drug and only 100 people know about it, then the other 1 million people with cancer will be left out
That's why you educate(not market to) their doctors. So that the health care professional in the situation can make the most appropriate decision for the health of the patient.
Advertising will make those other million people realize the drug is available, increase the sales, and decrease the per-pill cost.
A visit to the doctor will make those other million people realize that the drug is available, assuming the doctors are properly educated. If your doctors are not properly educated, fix that. Marketing plays no valid role in this dynamic.
Stop committing first-order thinking (advertising == waste of money == bad). Look to secondary and tertiary effects
What are the secondary and tertiary effects of thousands or millions of people taking drugs they don't need because they saw some B list celebrity talk it up on day time TV?
No amount of marketing can change the number of people who need a drug. That is fixed. If the number of sales is less than this number, that can be fixed by educating doctors. If the number of sales is greater than or equal to the number of people who need a drug, more marketing just leads to overprescription. Whatever savings you're imagining here are subsidized by encouraging people to take drugs they don't need. That's bad all around.
Your right to a speedy trial only kicks in when the prosecution isn't ready, generally speaking.
Where in the Constitution is that? I don't see any such qualifications in the 6th amendment.
This is another game the government plays, carving out exceptions to our rights without any basis whatsoever. The only way the Constitution provides to change the Constitution is through amendment. If the right to a speedy trial is too burdensome, then get the Constitution amended. If you can't, tough shit. Ignoring the Constitution only delegitimizes our justice system.
There are only two teams per game, modeling that with a coin flip makes a lot more sense than modeling it with a die. A random chance will give you 50% accuracy at picking the winner. You have to do better than 50% accuracy to have any claim at success at all. The real question is, what was the GP talking about when he claimed that success rates between 20% and 90% were more realisitic. Why even try if your algorithms can't beat random chance?
At least in Skyrim, you're an interactive participant. That, and Skyrim isn't just a polite way for people to act out their base tribalistic instincts.
And the cited estimate of 70-80% accuracy seems made up. People who research the field know that there is far less certainty than that. At something like 20% confidence, your prediction should be something like 20%-90%.
If a coin flip is 50% accurate, than an extra 20% accuracy will give you 70%.
Why haven't they been released? If you cannot offer them a speedy trial, you must release them under the 6th amendment.
Since you can't consitutionally hold them, and nothing else grants you the power, continuing to hold them is essentially kidnapping. That's probably a much more serious crime than what you're holding these people for. Remember that when you go to work. You are a criminal too.
The only reason that to take his threat seriously is because you predict that it's likely that he will prevail at trial. If you think you'll prevail, the threat is totally meaningless -- it's not like the prosecutor can put you in jail of his own accord.
What reason would someone have to belive that a court would find them not guilty, even if they are factually innocent?
do we really need a jury to decide that one?
Who are you going to trust to decide who gets a jury trial and who doesn't? What kind of oversight do you propose to ensure that power is not abused?
unless you're willing to fight for another century to rebuild the entire judiciary
The point is the judiciary is broken to the point where truly need to rebuild it.
The reality is, trials are expensive, they suck
They suck for a reason, because sending innocent people to jail sucks more.
And nor is forcing a trial on someone who will most likely be indebted for the rest of their lives paying legal and court fees
How about we don't send people to jail unless we as a society are willing to pay for a full and competent defense. If we're not willing to pay that much to send someone to jail, then it's not really that important that they be in jail in the first place.
You can get all romantic about the thought of saving some young guy from jail for drugs possession but would you find it so noble if a Klan member got away with murdering an innocent African American youth by his all white jury?
There are a lot more drug persecutions than lynchings these days, so on the balance we're still ahead.
Laws are put into place by people elected by millions of voters
By an extremely flawed process that ensures good policy cannot prevail. From the mathematics of winner takes all voting, to the extraordinary American propaganda machine it's nearly impossible for good policy to prevail against electioneering. Just government is based on the consent of the people, and you can't actually assess the consent of the people with such broken apparatus. It's thus impossible to consider the American government legitimate.
goes against the whole principle of justice being blind.
When you nullify, you're passing judgement on the law, not the defendant.
Mass incarceration isn't a libertarian issue. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, an embarassment to the "land of the free". You should take a look of the reality you live in before you lecture others on naivete.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who's not familiar with Matt should definitely check out his podcast. He has a lot of great interviews with real elders of gaming. The names range from Scott Adams to John Romero. And he just lets them reminisce. If you're interested in the development of your favorite classic games, or the personal histories of game design greats, or way the game industry has changed over the past 30 years, you'll get some great perspectives from watching Matt Chat.
The important thing is that in the aggregate the adverting works which is why people do it.
Does it really? How do you measure the net returns to the economy from advertising? Nobody really knows how well advertising works. All they can do is pick out a few examples where it clearly did work, and hand wave the rest away for lack of data.
The thing is, the success of advertising is judged by the advertiser. What we really should care about is the end user. Is he better off with this product he wouldn't have purchased except for the advertisement? If not, the ad was unethical. That goes for every type of ad, not just drugs.
After all, clearly they, their doctors and their healthcare provider all thought is was worth it.
Only after swallowing a heaping helping of bullshit from the pharmaceutical company.
With as many safeguards in place as there are, this issue is just a red herring.
Such as? What safeguards are there in place to stop the overprescription of non-scheduled drugs?
The real problem in these cases is with doctors prescribing drugs that people don't need, and stopping advertising won't fix that at all.
Stopping advertising won't eliminate overprescription, no. But allowing advertising certainly exacerbates it.
Since when does party A presenting information previously not known to part B not equal A educating B.
Biased information can be of negative utility. That's not education.
On the other hand, advertising, by definition, increases profits or it's a waste of money
Quite a lot of advertising wastes quite a lot of money.
Thus, advertising actually _decreases_ individual costs because they sell more units and can thus amortize the overhead costs (which are the primary costs) across more units.
What about the individual costs to the individuals who were mislead by advertising into taking drugs they didn't need?
For example, suppose your overhead is $1000, which cores things like labs, employees, trials, and other failed drugs and the cost to manufacture is $1. If you only sell 100 units, you must charge $11/each to break even. Suppose you then spend $200 on advertising and sell an additional 100. Now your break-even price becomes $7/each. The advertising money actually reduced the unit cost.
But now there's 100 people out there who are taking a drug their doctor didn't think was necessary. You've broken the first rule of medicine, do no harm.
At the end of the day, it's not the doctor's body. It's your body. It should be your choice what goes into it. Whether that's Paxil, Viagara, Cannabis, or Arsenic. It's your choice, period.
Getting white papers, case studies, etc to doctors is probably 70% of what drug reps do
Still not education, because you can't actually trust an industry representative to give you accurate data. He's going to give you the results from private industry research which always err in favor of the industry. Any results they choose to share will play down risks, and play up efficacy over an academic study.
What we need is real continuing education for doctors. With classes, and tests, and papers, oh my!
That is true, but if you don't advertise your drug and only 100 people know about it, then the other 1 million people with cancer will be left out
That's why you educate(not market to) their doctors. So that the health care professional in the situation can make the most appropriate decision for the health of the patient.
Advertising will make those other million people realize the drug is available, increase the sales, and decrease the per-pill cost.
A visit to the doctor will make those other million people realize that the drug is available, assuming the doctors are properly educated. If your doctors are not properly educated, fix that. Marketing plays no valid role in this dynamic.
Stop committing first-order thinking (advertising == waste of money == bad). Look to secondary and tertiary effects
What are the secondary and tertiary effects of thousands or millions of people taking drugs they don't need because they saw some B list celebrity talk it up on day time TV?
Guess what category 'educating doctors' falls under? That's right, marketing.
Not a chance. Education and marketing are mutually exclusive.
How do they educate doctors? By buying ads, and sending reps to talk to the doctors
That's not education.
How does a busy doctor have time to talk to a rep? The rep buys him lunch.
Also not education.
How does the rep convince the doctor that his meds are right for the doctor's patients? By giving him samples.
Still not education.
R&D spending is the second largest expenditure most pharmaceutical companies make. The largest expenditure is marketing, of course.
No amount of marketing can change the number of people who need a drug. That is fixed. If the number of sales is less than this number, that can be fixed by educating doctors. If the number of sales is greater than or equal to the number of people who need a drug, more marketing just leads to overprescription. Whatever savings you're imagining here are subsidized by encouraging people to take drugs they don't need. That's bad all around.
My guess is that 90% of police traffic/speed enforcement has literally nothing to do with traffic safety
90% of all law enforcement has nothing to do with safety.
Your right to a speedy trial only kicks in when the prosecution isn't ready, generally speaking.
Where in the Constitution is that? I don't see any such qualifications in the 6th amendment.
This is another game the government plays, carving out exceptions to our rights without any basis whatsoever. The only way the Constitution provides to change the Constitution is through amendment. If the right to a speedy trial is too burdensome, then get the Constitution amended. If you can't, tough shit. Ignoring the Constitution only delegitimizes our justice system.
There are only two teams per game, modeling that with a coin flip makes a lot more sense than modeling it with a die. A random chance will give you 50% accuracy at picking the winner. You have to do better than 50% accuracy to have any claim at success at all. The real question is, what was the GP talking about when he claimed that success rates between 20% and 90% were more realisitic. Why even try if your algorithms can't beat random chance?
At least in Skyrim, you're an interactive participant. That, and Skyrim isn't just a polite way for people to act out their base tribalistic instincts.
And the cited estimate of 70-80% accuracy seems made up. People who research the field know that there is far less certainty than that. At something like 20% confidence, your prediction should be something like 20%-90%.
If a coin flip is 50% accurate, than an extra 20% accuracy will give you 70%.
some people remain in custody that entire time
Why haven't they been released? If you cannot offer them a speedy trial, you must release them under the 6th amendment.
Since you can't consitutionally hold them, and nothing else grants you the power, continuing to hold them is essentially kidnapping. That's probably a much more serious crime than what you're holding these people for. Remember that when you go to work. You are a criminal too.
The only reason that to take his threat seriously is because you predict that it's likely that he will prevail at trial. If you think you'll prevail, the threat is totally meaningless -- it's not like the prosecutor can put you in jail of his own accord.
What reason would someone have to belive that a court would find them not guilty, even if they are factually innocent?
do we really need a jury to decide that one?
Who are you going to trust to decide who gets a jury trial and who doesn't? What kind of oversight do you propose to ensure that power is not abused?
Said that of all his clients, there was only one who he wasn't 100% sure was guilty.
That sounds like a useful psychological defense mechanism more than a reflection of reality.
Authoritarians. And yes, that does help one understand how the world works.
He's pretty sure you did it -- enough to put your ass in jail --- but not so sure he can meet the standards of proof that a jury trial would require
If you don't have the evidence, you shouldn't be "pretty sure". If you are, you definitely shouldn't be a prosecutor.
unless you're willing to fight for another century to rebuild the entire judiciary
The point is the judiciary is broken to the point where truly need to rebuild it.
The reality is, trials are expensive, they suck
They suck for a reason, because sending innocent people to jail sucks more.
And nor is forcing a trial on someone who will most likely be indebted for the rest of their lives paying legal and court fees
How about we don't send people to jail unless we as a society are willing to pay for a full and competent defense. If we're not willing to pay that much to send someone to jail, then it's not really that important that they be in jail in the first place.
You can get all romantic about the thought of saving some young guy from jail for drugs possession but would you find it so noble if a Klan member got away with murdering an innocent African American youth by his all white jury?
There are a lot more drug persecutions than lynchings these days, so on the balance we're still ahead.
Laws are put into place by people elected by millions of voters
By an extremely flawed process that ensures good policy cannot prevail. From the mathematics of winner takes all voting, to the extraordinary American propaganda machine it's nearly impossible for good policy to prevail against electioneering. Just government is based on the consent of the people, and you can't actually assess the consent of the people with such broken apparatus. It's thus impossible to consider the American government legitimate.
goes against the whole principle of justice being blind.
When you nullify, you're passing judgement on the law, not the defendant.
Mass incarceration isn't a libertarian issue. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, an embarassment to the "land of the free". You should take a look of the reality you live in before you lecture others on naivete.
But perhaps you're using some metric
Spectrum.
SAD is ameliorated by blue wavelengths. Heat lamps radiate near the red end of the spectrum. Heat lamps are really just the poor mans sauna.