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This is one reason the field of behavioral economics is important to society: there are things that an individual or company would never publicly admit to doing
by derefr 3y ago
This is one reason the field of behavioral economics is important to society: there are things that an individual or company would never publicly admit to doing — but which they're fine to admitting under NDA, to be used as a datapoint in an anonymized dataset used in academic research.
So, while no individual company will tell you that everyone's using dark patterns or hiring their friends, behavioral economists can put forth evidence-backed arguments that this is the case — and so save you the trouble of bothering to chase the Carrot.
- hammock 3y agoThere is a great quote I read here about how your life changes once you are read into valuable info that no one else has. It was Daniel Ellsberg giving advice to Henry Kissinger when he first got his security clearances: >You will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364718
- esafak 3y agoSee also Bruce Schneier's essay on the same subject, discussed just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37091989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37091989