Having worked on customer-tracking systems for several companies and seen executive strategy first hand and compiled reports to assess the effectiveness of these types of programs I have witnessed clear evidence that what you are saying is NOT true. Yes, there could theoretically be value to this type of data but trying to explain this to VPs is pearls before swine.
"They wouldn't do it if it didn't work" should be added to lists of logical fallacies. People do dumb stuff and make mistakes all the time, but groups of people are collectively about as clever as a slime mold.
To assume unquestioningly the intelligence of our rulers during the Trump era is just, wow. I don't know what world you live in, but in mine, the worst people on the planet are the ones at the wheel.
> "They wouldn't do it if it didn't work" should be added to lists of logical fallacies.
Exactly. Other reasons for doing something include:
- Thinking that it works, when it doesn't - in particular, reality is messy, and you can often get away believing in bullshit, as long as your peers believe in the same bullshit too.
- It not working for the company in general, but working for them individually to scam their own employer or boost their careers (related: CV-driven development in software).
- It not working, but the profit is made off making you believe they do it because it works.
speaking of fallacies, surely there's a middle ground where our "rulers" are not all geniuses (plutocracy vs meritocracy), but that on average companies pursue things that work over things that don't (survivorship bias).
and groups of people can be smart crowds or dumb (slime) mobs, depending on the systemic conditions.
The correctness of that conjecture depends on what you're averaging over. For example, racism and sexism. Those apparently can persist in the workplace, on average, despite the drag on profits. However, I'd agree that for the average topic, the market does a pretty good job of optimizing behavior.
that's more of a frame of reference issue though. in cases like racism/sexism, available profits on average do accrue to the people wielding power for that purpose, whether it's good for profits overall.
==To assume unquestioningly the intelligence of our rulers during the Trump era is just, wow.==
Who did this? I laid out the case that modern large corporations (no need to bring politics into it) are some of the most effective moneymaking machines in history. We can observe them investing heavily into customer surveillance/tracking. We can also observe the primary players in this industry thriving from a revenue and market cap perspective (Google, Facebook, Amazon).
The hypothesis is that both main street (through revenues) and wall street (through outrageous P/E ratios) are signaling that the data being collected does, in fact, have value.
At first I wasn't going to reply because you are clearly not discussing in good faith (you neglected to address my evidence to the contrary or the flaw in your reasoning but instead focused on my random afterthought.) But others might read this so I decided to elaborate a bit.
I was once misinformed with the belief that business' primary goal is to make money. But when you have the experience of explaining data to a CEO that clearly shows that their customer surveillance has a negative ROI and that the conclusions they are drawing from the data are not warranted. (For example, if you want to claim that your initiative increased sales, you need to compare an equivalent data point before and after the initiative, not just afterward.) If you say this and then look into the cold, dead eyes of a sociopath you'll know how foolish you were to ever assume the point of tracking customer data is to make money.
I felt dumb ever believing that business leaders care directly about money. I knew that to be false in high school when they made me read 1984. The lesson that O'Brien teaches Winston is one that we clearly have not learned.
> The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
We can add to that list "The object of unrelenting invasive surveillance is unrelenting invasive surveillance."
I think you are misunderstanding my point, so apologies for being unclear. I am not questioning the actual validity of the data collection or ROI of the projects themselves. I am saying that the market can award value to companies who just signal they are making efforts to "digitally transform" or "invest in data assets" or "monetize data". It doesn't matter if they accomplish them tomorrow, the market is giving value today.
Thanks for sharing your CEO experience, that is not a data point I have encountered. I do think money and power are closely linked, although maybe not as closely as I assumed.
==I felt dumb ever believing that business leaders care directly about money.==
Today, what do you believe they care directly about? Power? Ego?
"They wouldn't do it if it didn't work" should be added to lists of logical fallacies. People do dumb stuff and make mistakes all the time, but groups of people are collectively about as clever as a slime mold.
To assume unquestioningly the intelligence of our rulers during the Trump era is just, wow. I don't know what world you live in, but in mine, the worst people on the planet are the ones at the wheel.