[Pharmakon]

People like that are the intellectual equivalent of people who think they can win at three-cars monte; a gift to crooks and a bane to the rest of us. The old saw about looking around the table for the sucker, not finding one, and realizing that you’re the sucker applies. We’re all the same species of primate, and only accepting that along with associated weaknesses puts us in a position to maybe overcome them to a degree.

[wutbrodo]

So I guess the answer is no, you haven't considered it.

My purchase decisions are and always have been pretty simple and articulable: for small-ticket items (eg bath soap), I buy the cheapest thing that I haven't already tried and found under par. For big-ticket items whose value affects my utility significantly (eg smartphones), I spend time doing research and if necessary asking friends who have experience with the products.

I'm not confidently asserting that it doesn't _feel_ like ads don't affect my purchase decision; I'm saying that I don't see anywhere for their first-order effects to affect my purchase process[1].

I'm very aware of the risk of overconfidence here, but this is something I've noticed and wondered about for years. I was pretty unsure of it given the strong prior everyone else seemed to have that ads are all-powerful brainwashing devices. But for years, whenever I have brought it up to people convinced of the ultimate power of ads, I've never gotten anything but lazy dismissals like yours that it's simply hopeless and you're at the mercy of any ad you see.

The two possibilities here are 1) I'm being overconfident and 2) you're not just generalizing your weakness to ads, but universalizing it and unable to admit the possibility of someone who's not as affected. Given everything the above, over all the times I've asked this question over the years, I'm a lot more confident in 2 than I am in 1.

[1] Second-order effects of course exist: the brands stocked by my local Walgreens and those that have visibility in review roundups will of course be skewed somewhat by advertising budgets. This seems inevitable though, and is a substantially different topic than the GP's mention of cognitive sovereignty.

[Pharmakon]

So I guess the answer is no, you haven't considered it.

That definitely isn’t what I said or meant, and it makes it hard to talk to someone who insists on responding to what they’d rather I’d have said in place of what I did say. The only thing I’d add to what I did say, is what darkpuma said.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19324558

Furthermore, people who believe themselves immune to being duped are less likely to admit when they've been duped, because for them to admit they were duped means they must first overcome their ego and admit to themselves they can be duped. For this reason and others, con artists love people who think no con artist could ever trick them.