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Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

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Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#381

Post by trevyn »

enlyth wrote: post #15

To me, it is worrying how much human effort we're investing into advertising as a whole. The top minds of our generations, backed by billions of dollars in funding, are working on increasingly manipulative ways to capture people's attention and use it to generate profit. We're constantly getting better at it; who knows what path this will lead us down. I suspect it might not be the one we had wished for.

A good way to immunize yourself against something is to have weaponized it yourself in the past. Then you can recognize it when it appears, and you know its strengths and weaknesses.

The human vulnerabilities that advertising leverages are coded deep in the genome; building antibodies instead of avoiding the virus entirely could be wise indeed.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#382

Post by macleginn »

cm2012 wrote: post #43
kazinator wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spending on advertizing likely has diminishing returns. The marginal decrease in satisfaction that would come from doubling the spending is possibly smaller than the baseline decrease caused by the initial expenditure.

There's nothing in their data to support this, and if the effect was there they would have seen it (since they have yearly happiness data). They describe a linear correlation.

They describe a linear correlation because they fitted linear correlation. All kinds of interesting effects could be hidden in the residuals, but they don't show them.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#383

Post by foldingmoney »

QuercusMax wrote: post #379
foldingmoney wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, explain to me how the government is incentivising 'advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc.' through taxation and monetary policy.

Well, to start, corn is highly subsidized. This means corn syrup is cheaper than it should be, making soda and most processed foods cheaper than healthier options.

Low quality ingredients will always be cheaper than high quality ingredients, regardless of subsidies and taxes. That's an unfortunate fact of life, not a government decision.

And there's nothing to stop people buying diet soda.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#384

Post by Mirioron »

rexpop wrote: post #371
Chathamization wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a larger and larger percentage of our economy is being taken up by parasitic sectors that have a net negative value for society. Advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc. We'd probably be better of as a society paying these people to do nothing than to do what they do now; we'd be even better off if we paid them to do something actually productive…

You'd be smart to accuse me, here, of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but the core parasite is Capital, which siphons value from the labor of mankind in a Byzantine labyrinth of social games meant to obscure this essential truth.

But capital through markets is how we get around the "labyrinth" that is the economic calculation problem. I think it's like complaining about how you lose power when you transfer electricity over wires. It's true, but there's always going to be a transmission cost.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#385

Post by Mirioron »

Chathamization wrote: post #334
enlyth wrote: post #15

To me, it is worrying how much human effort we're investing into advertising as a whole. The top minds of our generations, backed by billions of dollars in funding, are working on increasingly manipulative ways to capture people's attention and use it to generate profit. We're constantly getting better at it; who knows what path this will lead us down. I suspect it might not be the one we had wished for.

It seems like a larger and larger percentage of our economy is being taken up by parasitic sectors that have a net negative value for society. Advertising, soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc. We'd probably be better of as a society paying these people to do nothing than to do what they do now; we'd be even better off if we paid them to do something actually productive…

How are soda, highly processed food, and credit cards parasitic? They provide a service that people find very useful.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#386

Post by Mirioron »

robertfw wrote: post #317
bobbygoodlatte wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good advice for an individual and relatively useless advice when given to society as a whole. Yes, people should think for themselves. If you have kids you might even be able to teach them how to think for themselves. But at scale, at the level of a population, an expectation of individual rationality loses out to the realities of these manipulative techniques. On an individual level they might not work, but…

I think on top of your points, the effect of decades of underfunding education - and on focusing on "marketable" skills over "soft" skills such as critical analysis - must be taken into account.

Why would education matter here at all? People are much more highly educated nowadays than they used to be. They even score much higher on IQ tests compared to people in the past. People understand the world better today than before.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#387

Post by Mirioron »

JohnFen wrote: post #232
maerF0x0 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the reason they keep doing-- It works. Stop rewarding it and they'll stop. I actually think a large number of societal issues today are stemming from people's inability to think rationally for themselves. Things like fake news, being vulnerable to advertising, taking bad deals like minimum wage etc. If someone were able to think rationally and into the future to figure out, "4 years from now if I choose this […

> Stop rewarding it and they'll stop. Here's the thing... I'd taken quite a lot of advertising courses during my education, and among the many truly scary things that I learned in them, one stood out above all others: Knowing how advertising manipulates you, and even noticing it in the moment that it's happening, in no way makes it less effective. People who claim that they aren't affected by advertising are incorrec…

>Knowing how advertising manipulates you, and even noticing it in the moment that it's happening, in no way makes it less effective. People who claim that they aren't affected by advertising are incorrect.

Is there any evidence for such a claim? I've heard people say this again and again, but I can't see how this is true based on myself. Sure, I've been guided to a product based on advertisement once in my life, but everything else I've ignored obvious advertisements. I can't say that I haven't been swayed by an advertisement that's masked as a review, but that's divorced from this I think.

>Nobody can just decide not to reward advertising, short of keeping a list of all the advertising you're exposed to (and are you sure you can spot it all?) and refusing to buy any product or service that appears on that list.

But buying something that's advertised doesn't mean you're rewarding the advertisement. If you would buy that product regardless, then even if the advertisement stopped (or never existed) you'd still buy it.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#388

Post by Mirioron »

crummy wrote: post #367
rkagerer wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never clicked a Google link and bought something. I've never watched a Youtube ad and bought something. I don't think they're making much money off me. They still keep advertising at me.

Have you ever bought a soft drink or purchased food from a fast food restaurant? Why did you choose it?

Because I like the taste of that drink or wanted to try something new.

Re: Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence

#389

Post by narag »

r00fus wrote: post #368
foldingmoney wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like there's some central planning committee that sits down and decides what to pay everyone. Citizens decide where to spend their money -- at least the part that the government doesn't tax and spend for them -- and all of these industries you name exist and pay well because people value them and choose to spend their money on them.

Almost correct. Governments have a strong say in what is incentivized and what is not through taxation and monetary policy. The people running government are (in most places) elected by the people but that is affected by political manipulation, gerrymandering and politicians often represent the moneyed interests that got them into power.

Governments have a strong say in what is incentivized and what is not through taxation and monetary policy.

Governments have similar competition problems as individuals and companies. If taxes are raised too much, the people with money will take it to other countries with more lenient tax systems.

And unpopular policies will cause other political parties to seize the power from their promoters. Money and advertisement also plays a part in campaigns.

Finally, if you try to extract competition from politics, you get a tyranny.

People on HN likes very much to write comments with the "we as a society" or "we as a species" or "we should do that", but there is really no such we.

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