That is the narrowest of all possible views.

Good luck using your personal consumer choices to avoid Pesticides in aquifers and breathing Tire dust in the air.

Its truly part and parcel of living in an industrialized world.

It cost 0 to not be obese

It cost 0 to not drink and drive

It cost 0 to ...

It's not a cost issue, it's a "we're slightly above average IQ monkeys, but we're still fucking monkeys" issue, we're easy to use and abuse, companies know that

If we're monkeys then companies are monkeys too and they aren't responsible.

You're sneaking free will in the back door. In your view, "victims" don't have free will but big companies do.

Some monkeys are paid 15/hr flipping burgers, some other monkeys are paid 900k/year at facebook to study how to trick your brain into doomscrolling and clicking ads

Weirdly enough the money is available when it generates more money or to lobby against regulation...

Your mentality (people are monkeys who can't make choices) is more responsible for people making bad choices than engineers at facebook. We can make choices to improve our lives! And the more convinced we are of that, the better choices we will make.

Or... we can do both ? I'm fit, eat clean, live frugally, yet I still see how these organisations are absolutely fucking the system by making people overeat, overspend, &c.

Do you think people wake up one day with the bright idea of becoming obese and dying at 45 of heart issues ?

You can only make decisions between the choices you're being provided, and if half of these choices are engineered to be addictive, on a global scale you're fighting a losing battle

> Or... we can do both ? I'm fit, eat clean, live frugally, yet I still see how these organisations are absolutely fucking the system by making people overeat, overspend, &c.

That's good but have you considered that this is motivated reasoning? I.e. you think you have free will but all those shlubs making bad choices don't. This casts you as a hero with special insight into various oppressive "systems" to which you are apparently immune.

It would be better to judge people for their bad decisions. Although this strikes many people as cruel, judgment involves respecting other people's agency and creates a culture that encourages people to take responsibility for their lives and make better decisions. To put it another way, people don't intend to be obese...but they also don't believe they have a choice, and that's not good.

Finally, I think you seriously overrate the ability of behavioral sciences to do anything useful. What you're really pushing is the always-seductive idea that shadowy forces manipulate the masses through quasi-magical powers.

A room full of educated professionals workshopping ways to manufacture the consent of the masses five days a week pretty much ensures that the average individual doesn't stand a chance at winning a battle of agency that they weren't told they were fighting.

Ah yes, those poor dumb masses...from which you exclude yourself. I suppose it's pure selflessness that leads you -- someone who is clearly not average -- to advocate on behalf of all those rubes without free will.

Lol are you implying that acknowledging that propaganda and marketing has an effect on the masses is an egotistical thing to do. Hilarious.

You're just trying to argue for the sake of arguing at that point.

And yes if you're on this forum chances are you're above average, if you're college educated you're already above average, it's not that hard really. I think you're overestimating what the average human is and underestimating what the top minds of google &co are being paid millions for.

> I suppose it's pure selflessness that leads you -

What about lobbyist ? The tobacco industry is run on goodwill too ? After all cigarettes were advertised as improving your lung capacity, why don't you smoke ? Don't you want better lungs ? Why would you want kids not to smoke ? Are you anti freedom ?

How's arguing with a pile of straw going for you.

I saw no indication of self-referential exclusion on behalf of the preceding poster. Mayhaps a bit of projection has snuck in?

Regardless, they have a point. Our system is driven by financially motivated, and subsidized action. Most people are just trying to live their lives with minimal interference and are not sampling for sources of psychological manipulation. Self-generated or external-to-self originated. In point of fact, metacognition is not last I researched on it, a universal thing for everyone.

I do not exclude myself from this population of non-samplers either, but as a tester, I am also well acquainted with the fact that testing costs and nature selects to minimize costs. Just as bacteria will abandon costly resistance mechanisms to a stressor given sufficient time removed from a stressor, so too do we in terms of our mental safeguarding behavior.

What an annoying way to misunderstand a point. And also the entire discipline of marketing.

You can’t just dismiss his point like that. It’s a valid question. If your argument is “people don’t know any better”, then why can’t someone also say “companies (which are just groups of people) also don’t know any better”?

You can say “companies should do more research on the consequences of this chemical before releasing it”, and you can also say “people should do more research on this chemical before drinking it”.

First of all, these are not the same thing. Manipulating people and being manipulated aren't mutually exclusive.

Second, these people spend their entire life mastering the art of manipulating large populations into consumerism and induced demand. Humans have limited bandwidth, and it wouldn't be most people's specific domain knowledge to spot the mechanisms and the resist them.

And, calling back to point one, even if you know the mechanisms of propaganda, you are not immune to propaganda.

None of that answered the question though. Why are companies, which are made up of groups of people, expected to somehow have foreknowledge of the consequences of these chemicals, while other groups of people are not?

It has nothing to do with “propaganda”. Are people just supposed to magically know the long term effects of every chemical they ingest? And if not, why are companies supposed to magically know it? Do companies have a crystal ball that normal people don’t have?

> expected to somehow have foreknowledge of the consequences of these chemicals

Try arguing in good faith for a bit it really isn't that hard. I'm not asking them to see the future, I'm asking them to study their products so we don't discover decades later that "oh snap lead in gas was bad!?", "Oh what, breathing asbestos isn't so good in the end?!"

They have unlimited money when it comes to finding new ways to make more profit but as soon as we talk risk assessment and management the money printing press runs dry, how convenient

Do you think the top behavioural scientists at facebook working on how to make you more engaged don't know what they're doing ? If so why are all people in the loop not giving phones to their kids, not allowing them to access social medias, &c. ?

https://www.independent.ie/life/family/parenting/the-tech-mo...

It’s so funny that pretty much everyone recognizes that individuals are smarter than groups, but somehow Evil Companies pull off one decades-long too-secret conspiracy after another, while the individuals who make up those Evil Companies are just monkeys.

It’s a very strange möbius loop of self-contradiction.

Quite literally the opposite of my point but if you rewrite the argument and answer it like that it sure makes you look like a smart monkey

> Evil Companies pull off one decades-long too-secret conspiracy after another

Famous conspiracies such as DDT, asbestos, freon, lead in gas, lead in paint, madcow disease, &c.

Not every mistake is a conspiracy. I’d argue those are examples of companies being monkeys rather than malign superintelligences.

Culpability, rather.

> It cost 0 to not be obese

It's not, it is against fundamental animal/human instinct and hormonal response developed during evolution: eat as much as you can when you have access to food.

Then how come obesity basically didn't exist until the 70s while 1 in 2 American is now obese ? Shouldn't everyone be obese ? Especially rich folks who have access to infinite amount of food

Don't you think it's a bit less simplistic maybe ?

> Then how come obesity basically didn't exist until the 70s while 1 in 2 American is now obese ?

probably more Americans spent time physically working, and not sitting 10h/d in office and another 2h in the car commuting.

> Especially rich folks who have access to infinite amount of food

I am sure there are obese rich, also rich likely in general have more willpower to control their instincts, and that's partially how they become rich.

That line is much more a reference to lead in the gasoline, pfas and microplastics in the drinking water. It in fact costs quite a bit of money to avoid these compounds and in many cases the damage was already done before people were aware of the risk.

Meanwhile, the investors and executives of the companies that produced these compounds are quite wealthy.

It’s a very substantial aspect of “being poor is expensive”. Polluted places, and the sorts of places where pollution tends to collect, are undesirable and thus cheap. The rich historically buy the high land and thus are not affected as directly by flooding, which these days also comes with a dose of pollution.

Ironically all of the rich people migrating to waterfront property may be what finally gets us past where we are today with waterway pollution and global warming.

The Soviet Union also poisoned their citizens.

Sure, and they also suffered pretty hard in the long run ( the soviet union and citizens both)

Microplastics in all water

Unless you live in a city with bad water like Flint, MI or any of the other cities where officials have purposefully poisoned the water supply or just never modernized it.

No. Flint was a specific criminal act.

My post more or less says this. Thanks for the extra clarification.

Don’t spread that conspiracy nonsense. It doesn’t belong here.

Fluoride is fine for cleaning your teeth, but not ingesting. Thankfully I don't have city water.

The amount in water is at a safe dilution and only conspiracy theory fear mongers say otherwise.

Who died and made you the arbiter of Truth?

I provided sources, you didn't. Engage in a facts based debate or don't engage at all. Shallow dismissals have no place on HN. (by the actual site guidelines, not my made up declaration)

Fluoride in community water sources helps prevent tooth decay.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8971694/

At what cost?

people didn't know it was poison -- they assumed it must be FDA approved if it is for sale in every supermarket and corner store. Not everyone has a PhD in biochemistry -- some people are just regular folks.

There's alot of crap on grocery store shelves, doesn't mean its healthy. The FDA approves alot of garbage. I don't trust them. You don't need a PhD to not drink soda, even easier to avoid aspartame (its listed on the back of the bottle).

Why would anyone know what aspartame is? There are often a dozen chemicals listed on the package -- is someone supposed to know what all of them are?

Do you avoid food containing Disodium Inosinate? Why or why not? What about Agar-Agar? What about Calcium Propionate?

If everybody agrees then it's probably wrong.

If a well-dressed person states it loudly and confidently over the tv/internet/etc, it's probably a lie.

It’s cost exactly $0 to not produce poison

Quite the contrary. Keeping foods poison free is quite an effort.

I think the issue here is you can earn many $$ by selling poison.

That's why I wear a Stormtrooper suit with full respirator and bottled water everywhere I go.

Hang on, that would be awesome. No survelliance, everyone has identical gear with added features like gait protection and infared protection. iPhones built in, with HUD on facemask interior. Heating/cooling pads in clothing. Ventilation as required, optional battery pack addon.

Oh gosh... star wars and space marines aren't meant to be a pratical solution to societal problems....

No surveillance and iPhone don't go together