Dave Rahardja (temporarily spooky) on Nostr: People underestimate how predictable they are. You talk about something, and then you ...

People underestimate how predictable they are.

You talk about something, and then you see an ad for that thing, and immediately conclude that some connected device is listening and serving you ads based on your conversation. This is (very, very probably) false; you are actually quite predictable. Advertisers know that people look for e.g. swimwear in the summer. You are “people”. They don’t have to target *you* individually to figure out what you probably want.

Plus you ignore all the ads that they throw at you that are *not* relevant. You only pay attention to the ads that hit, i.e. you are a victim of salience/recency bias.

Edit: Shout out to Dan Ariely and his timeless book “Predictably Irrational”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational