4 ms·

How do you reconciliate "execute their own free will" and "are easily manipulated" ?

• golergka 9y ago
  Easy: all manipulation is fair game as long as people don't lie and you're in an adequate state of mind when you're making the decision. This is the area where the existing laws of most of modern countries work quite well.
  • mrguyorama 9y ago
    How do you possibly consider it a fair game when the Corporations that you play against have vastly higher resources to pour into winning? David vs Goliath is story precisely because the giant usually wins
    • golergka 9y ago
      Come to think of it, the concept of "fair" is something completely subjective and therefore irrelevant in this kind of discussions. I probably should've used a different word. But anyway, corporations only have vastly higher resources when compared to the sum of all people they're targeting with their advertisement. When taken in a context of a single human life, resources that a certain corporation can spend on advertising to you directly are dwarfed in comparison with attention and empathy and interest (which are main resources required to manipulate someone) from any of your friends, family and colleagues.
      • mrguyorama 9y ago
        I disagree. Aggregate behavior that can be manipulated by advertising scales very very well, while attention does not. It is impossible give literally every interaction with a corporation the attention necessary to truly divine whether it is the "best" solution for you. As a result, shortcuts are required, and those shortcuts are exactly what the companies are spending billions to hit. It also works INCREDIBLY well, otherwise by the very theories behind the "Free Market", nobody would be doing it at such a scale
        • golergka 9y ago
          It works incredibly well on aggregate of millions of people. On any particular person, it's an incredibly weak influence.