19 ms·

Workaday copywriting is dead (was moribund, now has been shot in the head). Prestige literary writing is zero-sum and therefore eternal, in the same way that eq

Workaday copywriting is dead (was moribund, now has been shot in the head). Prestige literary writing is zero-sum and therefore eternal, in the same way that equities trading (not formation and not business-building) is zero-sum and therefore the actual success of LLM has not given anyone a signal advantage anywhere there, because everyone else has LLM too.

phyzix5761 16d ago
Equity trading is not zero sum. There are real businesses and assets behind the equities they represent that have actual value and produce actual money.
- djoldman 16d ago
  Presumably they mean HFT / "locals" / "sell side." These folks compete in a reasonably zero-sum game.
  - JamesBarney 16d ago
    They're market makers who provide liquidity. So it's not exactly zero-sum.
- curuinor 16d ago
  The business-building is not zero sum, but the trading is zero-sum, and the societal purpose of the thing is to provide liquidity
  - deleted 16d ago
    [deleted]
  - porphyra 16d ago
    theoretically equity trading is about distributing stonks most optimally so that productive companies get more and less productive ones get less, improving productivity of society as a whole
    - WD-42 16d ago
      We all know it hasn’t actually been about that for a long time.
  - quickthrowman 16d ago
    Derivatives (options, futures, swaps, etc) are a zero sum market, there is always a winner and a loser necessarily because the contracts have an expiration date. The same is not true for trading equities, they are not zero sum. There are dividends, buybacks, companies will sometimes spin off a part or parts as separate companies that you get newly issued shares of stock from (GE splitting into parts is a recent example), public companies get taken private at a premium to the market price, etc.
    - Ekaros 16d ago
      The market has been heavily engineered and gamed to be positive sum. But sometimes I wonder could it turn out to be negative sum on certain timescales. That is that overall money would be lost on markets.
      - tomrod 16d ago
        This is more or less what Ray Dalio was getting at with The Changing World Order, IMO.
      - svachalek 16d ago
        It can certainly be negative sum for a generation at a time, say 20 years. The US stock market has the good fortune of not doing that in a long time but if you look around the world for example Japan these periods are not hard to find.
    - AndrewDucker 16d ago
      Futures are zero sum, but can also be a win for both sides, because what they gain is stability. "I will buy y tons of corn from you in April for £x" - now I don't have to worry about how much my corn will cost and you don't have to worry about what your income will be.
      - weeu 16d ago
        [dead]
    - 16d ago
mrweasel 16d ago
Copywriting struggles with the issue that businesses know they need it, but they don't value it. It's absolutely shocking to see how poorly companies, and governments, communicate and no amount of AI/LLM usage will change it. For decades it's been neglected and relegated to "cover my ass"- writing. The majority of AI deployment in businesses could have been avoided, if more attention had been placed on good communication. LLMs don't yield better communication or corporate writing, just more of it, because no one in business seems to understand the value or have the ability to recognize good writing.
- ilamont 16d ago
  > It's absolutely shocking to see how poorly companies, and governments, communicate and no amount of AI/LLM usage will change it. Thank you for saying the first part. It truly boggles the mind to see how badly most organizations communicate, even those with professional staff tasked with communications. Regarding the second part: AI/LLM usage will lead to improvements for some people/organizations, if only for the simple reason that it removes barriers to communications. All of a sudden city hall or a third-tier supplier can quickly update their websites in multiple languages, process email communications more quickly, and empower staff who weren't good writers.
  - mrweasel 16d ago
    > and empower staff who weren't good writers. That's the part I question. You have to be a really good communicator to put yourself in the place for the reader and adjust your language to your target audience. So much of "professional" communication fails because the language assumes that the recipient is knowledgeable or even just interested. If you can't communicate effectively on your own, I doubt that you can prompt the LLM to do it for you. It's going to be very much like development, if you're a skilled developer, LLMs are a massive boost to your productivity, but if you can't code, you're just producing garbage. AI is going to produce an increase in communication, but that is not what we need. We need better and more targeted communication. AI doesn't need to help with the targeting, we can already do that, and do it cheaper than an LLM, and again, I don't believe the majority of people are able to prompt the LLM to generate better communication, because they don't know what that looks like.

phyzix5761 16d ago

Equity trading is not zero sum. There are real businesses and assets behind the equities they represent that have actual value and produce actual money.

djoldman 16d ago
Presumably they mean HFT / "locals" / "sell side." These folks compete in a reasonably zero-sum game.
- JamesBarney 16d ago
  They're market makers who provide liquidity. So it's not exactly zero-sum.
curuinor 16d ago
The business-building is not zero sum, but the trading is zero-sum, and the societal purpose of the thing is to provide liquidity
- deleted 16d ago
  [deleted]
- porphyra 16d ago
  theoretically equity trading is about distributing stonks most optimally so that productive companies get more and less productive ones get less, improving productivity of society as a whole
  - WD-42 16d ago
    We all know it hasn’t actually been about that for a long time.
- quickthrowman 16d ago
  Derivatives (options, futures, swaps, etc) are a zero sum market, there is always a winner and a loser necessarily because the contracts have an expiration date. The same is not true for trading equities, they are not zero sum. There are dividends, buybacks, companies will sometimes spin off a part or parts as separate companies that you get newly issued shares of stock from (GE splitting into parts is a recent example), public companies get taken private at a premium to the market price, etc.
  - Ekaros 16d ago
    The market has been heavily engineered and gamed to be positive sum. But sometimes I wonder could it turn out to be negative sum on certain timescales. That is that overall money would be lost on markets.
    - tomrod 16d ago
      This is more or less what Ray Dalio was getting at with The Changing World Order, IMO.
    - svachalek 16d ago
      It can certainly be negative sum for a generation at a time, say 20 years. The US stock market has the good fortune of not doing that in a long time but if you look around the world for example Japan these periods are not hard to find.
  - AndrewDucker 16d ago
    Futures are zero sum, but can also be a win for both sides, because what they gain is stability. "I will buy y tons of corn from you in April for £x" - now I don't have to worry about how much my corn will cost and you don't have to worry about what your income will be.
    - weeu 16d ago
      [dead]
  - 16d ago

mrweasel 16d ago

Copywriting struggles with the issue that businesses know they need it, but they don't value it. It's absolutely shocking to see how poorly companies, and governments, communicate and no amount of AI/LLM usage will change it. For decades it's been neglected and relegated to "cover my ass"- writing. The majority of AI deployment in businesses could have been avoided, if more attention had been placed on good communication. LLMs don't yield better communication or corporate writing, just more of it, because no one in business seems to understand the value or have the ability to recognize good writing.

ilamont 16d ago
> It's absolutely shocking to see how poorly companies, and governments, communicate and no amount of AI/LLM usage will change it. Thank you for saying the first part. It truly boggles the mind to see how badly most organizations communicate, even those with professional staff tasked with communications. Regarding the second part: AI/LLM usage will lead to improvements for some people/organizations, if only for the simple reason that it removes barriers to communications. All of a sudden city hall or a third-tier supplier can quickly update their websites in multiple languages, process email communications more quickly, and empower staff who weren't good writers.
- mrweasel 16d ago
  > and empower staff who weren't good writers. That's the part I question. You have to be a really good communicator to put yourself in the place for the reader and adjust your language to your target audience. So much of "professional" communication fails because the language assumes that the recipient is knowledgeable or even just interested. If you can't communicate effectively on your own, I doubt that you can prompt the LLM to do it for you. It's going to be very much like development, if you're a skilled developer, LLMs are a massive boost to your productivity, but if you can't code, you're just producing garbage. AI is going to produce an increase in communication, but that is not what we need. We need better and more targeted communication. AI doesn't need to help with the targeting, we can already do that, and do it cheaper than an LLM, and again, I don't believe the majority of people are able to prompt the LLM to generate better communication, because they don't know what that looks like.