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

Dopamine Fracking

igerman.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 446 posts

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#281

Post by igmn »

Aurornis wrote: post #232
kriro wrote: post #209

There's a certain irony in coining the term on discord. Nice blog post but I'm used to reading these from people who hang out on IRC. Times are changing indeed. My private version of anti-dopamine fracking is playing the phone game. Every social event I attend, I try to be the last person to look at their phone (well basically not look at it at all). It is fairly sad how easily this game is won in under 30 minutes in…

> There's a certain irony in coining the term on discord And the section in the middle where they start praising a YouTube video series that validated his anger and encourages us to go watch it. You can sense the author’s struggles with self-regulation at the center of this article, but they have a blind spot for the content and apps that they really like. I think people in this situation would do better to start loo…

I agree. I’m the author, and I think freeing up my time is the core of making myself feel better. And I think it could help others.

Because I don’t scroll nearly as much anymore, I have less things to immediately and effortlessly distract myself with. This inadvertently forces me into creativity, mindfulness or rekindling hobbies, which are healthier and more fulfilling activities than TikTok. It also promotes experimentation and trying new things. For example: I don’t write often, but having more time and boredom allows me to actually try instead of wishing I had. And now we’re having this conversation as a result.

YouTube and Discord are as much of a distraction as anything else, but their nature (or I guess how I use them) makes them feel more finite, and I can often “run out” of content to consume in a short amount of time. Previously, I couldn’t run out, and it was ruining my life and personality.

I can finally feel my life’s sort of global content feed becoming finite and manageable.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#282

Post by frakt0x90 »

Aurornis wrote: post #276
PowerElectronix wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but as you really can't get money out of it in a reliable way by exploiting the user addictive behaviors, it doesn't have that effect on society. It's just a cool place to visit now an then an check cool stuff out.

Kind of interesting how many people don’t realize that the purpose of Hacker News was to be an advertisement for Y Combinator and their portfolio companies. You don’t see it as much these days, but YC portfolio companies can post privileged threads on this site for job listings, which in practice double as ads for the company. You’re not allowed to comment on them. I haven’t seen one for a while because I suspect eve…

I think most people know this and are fine with it. YC owns the site and advertises their stuff on it sometimes. The site itself is not trying to milk you for every penny or trying to exploit you.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#283

Post by gyanchawdhary »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #240
subscribed wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worse than that. It promotes race to the bottom. I love strawberries, blueberries (bilberry variety) and tomatoes, but apart of the few times in the year when I can collect my own or visit a PYO farm I'm not eating them at all. Every shop (small and huge alike) only sells the fake, hyper-accelerated garbage (sorry Spain and Morocco, but that stuff is just gross), or - in season - locally grown similarly…

Living in London, I notice the same. Getting access to true quality produce is not even a question of money now, it's basically just impossible to get full stop. There are a few local shops in the more upmarket areas that survive on the fact that people are willing to pay the 2-3x premium over the prices at Waitrose. Gone are the days when you could ask the grocer or farmer to give you a peach to taste. People got us…

You should try Natoora in Notting Hill or Daylesford. I live in Belgravia and am admittedly spoiled for choice .. the Harrods Food Hall has excellent seasonal and harder to find fruits, and Daylesford consistently has some of the best British produce I've come across... the one in Sloane street even has the best organic Alphanso Mangos from India.

As for Brexit, I actually think it's been a net positive.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#284

Post by alexk307 »

While I'm empathetic to the overall theme of the post, the strawberries are a terrible example and takes away from the message. Strawberries are delicate little fruits that until a handful of decades ago, were seasonal expensive treats. It's not necessarily a bad thing that we've made a synthetic analog that allows less fortunate people to experience the taste of a perfect strawberry. Real strawberries aren't disappearing because of this, if anything this would have the opposite effect because strawberry consumption in the US have ~quadrupled in the past few decades [1]. No one replaced "500 individual human experiences", strawberries are not "extinct", there's no data to suggest that people "prefer the synthetic version".

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/77884

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#286

Post by heddycrow »

The real answer to "which came first, the chicken or the egg" - a long line of chicken-like creatures hatched from an egg before the first ever chicken hatched from an egg.

Why lead with this? There is a very long line of dopamine-fracking-like behaviors that hatched before now.

How difficult is it to say that we can't use science to create strawberry flavors but we can use science to basically create what strawberry means in the first place? Oh, you think that the strawberries we have now in all their varieties just arrived with us on the planet in their current form?

Who is to say what the point is where too much tampering is enough? HINT: it's not the ones consuming, they like the new stuff regardless of whether it's real or not.

It's tempting to point the finger at The Capitalist or Capitalism, but this misses the mark no matter how close it is. You are the Consumer. You empower enshit.

Don't believe me? Go build something and see. People don't take the time to look at what you have built and who you are to determine if your product is a worthy investment. You have to sell them. You have to court a demographic and place your product. You will spend a lot of time doing this unless you are already somehow connected into a network that turns everything you touch into gold.

After this process, see if you are not sympathetic to strawberry flavoring. And this is all your fault, right? It has nothing to do with The Consumer, we can't blame those people. We can't blame "You" because you aren't rich and powerful. Even though it's "You" and many people like you that are the whole engine of this thing.

TLDR; "dopamine fracking" is a great term. It lets us explain what those "others" are doing to "us" while we sit by passively and accept our fate.

Shame on them. When they hear this term they will be ashamed and fix their ways or we will make them through our friend The Government.

But where's the clever and magical term that makes "us" behave differently?

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#287

Post by regexorcist »

Aurornis wrote: post #276
PowerElectronix wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but as you really can't get money out of it in a reliable way by exploiting the user addictive behaviors, it doesn't have that effect on society. It's just a cool place to visit now an then an check cool stuff out.

Kind of interesting how many people don’t realize that the purpose of Hacker News was to be an advertisement for Y Combinator and their portfolio companies. You don’t see it as much these days, but YC portfolio companies can post privileged threads on this site for job listings, which in practice double as ads for the company. You’re not allowed to comment on them. I haven’t seen one for a while because I suspect eve…

> people don’t realize

Y Combinator is right there in the URL. People know and don't care because it's a well run forum with interesting discussions, the privileged posts don't change that.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#288

Post by maxerickson »

BonerWiener wrote: post #135
Xmd5a wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The original sauce is very cumbersome to make and almost no one makes it fresh. No it's not.

Nothing kills a discussion like when someone just saying "I disagree" with zero explanation. They're not really contributing just cluttering up the comments. At least give a reason why.

The other post is also just an assertion.

Can you link to evidence that countering assertions with assertions kills discussions? (This is sarcasm)

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#289

Post by nick__m »

barbs wrote: post #198
fireflash38 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maple syrup is a big one. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to even fancy breakfast restaurants and had real maple syrup. Cracker barrel used to, decades ago now. It's all garbage corn syrup now. I'd rather not have syrup at all than that cloying, thick, gross stuff.

Heh, I thought of maple syrup as well. And I'm ashamed to say I prefer the fake stuff! Although it's likely because it's what I had as a child, so there's a strong nostalgia factor.

What's the grade of the maple syrup you tried ? (the new grading system is stupid everything is grade A with a color name)

In my opinion,

The A golden is light and subtle, I don't know what it's for; it's the variety we sell in tourists, and to peoples that likes fancy bottles and higher prices!

The A amber is great as a condiment in small quantities, for pancakes it's the best.

The A dark is the best for cooking deserts.

And the A very dark is my favorite for cooking meats like ham and ribs.

So if you only tasted the A golden I can see why you would prefer the fake syrup if you were raised on that stuff. But I would be surprised if you prefer the fake stuff to the A dark.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#290

Post by eszed »

rapnie wrote: post #183
Gigachad wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s having a camera that killed it, it’s that most people stopped printing their photos. Most people have thousands of poorly sorted and duplicate photos on their phone which aren’t very enjoyable to scroll through. I went and sorted through all my photos and printed out the best ones to pin up on a board. I love looking at them and everyone who comes over finds it interesting to look through the photo…

Yes, you explained better. It is having the camera always with you and the abundance of photos that are the result, which for most people including me are too much and too boring to sort out. I find myself in the opposite situation now, when at a happening or event I take no photos at all, because I came to hate taking them. Feel it is not worth spoiling the moment. But that means not recording the valuable moments f…

I took essentially no photos in my twenties (long before phone cameras) for exactly this reason - and, in the short term, absolutely did remember events better than the folks who were constantly looking for their next digicam shot. I'm now living the long-term of that, though, and regret that I have nothing "tangible" to show my wife and kid, or even to re-spark my own memory, about all the amazing things I did back then.

I'm a bit more intentional now: I don't pull out my (phone) camera all that often, but I try to look for something that will represent - not record (that's impossible), but spark a memory of - the moment later. By the way, people are more important for this than things, or "the thing" itself. I actually think the selfie brigade are on the right track, for all that they may become annoying by overdoing it.

Post reply on HN