I think you’re lumping television and brand advertising together with targeted shopping advertising. TV and brand advertising works by bombarding a suggestion into your mind so you think of it at a later date.
With these Craigslist ads, the more likely scenario is that when you search for “toasters” you’ll see ads for where to buy a toaster right now. Ads like that are outright useful and are no inherent insult to rationality. I don’t think there is anything irrational about clicking on an ad that conveniently happens to be exactly what you want at that moment.
I don’t dispute that most ads inspire irrationality, but I still don’t follow the argument that because ads encourage rationality, we should not follow through with this project to raise a billion dollars for charity, especially rational charities.
I don’t think this is going to save mankind. I proposed this as a project that would rid the entire Less Wrong community of any empathic self-loathing as a result of buying lattes instead of saving lives in developing countries and to that end I think it will work rather well.
Having said that, I think you raised an important objection that Craig and Jim could raise: that there is something inherently bad about advertisements and it goes against Craigslist’s mission as a public service. They’d have to make the case that their feelings about advertisements outweigh the wishes of the users. Or maybe it’s just that we’d want to frame it so that was the case they’d have to make.
I think you’re lumping television and brand advertising together with targeted shopping advertising. TV and brand advertising works by bombarding a suggestion into your mind so you think of it at a later date.
With these Craigslist ads, the more likely scenario is that when you search for “toasters” you’ll see ads for where to buy a toaster right now. Ads like that are outright useful and are no inherent insult to rationality. I don’t think there is anything irrational about clicking on an ad that conveniently happens to be exactly what you want at that moment.
I don’t dispute that most ads inspire irrationality, but I still don’t follow the argument that because ads encourage rationality, we should not follow through with this project to raise a billion dollars for charity, especially rational charities.
I don’t think this is going to save mankind. I proposed this as a project that would rid the entire Less Wrong community of any empathic self-loathing as a result of buying lattes instead of saving lives in developing countries and to that end I think it will work rather well.
Having said that, I think you raised an important objection that Craig and Jim could raise: that there is something inherently bad about advertisements and it goes against Craigslist’s mission as a public service. They’d have to make the case that their feelings about advertisements outweigh the wishes of the users. Or maybe it’s just that we’d want to frame it so that was the case they’d have to make.