I think the most dangerous thing to North Korea is western media. I know the South Koreans like to float DVDs over on balloons and things, but the US would be smart to get into that in a big way.

https://unchainedpodcast.com/yeonmi-park-on-why-doing-busine...

[1] https://thediplomat.com/2014/12/the-strange-tale-of-yeonmi-p...

Anything said about NK is not an exaggeration. So much so that South Korea has a television station dedicated to defectors who make shows themselves and produce loads of content exclusively for helping defectors acclimate to the culture as well as smuggling efforts to let them know it's better on the other side. Many of them as well are volunteers.

At least in Hungary a dubbed version of Dallas was being aired in the mid 1990s well after the Berlin Wall fell.

I even remember my brother jokingly asking a Hungarian at the time if she wanted to know who shot J.R. and she answered immediately with a very loud, "no!"

I feel like if Kim Jong Un dies in the next 10 years and he doesn't have a designated successor, it'll turn into a Junta like Thailand or possibly even ones like Argentina or Portugal where they end up reuniting with South Korea.

Which of course leads to the ethical question: is it right for people to live in ignorance if it makes them happy, it it's not their choice? Is it fundamentally better for people to be happy rather than aware of massive inequality (up to and including significant poverty)? How much would be appropriate to hide, for how much additional happiness? Is it better in the long run for some to be unhappy if it brings attention to inequality?

I don't have any of those answers, but they're interesting and challenging questions.

It's artificial. If they just had knowledge, like say wikipedia or ad blocked internet. They would be wanting real things like education, health care, self-determination, not Nikes.

The documentary relates "The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires."

I wouldn't pretend to answer if it is "right" (what does it even mean), but a lot of people already do live in ignorance. Maybe not in the straight way of ignorance of not being able to recollect some information, but certainly in terms of assigning certain labels and judgements to it. So many people watch a TV with someone having a great time and think/feel to themselves things like "they stole the money somehow to get there", "they had rich parents", "they are not happy anyway", "life is unfair, they got their riches through unfairness", "money is the root of all evil", "money brings unhappiness", "it's not their real life, just some fake instagram story" etc.

Advertisement, like Instagram or facebook is tailored to give us the impressions the Joneses are doing much better for themselves. Some of this is true, some is designed to tap into this emotion.

I actually woke up 30 min ago iterating over all the things I didn't get in life that most other people had in abundance. It's not the first time I pondered that. After the excuses you mention above I always come back to a thought I had when I was I think 6 years old:

Other peoples lives, their expectations and their opinions are not really all that interesting or important. They could be if they put minimal effort into creating or evolving them. In stead they just copy this stuff from the next guy without review - then dedicate their lives to living up to them.

I consider myself extremely privileged to escape from that formula. I've never written it down before but happiness now starts with having oxygen to breath, then comes having water to drink, food and a place to sleep share the 3rd spot, 4th is having the mind set to think about something, 5th is a sense of safety and the privilege to implement the thoughts, 6th is to be able to share the thoughts and brainstorm, 7th is to have good people in my life, 8th is to be able to pay my bills, 9th a decent set of garments etc

Having what other people are having is still on the list some place but to have 1-4 makes for a fantastic life. 5 includes health and fitness. The rest is really just nonsense by comparison.

What I'm trying to say is that satisfaction is overrated. You get only so much of it, trying to optimize for it just diminishes it.

> the survey question “How satisfied are you with your life?”

Not satisfied? Well good! Time to accomplish something!

1) Prime Directive: don't introduce knowledge that will make someone's life harder or more complicated if you don't have to.

2) If they have the means to get that knowledge, you're now obligated to fill in the disparity between your quality of life, such that they can be at least as happy as you are.

Without unfulfilled desires, there is no room for self-actualization. See: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Thinking about long term, the life of their children, perhaps their children's children, is likely to be significantly enhanced when things like access to healthcare and education become a possibility.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/22/new-report-shows-how-many-ac...

These features are new in the last 10 years, some are new in the last couple years, and they are continually improving.

Of course plenty of older cars are still on the road, but collision avoidance systems have been on the roads for years and don’t seem to be having significant impact.

Granted, driver behaviors may be getting worse, but going back further and you see significant declines which just stall out around 2009.

Fair, it does seem like the overall statistics don't show this. I'm having trouble squaring this with the data showing that these technologies are preventing accidents.

> Granted, driver behaviors may be getting worse

I wonder whether the top quartile is getting significantly better (thus resulting in the great "crashes avoided" numbers that these technologies claim) while everyone else is getting more distracted with their cell phones, causing an overall increase in the average number of crashes.

This goes into a bit more detail, suggesting that pedestrian fatalities due to more SUVs could also be driving the increase in fatalities: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17933536/traffic-death-cr...

So it could also be a "safer for me, more dangerous for you" situation too with these new vehicles.

Someone doing 140+MPH is going to receive minimal benifits from 1/8th of a second of early breaking before hitting a tree. Similarly, losing control on ice and driving off a cliff, or getting hit with a jackknifed semi truck etc.

The systems will get better, but for the time being, they mostly serve to let drivers think they can get away with paying even less attention to the road than usual.

Easy cars are making worse drivers. People rarely check their blind spot now because the little light on their sideview mirror lights up instead. People are less concerned about driving unsafely because their cars are thicker, heavier, and bigger than the other participants on the road. This has been especially troubling to watch develop from the bike lane, as visibility shrinks and auto manufacturers don't seem to test extensively whether their onboard radar can detect cyclists and pedestrians. It's created a very strange experience of driving where the person inside does not share the same reality as the outside except when their car is within 2 feet of another car. Cars are cages, not only physically, but mentally too.

We're all locomoters, and we have finite road to share, but I do agree that some of these safety systems are probably having a deleterious effect on driving skill and overall awareness in that all the driver assist mechanisms are not being treated as instruments that can fail. They should be considered no replacement for human attention, which I think is unfortunately what is happening. Similar to how safety device advances in football have actually made the injuries more severe due to the players taking greater risks.

As long as we're all on the same infrastructure, we've all got to commit to respecting each other's presence. Cyclist and motorist alike.

> respecting each other's presence. Cyclist and motorist alike.

I truly hate the equivocation rhetoric used in these discussions on mobility because they obfuscate the insurmountable power dynamics at play. Let's fall into cager rhetoric; cars are cages now more than ever.

Cyclists aren't obligated to respect motorists if motorists act with scant care toward the cyclists' lives. Yes, yes, "not all motorists" just like "not all cyclists" but it's hard to overcome the difference between a 1000kg car and a 10kg bike. Reciprocity, man. Have some respect for the power you wield behind the steering wheel.

When I ride, I already do so under the assumption that the cars have absolutely no idea I'm there despite me following all traffic laws to a 'T'. And I'm still right-hooked at least once each way to the gym (20-30min ride on a 4-lane road). Most recently I was riding next to a cop one time when the person in front of him not only overtook me within 3ft but also swerved into the bike lane multiple times ahead of me. I approached him and raised my concerns, and was met with an absolute deadpan stare before he drove away without a word.

My argument is not one that supports cyclists behaving aggressively toward motorists.

It should be mandatory during driving school to spend some time on a bike on busy roads.

In 49 states a driver making a right turn should enter the bike lane before their turn. That’s what the dashed lines mean. However, it’s very rarely been taught in drivers ed and to my knowledge there has never been a major public safety campaign on this issue.

True, and another facet of the same problem is that blind spots are getting bigger by the model year, as automakers take the cheap way out and raise their belt lines to meet side-impact regulations.

We will all be driving around in tanks before long. I guess that's supposed to be a good thing.

Car doors are close to a foot thick now. The cars are getting huge which means more space is occupied by the streets (increased lane width and space in intersections for larger turning radius), the parking lots (larger parking spots and wider spaces to drive between them), etc. The mental isolation between driver and environment is growing and does not seem to be decelerating. I'm convinced that maybe 10% of all drivers (in my area, suburban SV) pay any attention to what's happening behind them. They don't have to care, so they don't!

Cars are devouring mobility.

Few drivers use their mirrors, and even fewer adjust them properly, so they might as well be next on the chopping block.

https://www.oemoffhighway.com/electronics/sensors/proximity-...

He said: "The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them."

If anything, the idea of earning twice as much feels weird rather than aspirational.

But I suppose that in of itself can be unhealthy if taken too far.

I make a pretty healthy salary working in the valley, certainly higher than most. But of course there are plenty people that make more. When I see these I get that brief sense of negative emotion.

I don’t like it but not sure how to control it either. Except I guess not look up engineering salaries.

"Ermo is a hardworking village woman in the northern province of Hebei, who makes noodles to feed her husband and child. When her neighbor buys a brand new television, she is consumed by dreams of owning one herself. Desperate to own the largest television in the village, she becomes obsessive in her desire to earn money, eventually leaving the village to work in town. Her efforts to earn enough money damages her health and her relationship with her family."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermo

I have cousins that would be considered modest down to earth people that were generally happy etc. Live in the city for a while because of school or work and a few years later are completely different. Much more superficial, materialistic and I guess shrewd.

Not sure what the answer is. The change is negative in my opinion. But keeping what’s out there from them isn’t right either.

Other than that, there's nothing wrong with creating desire for something. It's ultimately up to the people to make their own choices.

Also, I understand not everyone believes this, but I think there is something morally wrong with the form and scale of manipulation that modern advertisement brings.

And more critically, even when it is correct, it's not the complete story. I've never seen an ad that admits that their competitor's product is cheaper, or better. In fact, most ads don't even want you to know their competitor exists. So let's not pretend advertising is about "giving knowledge to the poor". That's just an odious lie. If it were about giving knowledge, you'd by trying to tell the whole story.

I think the point is that advertising is providing you an ideal imagery to drive you to buy their product, truth and knowledge be damned.

Again, the knowledge is them telling you about the product. They don't make you do anything other than provide information. You're entirely in control of your decisions.

That's one part of the issue. A company's product might be the best product for some people's needs, but there might be another product that fits the needs of some market segment better. But the company doesn't care if their product is the best for that segment: a sale is a sale. They'll advertise the strong points of the product, ignoring the properties of the product which might make it unsuitable for some consumers. This doesn't benefit consumers.

This might all seem obvious, but there are people on this thread who think advertising benefits consumers.

> What would a company consider a flaw? The product is released as designed, with no obvious issues.

This is really, really not true, and I am not entirely sure you are making a good faith argument here. I work hard at my job, but I've never released a product that didn't have bugs and tradeoffs.

> Again, the knowledge is them telling you about the product. They don't make you do anything other than provide information. You're entirely in control of your decisions.

Your decisions are only as good as the information you have, and advertising deliberately gives you wrong or incomplete information.

Bugs are not known flaws, otherwise you should fix them. What's the warning, that nothing is guaranteed to be perfect?

> "advertising deliberately gives you wrong or incomplete information."

Incorrect. False advertising is illegal. Trade-offs are subjective to you. What's considered complete information is subjective to you.

Consumers benefit from the knowledge of that product existing and its features. Whether that product works for you is your choice. If you need more info then go research it. Nobody is going to magically tell you what's best for your life, that's your responsibility.

That's not reality. Sometimes you don't have budget, sometimes there isn't a clear solution, etc.

> Incorrect. False advertising is illegal.

Haha! Okay buddy. Not sure what country you live in where that even pretends to be true, but our US companies are happy to break laws in that country to lie to you.

> Whether that product works for you is your choice. If you need more info then go research it. Nobody is going to magically tell you what's best for your life, that's your responsibility.

Sure, but let's not pretend that advertisers are our helpful friends here. They are our opponents, whose misinformation we have to constantly combat in order to find useful information to make informed decisions.

Your concern isn't about advertising then, it's just shady companies.

Where did you get this requirement that they must help you with your entire shopping comparison? Why would they do that for free? It's your responsibility to learn about what you need and make the decision that's best for you.

Also there's plenty of marketing that does help, for example the entire field of content marketing where educational and informative content is posted with a minor sponsor mention.

Agreed.

The problem is that on this thread there are a bunch of people trying to say that advertising is helping customers.

Incomplete and often deliberately misleading but there are actual gains to it. If you were in Cuba and saw an ad for the zero to sixty time of a mini-van which emphasised cargo space that was better than a hotrod.

Pretty much any interaction with reality even if pure lies can contain gleamable knowledge from analysis even if it is "they expect us to believe this crap".

Likewise, poor educational outcomes not caused by FAS are also correlated with low socioeconomic status of the parent(s). And we already have the "content by being" drugs -- tobacco, alcohol, and television.

If that doesn't look like a permanent underclass that we're snowing with Soma, I don't know what would.

Huxley is definitely on my top ten list of favourite authors.

I could put a /s here, but it could well be literally true.

I always thought that being real, as in being in contact with reality, knowing what is going on - is one of the main characteristic of a quality consciousness, as opposed to an inferior one which is lost in it's own illusions. So then of course a good consciousness could react (including emotionally) to a different landscape of reality? To new information about what reality is, what is possible in life, what activities can be done, what experiences to be had etc? This is by design and the desired behavior, no?

Also I don't think that happiness is in such direct linear correlation to this, despite of some anecdotes - there are a plenty of rich unhappy people (who know that they are the richest on the planet, who know they have it good, because on TV they see people doing less interesting things).

All that stuff you couldn't get.

Ignorance is bliss.