Re "identify the conspiracy theory," I'm simply referring to ideas such as those presented in this thread--that advertisers are plotting how to make people feel unhappy, distressed, etc. — Terrapin Station

I don't think any theory at all has been presented. Terms were brought up and left undefined. Odd contradictory assertions were made and left unjustified. Whole bunch of nuthin' I guess.

I don't think any theory at all has been presented. — Mongrel

Surely if I mentioned the word "theory," I meant that quite literally.

I did too. There's no theory here.

Haha

Well, at least neither of you are denying complete ignorance of the subject. Whatever floats your boats.

One idea I have about people who see marketing/advertising as an affront is that they're perhaps people who tend to be very suggestible and who tend to understand things in a "literal," surface manner, so that would go along with the old cliche of "you must not understand x if you don't buy the (or a particular) party line of x" with respect to a certain niche of academic criticism of marketing culture.

Again, complete ignorance. This discussion is not about the personal psychology of the interlocutors, it's about advertising and psychology in general, which you know nothing about. There are other discussions on these boards, you know...

Again, complete ignorance. — Baden

Put that mirror down.

Well, I did design and run a university course on advertising that went over a lot of this stuff. That may not count for much, but I'm not completely ignorant. Now as I said, if you are not willing to even Google the basics, why not run along?

Well, I did design and run a university course on advertising that went over a lot of this stuff. — Baden

No one is doubting that you have the beliefs that you do. And of course, the party line comment above applies here.

Would you share your perspective on advertising?

I thought I had been doing that. Do you have a more specific question or response to one of my comments?

Sorry.. I missed your comments. As I mentioned early on the thread, I rarely see TV commercials because I watch streaming TV. I'm in that category that wonders: "Does anybody still watch broadcast TV?" Some do, but I think in many cases it's that they just don't know that streaming is better and cheaper.

I wonder how the advertising industry is planning to adapt to this change as it becomes more prevalent. Any thoughts on that?

An aside.

When did the problem of other minds first occur to philosophy, Was it Descartes? Someone educate me.

To the ancients, other minds were the explanation for everything. All nature was the manifestation of other minds; thunder gods, sea gods, wood sprites, and so on. What was a struggle, a problem, was the depersonalisation of nature. Plato, I seem to remember was still struggling with the gods to subdue them.

One might say that the problem of other minds is the problem of knowing when to stop. It is no use to talk to a volcano, to reason with it or placate it, or apologise for upsetting it. No use trying to understand its point of view, as one might try to understand the point of view of an elephant. Or a fly? Or a madman?

When did the problem of other minds first occur to philosophy, Was it Descartes? Someone educate me. — unenlightened

Looking at the history of it being made explicit in philosophical literature: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#2

Sorry.. I missed your comments. As I mentioned early on the thread, I rarely see TV commercials because I watch streaming TV. I'm in that category that wonders: "Does anybody still watch broadcast TV?" Some do, but I think in many cases it's that they just don't know that streaming is better and cheaper.

I wonder how the advertising industry is planning to adapt to this change as it becomes more prevalent. Any thoughts on that? — Mongrel

Well, it seems to me that in the future, without mass TV viewing to rely on, advertising is likely to be more targeted, dispersed, invasive and diverse.

• More targeted.

See neuromarketing:, for example:

"Neuromarketing engages the use of Magnetic Resance Imaging (MRI), electroencephalography (EEG), biometrics, facial coding, eye tracking and other technologies to investigate and learn how consumers respond and feel when presented with products and/or related stimuli (Kolter et al., 2013). The concept of neuromarketing investigates the non-conscious processing of information in consumers brains (Agarwal & Dutta, 2015). Human decision-making is both a conscious and non-conscious process in the brain (Glanert, 2012). Human brains process over 90% of information non-consciously, below controlled awareness; this information has a large influence in the decision-making process (Agarwal & Dutta, 2015). "

• More dispersed/invasive:

More on subways, buses, taxis, lifts, anywhere where people congregate. Louder, flashier etc.

• More diverse:

Constant innovation. What was that movie with Cruise where he gets offered a Guinness by a hologram? Coming soon...

All nature was the manifestation of other minds; — unenlightened

Other?

In English we say "I am cold."
In German, it's "I have cold."
Russians say: "The cold is upon me."

Greek scholars say that Homer should be read the Russian way. All the stuff we think of as internal psychic forces is external in Homer. It's like the psyche turned inside out.

They would probably think we see ourselves as divine.

Constant innovation. What was that movie with Cruise where he gets offered a Guinness by a hologram? Coming soon... — Baden

Seinfeld did an internet show called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. It's pretty good. It's funded by Acura (why do I remember that?) and every time an Acura appears on the show, Seinfeld points out that it's "product placement."

Funny.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, my target in this thread is scientific, experimental psychology. The concern with modern advertising arises from this because it is a manifestation of this psychology. Note that the target is not psychology entire, but the particular modern conceptualisation of it. I am looking at the ways of relating that arise from the ways of seeing oneself and others. Everyone has and everyone has always had a way of seeing themselves and others. I am not the exception.

So in looking at this, I am manifesting my own psychological way of seeing. I am not selling it, but giving it away - confessing it. Here is my slogan:

If you regard people objectively, you will only ever learn how to manipulate them.

Well.. can I just ask then: when I asked you what you've done with the discovery that you can reject the given, why did you say you had no psychology at all?

why did you say you had no psychology at all? — Mongrel

Where did I say that?

But I have no scheme — unenlightened

Wait.. I think you answered me without understanding what I had asked. Just a lot of talking past one another. OK. I'm out. Peace, dude.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, my target in this thread is scientific, experimental psychology. — unenlightened

In order for it to be a science, given the conventions that make something a science in the first place (such as observation, theoretically replicable experimentation, etc.), it can't deal with subjective phenomena directly, because subjective phenomena are inherently first-person/not third-person observable.

In order for it to be a science, given the conventions that make something a science in the first place (such as observation, theoretically replicable experimentation, etc.), it can't deal with subjective phenomena directly, because subjective phenomena are inherently first-person/not third-person observable. — Terrapin Station

Exactly. And a person without subjective phenomena is a zombie. Treating people like zombies is the best way to turn them into zombies.

Well, it's not as if science can change this situation without simply no longer being science--it would have to become something quite different, because it would have to divest itself of a lot of its core operating assumptions.

I see the problem as occurring with people taking science (and especially mathematics) to both mirror and exhaust the entirety of the world, rather than taking it as something that's simply turned out to have a lot of instrumental utility.

I should apologise for starting this with advertising; it has rather misled people. One can resist advertising, avoid it perhaps, but advertising is merely an example of a way of thinking about people that pervades the eduction system, politics, entertainment, the workplace, every facet of society.

Shall we start again with a different example? Psychology and education?

Well, it's not as if science can change this situation — Terrapin Station

Indeed not. I am not asking it to; I am asking science to very kindly fuck off from where it cannot help but only harm. I am saying that the science of mind is psychopathic.

Shall we start again with a different example? Psychology and education? — unenlightened

I'm game.

I have "a feeling" that In the United States the "incidence" of mental illness (and some other maladies) rose fairly sharply when a law-change allowed for prescription drug advertising on television. Suddenly, antidepressant ads were advising people what to ask for at the doctors office if they didn't feel good. Some people really do experience accurately diagnosed "depression". More people experience fairly severe unhappiness which might be caused by too much debt, bad relationships, bad work situations, too much alcohol and drugs, and so on. They don't need antidepressants, they need to change their lives.

The major hard-core mental illnesses are not increasing. Psychosis, schizophrenia, bi-polar, and such affect the low percentages of the population they always have. It's the "soft-core" diagnoses that are popping up all over the place: ADD, vaguely defined depression, vague autism, oppositional defiance disorder, and so on. I don't doubt that people diagnosed with ADD, vague autism, "vaguely defined depression, and so on are having problems. Their problems just might be caused by very incompetent parenting and living in socially-deteriorating situations.

How many people had heard of "restless leg syndrome" before drug makers could advertise "Requip" and other such drugs (mostly older parkinson disease meds)? The incidence of ADHD is either of epidemic proportions OR pharmaceutical companies have found another nail to hit with a hammer. ("If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.")

I should apologise for starting this with advertising; it has rather misled people. One can resist advertising, avoid it perhaps, but advertising is merely an example of a way of thinking about people that pervades the eduction system, politics, entertainment, the workplace, every facet of society.

Shall we start again with a different example? Psychology and education? — unenlightened

Hee hee. No, nothing to apologize about in the OP, imho. Advertising is as good a place to start digging as any other, maybe even better. Lots of interesting and half-hidden things to find here. And much invested here, as someone pointed out, both financially and otherwise. Now back to the digging!
:)