Marketing vs science

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DRAFT

motivation. As I see it, marketing and science emphathise different ways of understanding reality.

• In science, we share theory to criticise it collectively.
• In marketing, we act on a scene of competing stories.

Both views of reality are necessary. Science without marketing will fail to reach everyone. Ceding the ground of story will limit who you reach. Talking about theory without caring about its interpretation works when communicating with people who are already interested in your message—but has no way of reaching new people. Marketing without science builds in a real risk of being plain wrong. It does not let you talk effectively about building things that do not yet exist. It does not teach you how you can create correct theory.

A synthesis of marketing and science is powerful. You can talk crisply about what you are proposing (theory) and motivate it for real use (story). This synthesis can be achieved within one individual, by choosing whether marketing or science is the right frame for the situation. Or, more commonly, different people can embody each frame.

text outline. I don’t want to describe this view as theory. Though theory is precisely what you’ve read this far. I want story. Something like this:

• Our champions: for science, David Deutsch. For marketing, Patrick Rothfuss. As judge, Socrates.
• Science for theory, marketing for story. Point of contention: objective truth versus utilitarian truth
• Good versus evil: As treated in Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time. Criteria:
  • Truth and deception in communication between people. Describe Aragorn, Denethor and Saruman.
  • Control and responsibility. What is the effect of failure? Is failure punished?
  • Controlling perception and story. In the prolouge of The Wheel of Time book 3, The Dragon Reborn there is a surprising amount of perception at play, in a scene with some arguably evil people. “If you do not encourage the perception that I want, I will kill you.” I don’t think you’d find that kind of interaction between less evil people.
• Is evil bad? A jungian take on integrating the shadow.
  • From the previous section on good versus evil, it’s surprisingly easy to find analogies to science versus marketing. An argument why science is not enough is found in Carl Jung’s work on integrating the shadow. I don’t believe science is enough. In science, we build theory. That theory is worthless if it’s not used in practice.