Comment by reverendsteveii

We talk about capitalism being really good at serving revealed preferences, but the thing becomes a bit more twisty when you start talking about capitalism and mass media's ability to shape those preferences. From Bernays to Chomsky we have reams of literature about how mass media is used to tell people what they want, then capitalism supplies it to them, then mass media tells them how free and blessed they are to receive just what they want.

Definitely hard agree on the split between slow, deliberative, rationally-focused thinking and quick, subconscious, emotional, pattern-seeking thinking and the way that most people to their own detriment don't ever examine which of those two they're doing. Hell, I still pretty regularly have trouble differentiating between thinking and reacting and I'm the kind of nerd who spends a lot of time thinking about how I think.