Why is the Advertising Ban Proposal The best thing ever?

Who here likes Ads? These days we have ads everywhere and I for one skip and close every Ad I see. The reason why I dislike ads is because they are not real – they are not truthful and their very reason for existing is to get you to buy what they are selling.  

The big problem comes with Advertising health care like pharmaceuticals – this does real harm, because they don’t have your best interest at heart.  Adverts are causing harm, because they make us think we need that particular product, or pill to make our lives better.

We need to stop the deliberate manipulation of pharmaceutical companies – they are causing harm:

Day 271:Do we all like what we think we like? Science behind Choice Manipulation

 

“”If you are doubtful, consider a brilliant study of music downloads. Sociologist Matthew Salganik and his coauthors conclude that there is a lot of serendipity in which music succeeds and which fails, and that small differences in early popularity make a major difference in ultimate success. In business, many people are aware of this point— but not nearly aware enough. They underrate the extent to which success or failure depends on what happens shortly after launch and frequently overrate the contributions of intrinsic merit.

Lev Muchnik, a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his colleagues carried out an ingenious experiment on a website that displays a diverse array of stories and allows people to post comments, which can in turn be voted up or down. With respect to the posted comments, the website compiles an aggregate score, which comes from subtracting the number of down- votes from the number of up- votes. To put a metric on the effects of social influences, the researchers explored three conditions: (1) “ up- treated,” in which a comment, when it appeared, was automatically and artificially given an immediate up- vote; (2) “ down- treated,” in which a comment, when it appeared, was automatically and artificially given an immediate down- vote; and (3) “control,” in which comments did not receive any artificial initial signal. Millions of site visitors were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. The question: What would be the ultimate effect of an initial up- vote or down- vote?

You might well think that after so many visitors (and hundreds of thousands of ratings), a single initial vote could not possibly matter. Some comments are good, and some comments are bad, and in the end, quality will win out. It’s a sensible thought, but if you thought it, you would be wrong. After seeing an initial up- vote (and recall that it was entirely artificial), the next viewer became 32 percent more likely also to give an up- vote. What’s more, this effect persisted over time. After five months, a single positive initial vote artificially increased the mean rating of comments by a whopping 25 percent! It also significantly increased turnout (the total number of ratings).””

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/19/you_dont_like_what_you_think_you_like_bad_taste_manipulated_choices_and_the_new_science_of_decision_making/

We like to follow. Since birth we learn how to copy behavior from other humans. We imitate things in our surrounding as we grow up, from learning how to crawl to learning how to walk and talk. And that is still with us till the day we die.

Looking at the research done here we can see what a mayor impact a single upvote can have on a video or an article or even a comment, where an upvote means that the next person will most likely upvote the article or video or comment simply because somebody else did. And funny enough – big business knows this about us and exploits it, yet we ourselves are not even aware of it. How many artists and songs that were and are popular got there based simply on successful early Artificial popularity boost?

This means that the things we like and upvote in life and on the internet is not just because we actually like it, but because somebody ( or something ) else liked it and simply followed. This brings to question just how many of our choices in our lives are truly independent – truly our own? Do I really like this or do I like it because somebody else did?

Day 91 - Fearing Others and hiding

 

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to fear  other people will hurt me

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to in this fear hide myself from others and withdraw and avoid meeting new people

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to fear other people seeing who i am and knowing me, because they might not like me and judge me

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to fear being exploited by other people where i will judge myself as being stupid

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to fear others taking advantage of me and being used

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to fear that if I share who i am that i will be vulnerable and thus weak

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to see being vulnerable as being weak and that i must be a strong manly person by closing myself off as to protect myself

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to in this fear of others to become silent so that people cant have the chance to know me and thus cant hurt me

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to when i see all the bad things in this world where people kill,exploit, manipulate etc others to then close up and hide myself from others so that I can be protected

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that nobody can deceive, manipulate, exploit and take advantage of me unless i allow it - and that it is not something I should fear, but rather be aware of.

I forgive myself that i have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that there is no need to protect myself or fear sharing myself to those who i trust and have proven that trust

I commit myself to stop fearing that others will hurt me and realize that there are people in this world who hurt others, but i cannot live my life in fear of this and being directed by it. Instead I am aware of this, but no longer allowing this fear to close me up

I commit myself to stop hiding myself form others and to stop fearing meeting new people, instead i embrace the opportunity to meet new people to asses my effectiveness

I commit myself to stop fearing being exploited and taken advantage of and to realize that this can only happen if i allow it and to instead become effective within myself so that i can see when someone want to exploit and take advantage of me and direct it accordingly

I commit myself to become vulnerable and to stop seeing it as being weak and to realize that I have created this believe that being vulnerable is weakness. Instead vulnerability is more like being open where I do not have anything to hide and no fear, because I am the directective  principle in my life 

I commit myself to Stop living the silent type character out of fear of others, but to instead express myself

I commit myself to stop the belief that I have to protect myself  and steel myself from everybody in order to keep me safe from them hurting me and to instead realize that if i hide myself from everybody then i will never change or become effective in this world