[4ntonius8lock]

Having read the article, it seems they are concluding a causality that isn't necessarily there.

The whole study is based on: there's a correlation between advertising spend per capita and life satisfaction between countries in Europe.

Now that COULD mean advertising is making people unhappy.

Or it could mean that people who are less satisfied tend to buy more crap and when people buy more crap they get more advertising. It's not as if advertisers are stupid.

The researcher in the article even admits to this being a one off with no other studies backing his claim. Now what's more likely, he discovered something no one else has, or he misinterpreted the data?

[throwawaymath]

I wish yours wasn't the only comment talking about this. It saddens me to see articles like this, where causation is imposed on correlation. Everyone "knows" correlation doesn't imply causation, but they only seem to know it in the sense of a student reciting it. They don't apply that knowledge critically.

A single study of two things as complicated as advertising measurement and happiness/satisfaction, and the intuitively compelling conclusion is immediately embraced as the truth because it's "obvious."

Edit: Again with the downvotes...come on HN. I'm not defending advertising, I'm criticizing the reporting on a study in a world which has a rampant replication crisis.

[4ntonius8lock]

The funny thing is, the most up voted comments on this topic don't even seem to be about the FA. They are mostly just 'generic advertising is bad comment/anecdote related to the title'.

Another idea I had after reading the article is that advertising is more pervasive in big cities. From what I can recall, big city inhabitants tend to have a lower life satisfaction rating than smaller town dwellers. So countries with more urban dwellers might normally have more advertising and less life satisfaction... because big cities, not necessarily advertising. Also richer nations tend to be less happy, and by being richer have more advertising. There's a lot of ways to interpret the data.

It's funny to see the group-think dynamic on display needed to make non relevant comments go up and comments related to the article be down-voted (which aren't even stating anything specific... you and I never even said 'it's this' just questioning 'maybe not that')

Another super interesting thing that I glean from the down-votes is the bottom down view only when convenient.

If you post on HN that tech companies are evil and conspiring against our privacy, people will say (IMO mostly rightly BTW) that it's mostly bottom up, with consumers CHOOSING bad options. But as soon as advertising comes in the mix, now the world is top down, with evil marketeers manipulating the masses anyway they want.

To all the down-voters: your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer!