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Fantastic book - I certainly had to read it slowly, not fast. Two things bothered me about it though - firstly, it landed shortly before the reproducibility is
by fastandslow 2y ago
Fantastic book - I certainly had to read it slowly, not fast.
Two things bothered me about it though - firstly, it landed shortly before the reproducibility issues of such research became more widely known.
Secondly - towards the end of the book, it espouses the idea that using some methods of psychlogical and behavoural manipulation is at worst a net neutral, especially if there was nothing to see of the manipluation in question. After all, who can argue against organ donation being opt-out by default, or similar?
To me, this is like a magician claiming that there was no sleight of hand, as we were free to look wherever we liked during their performance. Denying the presence and capabailities of tools of manipulation is, in my opinion, incredibly dangerous, and the worst of its outcomes has been very publicly played out in recent years.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoWhat the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve, as they used to say in the pie factory where I worked. But the belly knows. Yes, it's a dangerous, cavalier idea. But from an endlessly complicated and interesting thinker.
- Retric 2y ago> some methods of psychlogical and behavoural manipulation I think you may be objecting to the idea of manipulation here rather than his point. Influence is not necessarily bad, if a dentist notices some poster which causes his patients to floss more shouldn't he keep it up? Suggesting all manipulation is bad implies we shouldn't do public health education etc if it happens to be effective.
- fastandslow 2y agoBut it never stops at "this thing we want to encourage is obviously good with absolutely no downsides". After all, floss is a single-use plastic, generally made of PTFE, the production of which requires all sorts of nasty forever chemicals.
- Retric 2y agoYou can buy biodegradable PTFE & PFAS Free dental floss made from natural ingredients. Or even go old school and use a teeth-cleaning twig etc.
- fastandslow 2y agoIt's gonna be hard to include all of that in your eye-catching, behaviour-nudging poster.
- Retric 2y agoAnd thus the advertising industry.