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Over on the_other_place, there's another libertarian discussion ongoing about drug trials and that the FDA is too slow and should get out of the way. It's a beguiling concept, that the individual knows what's best for them and should be able to take the drugs they think can help them.
The flip side of this are the drug trials people I've met who are very cautious because they're fully aware that human physiology isn't just stranger than we imagine but, on the whole stranger than we can imagine and things go wrong in trials all the time. Plus people are genuinely lousy at risk perception and can be easily conned into doing things that are bad for them. I watched the Wolf of Wall Street at the weekend and then went and checked the back story. Basically, amoral fuckwit finds out how much money he can make selling worthless stock to people he can con and gets very, very, very rich doing it.
There's nothing all that magical about selling stuff to people, honestly, there's a very simple set of tricks you can use to get people to agree with you. It's why the legislation on things like cool down periods is so essential. Next time you're being sold to, watch for the open, leading questions "What will you use this for?", "How often do you think it could be useful?", "Why don't you try it out now?" And so forth...
See that? You're already thinking about using the widget. Then you switch to closed questions. "Can you see yourself using this then?", "What colour would work for you?" and then "When would you like it?" or "How would you like to pay?"
You get people thinking about the thing, you get answering questions that have yes as an answer and then you ask them to take it and shut up until they buy.
Next time you buy a car you might spot some of these, they're taught in sales training courses all over the world and they're based on very sound principles about how people respond to things.
Selling drugs to a dying person? Easy, you're just selling hope.
Which comes back to the fallacy of the Heinleinian Competent Man... I'll leave it to the reader to have a think about the triggers that get one of those saying yes and the sales script for anything pretty much writes itself.
The flip side of this are the drug trials people I've met who are very cautious because they're fully aware that human physiology isn't just stranger than we imagine but, on the whole stranger than we can imagine and things go wrong in trials all the time. Plus people are genuinely lousy at risk perception and can be easily conned into doing things that are bad for them. I watched the Wolf of Wall Street at the weekend and then went and checked the back story. Basically, amoral fuckwit finds out how much money he can make selling worthless stock to people he can con and gets very, very, very rich doing it.
There's nothing all that magical about selling stuff to people, honestly, there's a very simple set of tricks you can use to get people to agree with you. It's why the legislation on things like cool down periods is so essential. Next time you're being sold to, watch for the open, leading questions "What will you use this for?", "How often do you think it could be useful?", "Why don't you try it out now?" And so forth...
See that? You're already thinking about using the widget. Then you switch to closed questions. "Can you see yourself using this then?", "What colour would work for you?" and then "When would you like it?" or "How would you like to pay?"
You get people thinking about the thing, you get answering questions that have yes as an answer and then you ask them to take it and shut up until they buy.
Next time you buy a car you might spot some of these, they're taught in sales training courses all over the world and they're based on very sound principles about how people respond to things.
Selling drugs to a dying person? Easy, you're just selling hope.
Which comes back to the fallacy of the Heinleinian Competent Man... I'll leave it to the reader to have a think about the triggers that get one of those saying yes and the sales script for anything pretty much writes itself.
