<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Religion.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#000000"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">what is the most successful way of leading people, changing their behaviors, including letting go of their money, and no psychologist came to mind (unless it was Watson in his later career), no technique of conditioning, reinforcement or punishment. </span></font></div></div></blockquote><br><div>SR Ballard</div><div><br>On Jun 12, 2019, at 2:41 PM, William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com">foozler83@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">In The Blank Slate, Pinker offers us ways to take some aspects of our human nature and make a better society. I got to thinking: what is the most successful way of leading people, changing their behaviors, including letting go of their money, and no psychologist came to mind (unless it was Watson in his later career), no technique of conditioning, reinforcement or punishment. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Then the idea struck me: what influences everybody, everyday, in significant ways, including spending their money? </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Marketing. Don't try to get people to change by forcing them in some way, making laws as an example. (yeah, if you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow, but that's wrong in so many ways), Sell them the ideas. Great ideas will sell themselves to people and once some are sold, others will follow. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">So my vote for most effective manipulator of behavior of all time, without doing anything authoritarian, immoral, or forcing, is Madison Avenue.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">If you, like me, are someone who can be easily led by the right situations, and can never be effectively pushed (which creates a powerful counterforce in me), then it has to be marketing for the selling of ideas. Freely chosen things are usually much preferred to those demanded. (Are they really free choices is a philosophical question, not a practical one.)</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">There's gotta be a way to make buttloads of money out of this!</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">bill w</div></div>
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