Comment by torstenvl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by torstenvl | Hacker News Reader

Robert Sapolsky touches on this when discussing the effects of glucocorticoids on the prefrontal cortex. A stressed PFC is not an executive functioning PFC. When we're too close to an issue, we process with our periaqueductal gray (key in pain inhibition) and not with the part of our brain more adept at strategizing.

These stress effects on frontal function also make us perseverative—in a rut, set in our ways, running on automatic, being habitual. We all know this—what do we typically do during a stressful time when something isn’t working? The same thing again, many more times, faster and more intensely—it becomes unimaginable that the usual isn’t working. This is precisely where the frontal cortex makes you do the harder but more correct thing—recognize that it’s time for a change. Except for a stressed frontal cortex, or one that’s been exposed to a lot of glucocorticoids. In rats, monkeys, and humans, stress weakens frontal connections with the hippocampus—essential for incorporating the new information that should prompt shifting to a new strategy—while strengthening frontal connections with more habitual brain circuits.

R. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst 130 (2017).

>When we're too close to an issue, we process with our periaqueductal gray (key in pain inhibition) and not with the part of our brain more adept at strategizing.

This must be what happens when you think of a funny comeback or joke several hours after the opportunity to use it.

True! Captured very well in the 'Jerk Store' instance in Seinfeld.

The Treppenwitz or l'esprit de l'escalier: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/l%27esprit_de_l%27escalier

Tunnel vision bias

So those who opt in for parasitic payday loans are doing so under stress, can we say they opt for that loan in similar conditions like you are influenced by alcohol and therefore the contracts are invalid?

Many people have ruined themselves with such contracts and it's understood that they had full awareness of what they are getting into and that's why they are liable for all the losses.

This is a very difficult area to draw a line on.

Your emotions can effect your actions and decisions like anything else. Are we to apply the same logic to how advertising made me feel a certain way leading to a purchase u wouldn't otherwise have made?

We are talking measures of degree here but it's a spectrum that is incredibly difficult to nail down.

What constitutes being of sound mind?

> Are we to apply the same logic to how advertising made me feel a certain way leading to a purchase u wouldn't otherwise have made?

A thousand times yes!

People need some protections against bad actors hacking their brains. It wasn't a large problem in the past, but the bad actors are getting better and better at hacking.

It is still a continuous, so it will be hard to place lines. But it is something that must be done.

> Are we to apply the same logic to how advertising made me feel a certain way leading to a purchase u wouldn't otherwise have made?

I agree with your point about there being a line, but: YES!! ! Advertising has gone too far and is now squarely behind that line.

There is an all out war on our brains going on, and we are losing. Modern advertising and "engagement optimisation" is overwhelmingly insiduous and pernicious. People openly lecture about hacking faults in human psychology to make us buy more and pay higher prices, not to mention the new wave of shameless tracking and targeting. It does not move humanity closer to the stars.

Long live price and value based competition. Down with competition based on dirty psychological tricks.

It's a distraction from your main point, sorry for that. I couldn't let slip the opportunity for a call to arms against advertising.

Lumping all advertising into one box isn't just disingenuous, it's harmful.

Is the farmer advertising his grass-fed, hormone-free beef as a better alternative to what's currently standard grocery store garbage, doing harm?

There's a spectrum to everything, including tech.

Where can I get those ads?

A different view is perhaps that there is a system between the individual and the rest of society - there is a line where a person is clearly not of sound mind so cannot be taken advantage of, but then there is another area where the person is of sound mind but it is not in society's interest to allow them to be taken advantage of.

I often find that when (right wing) people say they want to push regulation back they sort of mean the point of "individual sound mind" but we as a society all benefit more when exploitation is prevented in that other grey area of "what benefits us all"

That grey area not only includes preventing usury but immunisation and education and sewage plants.

Even when contacts are found to be void or voidable due to things like unfair bargaining conditions (such as the inebriation of one party) that doesn't allow that party to escape all consequences of the contract if the sober party was acting in good faith (they were unaware of the condition).

> After all, if that party had no way to know that the drunk or impaired person was not sober, it may have suffered a harm by entering into the contract and performing in good faith despite the other party’s impairment. Thus, it may bring claims sounding in equity (i.e., fairness under the law) called “quasi-contractual claims.” Quasi-contractual claims include things like unjust enrichment, quantum meruit, and others. In essence, they are claims that allow a party to recover when it has, in good faith, performed as though a contract existed, even if it did not or if the contract was void or voidable.

https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/is-a-contract-valid-if-i-s...

i have a saying i tell myself every time this happens to me: 'if it's too hard, you're doing it wrong'.

FTFY if it's too hard, it's fun

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