Musings- Truth and Advertising

In modern times, the words 'truth in advertising' have taken on a certain meaning which may not be entirely accurate. For example, when people hear the phrase 'truth in advertising', they tend to think of advertisements that are misleading or false. This is an error.

It is not surprising that this would be the case. The modern world has so many advertisements, and they are such a big part of society that it seems only natural to associate 'truth in advertising' with false information.

However, to understand what 'truth in advertising' actually means, we must first recognize that all information is true. To say otherwise would be a contradiction.

To say that a particular piece of information is false is to make two implicit claims: 1. That the information in question is not true, and 2. That there exists an accurate set of information which does describe reality.

If the first claim is true, then there exists a set of information which accurately describes reality. This would be an accurate description of reality, but by definition it would not be 'the truth', as there could still exist other descriptions of reality that are equally true- in fact if we accept premise 1 to be correct, this accurate description must also contain some false statements.

Imagine a large and powerful empire, which is expanding its sphere of influence. The emperor wants to make sure his subjects are well fed and happy, so he sets up a system where people can choose their profession freely. In order to motivate people to work harder, the emperor establishes two classes of citizens : those that only have basic income (enough for food), and those that get an additional bonus depending on their profession. However, this bonus is given only if they keep working in the same field as before; but switching jobs carries with it the loss of all bonuses received previously.

This system is widely considered as fair by the people, because the emperor *says* so.

However, in reality it is a terrible system. It creates two classes of people : the managers who get more wealth (and power) and the workers who are stuck with basic income. This divide can only lead to social instability, because there will always be underpaid workers that start protesting against 'the unfair system'. Even if they succeed in changing the rules for themselves, there will be other groups of people left behind.

Here is another example: A company that sells widgets wants to increase their market share and decides to advertise the fact that they are selling a good product. However, people will soon realise that they cannot trust any advertisement, since all advertisements are biased towards the product being advertised.

So, if someone wants to buy a widget, they will have no idea which one to choose and will end up buying the cheapest. They might even try to save money by making their own widget instead.

Obviously, the company selling widgets does not want that to happen. So they make sure their product is better than the competitors'. However, if it really was superior to begin with, there would have been no reason for them to advertise in the first place.

My first impression is that advertising is a strange thing. I think of it as an art form or at the very least some sort of creative endeavor, but this does not seem to be how most people see it.

Instead, it seems like almost everyone sees advertising as something manipulative and dishonest.

This is a strange way to see advertising because how can something which does not tell the truth be dishonest? Isn't that like saying, "I'm lying about lying." If you have no regard for honesty then why would you expect anyone else to? I mean if people don't care that advertising isn't honest and they are just trying to trick others into doing or buying things, then it seems like most of those people should also try their hand at being used car salesmen. It's extremely similar work in terms of tactics and strategy after all. You're still having conversations with people about making them feel good enough so that they make an irrational decision for your profit.

The reason I think people see it this way is because they have a lot of preconceived notions about advertising, and that's what they're seeing when they look at the world around them. The truth is though, that if you look for honesty in advertising then you will find none. If you are looking for dishonesty then there is plenty to go around.

When people think of advertising they usually think about the kind that is trying to sell them something, and not some other sort. They are thinking about a car commercial or an ad for new sneakers or whatever. These ads are mostly dishonest in that they show you things that are often not present in real life like bright colors and beautiful women and cool kids wearing sunglasses with neon lights on them at night. You don't walk into a dealership and see it decorated like it was designed by Willy Wonka, but this is what you get when you see an ad for a car.

The entire purpose of this is to get you to buy the car. There's no other reason for it, and so that makes it dishonest, because they are not giving you what they're selling. You may see a beautiful woman in the ad for a new pair of shoes but when you go into the store there will be no beautiful women waiting to help you find your shoes.

There are other ads that tell you about the truth of a product, and these are actually much more honest, because they're not trying to trick you at all. They simply say that this is what something is or how it works. These kinds of ads can be really good if people want the information they provide. For example, there was an ad for new socks recently which said "New socks? Of course!" It didn't try to sell anything in particular; it just provided useful information.

The purpose of a business is to make money. It is critical that the business succeeds and generates profit, because if it does not then it will close down and cease to exist. As such, businesses must use any means possible to generate revenue and attract customers. Businesses are constrained by competition, consumer spending power, technology changes etc.

The main way in which businesses make money is through sales. Sales are generated by advertising, and advertising is designed to make you buy the product advertised. Businesses will create effective ads because they want to sell more products.

The purpose of an ad is to make you buy the product. It does this by appealing to your emotions or logic in a way that causes you to place the high importance on buying the product. The reason people will buy a specific product instead of another one is because they believe it will bring them more happiness.

This is where the problem of advertising comes in. The product itself will not necessarily make you happier, but simply buying it will fulfill your desires to feel better about yourself and possibly have a higher status.

When I see advertising being criticized for being manipulative, or deceitful, The only response I have is- It really it is only doing what any business must do in order to survive.

In my opinion, advertising is the most effective way for people to make rational choices about their lives and what they want. The biggest problem with advertising in today's world is that it has gotten out of control, and a lot of the ads we see all day are completely irrelevant to our interests or needs. If there was a better system for filtering out non-relevant advertisements from relevant ones, this would not be an issue.

Advertising is a form of persuasion. Persuasion is an attempt to change the recipient's beliefs or behavior through presenting information (in various forms) and indicating a means for that recipient to act upon it, either directly by doing something or indirectly by believing something else.

Persuasion is not inherently negative. It can be a powerful tool for good, especially when it is used to correct inaccurate beliefs or improve behavior that is causing problems.

I suppose the best thing about advertising is that it can improve customer welfare by informing customers of product features and benefits, so they can choose a good product instead of wasting time, effort and money on bad products.

Finally, is there truth in advertising ?

When you put an advertisement in a newspaper, for example, and it says that 'so-and-so is the best car to buy', this statement cannot be said to be either true or false until someone goes out and tests whether it is really the case. Likewise if I say that my favourite colour is blue then this will only become true once someone has gone out and actually looked at me: does my skin turn blue when I am angry? In both these cases we assume there are facts which exist independently of our opinions. But these facts are relative to us as individuals since they could not exist without us.

So, truth is indeed something that depends on us humans. But there does seem to be a universal form of it which transcends our individual perspectives.

And I think that the key to understanding how truth works is by seeing it as a human creation.

A human-centred definition of truth might go something like this: 'Truth is what you can get away with.'

This means that there are no universal truths, only what humans allow to be true.