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

191–200 of 443 posts

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#191

Post by curun1r »

tdaltonc wrote: post #81
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?

So based on what this author is saying, what is a more ethical design pattern for karma? or is there no ethical karma design pattern?

What Slashdot did comes to mind...replacing the actual number with an enumerated set of descriptions. It was fairly easy to get to the top classification of 'Excellent', so once you achieved that, there was no reason to check it. It also cut down on the 'karma whoring' that led them to make the change in the first place, so it was a positive in multiple ways.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#193

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

freshhawk wrote: post #190
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.

> no solutions or actionable items Well that's not true, they have no palatable solutions or actionable items. No new toy to buy that will fix things, no low effort/high status ritual to perform. Just a bunch of changes that involve sacrifice on our parts, and involve organizing large groups of people and trying to get them to plan for the future and then act in accordance with this plan. Also some of these choices w…

The greatest impediment to attaining fully renewable energy generation and ending climate change is that our biggest opponents in this conflict are ourselves and our insatiable desires.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#195

Post by nnd »

flurpitude wrote: post #184
nnd wrote: post #177

Nothing new here. If anyone is interested to learn about these mechanisms in death there is a great book "Hooked" by Nir Eval. The real problem here are the users. If they keep unconsciously falling for the same tricks over and over again, rather than taking a stand and rejecting manipulative products, there is no incentive for product makers to create product which are _not_ manipulative. You can compare it to eatin…

As with addictive drugs, the real problem doesn't wholly lie on either side. You can't blame the users entirely for the fact that people choose to supply a harmful product for profit, but neither can you wholly blame the suppliers for being tempted to do so when users lap it up. Regardless of the blame question, it will improve when (if) both sides change their behaviour, or when either side changes unilaterally and…

Addictive drugs is a good comparison. The supply stills exists because it's profitable and because of suppliers who don't have any moral problems with providing the supply in the first place, for the sake of profit. I remember I watched a documentary on Mexican cartels, and their excuse is simply because they don't know any better.

In the case of technology, it seems a sacrifice has to be made, to refrain from using said manipulative strategies, and thus losing profit.

I still don't quite understand your point about consumers. Assuming that you have free will, it's your own choice to either use those products or not. You can't blame companies manipulating your behavior if you opted in in the first place.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#196

Post by grok2 »

I think this is not necessarily right -- the existing technology limits peoples choice and directs them to behave in a certain way sometimes, but it's not like people don't know they are being manipulated or that they are being provided limited choices, but they live with it what's available if what's available is satisfactory enough. But if it doesn't really satisfy them, people do go out of their way to get what they want...mostly. Atleast that's what I see from a data-point of 1.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#197

Post by Animats »

Hm. Maybe we need a system for mail and messaging which puts most items into a bin to be read later. Once every N hours, it shows you the "later" items.

(One real headache is the demise of third-party messaging clients. You can't write a Twitter client any more, or a Facebook client, or a WhatsApp client, or a Slack client. This is a big problem, because the vendor clients work for the man, not for you. With email, you're still in control, but not with the proprietary systems.)

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#198

Post by philovivero »

reasonattlm wrote: post #45
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more apt metaphor is lead in Roman pipes. They knew lead exposure made you crazy but they still used it in their pipes, on their plates - and it drove them mad. After the planet has warmed beyond a point of no return, after antibiotic resistant bacteria make routine surgery a life-or-death decision, after we have squandered away our resources and used what little we had left to wage futile wars, we will f…

The lead hypothesis for Roman decline is disputed. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/04/lead-pipes-pollute... The demise of antibiotics is much overwrought. It won't happen, since researchers have basically solved the problem of cost-effectively finding an unlimited supply of new ones. https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26701 In general people like seeing doom everywhere. To the extent this motivates some of t…

I'm worried about bacteria that are antibiotic-resistant. So I was excited to read the article you cited.

> Don’t get me wrong—there is certainly no case for complacency at this stage.

Oh. Okay. So unwarranted optimism is... unwarranted.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#199

Post by AndrewKemendo »

This is classic game theory.

You lose as a company if you don't build in these addictive features. So everyone does it because as he made clear, attention is the currency of business currently. All of these companies, and new companies would have to agree not to build these behaviors in.

The idea of an FDA or bill of rights for technology is great in the holistic macro sense, but I think unrealistic as it is not aligned with the interests of companies.

It's the same with any externalities, be it pollution or labor exploitation - things that have clear nexus with bad outcomes but struggle to gain traction around limiting because of overwhelming business interests.

Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

#200

Post by angelbob »

tremon wrote: post #97
forgottenpass wrote: post #33

Apparently google has an Ethicist. Ctrl-F: Ad Huh. Zero mentions of the thing that manipulates people by design. I guess I don't blame him, because even with a blind spot to ads it would seem Google still doesn't give two shits about his input. He explicitly calls out a problem YouTube feature, which he certainly would have voiced internally before externally. And he doesn't work at Google anymore. Google must want r…

Apparently google has an Ethicist. I'm not sure if I should rejoice that Google has one, or be worried that Google has just one.

More than one. There was a British AI company they bought on condition of hiring an AI ethicist.

So there's at least one other than the former Google ethicist who wrote this article.

Post reply on HN