Why is there even the social norm that some form of misleading is okay as long as the sufficiently smart people can figure it out?
Once you start paying attention to this, you can see it in many places. For example, advertising. There is a rule that you cannot say “X is better than Y” (where Y is your competitor), but it is okay to say “X is best”. But how could that make sense? If X is the best, then logically it must be better than Y.
I guess the official version is that “everyone knows” that calling something best in advertising is an exaggeration.
I say, fuck that. “Everyone knows it is an exaggeration” means that it is a lie. Lying about the product you are selling is fraud. Fraud should get you in prison. But… only a stupid people would believe that literally, right? Yes, but stupid people exist, you told them something, some of them believed it, and they bought your product. How specifically is this not a fraud?
(No, I am not blaming you for the “stupid people exist” part. I am blaming you specifically for the “you told a lie” part. If you tell the truth, and the stupid people misunderstand you, you can defend yourself by showing that they misunderstood. But if you tell a lie, the stupid people understand you correctly… technically… they just do not understand that you are socially allowed to lie to sufficiently stupid people. Why is that so?)
From the conflict theory perspective, it is all obvious. We are scamming the stupid because we can, LOL! What are they going to do about it? Anyone who fully understands the problem and is capable of doing something about it, is by definition already on the winning side!
(But of source, “stupidity” is relative, and no matter what your IQ is, in certain contexts the stupid one is you.)
Re: “best vs better”: claiming that something is the best can be a weaker claim than claiming that it it better than something else. Specifically, if two things are of equal quality (and not surpassed) then both are the best, but neither is better than the other.
Apocryphally, I’ve heard that certain types of goods are regarded by regulatory agencies as being of uniform quality, such that there’s not considered to be an objective basis for claiming that your brand is better than another. However, you can freely claim that yours is the best, as there is similarly no objective basis on which to prove that your product is inferior to another (as would be needed to show that it is not the best).
I say, fuck that. “Everyone knows it is an exaggeration” means that it is a lie. Lying about the product you are selling is fraud. Fraud should get you in prison. But… only a stupid people would believe that literally, right? Yes, but stupid people exist, you told them something, some of them believed it, and they bought your product. How specifically is this not a fraud?
I understand this attitude, but I think once you try to operationalize this into policy, it runs afoul of the same problem of trying to censor misinformation. E.g. see section IV of this ACX essay:
Okay, that’s my nitpicky point. Who cares? Obviously all of this kind of stuff is more than deceptive enough to in fact leave a bunch of people misinformed. So why do I care if it misinforms them by lying, or by misinterpreting things and taking them out of context?
I care because there’s a lazy argument for censorship which goes: don’t worry, we’re not going to censor honest disagreement. We just want to do you a favor by getting rid of misinformation, liars saying completely false things. Once everybody has been given the true facts—which we can do in a totally objective, unbiased way—then we can freely debate how to interpret those facts.
But people—including the very worst perpetrators of misinformation—very rarely say false facts. Instead, they say true things without enough context. But nobody will ever agree what context is necessary and which context is redundant.
Ads may be less honest than news, but it’s still hard to operationalize no-lies rules in such a way that they aren’t used asymmetrically against those who aren’t in power.
I cannot fully evaluate how I feel about this now, but something sounds suspicious. For example, using the same logic, slander/libel should be legal, because people in power will always be able to say or at least insinuate negative things about their opponents, so if we make it illegal, the situation becomes asymmetrical. Perhaps theft should be legal too, given that the government and police can take things/money from you if they really want to.
I understand the ACX essay as an argument in the opposite direction. It is too easy to mislead people while only saying things that are technically true. But advertising fails to comply even with this standard.
From what I understand, libel laws have very high standards of evidence precisely because of the worries I mention. Also see this NYT article (note that the article is behind a soft paywall), which both mentions the even stronger requirements for a public official to sue for libel; and also mentions the differences between the US (harder to sue for libel) and the UK (easier to sue), and the effects of this.
Again, I have no problem with accusing ads of dishonesty or calling them lies; I’m just skeptical that there’s a way to codify this into law that doesn’t just make things much worse.
Why is there even the social norm that some form of misleading is okay as long as the sufficiently smart people can figure it out?
Once you start paying attention to this, you can see it in many places. For example, advertising. There is a rule that you cannot say “X is better than Y” (where Y is your competitor), but it is okay to say “X is best”. But how could that make sense? If X is the best, then logically it must be better than Y.
I guess the official version is that “everyone knows” that calling something best in advertising is an exaggeration.
I say, fuck that. “Everyone knows it is an exaggeration” means that it is a lie. Lying about the product you are selling is fraud. Fraud should get you in prison. But… only a stupid people would believe that literally, right? Yes, but stupid people exist, you told them something, some of them believed it, and they bought your product. How specifically is this not a fraud?
(No, I am not blaming you for the “stupid people exist” part. I am blaming you specifically for the “you told a lie” part. If you tell the truth, and the stupid people misunderstand you, you can defend yourself by showing that they misunderstood. But if you tell a lie, the stupid people understand you correctly… technically… they just do not understand that you are socially allowed to lie to sufficiently stupid people. Why is that so?)
From the conflict theory perspective, it is all obvious. We are scamming the stupid because we can, LOL! What are they going to do about it? Anyone who fully understands the problem and is capable of doing something about it, is by definition already on the winning side!
(But of source, “stupidity” is relative, and no matter what your IQ is, in certain contexts the stupid one is you.)
Re: “best vs better”: claiming that something is the best can be a weaker claim than claiming that it it better than something else. Specifically, if two things are of equal quality (and not surpassed) then both are the best, but neither is better than the other.
Apocryphally, I’ve heard that certain types of goods are regarded by regulatory agencies as being of uniform quality, such that there’s not considered to be an objective basis for claiming that your brand is better than another. However, you can freely claim that yours is the best, as there is similarly no objective basis on which to prove that your product is inferior to another (as would be needed to show that it is not the best).
I understand this attitude, but I think once you try to operationalize this into policy, it runs afoul of the same problem of trying to censor misinformation. E.g. see section IV of this ACX essay:
Ads may be less honest than news, but it’s still hard to operationalize no-lies rules in such a way that they aren’t used asymmetrically against those who aren’t in power.
I cannot fully evaluate how I feel about this now, but something sounds suspicious. For example, using the same logic, slander/libel should be legal, because people in power will always be able to say or at least insinuate negative things about their opponents, so if we make it illegal, the situation becomes asymmetrical. Perhaps theft should be legal too, given that the government and police can take things/money from you if they really want to.
I understand the ACX essay as an argument in the opposite direction. It is too easy to mislead people while only saying things that are technically true. But advertising fails to comply even with this standard.
From what I understand, libel laws have very high standards of evidence precisely because of the worries I mention. Also see this NYT article (note that the article is behind a soft paywall), which both mentions the even stronger requirements for a public official to sue for libel; and also mentions the differences between the US (harder to sue for libel) and the UK (easier to sue), and the effects of this.
Again, I have no problem with accusing ads of dishonesty or calling them lies; I’m just skeptical that there’s a way to codify this into law that doesn’t just make things much worse.