161–170 of 241 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's a monopoly? What is a business expense? What's NSFW? There are lots of gray areas in regulation, to the point where ambiguity is more the rule than the exception. This is just another aspect of complex behavior that, now that we see it abused, we realize we need to regulate.
Well, yes, but since you are a proponent of regulation, I was asking where you would draw the line. Presumably you have given it some thought.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is absolutely no limit to this. Putting on a suit for a financial job interview exploits the cognitive biases of interviewers. Tattoos exploit the cognitive biases of hipsters. Putting hockey-stick growth projections in pitch decks exploits the cognitive biases of VCs. Equity grants (pretty much always) exploit the cognitive biases of startup employees. Driving a fancy car exploits the cognitive biases of (a ve…
> You simply cannot ban emotional appeals in principle, because all appeals have an emotional component. This way lies a dystopia far more terrible than "grandpa shared some nonsense on facebook". True enough. But are you implying (not saying you are, just asking) that ~"nothing can be done"? "Banning emotional appeals....This way lies a dystopia..." is just one option - might there be other approaches that could imp…
This problem space has barely been cracked open, and we're going to have to get big smart about it before it destroys us.
I wrote this for a related article yesterday: --- If we know that humans have all sorts of cognitive biases, how come it's ok to use that fact while at the same time we insist there's some kind of free market? Say you discover that putting good-looking women next to cars causes the sale of cars to increase. Why does nobody question whether it is legitimate to do so? It's as if there's a line between actively lying ("…
There is absolutely no limit to this. Putting on a suit for a financial job interview exploits the cognitive biases of interviewers. Tattoos exploit the cognitive biases of hipsters. Putting hockey-stick growth projections in pitch decks exploits the cognitive biases of VCs. Equity grants (pretty much always) exploit the cognitive biases of startup employees. Driving a fancy car exploits the cognitive biases of (a ve…
It'd be like saying that all car driving should be banned because high speed driving is extremely risky. Of course that makes no sense, because there's a huge difference between driving 100mph in a neighborhood and just doing 25mph, and it's also the reason we have speed limits, which draw a line in the sand, past which we say "this is unacceptable."
Over time things should stabilize as we get social antibodies against new forms of persuasion, and a new balance of power between groups that organize differently because of new communication patterns.
For us on HN, Internet may be something that's existed for many decades, but social media and smartphones really changed things for the masses starting around 2008-2010 or so.
I wrote this for a related article yesterday: --- If we know that humans have all sorts of cognitive biases, how come it's ok to use that fact while at the same time we insist there's some kind of free market? Say you discover that putting good-looking women next to cars causes the sale of cars to increase. Why does nobody question whether it is legitimate to do so? It's as if there's a line between actively lying ("…
Well obviously that's not what it means. What it means is that the speed of light is rather impossibly constant. Likewise, economics has this same issue. "Free Market" does not mean everyone has complete free will and has total immunity to persuasion. "Free Markets" defines a philosophy of trade where individuals can own and sell property. Whether or not people are 'easily affected by suggestion' as you put it, has got no impact on the concept of free markets.
We live in the attention economy. We have medias monopolizing that attention.
It's the Supermarket of Ideas™, right? Maybe the Freedom Speeches™ and Freedom Markets™ camp followers could advocate for some competition.
I dunno, maybe something crazy, like a doctrine of giving interventions their fair share of oxygen. For example: After Alex Jones spins up the peanut gallery, trained psychiatrists can talk them all off the ledge. Make sure they all get a cookie and some nap time.
Call it the Milk & Cookies Fairness Doctrine.
Anyhow, if you go look at the Wikipedia entry for "Neurolinguistic Programming" you'll see that it's coated in warnings that it's a pseudo-science. So that's where we stand today in re: state-of-the art persuasion technology. Most folks have never heard of NLP, many that have are openly skeptical (verging on hostile) and some people have entered into the Information Revolution proper. (Meaning they know and use this body of knowledge.)
Given that we have allowed software to fall under patents, and that this knowledge constitutes the software of the mind, I'm reluctant to have it "go mainstream". I'd hate to imagine patent wars over IP that is essentially just structured thought...
On the other hand, ignorance of the "operating system" of the mind causes unspeakable suffering. (I myself was cured of severe depression, just to add a personal, anecdotal, note.) And the differential between folks who know and folks who don't is also problematical. That would seem to argue in favor of rapid and widespread dissemination.
Then there's the problem of the self-referential nature of persuasion and the limits thereof: can you limit persuasion if I can persuade you not to? Either persuasion tech doesn't work and so the laws are unnecessary, or it does work and can be used to affect its own regulation.
I wrote this for a related article yesterday: --- If we know that humans have all sorts of cognitive biases, how come it's ok to use that fact while at the same time we insist there's some kind of free market? Say you discover that putting good-looking women next to cars causes the sale of cars to increase. Why does nobody question whether it is legitimate to do so? It's as if there's a line between actively lying ("…
There's this problem in the sciences and higher academe where we give things names that sound like something but mean another. For instance, Einstein's Special Theory of Relatively is a common example. Ask the average person on the street what it means and they'd say, "Well of course I know what it means, after all, it means that everything is relative." Well obviously that's not what it means. What it means is that…
Yes, it does. A free market is not just about individuals owning and trading property. A free market requires that all trades are voluntary. If people are forced, for example by law, to make trades they would not freely choose to make, you do not have a free market: forced trades are not voluntary. But if people are manipulated into making trades they would not freely choose to make if they knew the information the manipulator is hiding from them, those trades are not voluntary either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There isn't a clear cause and effect between smoking a single cigarette and developing cancer, or even between smoking a single cigarette and addiction. For a long time, tobacco companies used such equivocation to avoid regulation of their industry. Instead, we look at the total effect (and often the intended effect) of multiple small changes, and decide whether they are a net positive for society.
Do we have a total effect of ads and fake news on society? Something that's actually reliable and not propaganda itself? It seems extremely difficult to be able to differentiate between an ad letting people know that a product exists and it directly influencing your decision. Or you could consider letting people know about the product existing as influencing the person, but then it's hard to argue that ads are actual…
When the rest of the "free society" has to bear the costs of certain choices, it doesn't seem so illegitimate to argue that it has some interest in constraining those choices.
And there of course is the endless contradiction of being a social creature: on the one hand, being part of a society creates possibilities that were not there before, but also leads to constraints that were also not there before.
Endless political philosophers across centuries have grappled with how best to resolve this paradox, with no definitive answer at this point.