How Viewing a "Virtual You" Can Help You Save 182
Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that computer scientists, economists, neuroscientists and psychologists are teaming up to find innovative ways of turning impulsive spenders into patient savers. One way to shock Americans into saving more for their retirement is software that lets users stare into a camera in a virtual-reality laboratory and see an image staring back of how they will look in the year 2057. By enabling the young to see themselves as they will be when they are old, virtual-reality technology can transform their urge to spend for today into a willingness to save for tomorrow because to the extent that people can more vividly imagine how badly they will feel in the future with little to no retirement savings, they can be motivated to save more money now. In one test experimental subjects who saw a persuasive visual analog of a 70-year old version of themselves by morphing the shape and texture of his avatar to simulate the aging process reported they would save twice as much as those who didn't (PDF). 'An employee's ID photo could be age-morphed and placed on the benefits section of the company's website,' says Dan Goldstein of London Business School. 'From there, we're just a few clicks and a few minutes away from someone making a lasting decision that can be worth thousands [of dollars].'"
B.F. Skinner would be proud (Score:5, Insightful)
Just short of mind control, really. We're holding your future self for ransom and if you don't put your money in the the 401(k) he's gonna get it! It's also weirdly like the Wolfenstein HUD in that your character's face is used to communicate status.
Such a technology as this is really an abandonment of rationalism -- we concede we can't use empirical arguments and evidence about saving and retirement to convince people to save, so now we'll just scare them. Notice that people are only manipulated into saving, and not into thinking about what to put their money into, which is the actual decision people are making. How will your face look if you discover in 20 years the stocks you were buying were a house of cards, and that the only reason you were putting your money into them is because your corporate HR department was guilting you. You should decide how to save their money with a sound mind, free of the sort of manufactured anxieties bank and stock broker marketers use to induce new customers, which is all this is.
Re:Good life (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ah, yes, the US retirement scams (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The top 400 own more than the bottom 150,000,00 (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because breaking out the guillotines and slicing the heads off of a bunch of rich jerks will is totally an effective strategy for improving the day to day lives of these people. Hope they enjoy themselves. Myself, though, I think I'll wander off somewhere else before anyone decides it's time to start purging the intellectuals, and would advise most of Slashdot to do the same.
Re:Why on earth would I save? (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that you and I will have equal votes in forty years, when my life of scrimping and saving means I have $1M in the bank, and you're penniless and living on debt scares the bejeezus out of me.
The really scary part is that 40 years of 70s style stagflation in a post peak oil environment means $1M will roughly buy a cup of coffee at starbucks...
You know what else would help me save? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good life (Score:4, Insightful)
It's reasonable to worry about global warming and similar effects, and it's all well and good to complain about "climate change deniers and proud of it", but to visit the other extreme is also an affront to reason. To wit: changing weather patterns may affect the world economy to the tune of trillions of dollars, but your "uber-winter" scenario sounds like something out of The Day After Tomorrow. As such, I believe that your worries have transcended reason and are now firmly in the realm of paranoid delusion.
Please come back. I assure you there's still plenty of room to be rationally concerned about the world, and (outside of a circle that already embraces the notion) you're really undermining the global warming cause.