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 about products and what they do. It's brain-hacking, where advertisers have figured out over decades of experience, and research into human cognitive biases and failure modes, ways of presenting the same product, the same information, but getting a desired response out of the target.
We accept this as a society because we tell ourselves that, as rational human beings, we have the choice to listen to or reject these messages. But modern understandings of cognitive biases show how advertising works on deeper levels, and even works despite us knowing about the tricks that are being used on us.
The problem is that there's a severe imbalance. Advertisers are getting better and better at attacking -- at figuring out precisely what makes us tick, down to the level of pixels on an A/B-tested website.
Are people getting any better at defending themselves? Are people being trained in dealing with their cognitive biases to make themselves resistant? Overall, I don't think so. There's no law of nature that says that attackers and defenders must be equal in strength; the situation we're in right now with advertising is like medieval warfare with the advent of the crossbow -- a great imbalance in favor of the attacker that disrupted the nature of combat for centuries.
> the situation we're in right now with advertising is like medieval warfare with the advent of the crossbow -- a great imbalance in favor of the attacker that disrupted the nature of combat for centuries.
(totally off topic, but)
hm. I thought that the crossbow was a little like the early fireams, in that it wasn't particularly better than what came before, mostly due to it's terribly slow rate of fire; it was just easier to use.
My understanding was that someone skilled with a longbow was a more effective fighter, especially in terms of rate of fire, but also in terms of armor penetration and range than someone with a crossbow or a early firearm. (my understanding was that early firearms were massively effective at dealing with armor at very close ranges, but that effectiveness dropped off very quickly. Crossbows suffered from similar issues, in a less dramatic sort of way.)
However, becoming really good with a longbow was a serious undertaking, one that took up a significant portion of your time over a lifetime.
The crossbow and the early firearms, from what I read, were superior in that you could give them to a bunch of shopkeepers or construction workers or what have you, have them drill every third Saturday, and have someone who was a semi-effective warrior when it came time for battle.
back on-topic, I... think there's a hole in our schooling; one the greeks had down. Rhetoric. Most students don't study it. And most of that manipulation of other people (at least if you use words) falls under rhetoric.
Incidentally, I am given to understand that rhetoric and logic were often taught together. Formal logic gets more academic time than rhetoric, I think, but I think that explicitly teaching logic with rhetoric says important things about logic and how it ought to be applied to argument. This idea that we need to apply logic to our arguments before applying rhetoric is a cultural value that we don't have, that the greeks did. I mean, I'm the first to call the greeks assholes, and to remind everyone that they had slaves, that they were not good people and that we should not follow them in all things. But we have chosen to model our education systems after theirs, and this is one of the things they did that I think we should do, too.
In fact, I've been looking for a modern academic-ish rhetoric text; all I've found so far are a bunch of pop psychology style books, while I strongly prefer a more academic presentation.
But yeah; I think in this case, understanding what other people are doing to manipulate you is how you disarm them.
I agree with you on the importance of rhetoric -- in the sense of really breaking down what people are saying. Though, I remember being taught some of that in school and I don't know if it stuck for most students. It's probably a disconnect between a subject learned for school and tests, and a subject that's really internalized. A lot of analyzing dusty old essays and historical arguments, not enough forceful application to one's own modern-day surroundings.
(And I think you're probably correct about the crossbow bit. The influence it had was in the manner of making arms more accessible -- hand a peasant a crossbow and all that. I suppose a different analogy would be World War 1 -- outdated charging tactics coming up against machine guns, though that's a case where defense had the upper hand over offense.)
Most things aren't going to stick for most people. I certainly only retain some small portion of every book I read. But I do retain some. There is value in exposure to ideas, I think, even if those ideas don't always take root.
Now, I think we've got a really idealized vision of Greece; Idealized by a whole chain of different powers who translated their work, so some of this could be complete bullshit, but from what we read, it sure sounds like they saw rhetoric and logic as the practical skills one needed to be a pundit, a talking head, a leader, or even a participating member of a democracy. So... if we were to give the modern equivalent, we'd teach people about modern rhetoric more than historical rhetoric. History does have a place, sure, but it's not a big one. (I... really, really enjoy history, but I think it has less value that advocates clam to understanding the future. )
There were hippies who talked a lot about how important the connotations of a particular word are. gah. I'm forgetting the author. But I read all my parent's stuff when I was a kid, and it made a real impression on me. For a long time, i would translate everything I heard into the same thing, only using words with negative connotations, with the idea of inoculating myself against such a thing, and because for whatever reason, the negative connotation felt more honest to me than the positive. Less manipulative.
But that's the sort of thing, I think, that people need to think about if they don't want to be sheep.
That just makes it even more irritating. Knowing that my attention is being demanded for something that not only will not persuade me to buy but is also unlikely to persuade others is one of the reasons that I hold commercial broadcast television in such low regard.
It wasn't always this way, not in Europe at least. But with the rise of satellite tv it seems that the regulators have become either toothless or uninterested.
A species is less likely to build resistance to a threat in environments where the threat is not present. I don't disagree with you except that we do need the damage in order to grow. It's precisely because of that damage that you feel so strongly and are among so many others trying to work out the problem.
Modern advertising is not merely informing people about products and what they do. It's brain-hacking, where advertisers have figured out over decades of experience, and research into human cognitive biases and failure modes, ways of presenting the same product, the same information, but getting a desired response out of the target.
We accept this as a society because we tell ourselves that, as rational human beings, we have the choice to listen to or reject these messages. But modern understandings of cognitive biases show how advertising works on deeper levels, and even works despite us knowing about the tricks that are being used on us.
The problem is that there's a severe imbalance. Advertisers are getting better and better at attacking -- at figuring out precisely what makes us tick, down to the level of pixels on an A/B-tested website.
Are people getting any better at defending themselves? Are people being trained in dealing with their cognitive biases to make themselves resistant? Overall, I don't think so. There's no law of nature that says that attackers and defenders must be equal in strength; the situation we're in right now with advertising is like medieval warfare with the advent of the crossbow -- a great imbalance in favor of the attacker that disrupted the nature of combat for centuries.