Sometimes I read warnings from medical and health care groups that are so obvious that they are laughable. For example, I read the OpinionJournal [OpinionJournal@wsj.com] almost every day and they have a penchant for finding dumb warnings. For example:
"Mark Steel: Shooting People Is Both Unhealthy and Unsafe"--headline, Independent (London), July 19
"Ethicists: Any Deliberate Killing Crosses the Line"--headline, Times-Picayune, July 19
I have mentioned several times that many attempts to prevent drugs, suicide, dangerous driving and sexual promiscuity have backfired. The marketing programs designed to convince people to avoid such behavior has actually been found to produce the opposite behavior.
Why then you may ask, do they keep getting millions of dollars to fund them? Well, the people with money love the warnings and they usually agree with them so they fund that which they prefer. However, they are already convinced of the behavior they want to prevent so the ads preach to the choir rather than the unconvinced.
The unconvinced are anti-conformist and the people who pay are conformists that insist on preaching to other conformists. Thus, the conformists love the ads and get more money to pay preachers to convince the rebels that sex, drugs and rock and roll are wrong.
posted by Gary Sweeten @ Wednesday, July 19, 2006
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