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> some methods of psychlogical and behavoural manipulation

I think you may be objecting to the idea of manipulation here rather than his point. Influence is not necessarily bad, if a dentist notices some poster which causes his patients to floss more shouldn't he keep it up?

Suggesting all manipulation is bad implies we shouldn't do public health education etc if it happens to be effective.



But it never stops at "this thing we want to encourage is obviously good with absolutely no downsides".

After all, floss is a single-use plastic, generally made of PTFE, the production of which requires all sorts of nasty forever chemicals.


You can buy biodegradable PTFE & PFAS Free dental floss made from natural ingredients.

Or even go old school and use a teeth-cleaning twig etc.


It's gonna be hard to include all of that in your eye-catching, behaviour-nudging poster.


And thus the advertising industry.




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