Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 443 posts

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#161

Post by ljk »

Very eye-opening read.

few random thoughts:

> Hijack #7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery... By contrast, Apple more respectfully lets userse toggle "Read Receipts" on or off

Unfortunately iPhone has a new feature to reply to messages immediately even in the lock screen, looks like everyone is guilty of this

> “now that you know I’ve seen the message, I feel even more obligated to respond.”

always tried to purposefully not respond right away even when it said I read it already, but it does feel weird/rude

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#162

Post by ljk »

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?

almost every "social news" site is guilty of this.

reddit even has two types of imaginary internet points: link and comment karma. reddit also has endless scrolling, a bar that shows daily "reddit gold" goals, and oranged envelope to see unread messages(slot machine)

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#163

Post by ljk »

xufi wrote: post #57

It saddens me whenever I go out wit my friends and I try to have a conversation, that everyone is glued to their phones and can't have face-face conversation.

Even sadder is when you see this happen to families, with the kids' eyes glued to the phone screen instead of interacting with their families

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#164

Post by Jtsummers »

pmlnr wrote: post #131
Jtsummers wrote: post #4

Kind of interesting idea about how our tools (generic) present us with limited menus, and effectively restrict our options. Facebook has expanded (barely) the options for basic responses to posts (no longer just like, but also a handful of emoticons to express laughter, anger, sadness, etc.). Not as full an option as when using the comment box, but for quick responses it allows for greater expressiveness. At least pe…

A long time ago, when MMORPG was a new thing, I was still playing regular, "paper based" RPG. When someone asked me why am I not jumping on the shiny bandwagon I told them it's because I cannot make the decision to, in case I have the strength for it, pick up a random log of tree in the forest and kill the attacking giant with it in the game, because the choices there are limited to whatever the programmers decided t…

Yep. I play some video games. But tabletop will always be better for me and my friends because of this freedom.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#165

Post by jflatow »

facetube wrote: post #143
jflatow wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to post the same sentiment re: smoking. Given that we see this type of behavior in all industries (not just tech), it seems to me it's actually a systemic problem. People / organizations are incentivized universally to optimize for their own selfish interest, because they do not incur the cost of their decisions on everyone else. In this case, designing your product to maximize e.g. addictiveness or time…

I'd wholeheartedly support wealth taxes if I trusted the social safety net and health care system in my country. Until then, I'll hoard money out of fear: I don't have anything I'm intending to spend it on and hopefully never will. Fix health care and there'd be a high probability of the chains coming off off, at least for me.

Yeah, I chalk this up to broken feedback loops. A separate but related problem, is that in most places it works roughly like G = TI, with a fixed T (tax rate), so that G (government budget) is a function of I (income). The tax just works like a resistance to accumulating wealth, no matter how much the government actually needs in order to function. It would probably help if we capped G instead, i.e. T = G/I.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#166

Post by dredmorbius »

facetube wrote: post #143
jflatow wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to post the same sentiment re: smoking. Given that we see this type of behavior in all industries (not just tech), it seems to me it's actually a systemic problem. People / organizations are incentivized universally to optimize for their own selfish interest, because they do not incur the cost of their decisions on everyone else. In this case, designing your product to maximize e.g. addictiveness or time…

I'd wholeheartedly support wealth taxes if I trusted the social safety net and health care system in my country. Until then, I'll hoard money out of fear: I don't have anything I'm intending to spend it on and hopefully never will. Fix health care and there'd be a high probability of the chains coming off off, at least for me.

The trick to taxes is in getting them right.

Taxes are, to a rough analog, like the vacuum hose system within an automobile engine. (Hrm: I'm thinking that this may be a bad analogy if there aren't many auto gearheads here.)

An internal combustion engine is essentially a self-powered air pump. It has a low-pressure end (intake) and high-pressure end (exhaust). It's got various bits and pieces which need powering. Chains, shafts, and vacuum hoses bleed off some of the energy output of the engine to run systems which can't otherwise be powered. Without the vacuum system, the engine as a whole runs worse.

A vacuum leak, though, worsens performance as you're bleeding off energy and not feeding it back in where it's needed.

In the same sense, taxes modify the function of markets by rasing or lowering costs, and transferring purchasing capability elsewhere. If properly structured, they improve the function of the economy as a whole. If not, they worsen it.

The engine (wealthy) generally perceive the direct costs, but not the indirect benefits of the tax system.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#167

Post by mc32 »

kbenson wrote: post #159
mc32 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and the article and further... Many companies are trying to take search, for example, to the next level by brining predictability through your history as well as your graph. It takes decisionmaking out of people's minds. "You show a history of reading this and that book, have watched these movies and your circle of meaningful people have influenced you thus, so we have this book on its way to you now…

You can look at it as removing our humanity, or you can look at it as supplementing our humanity. Prior to the written word, we had to devote time and effort to passing down information through the spoken word. By offloading this task to an external device (wall, tablet, parchment, paper, book, screen), we've been able to use that time and brainpower to focus on other items, while also increasing the fidelity of our…

I'm aware of all that. We have come a long way since being "savage". My issue is we're getting to the last mile problem where we begin to undermine what we are.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#169

Post by ljk »

frogpelt wrote: post #109

timewellspent.io contains a perfect example of indirectly hijacking our agency: the video play button. That little triangle has almost become impossible to resist. My two-year-old can spy it from across the room and he runs over and begs me to click it. What if we stopped using icons that have programmed our brains?

isn't it better to use a universal icon for simple actions like this? e.g. pointing to wrist for the time, floppy disk icon for saving a file, etc

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#170

Post by orbitur »

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 don't make submissions, only comments, but I like that no one else comment score is displayed for me, and I only feel the need to check my own comments page to see if anyone's replied to me.

On reddit I'm much more likely to check how my comments are doing.

Post reply on HN