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We need to reclaim our attention

theguardian.com

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Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#371

Post by wyre »

rightbyte wrote: post #354
wyre wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be different. Playing Pokémon or Mario is much different than the endless scroll of TikTok, YouTube Kids, or a lot of the games.

Ye probably. I looked into what Nintendo does nowadays and luckely they seem to have not ditched their anachronistic cartridge design, even though there seem to be internet stores built in into "New 3DS". I guess they are opt in.

Internet store =/= algorithmically determined feeds programmed specifically to capture prolonged attention.

Traditionally, video games were addictive because the game was good. The gameplay, storyline, art, music, etc have a part in grabbing attention.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#372

Post by jmknoll »

redisman wrote: post #335
freewilly1040 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight tangent re: fitness. Over Christmas my dad and some similarly aged people (70’s) were reminiscing about their childhood, and pointed to the lack of Doritos as memorable. Junk food was neither the product of decades of addictiveness-enhancing R&D not cheap. A poor person today by contrast has junk food as the cheapest option.

Cheapest by effort plus taste divided by cost maybe. It’s still much cheaper to buy a bag of rice and a bag of beans and some frozen veggies. You can eat sub $1 meals

Thank you! This line about "unhealthy food is the most affordable option" doesn't really hold up in my experience.

Some "superfoods," exotic fruits, nice cuts of meat and fish, and certain vegetables are expensive, and that's a problem, but its a problem at the margins. The basic building blocks of a healthy diet are all widely available and affordable.

Some quick googling says the avg price for a dozen eggs in the US is $1.48. A can of tuna is $0.77. A pound of bananas is $0.57. A pound of potatoes $0.75. Dried beans/lentils/rice are even cheaper.

I understand there are complicating factors. You need a place to cook, and a big mac probably generally looks more enticing than canned fish, especially if you've spent all day on your feet at a job you hate. But these are separate problems, unrelated to the food supply chain.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#373

Post by anigbrowl »

zippystrider wrote: post #140
le-mark wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently my son (8) was talking about how cool his uncles vr headset is and made the leap to what if that was in your brain! I was impressed he made that connection. Then I reminded him how all the games on his iPad forced him to watch ads, wouldn’t that be a similar situation, only in his brain? His eyes got wide then he got a disgusted look on his face. He agreed that would suck. I personally think there have alway…

If you install and adblocking app on the iPad, your son can see fewer ads (e.g. AdGuard, AdBlock) on these games. Alternatively, you could set up Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi to block ads across the network.

This isn't something you need to explain to people here. It's like responding to someone's comment about unpleasant weather by suggesting that they could wear different clothes.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#375

Post by speby »

slibhb wrote: post #42

> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mista…

Yep, agree. And as an example, things shift (i.e. transfer attention from one "account" to another another "account") such as TV consumption: https://www.statista.com/statistics/186833/average-televisio...

tldr: It's down. But why? Did everyone wise up and decide watching as much television was not good for them so they started to do more productive things? No, of course not. Time was simply shifted to other entertainment mediums, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, and so on.

In another 10 or 20 years, it wills surely shift several more times, too. And so it goes...

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#376

Post by trwhite »

freedom2099 wrote: post #327
pietrovismara wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't for a game to be thrilling usually the ultimate goal? I'm not concerned about games being fun to play, that's what they are for. I'm more concerned about the dopamine exploiting patterns implemented in modern games, especially those targeted at younger gamers.

I think it depends on the person. I am an avid gamer (have all consoles and a high end Pc) but despise all multiplayer games! I love RPG and strategy games… the less frenetic the gameplay the better! For me it’s all about the story, the immersion in a new world and the mental challenge! I don’t understand how people can waste time shooting around at random people!

I find the online games very addictive but for a lot of the time they aren't very enjoyable and then for a brief period they are very exciting (the adrenaline I'm speaking about). The game that resonated with me most emotionally was The Last of Us: Part 2 but I couldn't play it regularly or I think it would lose its charm. I generally feel quite conflicted about gaming because of this: there are games (like TLOU) that I'm glad to have experienced, but the ones that I spend the most time playing are only enjoyable some of the time (usually when I win). I think this is what I define as my own addiction: continuing to do something that doesn't bring me pleasure.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#378

Post by anigbrowl »

hindsightbias wrote: post #141
jacquesm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One form this takes is that people with some regularity claim that 'all this advertising doesn't work on them' while having an iPhone, ridiculously over-priced in ear headphones, designer clothes with large logos on them and shoes with very visible branding. Advertising works, on everybody. The only way to get to a level playing field is to filter it out of your life as much as possible. The only thing I haven't foun…

My sneakers have branding because there isn’t a place to try jogging shoes with no branding. NB also made their logo reflective, so there is utility in that. All these people running in black shorts and shirts, there ought to be a law.

For most of the last decade I've worn sneakers shoes with no visible branding unless you're very close or can look at the sole, even though they're by major shoe companies everyone knows. My current daily walking around shoes have a logo but it's smaller than my pinkie fingernail and I have to squint to notice it. You don't have to be a billboard if you don't want to, and you can still enjoy the comfort of good design/manufacture at very reasonable cost.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#379

Post by champagnois »

kiliantics wrote: post #355
champagnois wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-work content on reddit should be analyzed by the feds a bit. It is promoting illegal sabotage of workplaces much of the time. It is also very similar to an organic movement from China that got banned and censored just before it suddenly became a top three thread on reddit every day for all of this year. I suspect movements and divisions that are studied and analyzed in (adversarial nation) are then exported,…

Have you considered that there are just a lot of people whose work lives are so horrible (because they don't have cushy tech jobs for example) that they might completely and utterly despise the work-worshipping society we live in? Many Americans, let alone people in poorer places, are forced to work like dogs, often under inhumane conditions, for compensation that barely earns them a dignified standard of living. It'…

The sentiment exists in every society because society and civilization is always hierarchical.

That is the root of a simple division that a coordinated state actor will exacerbate, amplify, meme-ify, and repeatedly upvote with bot armies.

Taking as fact that social media platforms program the brain of their users via dopamine rushes obtained through the upvotes, likes, and user engagement. Thus and therefore we can conclude that this is the easiest attack vector in the history of state versus state psychological warfare.

Adversaries use benign divisions as a tool to cause discord. This has always been the case, but social media is a tool that has been weaponized to tremendous effect and now you can see it being leveraged as a weapon by simply opening Reddit and seeing what divisive was botted to the top.

Maybe you refuse to believe this is happening and you assume this is all a paranoid fiction. That is fine. How then do you explain the legions of PHDs and psych researchers and language experts working at Chinese and Russian information warrior farms and leveraging machine learning empowered bot identity generators? Do you just assume Russia and China are pissing money away?

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#380

Post by guerrilla »

simplestats wrote: post #370
guerrilla wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inconsistent reward is more addictive than consistent reward. This has been known for a long time. That's how they make it addictive.

This doesn't require algorithmic feedback loops. People simply would seek out (and create) content which provides inconsistent rewards. A slot machine simply needs a random number generator with a certain small chance of jackpot. The null model here is what can be achieved without individualization.

That doesn't mean it can't be optimized with algorithms. Obviously that's what they think they're measuring and doing, otherwise it would be random.
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