Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes • Hacker News Board

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#41

Post by maxerickson » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:17 PM UTC

DanAndersen wrote: post #38

Shamelessly reposting an earlier comment of mine ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9909259 ) because I feel it's relevant here: --- >For quite some time I've felt that advertising/marketing, at least the sort we've had for the past century or so, is inherently immoral. The fact that it's a necessary evil in our economic system doesn't stop it from being an evil. >Modern advertising is not merely informing people…

Exposure to more and more sophisticated media is bandied about as a potential explanation of the Flynn effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Generally_more_st...

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#42

Post by wanderingstan » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:19 PM UTC

Years ago I wrote an essay on a neighboring idea, that Attention is meme sex (and Google is a dating service). http://wanderingstan.com/2006-10-11/attention_is_meme_sex_an...

>Advertisements are sometimes consensual too, as when people tune in to watch the superbowl ads. But ads often constitute a theft of attention, a non-consensual transmission of ideas. TV advertisements, email spam, billboards, flashing banner ads…they’re all there to steal a little of your attention. The chances of successful replication are lower of course, but the advertiser only needs a few successes to make it worth their while. Not to stretch the analogy too far, but this non-consensual transmission of ideas could aptly be described as a sort of “memetic assault”.

Tl;tr Ideas replicate only through attention, thus the battle for our attention.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#43

Post by mirimir » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:23 PM UTC

I've learned to always consider speakers' agendas. I'm also very careful to avoid viewing ads. Online, I use AdBlock Plus. In meatspace, I just don't look. And when that's not possible, I always focus on deconstruction. It helps that I've worked in both academic science and litigation ;)

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#44

Post by justaman » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:24 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #35

saulrh wrote: post #25

It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw . Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution. Religion is a coherent,…

And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads Unfortunately for my budget, in all but the rarest circumstances advertising is quite a weak vector, seldom infectious, and requires constant reinforcement to have even a small effect.

Unfortunately for the U.S, people are all too quick to jump on the [slang] bandwagon, "squad". Dont underestimate even limited exposure. Oldspice/Axe commercials and Uncle Grandpa on Cartoon Network seems to market towards people with ADHD.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#45

Post by justaman » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:27 PM UTC

elisee wrote: post #16

Related, though less about brands, I really liked "This Video Will Make You Angry" by CGP Grey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc - Thoughts/memes as germs trying to reproduce and spread, battling for attention and thriving when people endlessly argue as part of an us/them dynamic.

I recommend reading http://www.amazon.com/Virus-Mind-The-Science-Meme/dp/1401924... this guy wrote Microsoft Word. One of the chapters is called "How to start a cult"

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#46

Post by denom » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:41 PM UTC

saulrh wrote: post #25

It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw . Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution. Religion is a coherent,…

I appreciate your point of view, but doesn't this deny human nature, replacing subjectivity with a kind of sterile mechanistic objectivity? We can make rational choices. For instance, we could remove advertisements from public places and roads.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#47

Post by necessity » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:43 PM UTC

DanAndersen wrote: post #38

Shamelessly reposting an earlier comment of mine ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9909259 ) because I feel it's relevant here: --- >For quite some time I've felt that advertising/marketing, at least the sort we've had for the past century or so, is inherently immoral. The fact that it's a necessary evil in our economic system doesn't stop it from being an evil. >Modern advertising is not merely informing people…

I completely disagree and I find your choice of words - "it's too deep for you", "it's tricking you!", "it's eeevil!" to be distasteful. Seems like a political ad for going to the "righteous side" of being against ads.

There has been only one brand that I can recall to have bought because of "hidden" advertising. Budweiser. I used to see the characters from my favorite series drinking it while eating pizza or other delicious food, and whenever I passed by it in the market I had this feeling that it seemed to taste real good. It's piss. I have never bought it again, and I was fully conscious that I thought it was good because I established a relation between it and people I like eating food I like while drinking it. Even if I had not seen this relation, I would not mind. I for one do not want to see the day when trying to sell your fish the best you can - without deceive - becomes immoral or illegal. Before someone says I'm being "tricked in a deeper level" and buying other stuff without noticing, I don't pick brands. I pick whatever is cheaper at the moment since I'm both frugal and unemployed.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#48

Post by pixl97 » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #43

I've learned to always consider speakers' agendas. I'm also very careful to avoid viewing ads. Online, I use AdBlock Plus. In meatspace, I just don't look. And when that's not possible, I always focus on deconstruction. It helps that I've worked in both academic science and litigation ;)

>In meatspace, I just don't look

Honestly that sounds impossible, practically dangerous.

Just go out in a park, people are walking billboards. Clothes, shoes, accessories they all seem to be plastered with logos. Along the road, billboards, many of them electronic flashing messages. Oh and logos over everything, everywhere. Big yellow arches. Communications companies love sticking their corporate image on every surface they can. Oh and a soda company that love putting red and white on everything they can.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#49

Post by pixl97 » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 1:56 PM UTC

necessity wrote: post #47

DanAndersen wrote: post #38

Shamelessly reposting an earlier comment of mine ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9909259 ) because I feel it's relevant here: --- >For quite some time I've felt that advertising/marketing, at least the sort we've had for the past century or so, is inherently immoral. The fact that it's a necessary evil in our economic system doesn't stop it from being an evil. >Modern advertising is not merely informing people…

I completely disagree and I find your choice of words - "it's too deep for you", "it's tricking you!", "it's eeevil!" to be distasteful. Seems like a political ad for going to the "righteous side" of being against ads. There has been only one brand that I can recall to have bought because of "hidden" advertising. Budweiser. I used to see the characters from my favorite series drinking it while eating pizza or other d…

>Before someone says I'm being "tricked in a deeper level" and buying other stuff without noticing, I don't pick brands.

"My, my, that's a spicy meatball"

It was an alka seltzer commercial, didn't help with their sales, but sales of spaghetti supposedly increased at the time. Just because the advertising didn't work for its intended purpose doesn't mean the advertising didn't work on you. The manufacture selling the ad wants you to go to the store and think about fish because there is a good chance you will buy their product. The manufacture buying expensive ads also tends to have the bright colored boxes in the store, they are placed at eye level, there are likely other ad campaigns in the store to direct you to their product. In the end there is a higher probability of 'an average person' buying their product over the other brands. The other fish brands get sales benefit at their competitors expense.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#50

Post by bikamonki » Fri, Jul 31, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

I am immune. The trick is to become conscious of the process. Put another way: the immune mind operates on a higher level of abstraction and can objectively see lower levels - you allow the memes to run in brain cycles but you are su and kill them. It's like when you are watching a movie and at some point you realize (feel) it is fake reality, then you learn to do it on purpose everytime: you watch the movie layer from above, it does kill the idea of the movie to fool you but it is a great mind workout to 'learn to be immune'.