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Advertising is devastating to my well-being

briancarper.net

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Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#141

Post by JabavuAdams »

moron4hire wrote: post #132
JabavuAdams wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has to by definition, or else it wouldn't be entered. This is Econ 101 dogma. I'm surprised you can write this without examining it further. People are not rational actors. That's why advertising works. What's particularly interesting about your using this argument is that advertising exists precisely to manipulate the non-rational decision making of consumers. Once we realize that humans in general are wired su…

Wow, I had no idea that human beings were such simple creatures that they could be compelled to purchase goods and services against their best interests by a simple flashing picture. While advertising is primarily persuasive (there is still a significant informative portion of advertising), there's nothing wrong with being persuasive. You're attempting to be persuasive with your replies in this thread. If being persu…

> Wow, I had no idea that human beings were such simple creatures that they could be compelled to purchase goods and services against their best interests by a simple flashing picture

People's moment to moment interests often differ from their stated long-term interests. If this were untrue, impulse purchases would be impossible. How do you explain impulse purchases? How do you explain people who "want to lose weight", yet eat an extra snack that they know they shouldn't eat.

Notice that I didn't write "compelled", anywhere. That's your choice of words, and it creates a straw-man argument. "Enticed" would be closer to the mark.

Let's examine this claim of yours that "there's nothing wrong with being persuasive". Persuasion doesn't exist by itself. One tries to persuade someone of something. Considering persuasion alone, without considering the context is not very deep thinking.

If I try to persuade you to believe something that is untrue, or that is likely not in your best interest, then actually, there is something wrong with that persuasion.

I'm arguing here, not for the sake of arguing, but to persuade you of something that I believe is true. While many advertisers may believe their own claims, many do not. Furthermore, many who believe their own claims do so out of a failure to question them with the same rigour as they might question a position they disagree with.

Going meta, the pattern I see in your response is that you take what I wrote to an absurd extreme, and then point out the absurdity of (your interpretation) of my argument. What do you think of this?

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#142

Post by rudzki »

fexl wrote: post #125
scrod wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure hope you're not suggesting that the recognition and protection of private property is somehow linked with the survival of the species, because that would demonstrate a pretty shallow view of history. Indeed, the notion of "private property" often comes hand in hand with authoritarian force: http://everything2.com/title/The+Enclosure+Movement

You have linked to a story of people who used authoritarian force to violate private property. The people who took that land from its rightful owners were thieves. Rightful property is established by production or trade. A rough recursive definition goes: Your body and mind are your property. If you make a thing using your property, that thing is your property. If you obtain a thing by trading your property for it, t…

It's a little bit more complicated. I mean, suppose it's true that the only things you own are your mind, body, and the things you make using them. Then, the only things you can legitimately own are your mind, body, and bodily waste. Oh, and spit. So, there must be something else that you can own. For Locke, you can own land and other natural resources by mixing your labor with it. (But what this really means is a matter of serious debate, involving very old people wearing argyle socks, pipe tobacco, and tenure)

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#143

Post by DennisP »

bd wrote: post #67
rick888 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I submit that, if sites ran carefully-vetted ads that were of legitimate interest to their readers, were not annoying, and did not compromise user privacy, far fewer of us would use adblock." How do you know if the site has changed if you are using adblock? If they do decide to change ads, it won't really matter because they are already blocked. What about people that are using a computer with adblock already instal…

How do you know if the site has changed if you are using adblock? What about people that are using a computer with adblock already installed? If, for example, your site has a community and ads are indeed "of legitimate interest", your community will discuss interesting ads. I have seen this happening on MetaFilter and Reddit.

The trouble might be that if your advertising message really is all that interesting, you can just submit it like any other story and people will vote it up.

Every now and then, an advertiser will make a mistake and pay for attention he could have gotten for free. But I don't think we can expect them to do that all the time. The only way to make money from advertising is to accept money from people who can't get attention otherwise.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#144

Post by DennisP »

fexl wrote: post #122
cabalamat wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If human behavior ever became "all about screwing over" other people, initiating force, and taking property without consent, Humans have been doing these things for as long as there have been humans... > then the human race would die out. ...and this hasn't happened. Ergo, your argument is wrong.

You are not responding to the argument that I made. I said that if such behavior ever became the norm , the human race would die. As of now, only a small portion of humans behave this way. This happy fact enables humans to survive. However, on the basis of your comment I will scale back my argument a bit. It might be possible for some humans to survive in a movie fantasy post-apocalyptic world of pure rampaging feral…

> In reality, in order for a human being to survive, he must have things and services produced by other humans. He can't do it all himself.

Actually he can, and quite easily, as long as he's got the appropriate skills and the population density is low. We can survive comfortably in most environments; it's just that today our environment consists mostly of other humans.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#145

Post by DennisP »

The solution seems obvious. Run adblock, and also run a background script that reads your browser history and hits the same sites, ads included, without displaying anything. You get your clean Internet and as far as the advertisers can tell, they're getting their "impressions."

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#146

Post by DennisP »

metamemetics wrote: post #82
natrius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inform sites which you enjoy of this opinion. If you don't, you're just reducing the probability of sites you like existing in the future, which is stupid.

I won't need to, technology will naturally evolve this way. Sites will just make a simple technology switch and host ads from their own domain rather than from 3rd party ad servers in the same manner as they host content. -The sites will make more money as there is no way to block the ads. -The sites will make more money as they will not allow low click through spam. -The viewers will have a more pleasant experience.…

Hmm, can't do impression-based ads because the advertiser would have to trust the website to accurately report impressions. But click-based ads should work fine.

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#147

Post by fexl »

rudzki wrote: post #142
fexl wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have linked to a story of people who used authoritarian force to violate private property. The people who took that land from its rightful owners were thieves. Rightful property is established by production or trade. A rough recursive definition goes: Your body and mind are your property. If you make a thing using your property, that thing is your property. If you obtain a thing by trading your property for it, t…

It's a little bit more complicated. I mean, suppose it's true that the only things you own are your mind, body, and the things you make using them. Then, the only things you can legitimately own are your mind, body, and bodily waste. Oh, and spit. So, there must be something else that you can own. For Locke, you can own land and other natural resources by mixing your labor with it. (But what this really means is a ma…

I think the recursion gets off the ground better than that. Notice that I said "if you make a thing using your property, that thing is your property." Property starts with your mind and body but it doesn't end there.

Certainly an infant produces spit, vomit, and poop. But it doesn't stop there. The infant also produces cuteness, affection, and love. In any case the parents give the infant food, shelter, education, and care for free. Those are gifts.

So the infant grows into a strong, healthy, and wise adult. He obtains that position largely through gifts from his parents, but he has also done some production and trade along the way, for example any jobs he did as a teenager.

Now he produces far more than spit, vomit, and poop. He uses his mind and body to produce all sorts of things other people value. He owns the products of his mind and body right up until the time he trades them for something else.

Simple example: he buys a set of tools using the money he earned as a teenager cutting grass and starts a small repair business. He is now using both the physical and intellectual capital he has accumulated over the years to produce even more goods and services. That capital is his property.

So my definition gets off the ground far better than you suggest. Spit and poop ... you so funny!

Re: Advertising is devastating to my well-being

#148

Post by zaphar »

metamemetics wrote: post #112
zaphar wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those same economics books also will show the inevitability of middle men. The internet started with exactly the model you describe and evolved to it's current state. Expecting it to devolve back down is not a strategy I would back.

Correct by posting these comments I have been promoting the idea of middle men such as ourselves to create ad markets for direct participation by buyers and sellers (individuals and firms). I meant that the flavor, i.e. whether modelled after matchmaking services, auction sites, or the stock market doesn't matter there are plenty of options for ideas that could work.

Full disclosure: I currently although not for long work on the Google Affiliate Network which pretty much does exactly that. Most affiliates host the ad themselves.
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