I guess this is what goes as a "psychological hack".
Definitely interesting to see how you can play the same tricks on people as you can on machines as long as you know enough about how they work internally.
Interesting and scary I guess. We all know how big corp is going to be spending billions on this to manipulate us all.
We all know how big corp is going to be spending billions on this to manipulate us all
That's more than a little hyperbolic. No matter how much money someone spends, while I'm sane I will not (cannot?) be manipulated to stand next to a fake bus stop.
Back on topic, my girlfriend works at a nursing home and she has often spoke to me about the residents being eager to go home, and just as in the article the residents often express their intent to find a bus stop. The approach my girlfriend takes is to tell them that the bus will arrive shortly, and they simply sit and wait in the home itself, waiting to be notified of the bus's arrival. Interestingly, some of the residents even think that the nursing home itself is a bus, and in that case they tell them that their stop is just around the corner, and they happily sit and wait to alight from the "bus".
To me, the scariest thing is that occurence of Alzheimers will likely increase as medicine further increases the lifespan of our bodies, but medicine is rarely successful in increasing the lifespan of our brains. And with that I sincerely hope that by the time any of us are that old, euthanasia is no longer a taboo and is a socially-accepted norm.
But to add some substance to this comment, let me add something. Be it marketing drivel or just the flurry of advertisements we see every day, we are being conditioned and manipulated. To a society where we need to buy to be happy, where you need Tide for clean clothes and McDonalds for happy children. Where brand names matter, and showing wealth is more important than fulfilling interests. Not to sound all hippy dippy, but I think it's naive to say that we aren't being manipulated.
I do want to also agree with your last point though. I'm amazed that in our current society that we have no "right to death". I too hope this changes by the time I start to turn.
You raise a good point about advertising, we are constantly bombarded with attempts to manipulate and coerce into specific ways of thinking. Even those who acknowledge this are likely still being manipulated, though more subtly.
Definitely interesting to see how you can play the same tricks on people as you can on machines as long as you know enough about how they work internally.
Interesting and scary I guess. We all know how big corp is going to be spending billions on this to manipulate us all.