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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how people working at Facebook and Google deal with the "morality issues" of peddling advertising to impressionable children and teenagers (while calling it "innovation") while consuming 10x as much resources per capita as people in China who actually build real tangible things?

NB: I don't want to give the impression that I think advertising is bad or anything. I think of it like porn: fine for adults, but not something I want my daughter exposed to until she can appreciate what it is.

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> I don't want to give the impression that I think advertising is bad or anything. I think of it like porn: fine for adults, but not something I want my daughter exposed to until she can appreciate what it is.

That's an interesting comparison. One could argue that advertising is far worse than pornography, in the sense that pornography is usually being purposefully sought out when one is exposed to it, whereas advertising is often intrusive info-pollution, going out of its way to expose us to strongly-biased and/or manipulative rhetoric.

One of the best classes I had in college was "Reasoning and Critical Thinking", taught by the Philosophy department. A few friends and I took it to satisfy some degree requirement or other. Afterwards we reflected that wasn't enough -- we felt that a passing grade should be required for graduation for every single student.

Why? Because it was inoculation against bogus argument. It covered basic logic, logical fallacies, and gave students a solid footing in resisting and debunking nonsense in argument, advertising, and other communication. Really an invaluable life skill.

If everybody were required to take that one particular class, the content would be so diluted that it'd lose its original intention. I think it's better for some to seek it out than for half of the freshman class taking it, failing, then complaining that it was the most worthless course ever.

My university required everybody take a philosophy course, and I can't remember anything from it because there was essentially nothing taught. The professor assigned the absolute bare minimum and expected the absolute bare minimum since he knew people took it for only one reason: they needed to.

Or stop admitting students who can't pass a basic philosophy course.

1. You could say that about any course... Statistics comes to mind.

2. The original justification was "everyone should learn basic reasoning". You just turned it into "kick out people who can't learn it, cause screw those guys".

Many people do take that opinion though. I've seen it reasoned, and felt it a little bit myself, that you should take any and every opportunity to say "kick people out who can't learn X" because that's what assures the value of the degree in the first place.

However, that gets into "what does a degree really mean" and plenty of other arguments, not something I'm interested in.

1. I don't believe that everyone needs to go to college. 2. I don't believe college is a day care where students should be coddled. If they can't pass a basic philosophy course, they have no business being in college. That's not to say they are worthless, just that college isn't right for them.

Too bad no one learns a thing about arithmetic, because we're all required to take it.

Seriously, I don't actually give a flying fig about the feedback and evaluation mechanisms. I care about raising skill in this kind of thinking capability in as many people as possible. That is, taught with the cultural vigor we give to skills such as literacy. I also don't mean "some kind of random class with this label slapped on it". At the time, we very clearly meant the instruction quality that we had just experienced.

This is actually a required course at CSU, Chico (my alma mater). I believe it is required at all CSUs and UCs [1]

[1]: https://secure.csumentor.edu/planning/transfer/ge_breadth.as... (Under Area A)

Some educators are directly opposed to teaching critical and high-order thinking: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-...

has your daughter gone outside, watched a movie, watched a tv show, took the bus, went to a sporting event, etc?

This disingenuous -- he was complaining about ads targeting children/teenagers rather than ads in general.

Children's toys are not generally targeted towards the parents.

I think your understanding of advertising is rather shallow. Of course children's toys are targeted towards parents. The underlying message in most advertisements is, "buy this toy to make your kid happy and get them out of your hair for a few hours."

Sometimes, sometimes the kid sees the commercial and just annoys the hell out of their parent until they buy it; specially in Christmas because is socially expected.

This reminds me of an example in a book I read about advertising. Toy companies increase advertisement before Christmas but lower production rates so the big toys of the season sell out. The reasoning is that kids bother their parents to buy the toy and the parents promise they will but can't since its all sold out so they buy something else. The toy companies cut the ads a little before Xmas only to ramp it up again a month or so later at which point the kids complain that you promised and parents psycologically feel obligated to buy. The toy companies then get 2 purchases from you. They use your kids against you

You know, there are some places where at least two of those things don't involve any advertising, thankfully.

I hear that complaint, but I think that my kids are growing up more savvy regarding the tricks of advertisers because they've been exposed to them at such a young age.

I would definitely distinguish it from porn in that heavy sexuality is way too able to psychologically scar someone at a young age -- but learning that the Barbie in the commercial isn't as much fun to play with as the girls in the ad made it seem isn't a bad thing.

heavy sexuality is way too able to psychologically scar someone at a young age

Evidence? Not sure what you mean by "heavy sexuality"... rape porn, sure, I'm inclined to agree, but anal sex, scat, orgies, etc. I'd need to see some proof. I saw all that when I was 8-9 years old, and anecdotally I have a healthy sex life now that is free of any destructive fetishes (or really any fetishes in general).

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