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Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

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Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#21

Post by superbrama »

lerie82 wrote: post #18

Oh get over yourself, this video is disgustingly egotistical. "ripping apart the social fabric", I absolutely doubt that. This is getting way out of hand. Social media isn't ripping any core values apart, and nothing he has said in this video proves it.

Just curious if you’ve any anecdotes about behavior of nouveau generation. While not a parent myself I’ve heard many times from parent and youth peers that the new generations are entirely lacking IRL social skills, instead deferring their social lives entirely to their digital presence. As a result, basic conversational skills development is limited.

Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#23

Post by lerie82 »

superbrama wrote: post #21
lerie82 wrote: post #18

Oh get over yourself, this video is disgustingly egotistical. "ripping apart the social fabric", I absolutely doubt that. This is getting way out of hand. Social media isn't ripping any core values apart, and nothing he has said in this video proves it.

Just curious if you’ve any anecdotes about behavior of nouveau generation. While not a parent myself I’ve heard many times from parent and youth peers that the new generations are entirely lacking IRL social skills, instead deferring their social lives entirely to their digital presence. As a result, basic conversational skills development is limited.

I work with many people who are still in high school or right out of high school and none of them seem to be lacking social skills.

Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#24

Post by ashark »

stryk wrote: post #13
peg_leg wrote: post #6

Seems like an old man is having trouble with change. I'm sure that similar things have been said about cars, telephones, televisions, and computers in general.

And they weren't necessarily wrong IMHO, with the exception of maybe the original landline telephone (I would give this an asterisk though, and confine it to the first ~20 years of landline telephony; ie, farmers running homebrew line using barbed wire fencing in the depression-era dust bowl to keep current on grain prices, etc.). Cars are great for transportation and have enabled humankind to travel further and more…

> Cars are great for transportation and have enabled humankind to travel further and more often then ever before, but they are also 2000+ lb. death traps and combined with alcohol they are an absolute threat to everyone's safety.

The time savings provided by cars, once you factor in time spent to pay for them, pump gas, perform (or wait on) maintenance, plus actual travel time, is dubious for anyone earning average income. I've run the numbers, and even for me earning way over, it's practically a wash versus a bicycle.

Then consider its effects also on distances between things and how many people are now dependent on cars (=less free), and it's not hard to see widespread ownership of automobiles as overall a very negative force in society.

Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#25

Post by mitchty »

beachy wrote: post #14
jabgrabdthrow wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your point more clearly? Are you saying that he’s not credible because he got rich off of it?

Perhaps that he could have done more, earlier, but choose the money instead.

Perhaps, but its easy to be outraged at people in both hindsight and outside of the situation they're in.

We should be encouraging this kind of discussion, not trying to shame or judge past actions incessantly.

Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#26

Post by gaius »

callesgg wrote: post #16

I have been saying that for a while now. Social media is great for the individual but horrible for society.

Great for the individual in the very short term but any longer than that, the society in which the individual exists is degraded enough to impact them too.

Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#27

Post by rwnspace »

Tristram Harris [1][2] is worth listening to on these points, I'm sure many on HN are already aware.

Without rambling too much, I'm one of those over-sensitive, slightly aspie types that reads SSC and gets carried away with over-analysing the zeitgeist. Uncharitably, you might say 'smart but weak-minded'. The longer I spend in front of social media, the more and more in tatters I feel. I spent a week entirely disconnected from the 'net a month ago and I can't stress how restorative it was for me. Though, alarmingly, I was back in full swing soon after I returned.

For those of you who have problems with self-control and sustaining your attention, and think it has something to do with your browsing habits, I highly recommend you - I urge you - to disconnect in a significant way. Of course it's up to you what that means.

In September I gave up smoking, and the physical and psychological changes I underwent were pretty surprising. I felt more present and in-the-moment (and other barely-describable-but-definitely-nice feelings) than I had done in years. Despite smoking 25 a day, I have found quitting Reddit much, much harder; despite being convinced it's as bad for my mental health as smoking was for my physical.

I think there's something to be said about identifying addiction patterns in your life and exorcising them. The small amounts of progress I've made recently have certainly felt as though they've increased my net level of agency and free will. I wish that flowery metaphors about demons were more readily acceptable, because software is a lot like wizardy - and it really does feel like dark sorcery has been cast to possess the West.

[1] http://www.tristanharris.com/essays/ [2] https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-is-technology-do...

Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#28

Post by stryk »

eropple wrote: post #17
stryk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they weren't necessarily wrong IMHO, with the exception of maybe the original landline telephone (I would give this an asterisk though, and confine it to the first ~20 years of landline telephony; ie, farmers running homebrew line using barbed wire fencing in the depression-era dust bowl to keep current on grain prices, etc.). Cars are great for transportation and have enabled humankind to travel further and more…

I wouldn't by any stretch call social media "all evil". It has its problems, a lot of them. But, for me personally, it's just an extension of the rest of the internet, where I encounter people and ideas that I wouldn't otherwise stumble into. I grew up in a fairly poor, extremely white setting and social media (and its precursors, IRC and the like) was, no joke, pretty much the first exposure I had to people who were…

I too grew up during the dawn of the Internet and "information age" in general. It was a wonderful time to be living, and an even better time to be a teenager -- we had such a leg up on the previous generation because we KNEW the 'net was going to be huge, and most of them thought of it as just another passing fad. I have fond memories of even pre-Internet, dialing into local BBS' on 28.8 baud modems -- which of course led to discovering "phreaking" to get free long-distance calls to dial into the non-local BBS' (hey, I was a teenager remember). Such great memories. IRC was, and still is, incredible. But I can't bring myself to lump the current day 'social media' (ie; Twitter, Facebook, etc.) into the same category as IRC. Yes technically I guess it's in the same vein, but there are no "likes"/hearts/thumbs-up-or-down on IRC -- it's just a vast open public forum for almost instantaneous text-based chat, for better or worse (better, IMO). That whole likes vs. dislikes thing which is far too central and too much of a core part of current social media platforms. It's way, way, way too easy to use as a tool for manipulation -- and if anyone thinks they are NOT doing this, they are sorely mistaken. There's a case to be made that advertising is really the central issue with Twitter/FB/etc. They have to keep people's eyes glued to the platform in order to show them more ads in order to make more money. That business model isn't going to end well for anyone except the advertisers.

Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#29

Post by misterHN »

The problem isn't dopamine, it is adrenaline.

The problem is that jews are a threat, people know it, and they want the jews put down.

People do not want jews in their society, they do not want Facebook in their society. They want the Facebook protectors put down and they want the jews put down.

I'm sick of complaining about the jews. I want them put down.

Re: Ex-FB exec: The dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works

#30

Post by gaius »

ashark wrote: post #24
stryk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they weren't necessarily wrong IMHO, with the exception of maybe the original landline telephone (I would give this an asterisk though, and confine it to the first ~20 years of landline telephony; ie, farmers running homebrew line using barbed wire fencing in the depression-era dust bowl to keep current on grain prices, etc.). Cars are great for transportation and have enabled humankind to travel further and more…

> Cars are great for transportation and have enabled humankind to travel further and more often then ever before, but they are also 2000+ lb. death traps and combined with alcohol they are an absolute threat to everyone's safety. The time savings provided by cars, once you factor in time spent to pay for them, pump gas, perform (or wait on) maintenance, plus actual travel time, is dubious for anyone earning average i…

The time savings provided by cars, once you factor in time spent to pay for them, pump gas, perform (or wait on) maintenance, plus actual travel time, is dubious

I call shenanigans on this. How much time do you spend pumping gas? I doubt I spend more than 5 minutes a week, maybe even every two weeks.

As for travel time, just other day I was thinking, my 30-minute journey would be a day's walk probably, starting and finishing in darkness. And carrying all my stuff on my back I would have been exhausted at the end, if I'd gone cross-country instead of on metalled roads, instead of arriving in no time feeling fresh as a daisy. If the weather was bad perhaps I couldn't have made the journey at all, on foot.

And as for maintenance, well, I have a Toyota, so that doesn't take much of my time either!

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