4 ms·
I actually realized recently that this is probably the underlying phenomenon behind "how is my phone listening to my conversations to show me ads/articles?" Th
by kromem 2y ago
I actually realized recently that this is probably the underlying phenomenon behind "how is my phone listening to my conversations to show me ads/articles?"
The other day I was thinking about LLM aggregation and in my internal dialogue used the example of "aliens built the pyramids" as a fringe theory that would be picked up on if tuning for other associated fringe positions by LLMs at places like Gab.
Later in the day I saw in my news feed an article on "how were the pyramids built?" (One of my interests is Egyptian and LBA Mediterranean archeology, so on topic.)
At first I thought "how the heck did it read my mind?"
But then as I thought about it more I remembered that usually my go to example of a fringe position is flat earth. So why was I suddenly using pyramids as the example in my internal dialogue.
What must have happened was that I initially saw the article headline in my feed in passing and didn't consciously register it, but when I was reaching for a fringe position example had been primed for that, and then only after having consciously been reflecting on the topic actually noticed the article in my feed.
Which IMO is a much more alarming explanation for the phenomenon - that my thinking was being written to a degree by my feed - than that my phone was somehow listening in on things or reading my mind.
It reminds me of a graffiti artist in NYC who used to write graffiti about how in reading it he had effectively graffitied your mind.
- nsagent 2y agoResponding to something in your visual field unconsciously is very reminiscent of split-brain studies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain
- Zambyte 2y agoThis is why your attention is so insanely valuable. Everyone thinks they're immune to advertising, yet people keep paying billions and billions of dollars to show something on your screen for a few seconds... because like it or not, it works.
- OnionBlender 2y agoI've been using ad blockers and not watching TV for so long that I have very little ad resistance. Whenever I use someone else's computer that doesn't an ad blocker, it makes me wonder how people live like this. I'm so bad at handling distractions that I have to turn the radio or music off to make a left hand turn.
- komali2 2y agoI often wonder how friends back home in Texas can believe the things they do, say the things they say... and then when I visit and we sit around to watch a game and I see how many ads many people are exposed to every day, I start to get it.
- Kye 2y agoThere's some version of it anywhere you go, for every social and political leaning. I tend to be somewhere between liberal and leftist, but I used to be a lot more extreme and absolutist in my views, and I can pin it directly to mindlessly taking in memes and messages targeted straight at my biases and preconceptions. Even having "good praxis" is no vaccine: someone somewhere is looking for a way to radicalize or profit from your perspective. You probably get this, but every so often I meet someone who thinks they're a good person because they live in the right state or follow the right media. And that could be Fox News and Texas as easily as it could be MSNBC and New York.
- Terr_ 2y ago"Sure, we're trying to hack your brain to enrich ourselves at your expense, but it's traditional."
- vasco 2y agoWithout advertising in the world, it'd be a much poorer place. Advertising exists for more than a thousand years and it's the only way for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.
- csomar 2y agoExcept the advertising industry of today is akin to mental manipulation. It's less about letting you know what the product can do for you and more about getting you to buy/pay for it.
- blackbear_ 2y agoI call what you are describing "informational" advertisement, and indeed it is totally fine. However most modern advertisement is not trying to inform but rather to convince, using a variety of psychological tricks to manipulate viewers into a specific position. This is totally not okay.
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoI'm sorry but that's bullshit. Advertising is carte blanche mind control. Markets and products can easily exist without advertising. In fact, they're better. You go to markets, and you have curators. Advertising outside of a market should be not only illegal but culturally frowned upon as a root ethic.
- vasco 2y ago> Markets and products can easily exist without advertising Source needed - seeing I don't know any company that doesn't advertise in some shape or form. The ones that I found that claim they don't, actually do advertise and use the "we don't advertise" as further advertisements. By definition I think it'd be hard to find companies that truly don't advertise, so maybe you know of some that are successful but don't do it?
- pyinstallwoes 2y agoWords are literally spell(ings), you see, we've trivialized casting spells. In the past being enchanted was a negative semantic relation, now, everyone wants to be enchanted. What type of world is the world where everyone is a magic user casting spells without their awareness of such? Our world.
- pyinstallwoes 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)
- feoren 2y agoSometimes I play Rocket League, where I'm intensely focused on the playing field and not paying attention to anything else. I'll have some random song or phrase in my head the whole match, just there in the background. And then there will be a pause in the action, and I'll for (what I thought was) the first time, look at the names of the other players long enough to actually read them, and there it is: one of them has a name that prompted that song or that thought in my head. I had no idea. I thought I was 100% focused on the action in the game, but those names influenced me anyway.