I heard it, too. I think a lot of people outside neuroscience overestimate the knowledge that the research community has vis-a-vis bending us to their will. If you look into it, you will find two interesting things:1) Virtually everything of practical value that has been published on this topic is empirical. Frequently, theoretically-derived predictions are contradicted by experiment. Thus, it derives from "psychology" whose theoretical models rarely refer to the meat (i.e. neurons, glia, synapses, ion channels etc.)
2) In my opinion, the lion's share of brilliant pscychologists work for advertising agencies already and they don't need MRI data to manipulate us. While any complete psychological theory will be derivable from the aggregate properties of our brains' componenents, deriving theories of conciousness and motivation from "first principles" is a long way off except for very restricted types of behaviour, in very simple creatures. It's just too complicated.
IMO, if it were possible to create a consistent theory of consumer behaviour, economics would be a science.
[ December 03, 2002: Message edited by: Sisyphus ]
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posted 03 December 2002 11:26 AM
