This morning I got up early to be ready for my first ethics class at 8am. I could have used more of a sleep-in to continue recovering from this illness, but maybe I can get that tomorrow. I’ve been sleeping much better the past three nights, after nearly a week of just a couple of hours sleep a night. My infected eye is improving thanks to the eye drops.
The classes were the last three of the advertising topic. I found it interesting in the interrupted week’s worth of classes that virtually all of the kids expressed the opinion that yes, ads often stretch the truth, or do things that are deceptive, to try to convince people to buy their products. And that’s okay. I asked them if they thought it was bad that ads were deceptive, and almost every kid said it was okay, because that’s what companies have to do to sell stuff and do business. And people know ads are exaggerated, so it’s not really fooling anyone.
I pushed a little, and asked: “Just because lots of companies do it, and people are used to it, does that really make it okay for them to be deceptive in ads?” And all of them said yes, it was okay. I asked if their should be laws against deceptive ads, and none of agreed that there should be. A couple even suggested there should be no laws against even outright lying in ads.
Honestly I’m kind of flabbergasted. I would have thought that a large number, maybe half or more, of the sample size would have expressed the opinion that deceptive ads were bad, and should be cracked down on in some way. Maybe kids these days are more cynical, and figure nobody should be gullible enough to actually believe ads, so it doesn’t matter if they lie to us.
Today I finally managed to get access to the video presentation of the last university team, and mark that, which completes the marking work. Although I still need to upload the marks and comments into the university system, which is about an hour’s work copying and pasting into the clunky web UI.
Not much else to report. I cooked vegetable fajitas for dinner.
New content today:
If you do any science courses via Outschool again, you could use your eye infection as an example. You really have no idea whether the antibiotic helped you, as you undoubtedly know. Most infections are self-limiting, and it’s perfectly possible it would have cleared up (as your flu did) regardless of the medication.