Thanks, Mike. Interesting, and a bit worrisome, for it seems that the motives of people involved in marketing have little to do with morals and much to do with extracting money from others. I know that advertisers will mount a rebuttal based on their service in matching consumer to product, but I find the toxic consumerism and materialism that results from their efforts far overrides their proclaimed service.
A comment on NLP: NLP, as you say, showed promise back in the 70s. But then as a 'movement' it splintered. Some charlatans, IMO, grabbed it ran for the big bucks (Tony Robbins). Others got involved in drugs and a variety of unsavory activities (including, it is alleged, murder). Most engaged in psychotherapy where a few of them did truly excellent work (e.g. Leslie Cameron-Bandler). A few continued to push the technology (Diltz). And a few others took what was solid of NLP and advanced it much further, some of whom then began successful applications in conflict resolution. But the elan and coherence of the movement was broken, what with the loss of trainer discipline, the murder trial, divorces among the senior leaders of the movement, and an ill-considered efforts by some of these leaders to build a privileged trainer elite. Nonetheless, the capabilities of NLP and its more advanced forms spread beyond psychotherapy into conflict applications, cognitive modeling, legal trials, and intelligence ops. To my mind, the key issue with NLP and its children is the matter of whether the applications are carried out openly and with the voluntary participation of its subjects, as happens in psychotherapy (wonderful success with such things as bad habit elimination, phobia elimination, bad memory management, etc); or the applications are covert and the subjects unaware that it is being used. One can then take this second category (covert) and divide it into those applications that are beneficial (including beneficial to the subject), and those that are exploitative or work to the detriment of the subject. There are active efforts on-going to try and prevent the dissemination of the advanced forms of NLP and its derivatives into what some view as predatory environments, such as advertising and marketing, lobbying, and political communications, and trial lawyering. I hope these notes are of interest. Cheers, Lawry On Jun 20, 2012, at 2:37 AM, Mike Spencer wrote: > > Mike G. wrote: > > mg> Yes, and it has been a very long time since I read Marx on this > mg> but I have a feeling that what we are seeing is a qualitatively > mg> more advanced form of distortion... One where the bad guys are > mg> able to actually get in and manipulate at a level of detail > mg> (informed by neuroscience, psychology, anthropology etc.) that the > mg> Churches etc. were not sufficiently sophisticated to be able to > mg> achieve. > > to which Lawry responded: > > LdB> Michael, can you say more about what you mean here by > LdB> "neuroscience"? > > An intro of sorts can be found on Wikipedia at: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromarketing > > from which this squib: > > In a study from the group of Read Montague published in 2004 in > Neuron,[7] 67 people had their brains scanned while being given > the "Pepsi Challenge", a blind taste test of Coca-Cola and > Pepsi. Half the subjects chose Pepsi, since Pepsi tended to > produce a stronger response than Coke in their brain's > ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region thought to process > feelings of reward. But when the subjects were told they were > drinking Coke three-quarters said that Coke tasted better. Their > brain activity had also changed. The lateral prefrontal cortex, an > area of the brain that scientists say governs high-level cognitive > powers, and the hippocampus, an area related to memory, were now > being used, indicating that the consumers were thinking about Coke > and relating it to memories and other impressions. The results > demonstrated that Pepsi should have half the market share, but in > reality consumers are buying Coke for reasons related less to > their taste preferences and more to their experience with the Coke > brand. > > An early run at this kind of thing was non-therapeutic applications of > notions proposed by Bandler & Grinder 30 or so years ago that they > called Neuro-linguistic Programming. NLP hasn't held up very well > under scrutiny but the notion of outsmarting T. C. Mits [1] by > end-running his nervous system seems to be alive and flourishing. > > See also: neuroeconomics > > - Mike > > > [1] The Celebrated Man in the street > > -- > Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. > /V\ > [email protected] /( )\ > http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
