I’m reading this live so forgive me if this is covered later in, but:

This meme or theory about how ads work — by emotional inception — has become so ingrained, at least in my own model of the world, that it was something I always just took on faith, without ever really thinking about it. But now that I have stopped to think about it, I’m shocked at how irrational it makes us out to be. It suggests that human preferences can be changed with nothing more than a few arbitrary images. Even Pavlov’s dogs weren’t so easily manipulated: they actually received food after the arbitrary stimulus. If ads worked the same way — if a Coke employee approached you on the street offering you a free taste, then gave you a massage or handed you $5 — well then of course you’d learn to associate Coke with happiness.

But most ads are toothless and impotent, mere ink on paper or pixels on a screen. They can’t feed you, hurt you, or keep you warm at night. So if a theory (like emotional inception) says that something as flat and passive as an ad can have such a strong effect on our behavior, we should hold that theory to a pretty high burden of proof.

I don’t think this is fair. “Mere ink on paper or pixels on a screen” have been aggressive influences, both societally and individually, in the past - Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Communist Manifesto, FDR’s Fireside Chats, Atlas Shrugged, etc. Underselling the effect that ideas in a reproducible, spreadable, and permanent form like print media or film have on individuals is dangerous for any conclusion that is derived off of that assumption.