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How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

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Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#121

Post by supergreg »

nihonde wrote: post #88
lars wrote: post #30

Wow, I'm glad this was posted. I think the way we use technology today will be looked back on the same way we look back at naive cigarette smoking in the 1950s. Modern app design isn't about creating things that are good for the user, but about creating want in the user. This is a problem. For example, there are several studies showing that using Facebook in general makes people less happy. User happiness just happen…

If I find an app is pulling me in too often, I delete it. If I find a website is distracting me too much, I throw it on my hosts file (and redirect it to 127.0.0.1). If I find myself drinking too much beer, I stop. If I find myself craving anything in a way that feels intuitively bad, it's a good sign that I need to change something. I feel like a lot of people respond to those impulses by going out of their way to m…

So no hobbies?

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#123

Post by realitycheckxxx »

frank_jaeger wrote: post #74
realitycheckxxx wrote: post #41

First world problems. This post was really disgusting. "Oh, no, I have to look at pictures of bars...Manipulation!", "Oh, no, they are offering me to tag myself on a picture - systemic oppression and manipulation!" "Nooo... Fuck, now have to say 'You're welcome' " Fuck this author. A spoiled, rich cunt complaining that someone will auto-play a video after a countdown on his newest iPhone. ... In the meantime, slaves…

Just a small nitpick, all slaves make $0 per diem. It's sort of the main benefit of slavery.

Not true. Slaves are a cost to the owner, so they get food, accommodation, clothing, transportation paid for by the owner. In modern day, owner doesn't pay for you directly, but does it by giving you the money, so you get yourself all the things slaves used to get directly. You really are nitpicking and not seeing the bigger picture, because it's kinda uncomfortable.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#124

Post by realitycheckxxx »

zepto wrote: post #108
realitycheckxxx wrote: post #41

First world problems. This post was really disgusting. "Oh, no, I have to look at pictures of bars...Manipulation!", "Oh, no, they are offering me to tag myself on a picture - systemic oppression and manipulation!" "Nooo... Fuck, now have to say 'You're welcome' " Fuck this author. A spoiled, rich cunt complaining that someone will auto-play a video after a countdown on his newest iPhone. ... In the meantime, slaves…

Have you considered that the manipulation of people's minds in consumer societies might actually be part of the reason why there is so much exploitation of people in more vulnerable communities?

Yes, that's a great point. It's a vicious cycle.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#125

Post by kefka »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #49

One nitpick: maybe it's just the grocery stores near me, but the Pharmacies are almost always located near the front right by where you walk in. Milk is often in the back however.

Milk in the back or side makes sense though. The milk and dairy area is usually front-facing doors from the huge walk-in refrigerator.

It wouldn't be smart to put a huge walk-in fridge in the center or front of the store, given the recurring shipments from cold storage trucks to fridge.

... However locally, our Kroger(s) has a small case that holds 15 gallons of milk, and a shelf of common bread up front and center.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#126

Post by itsfunny »

bikamonki wrote: post #18

Does anyone else feel the slot machine effect here on HN is the karma displayed on the top-right? After a submission or comment, is that number the first thing you check when you come back to the site?

I've always just created a new account for any comment I make here. In the beginning this was simple privacy consciousness. Paranoia, if you like. I just didn't want a long-lived trail of comments, however apparently benign, to be trivially associated with my actual persona.

As the years went by, though, I found that the lack of score consciousness was itself a noticeable relief of cognitive load from my earlier status-conscious state. The actual feeling was similar to when I desynced my work email account from my smartphone and disabled all but SMS and incoming call notifications.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#127

Post by jmiserez »

jakub_g wrote: post #100
jmiserez wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but a good example would be the various PDF conversion apps around. The freemium/shareware ones all suck in one way or another unless you pay (arbitrary page limits, watermarks etc), the web-based ones make batch processing very hard and have privacy issues. Meanwhile ghostscript, pdftk, imagemagick and co. just work and will continue to work for a long time. On mobile I can use these over SSH on a remote Lin…

Offtopic ad. PDF: [1] is quite fine on Windows and has no arbitrary restrictions. But the general point holds. [1] https://www.pdfill.com/pdf_tools_free.html

Nice. Apparently it uses Ghostscript in the background though?

Another problem is that a Google search for "convert to PDF" turns up so much crap it's hard to even start looking. Same with "convert to MP4". I just use ffmpeg directly now, even though getting the command line options right is not easy.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#128

Post by dTal »

tdaltonc wrote: post #72

> We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People’s time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights. I think that the only way we can do this is for out technology to make our values impulsive.

I don't know about the only way, but this is a stunningly thought-provoking comment.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#129

Post by illumin8 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #77
cpt1138 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what? The problem with the constant doom is that we get exhausted. At least in the US all we truly care about is war and old people (looking at where the money goes; http://whatwepayfor.com/ ). The problem with the doom sayers is they have no solutions or actionable items that we can say yes or no to. Its just lions and tigers and bears 24/7.

I'll give you an example. I live in Ithaca, NY, not far from some of the richest shale gas deposits in the United States. This town is also ground zero for fracking hatred. Post something awful about fracking, and people will eat that shit up whether it's true or not. I know, because I was one of them. Then I started dating a hydrogeologist. As luck would have it, her very MS thesis was on fracking. She dispelled rum…

> Point is, it's fair to be scared. Improper fracking CAN cause earthquakes, it CAN poison groundwater, but it is very obvious where and how it happens, and it can be regulated and prevented.

Everywhere I've seen fracking it's been almost completely unregulated. The US MMS (Minerals Management) has been called a "culture of corruption" by whistleblowers: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/14/oil.whistleblower/index.htm...

What makes you think fracking would be regulated in any reasonable manner, given our current bought and paid for government?

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#130

Post by ifdefdebug »

realitycheckxxx wrote: post #123
frank_jaeger wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a small nitpick, all slaves make $0 per diem. It's sort of the main benefit of slavery.

Not true. Slaves are a cost to the owner, so they get food, accommodation, clothing, transportation paid for by the owner. In modern day, owner doesn't pay for you directly, but does it by giving you the money, so you get yourself all the things slaves used to get directly. You really are nitpicking and not seeing the bigger picture, because it's kinda uncomfortable.

The word "slave" is bound to the loss of freedom to walk away. You probably mean "exploitation". Don't use the word "slave" for that, because unfortunately there are still enough "real" slaves in the world who can't walk away.

And don't bother to make the argument they can't walk away for economical reasons. It's still a whole different thing.

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