RE: taboos

From: Douglas Brooker (dbrooker@clara.co.uk)
Date: Mon Apr 02 2001 - 15:41:56 BST

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    Subject: RE: taboos
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    From: Douglas Brooker <dbrooker@clara.co.uk>
    Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 15:41:56 +0100
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    > Wade's right. It's an urban myth in the sense that even the best
    known
    > "examples", like the frames of coca-cola in films making people buy
    more
    > coke, are now highly suspect and weren't based on rigourous tests.
    >

    Is it relevant whether subliminal advertising is effective or not?

    If its an urban myth it's because it is widely believed despite - and
    maybe because of - evidence to the contrary.

    Some societies, more than others, have difficulty understanding that
    facts are prescriptive. Consider the different data right and left
    wingers (if there are any) in the US use to support their positions on
    carbon emissions. Facts are a commodity, bought and sold, and made to
    order. It is not a contradiction to say facts can be mythic.
    ALso, there are different senses of the term myth and some of them are
    only conveyed effectively in the spoken word. Interesting that some
    might write 'myth' meaning it in a pejorative sense, while others read
    it in its more neutral anthropological sense. Maybe I haven't caught
    on to that yet.

    -- 
    

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