[mlthoughts2018]

Yes and yes. Saying otherwise would be like the foolish attitude “advertising doesn’t work on me.”

Everyone in developed nations buys tons of shit they don’t want, like or need, from sheer ad manipulation and repetition.

Tobacco companies literally employed chemistry PhDs to discover how to add ammonia to make uptake of nicotine more rapid, to literally physically addict you to their product.

Companies spend capital T Trillions a year on corporate research in branding, impulse packaging, habit formation, etc. etc.

[imgabe]

There are two competing worldviews here:

In one, some subset of humans are just mindless automatons who are helplessly subject to manipulation. They only buy things they have been tricked into thinking they want. They have no personal agency. In this world, how do you ethically conduct any business? Is it even possible for you to do anything? How do you know you're not one of the mindless automatons who's just being manipulated into doing something against their interest? What choices can you even make?

In another view, humans can be lied to and manipulated to some extent, but ultimately have agency and can make choices for themselves. I've been a smoker. I can tell you from experience that smokers want, need, and like to smoke cigarettes. They are not stupid. They are not unaware of the risks. Many eventually decide, yes, they decide using their own brains and free will to stop smoking. I know it happens because I did.

If you decide there's no such thing as personal agency, I suggest carefully following the consequences of that logic and seeing where it leads you.

> Companies spend capital T Trillions a year on corporate research in branding, impulse packaging, habit formation, etc. etc.

How do you know they weren't just manipulated into spending that money on advertising services they don't want need or like, since that's apparently a possible thing to do? Why would anyone bother building a product at all if you could just use advertising to manipulate people into giving you money for something that is of no value at all to them?

[mlthoughts2018]

I’m sorry but this is just rhetorical nonsense. Manipulation can exist and be a primal cause of someone’s actions even if generally personal agency exists. It’s not some philosophical epiphany to try to mix up some grandiose concern of determinism vs free will vs basic social manipulation.

I’d flip it around and say _you_ need to think about the consequences of your viewpoint. Social manipulation is just a basic phenomenon. It happens. If you’re espousing some philosophical perspective that doesn’t comport with just basic 101 human behavior, your philosophy is wrong, no matter how principled.

[imgabe]

> Regardless, “customers buy your product in a marketplace” absolutely does not indicate or have really any connection with “providing something that matters to someone.”

Your basic contention is that nobody ever buys any product because it's something they want need or like. Indeed you're saying that a product mattering to someone has no connection whatsoever to them buying it.

There's a difference between "social manipulation exists", which I never disputed and "social manipulation, and social manipulation alone is the only reason anyone has ever purchased anything", which is the natural consequence of the contention that a product mattering to someone is wholly independent of them purchasing it.

[mlthoughts2018]

> “ Your basic contention is that nobody ever buys any product because it's something they want need or like.“

This is a complete misrepresentation of what I wrote. Either you are not understanding or are deliberately creating a strawman.

[tpxl]

I think the misunderstanding comes from you saying "A does not imply B" and the other poster misunderstanding that as "A implies not B". This is a rather common mistake in arguments I find ):

[imgabe]

The comment went beyond saying A does not imply B to say that A is completely unrelated to B, even outside of degenerate scenarios such as addiction. Claiming that purchases are completely uncorrelated with receiving value from something is a much stronger and obviously false claim to anyone who thinks about it for more than a minute.

[KSteffensen]

As a data point I understood the same thing as imgabe from the "any connection with" bit.

[mlthoughts2018]

Given the downvotes on imgabe’s comments, it seems that understanding is sufficiently uncommon / extreme and easily corrected by rereading, so as to render this additional data point too much of an outlier to factor it into any conclusions.

Nobody disputes it’s possible to have the same understanding, it’s just not reasonable, and not realistic to claim it as a function of the way the point was initially written.

[pedrosorio]

> Your basic contention is that nobody ever buys any product because it's something they want need or like.

No this is the question you asked which they answered affirmatively:

> Do you believe people routinely buy things that don't matter to them? Do you buy things that don't matter to you?

Routinely != Exclusively

EDIT: I can see how the "does not have any connection with" could sound like that, but as someone says below their argument is just "Buy does not imply need/like"