100% - even annoying "promotional" email blasts. I've worked for companies where, when we did surveys, customers overwhelmingly said that we sent them too many emails or that the emails were not relevant. Yet time and time again we would do a bulk email send and watch in-store sales climb up proportionally. So naturally then we had to make email address a required field when making an account online. One more step for users, and specifically something that most users don't want to give...but the money says otherwise.
This reminds me of JC Penney's attempts to switch from bullshit discounts to "everyday low pricing"[1]. Sales dropped 20%.
I think the sad reality is that, despite how people like to think of themselves as rational actors who consider the pros and cons of each purchase, these tactics work. The only way to curtail stuff like this is by interfering in the free market - i.e. regulation.
My understanding of the automotive industry is that they cut corners everywhere they can because they know it’ll save more money than a lawsuit or recall will cost. Do they do these things and when someone dies or raises a stink only then do they do the recall.
Having spent 7 years in automotive, I can tell you definitively this is not the case. Automakers are not interested in dealing with litigation, regardless of the cost-benefit-analysis. It is a mess. Discovery is a mess. The actual court work is a mess.
No automaker wants to risk going down this road.
This is largely urban legend from the Corvair debacle when an internal document showed someone comparing costs of lawsuits to a cost of recall. I don’t think it ever made it into some sort of policy, it was just a math wonk running numbers
I had originally typed the Pinto as the example, but changed it after thinking the memo in question was related to the Nader book. Regardless, the point still stands. From your link:
“The general misunderstanding of the document, as presented by Mother Jones, gave it an operational significance it never had” and that the memo
“explains in part of his Mother Jones article that Ford employees wrote this document as part of an ongoing lobbying effort to influence NHTSA (24, 28). But his readers have relied exclusively on his other claim, that it was the "internal" (20, 24) memo on which Ford based its decision to market the dangerous Pinto and settle the few inevitable lawsuits”
That’s what I meant by it not translating to actual policy.
Obviously those inclined to buy 5g jamming necklaces are also the crowd that do their own research and check to see if things are radioactive or otherwise toxic before attaching it to their body.
Wow, and here I am dropping cash on weed and shrooms like a chump. I’ll be honest, this strikes me as similar to the whole binaural sounds thing…I tried that way back in high school and got nothing from it but my friend swore it was elevating. I won’t knock it, I’m sure some people really do get something out of it and who and I to say otherwise. I might even try it some time. But shrooms haven’t ever let me down. So at least I’ve got a backup
I always had this idea that meditation was the long way to the shortcut drugs offered. I am saying meditation, because, despite using fancy new terminology (RS)( ..[is] facilitated by specific induction methods involving relaxation, concentration of attention, and autosuggestion ), the paper does not really describe new phenomenon, but rather.. a new generation rediscovering 60s.
>I always had this idea that meditation was the long way to the shortcut drugs offered.
Very well put! Every time I'm on LSD or psilocybin (or even THC in higher dosages) I think "I should learn how to properly meditate to get into this state of insight sober"
It is really quite easy: have someone you know provide a nonsense word. In needs to have no logical sense or connections to to anything - pure nonsense. Then, with that phrase held in your most present and loudest inner voice you repeat that phrase in your head. Repeat it over an over, forcefully to drive any other thoughts or thought fragments out of your mental conversation(s) (at all mental conversation levels, if you have more than one going at once). After a few minutes of forceful repeating, it echoes on it's own, and a few realization moments later 20-30 minutes have passed and it feels like waking from a refreshing dream. When in the "state", it really can't be described because it is whatever your imagination and recent experiences feedback froth back and forth. It's relaxing and refreshing, and a great way to clear one's head when working on difficult complex mental goals.
Some people seem to be able to will suggestive language, phrases, maybe audio additions to take them to an imagined fantasy they will testify in a legal court they "teleported and lived there". I made the mistake of discussing deep meditation as described by the Transcendental Meditation faddists during the Beatles hey days, and ever since that date I have been receiving emails and social media private message questions asking about "reality shifting", as if I'm some type of authority. I had no idea what this "reality shifting" phrase meant, so I responding describing literary authors who are known to have changed and elevated literature (basically, Nobel Literature authors) whom they did not know, but created some type of confusion circle. I still get about a dozen such private message contacts a month, asking how to "reality shift" with a half dozen acronyms and pseudo-science nonsense words in their peas to who they think is some type of reality wizard. I'm at a loss how to respond ethically to such irrational requests, they certainly do not respond to anything as I expect. Too often, the response seems to come from a perspective that I'm being coy, or testing their made up something or other. I feel like I'm on the tangential end of a mass mental disease.
I'd recommend seeking out a copy of the original HemiSync recordings and follow along at least for the first 3-5 of them. I was skeptical and had no results from other binaural beat and similar things, but HemiSync blew me away.
Funnily enough I just noticed this in the article:
> Some of those who experience RS reported on social media that their practice was first described in a declassified CIA document titled “Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process.” (McDonnel, 1983). In the document’s 29 pages, the writer, Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell, outlined a method involving hypnosis and binaural audio stimulation designed to achieve equal amplitude and frequency of EEG patterns in both brain hemispheres. Its purpose seemed to have been the induction of out-of-body states capable of time travel, remote viewing, and, ultimately, information gathering (for a review on out-of-body experiences, see Cardeña and Alvarado, 2014)
This is referring to the very same HemiSync (by the Monroe Institute). Interesting.
If you can learn to focus in your day dreaming, weed can make it much more fun, I can’t speak for shrooms but I suspect if you can handle the hallucination it may be additive to the experience.
Depending on how clear of a display you want, a projector may be a good option.
We have a small shelf in our bedroom with an Apple TV, a HomePod mini, and a $90 projector from Best Buy. It projects to the large wall across the room from our bed and is perfect for night time or late evening viewing. I’m sure you could put together a similar system using either SD cards or streaming from your Plex or whatever media server you use.
The very first website I ever saw was at my cousin’s house during a visit for Christmas. They had just recently “gotten the online” and he was showing me his favorite site which was an Oprah talk show discussion forum. At first I was like “wow this is stupid” but then he told me that there’s discussions for “almost everything” and that you’re talking to people all over the world…now I was from a town of about 10,000 people or so and had probably met a thousand people total in my lifetime if that (I think I was 8 or so at the time) so it was mind boggling to me to have the ability to just talk to someone on the other side of the world just by clicking a few icons on a computer screen…I was hooked immediately.
Flash forward years and years and so far I just have not sensed the same magic and awe with things like blockchain “stuff” but it may be that I’m not allowing myself to be mentally agile and open (I’m willing to admit it’s a possibility, at least).
