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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

#81

Post by anigbrowl »

folksinger wrote: post #59
rwnspace wrote: post #27

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 disconn…

What your life is missing is meaning. Meaning is action. If a word means anything at all it is because it is in reference to some kind of actual experience. Blogs, books, and media of all kind are basically meaningless. Vanity of vanities and all that jazz. You need to experience life. You need to find meaning through action. You need to become a poet by becoming the poem. Help your neighbor with his hobbies. Cook di…

Consuming media without further participation in life may be meaningless, but to assert that they're inherently meaningless is nonsense. Many people are perfectly capable to grasping ideas in the abstract and then implementing them in reality.

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

#82

Post by anigbrowl »

eyeareque wrote: post #31

He stated what I have felt for years, in words much better than I could. If you struggle to disconnect from social media because you feel like you’ll miss out on friends, remember this: If social media is the only thing connecting you to a friend, they aren’t that good of a friend anyway. Your true friends will not disappear if you delete Facebook.

If social media is the only thing connecting you to a friend, they aren’t that good of a friend anyway.

Sure, I have friends like that. I also have friendships that began on social media and endured for years, including both people I've never met in real life due to geographic separation/difficulty of travel and people that I have met and got on with equally well in person. Perhaps you haven't experienced that yet, but I've been hearing this clicheed dismissal of virtual relationships for ~25 years now and it's getting pretty old.

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

#83

Post by anigbrowl »

pwaai wrote: post #67

This is what a lot of us have figured out and stopped using facebook. I briefly checked in last year and was overwhelmed by the number of engagements, marriages, newborns, relationships. The eerie thing is everybody's life looked very similar from one another, happy, smiling instagramed filters where they momentarily pose for selfies. Then it hit me. I know what makes me disappointed about society today. It's that we…

Wait, you mean people 'keep up with the Joneses' online as well as in real life? Social media ia new venue for an old behavior. People who are shallow online are shallow in real life, it's just more 3d. Likewise, people who are thoughtful and interesting online tend to be similarly so in person.

I also have a jaundiced view of society, but it's naive to think it was great and than got completely wrecked by social media (or TV, or jazz music, or dancing, or...). Going down that path will just lead to being a bitter reactionary. Instead, examine your prior premise of what you thought society was or should be, and consider whether that was a historical actuality or a frustrated desire. A good deal depends on whether you conceive of people to 'naturally' be good or bad and whether/how they are shaped by society or vice versa, so your consideration should include some philosophical reading since this is a fundamental question philosophers struggle with.

Read some history too. If you're American, I suggest 'American Nations' by Colin Woodard, which offers a sweeping overview of the competing forces that have shaped US society and makes for an interesting contrast to the increasingly dysfunctional idealogical monomyth.

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

#84

Post by rwnspace »

Mouse47 wrote: post #44
rwnspace wrote: post #27

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 disconn…

Can you elaborate on how you felt after you took your week off? In particular I'm interested in differences in sleep requirements & quality, difficulty handling eye contact (the 'slightly aspie' stuff), and general cognition. "In tatters": can I get a description of that also? Only reason I ask is because I've had a similar experience...twice. Once when moving into an apartment (no power, close proximity to roommates…

I felt more socially confident (perhaps not confident exactly, though that was an aspect -- more strident). My sleep was at healthy times, for slightly longer, but the difference between being 'asleep' and 'awake' was, well, night and day. Rather than the slow, drawn-out waking, for which there's a gateway to very negative appraisal of the world. When I came back, I binged, heavily.

'In tatters', hmm... My self-regulation is poor but I'm desperately trying to claw upwards, so I have erected a lot of barriers between me and my lovely but drug-addicted friends, which gives me a lot of free time. I spend a lot of time purposefully and sanely researching things I want to learn, where I should learn them from, then feeling pooped out and gawping in front of YouTube or Reddit, then blaming myself for wasting time etc etc. It's hard to summarise, to be honest. Feeling 'locked-up' and 'scattered', maybe? I'm often exhausted by reading Reddit, it really feels like work. Honestly, I feel like I spend most days working intensely and not sleeping enough to manage it. Despite spending most of my time gaining weight on a desk chair, and not actually working.

I'm very gullible. I tend to remember a lot of what I read, and I'm naturally full of doubt, and over-analytical. So reading a thousand conflicting opinions on subjects makes me... A little loopy and conflicted. Like I'm always in last place, trying to catch up with the 'right' opinion on everything. There was a Reddit thread for the OP's link just today, where someone mentioned arguing with their girlfriend like an anonymous Redditor - I also definitely empathise with that one.

I have problems with eye contact, for sure, I tend to 'fall into' it if I look too long, as it seems to me to be a remarkably intense thing to hold eye contact for longer than an instant.

I was diagnosed with ADHD-PI in September, and haven't gotten on medication for it just yet (I've been disorganised...). I think reddit-like media is particularly bad for people like us. They say ADHD is more of a working memory disorder than anything, and I think we need our cache clearing regularly, let's say. A Reddit addiction tops it up at every opportunity.

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

#85

Post by rwnspace »

anigbrowl wrote: post #81
folksinger wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What your life is missing is meaning. Meaning is action. If a word means anything at all it is because it is in reference to some kind of actual experience. Blogs, books, and media of all kind are basically meaningless. Vanity of vanities and all that jazz. You need to experience life. You need to find meaning through action. You need to become a poet by becoming the poem. Help your neighbor with his hobbies. Cook di…

Consuming media without further participation in life may be meaningless, but to assert that they're inherently meaningless is nonsense. Many people are perfectly capable to grasping ideas in the abstract and then implementing them in reality.

You could argue that symbols are all 'inherently meaningless' without breathing some life in them from your own needs and experiences. 'Fingerspitzengefuhl' [1] is one of my favourite words in German and I think gaining that kind of understanding is impossible if one spends all their time in letters and doing nothing of the stuff that necessitates writing them. I took the author to mean that endlessly reading without doing any living is somewhat of a dead existence. As the person they're replying to, that's what I got from it anyways.

I tend to intellectualise this way of looking at depression (and how to get out of it - how to just get out the damn house!) as related to the Symbol Grounding Problem [2], in a semi-serious, semi-metaphorical way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengef%C3%BChl [2] http://www.socphilinfo.org/node/100

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

#86

Post by rwnspace »

folksinger wrote: post #59
rwnspace wrote: post #27

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 disconn…

What your life is missing is meaning. Meaning is action. If a word means anything at all it is because it is in reference to some kind of actual experience. Blogs, books, and media of all kind are basically meaningless. Vanity of vanities and all that jazz. You need to experience life. You need to find meaning through action. You need to become a poet by becoming the poem. Help your neighbor with his hobbies. Cook di…

Thank you.

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

#87

Post by dgudkov »

md224 wrote: post #49

Just want to make a couple points: - I think everyone understands this, but it bears repeating: dopamine isn't the problem here, as it will be involved in any rewarding behavior. The real claim being made is that we have created technologies that give us too much and/or the wrong kind of pleasure. - We should consider that "junk food" pleasure (the internet, TV, drugs, actual junk food, etc.) can be useful as a copin…

Every new massively successful technology requires a new kind of social education. When cars became popular people had to be educated to respect pedestrian signals and not jaywalk. With the mass adoption of credit cards and ATMs people had to be educated to keep their PINs secret and not write them right on credit cards.

Social networks require new social education that should start with realizing their potentials downsides which I believe is still the most difficult part.

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

#88

Post by folksinger »

rwnspace wrote: post #85
anigbrowl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consuming media without further participation in life may be meaningless, but to assert that they're inherently meaningless is nonsense. Many people are perfectly capable to grasping ideas in the abstract and then implementing them in reality.

You could argue that symbols are all 'inherently meaningless' without breathing some life in them from your own needs and experiences. 'Fingerspitzengefuhl' [1] is one of my favourite words in German and I think gaining that kind of understanding is impossible if one spends all their time in letters and doing nothing of the stuff that necessitates writing them. I took the author to mean that endlessly reading without…

Thank you for such a charitable interpretation. This is basically what I was trying to get across.

Depression is a son of a bitch that I have also known at times and it really is as hard and as easy as just doing anything at all.

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

#89

Post by jwatte »

Danihan wrote: post #63
rwnspace wrote: post #27

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 disconn…

My issue with replacing something like reddit is... what exactly to replace it with? Reddit is entertaining and free. Every time I quit, I end up still seeking out entertainment, but it's no longer free. Movies, gambling, restaurants, bars. TV is free but even less entertaining, imo. Books feel like mental masturbation and very few change my worldviews at this point. My overall conclusion has been that reddit is not…

The whole problem of the main thread is that people seek entertainment (dopamine.) This is mindless and not constructive. If the alternative was watching TV, yeah, Reddit isn't that bad. But if the alternative is exercise, or serving homeless, or inventing a new way of cleaning air, or having deep conversations with your family, or creating art, then that Reddit habit deprived your life of meaning and impact.

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

#90

Post by gaius »

ashark wrote: post #76
gaius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Cost of gas. Cost of maintenance. Cost of insurance. Cost of replacement car from time to time. Cost of parking, both at home (garage is part of the cost of your house, if you own/mortgage) and at work. Direct time lost to gas pumping, maintenance, replacing a tire, detours taken to reach gas or maintenance places, whatever. Time of actual commute. Find typical values for normal working people for these, find typical…

[EDIT] to save you some time, the average spent on car-related stuff in the US per year is about $9,000. Average hourly wage, 26.55 or so. Call it 50 working weeks a year, 5 days a week. Looking at about 1.35 hrs per day paying for car crap

That "car crap" is also the ability to head into the mountains or to the coast or the lake at the weekend... while cyclists, so smug during the week, are left begging for a lift. Like children being taken to after-school activities.

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