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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   5860 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 21, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Fellow Motteizans, what are your small scale conspiracy theories? I'm not talking grand narratives here. What minor, apolitical conspiracy theories do you explain to the next table at a diner.

For myself, I think at least some large portion of lottery drawings are not random. I base this belief on the fact that of repeat lottery winners, a suspicious number of them are math professors.

Makeup and skincare products age your face and give you acne and bad skin to make you buy more makeup and skincare products.

I mean, if they don't, the industry is leaving money on the table.

That would make sense, but there's a lot of competition in the market and women do discuss skin care a fair amount.

If your thesis was true, you'd expect poor white women who went without an expensive skin care routine to have better skin in their old age.

That doesn't match what I've seen.

From what I've seen more expensive products do produce better results. I used to work in Canadian politics and there was a sharp salary division. Hill staffers got paid crap. Ministry staffers got paid well.

When a girl moved over to a Ministry it was obvious. Her skin was noticeably better after a few months. Long term it holds up. Although UV protection seems to be the bigger split.

Or she got better sleep and ate better and drank more water.

Multiple women moving to jobs that had worse hours. They were probably eating better.

Eh, I think you could also chalk it up to the ten million lifestyle changes that come with having more money. When I was super broke I had terrible skin because I was constantly stressed out and didn't have a regular schedule, now that I have a lot more money I use the same few products all the time and am really consistent with my skincare routine and have significantly better skin than when I was younger and broke, though I don't use any more expensive products.

there's a lot of competition in the market and women do discuss skin care a fair amount.

Yeah, but the competition really serves to obscure and obfuscate the market (for example the constantly shifting product selection is completely ridiculous) and the quality of discussion on skincare is basically at the same level of like horoscope talk in the majority of cases, even in extremely niche reddit skincare forums I would take most of the advice with a huge grain of salt

I mean, if they don't, the industry is leaving money on the table.

That depends on the level of scrutiny they get from whatever quality assurance regulations they have to comply to, the estimated probability of a employee turning whistleblower, or just random customer finding out, multiplied by the expected damage from the resulting lawsuits and public backlash. It's not especially unrealistic that if they did do this people would notice the trend, some scientist would do a statistical survey, and then lawyers would jump at the opportunity for a class action lawsuit, it happens for many products.

So it's entirely plausible that the expected value of doing so is negative and thus the company increases profits by keeping their products safe and effective. It's not guaranteed, I can see it going either way, but the entire point of being able to sue companies for damages is to act as a deterrent for this kind of behavior.

It doesnt have to be a conspiracy.

I know jackshit about skincare but my prior is covering up the pores on ones face for long stretches of time probably harms said faces skin even if by a miniscule amount.

A lot of things leave money on the table. The police don't usually train new criminals, and the cardiology department in the hospitals doesn't sponsor the addition of transfats to the cafeteria food.

Turns out we're not averse to doing so when there are obvious moral issues, most of the time.

But I believe the American Heart Association etc absolutely does endorse seed oils and warn against animal fats.

But that’s because they’re unwilling to go against consensus, not because they’re trying to drum up business.

It can be both. One of the things I'm always on about is the way that humans can coordinate with/against each other without even being aware that we're doing so. We have a conscious mind which spins up plausible excuses, and another hidden one which knows exactly what we're doing but also hides that from us, which makes us better liars. Including to ourselves.

Consider the old saying, "It is impossible to make a man understand something his income depends on him not understanding."

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