@temporal Intent behind or consequences of.

You're hitting on a concept I've been trying to refine for a couple of days, it's an answer to the "but we're just giving people what they want" canard.

And I think I've finally worked out what's wrong with the logic.

Wants are a means to an end. They are not the end itself. That is, wants are evolutionarily-derived (or sometimes culturally-instilled) drives or motivators which should result in improved fitness.

Think of these in terms of emotional drives, tastes and our responses to them, favouring aesthetics (symmetry, balance, smoothness, etc.) Those evolved in an environment which was itself not counterevolving to feed those drives faster than they could emerge.

That's not to say that there isn't co-evolution occurring: fruits, say, evolve to be sweet to attract animals which will eat it and spread seeds. But *there is no "fruit sector" specifically engineering high-sugar fruits with a response cycle of days or weeks or months. Even human breeders typically take years or decades, and natural selection generally takes much longer.

Motivators evolved to find things in the environment which improved overall fitness.

"Give them what they want" is engineering rapidly to appeal to psychological behaviours in ways that exploit them specifically to the interests of the engineer. (Or more likely: the investors / shareholders / VC behind them.)

If you're gaming the want itself directly, you lose the argument that what you're providing is at the choice of the target, because you've coopted that choice to your own interests.

I think I need to work on the concept and argument a bit, but I think that's the heart of it.

I'm also sure (as usual) that someone's beat me to it, and would love to know the literature on that.

#GivingThemWhatTheyWant #BehaviouralManipulation #Manipulation #Wants #ABTesting #AdTech #Advertising #Propaganda

@vortex_egg @ArneBab