I agree completely. I think you have a moral obligation to yourself to avoid advertising as much as is reasonably possible. This means not watching television (unless you're paying to watch it free of advertisements), not reading publications that are heavily supported by advertising (e.g. most magazines) and using an ad blocker everywhere on the web.
You will never be able to completely avoid advertising without taking yourself out of mainstream society, but you can avoid the most insidious parts, and you can try very hard to condition yourself against the rest of it.
The "second-order" advertising (e.g. critic recommendations, word of mouth) is much harder to deal with, especially if you believe that some people have good, unbiased, not-unduly-influenced opinions that you will benefit from listening to. My only recommendation is to curate the people whose opinions you listen to very carefully, and think hard about who they might be (possibly unwittingly) influenced by.
I am sympathetic to the argument that advertising pays for many of the things I like, particularly on the web. But I don't think that argument is compelling enough for it to be worth handing over control of my head.
Of course, advertising is only one factor, though it is probably the most important factor. Other systems competing for a share of your mind include religions, political parties and/or systems of political thought, philosophical systems, programming languages and/or communities (eg functional vs. object oriented), sports teams, national identities, racial identities, and more.
You may want to allow some of these access to a share of your mind (e.g. many people enjoy supporting a sports team, even when the rational part of their brain knows that their sports team isn't inherently better than any other). But for the most part, I think it's better to avoid falling into these traps.
The best exposition I can recall is one of Paul Graham's earlier essays, "Keep Your Identity Small"[0]. I would probably argue a similar point, but phrase it differently - keep your identity broad. Instead of thinking of yourself as a "Ruby programmer" or a "functional programmer" it is better to think of yourself as a "programmer" (and even better not to think of yourself as a programmer at all!). Instead of thinking of yourself as American, or Chinese, or as black, or white, try to think of yourself as a human. The broader you can make your identity, the less chance you have of accidentally falling prey to any of the theories competing for a space in your head.
Like I said, "you will never be able to completely avoid advertising without taking yourself out of mainstream society" and "second-order advertising is much harder to deal with".
I don't claim to be immune to advertising, or know how to avoid all of it! But knowing you are susceptible to advertising is the first step towards not letting it influence you (too much).
> The "second-order" advertising (e.g. critic recommendations, word of mouth) is much harder to deal with, especially if you believe that some people have good, unbiased, not-unduly-influenced opinions that you will benefit from listening to. My only recommendation is to curate the people whose opinions you listen to very carefully, and think hard about who they might be (possibly unwittingly) influenced by.
But we rely on other people's opinion precisely to avoid thinking hard about everything, which would be overkill at best, and could even kill you at worst.
What you say is idyllic, but in practice we just go with the flow. It's easy and safe, from an evolutionary point of view. Choosing requires energy, time and attention [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice], and it has a big opportunity cost [http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/11/27/the-psychology-of-se...]. Do I need to thoroughly bet every "expert" that I listen to? In practice, this is infeasible. You definitely should do it for important stuff, but advertising covers many other unimportant things (such as yoghurt brands) for which it's economically optimal to just assume everyone is an expert.
Also, you approach advertising and human bias such as social proof as only bad things, and I think one needs to also consider the good side of it.
Even for things not so trivial as yoghurt, perhaps if I spend 40 hours choosing for the best car I can make an optimal decision; or perhaps choosing the one that is advertised the most is sufficient; I get a suboptimal choice but psychologically it's less demanding; socially is more acceptable (as I have the same car as the rest); heuristically it might even hold some intelligence (advertising power carries some information about financial strength, financial strength about solid business, and solid business about good products). Typically, you will shortlist a couple of cars and try them. It's a matter of being a satisficer and not a maximizer [http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-you-make-decisions-says-a-lo...].
You will never be able to completely avoid advertising without taking yourself out of mainstream society, but you can avoid the most insidious parts, and you can try very hard to condition yourself against the rest of it.
The "second-order" advertising (e.g. critic recommendations, word of mouth) is much harder to deal with, especially if you believe that some people have good, unbiased, not-unduly-influenced opinions that you will benefit from listening to. My only recommendation is to curate the people whose opinions you listen to very carefully, and think hard about who they might be (possibly unwittingly) influenced by.
I am sympathetic to the argument that advertising pays for many of the things I like, particularly on the web. But I don't think that argument is compelling enough for it to be worth handing over control of my head.
Of course, advertising is only one factor, though it is probably the most important factor. Other systems competing for a share of your mind include religions, political parties and/or systems of political thought, philosophical systems, programming languages and/or communities (eg functional vs. object oriented), sports teams, national identities, racial identities, and more.
You may want to allow some of these access to a share of your mind (e.g. many people enjoy supporting a sports team, even when the rational part of their brain knows that their sports team isn't inherently better than any other). But for the most part, I think it's better to avoid falling into these traps.
The best exposition I can recall is one of Paul Graham's earlier essays, "Keep Your Identity Small"[0]. I would probably argue a similar point, but phrase it differently - keep your identity broad. Instead of thinking of yourself as a "Ruby programmer" or a "functional programmer" it is better to think of yourself as a "programmer" (and even better not to think of yourself as a programmer at all!). Instead of thinking of yourself as American, or Chinese, or as black, or white, try to think of yourself as a human. The broader you can make your identity, the less chance you have of accidentally falling prey to any of the theories competing for a space in your head.
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html