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

381–390 of 446 posts

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#381

Post by tdb7893 »

ghurtado wrote: post #336
sheepscreek wrote: post #258

I love this term - I think it beautifully describes the direction that at least, YouTube is heading towards. Take for example, this racket where a channel copies popular (non-kids) creators’ parody work, splits the screen in half with the content on left, adds a completely random DIY type video on the right half, and lo and behold its content for kids who are too young to know any better[1]. Another one: AI voiceover…

The problem of 8yr olds watching too much YouTube is definitely not one for YouTube to fix. We're quickly getting to a point where all parenting is delegated to people and institutions that have nothing to do with raising children. And then we complain that our kids are not being raised properly. We don't even know who to blame for this any more.

At that age I could watch TV or play video games without strict parental supervision (I had older brothers and would often play with them while my mom cooked or whatever). I was lucky because while I did watch some age inappropriate media (I watched Gundam Wing on Toonami when I was 7) I was really lucky that none of these things were trying to addict me to them in the same way media often does now.

I don't think the level of autonomy I had in the mid-late 90s would be a good idea now, even though it helped me be an independent and resilient adult, and I don't think that's parents' fault. I would've really struggled with the purposefully addictive nature of modern media and trying to balance autonomy with managing the exploitative nature of modern technology makes me anxious to have kids (and I've met a lot of parents who had some issues with it).

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#382

Post by gyanchawdhary »

wholinator2 wrote: post #378
gyanchawdhary wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm confused. What exactly is it about these immigrants that make them incapable of appreciating fresh food? I agree that you can enjoy your privilege or money just fine, but do you believe that the poor are incapable or unworthy of appreciating wealth or privilege? They're surely more likely to appreciate the cost-to-calorie ratio.

[flagged]

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#383

Post by SauntSolaire »

mrguyorama wrote: post #379
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where I would note that tastes can be deformed. It is possible, for various reasons, to acquire bad tastes (here, childhood nostalgia).

>deformed Jeesus. Very silly elitism here. There's no such thing as an obvious "Perfect" taste. Everyone has different taste preferences. Some people legitimately prefer and like the thing you consider "lesser" for reasons like they literally experience it differently than you do and that experience is not as good for them. People have dramatic differences in their tastes. Some people are far more sensitive to sour f…

> There's no such thing as an obvious "Perfect" taste.

The person you're responding to never claimed there's such a thing as "Perfect taste"; they've only said there's such a thing as "bad taste" (which I would agree with)

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#384

Post by brandensilva »

skwirl wrote: post #332
sheepscreek wrote: post #258

I love this term - I think it beautifully describes the direction that at least, YouTube is heading towards. Take for example, this racket where a channel copies popular (non-kids) creators’ parody work, splits the screen in half with the content on left, adds a completely random DIY type video on the right half, and lo and behold its content for kids who are too young to know any better[1]. Another one: AI voiceover…

It is crazy to me that any parent of young children would let their kids watch YouTube videos on their own. Maybe this happened gradually enough that some parents didn't notice, but we had our first kid a couple years ago and I nope'd out of YouTube pretty quickly when I saw what was there. Even the channels known for being good - which we occasionally let the kids watch as long as we were present and choosing the vi…

We blocked YouTube recently in the household for all devices but one approved tv device that our kids are only able to watch with us.

I let my oldest daughter at 10 watch stuff there a couple times a week which she largely watches Minecraft videos. I know everything she consumes for now.

Eventually that will stop and she's on her own when she is more responsible as an older teenager but the important point here is this isn't helicopter parenting, it's survival at protecting her brain from dopamine overload making her a content addict.

I don't want to go full Amish as I think it's important to prepare our kids for the inevitable world they will be exposed too but I feel I'd fail them letting them loose.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#385

Post by SauntSolaire »

foldr wrote: post #376
cassepipe wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has struggled with understanding Adorno for a long time, I found this recent review of a book about Frankfurt School a pleasant read : https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-dialectical...

> I’ve long complained that communists refuse to specify the details of how a communist society will work, or why it would be good. Did capitalists do this in any comprehensive or satisfactory way prior to the advent of capitalism? I’m not a communist, but this seems like a fairly weak criticism.

The advent of communism was sufficiently long ago that it I'm not sure your critique applies.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#386

Post by kinjba11 »

This reminds me of the concept I learned of recently: that metrics and simplified quantitative information has been digesting the world for a long time. Simplified metrics like 'pounds of strawberries sold' take over our value systems instead of more squishy values like 'humans enjoying varied and great tasting strawberries'.

The drive for 'number goes up' eliminates nuance and we lose something real but poorly quantified and thus not valued. And this dopamine fracking has been happening for a while, is the latest version of that. Whatever gets eyeballs and we can measure getting eyeballs, wins, despite the dystopian consequences.

The book 'The Score' by C Thi Nguyen goes into this, has given me a new way to see if something I value is actually just a metric I learned and unconsciously am following. He outlines 'four horsemen of bureaucracy' that have replaced more nuanced values: the need to scale (losing nuance and geographical variability), make something mechanical and repeatable (lose nuance and adaptability), replaceable parts (losing nuance, make everything fungible, humans as replaceable), and centralized control (lose individualized voices). These were great in the first wave as they've increased our standard of living and made e.g. mass production of medicine and such possible, but now as more ways are found to extract attention these forces are eating away at our lives

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#387

Post by marciob »

I had a similar realization recently while reading books and then watching YouTube videos on the same topic. The difference was very obvious. YouTubers often distort the subject with engagement hooks and unnecessary compression, which also misses the context. Sometimes the result is in essence a very different thing.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#388

Post by SauntSolaire »

veunes wrote: post #82
PeterStuer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a significant contributer to franchize style commoditized homogenization is modern anxiety. Millenials especially seem near exclusively drawn to the 'predictable' and curated 'peer approved' nature of recognizable 'safe' brand signals.

When housing, healthcare, work, social life all feel unstable, the predictable option starts looking less like boring conformity and more like one less decision that can go wrong

What's being discussed is not at all limited to people experiencing instability

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#389

Post by hypfer »

igmn wrote: post #154
hypfer wrote: post #43

> Written by a human. That for some reason uses em dashes and writes in a voice that at times I find hard to distinguish from AI. Man, I'm tired. Are people just lying? Am I just seeing things? Some mystery third option? Is it meta commentary? Everything is poisoned. I suppose it feels incorrect regardless of actual AI use, because it's still the LinkedIn thought leader template with relevant current issue. Which is…

I went into my text editor, then used a find-replace tool to replace “--“ and “---“ with the appropriate dashes I copied from a character map website. Manually: with my good ‘ole hands mouse and keyboard. I realise that some grammar can just seem like LLM slop, that’s kind of what they have been designed to output. This is why I went out of my way to add that disclaimer at the end. I enjoy using em and en dashes for…

Nah, man. It's deterministic. If the input sets flags, then output will be "this set flags for me".

No need to make it emotional like that.

Besides, I have simply told you that these aspects set flags for me. Others might not. They might instead just discard it with zero actionable feedback.

I saw on your bsky account that AI is some sort of holy war for you. It is not for me. I just don't want to read stuff that feels inauthentic :D

The thing with such disclaimers like "written by a human" is that a) people can just lie and b) labels are redundant. Either the content speaks for itself, or it speaks in a way where a label doesn't change anything about it.

Especially on platforms full of hustling business frauds like HN, you do not want to base your judgement of something on their self-declarations. You completely ignore any provided guidance or other metadata on how you're supposed to understand stuff and instead parse it as it is. (Of course, context still matters. Always does.)

Anyway. I'm not trying to be an antagonist here.

___

One of the harsh lessons of the internet (or rather the world) is that rarely anyone cares about your intent. What people do care about is what they've perceived.

This can be very frustrating, however, it becomes somewhat less frustrating (but still frustrating) when you plan with that and act accordingly.

Then again, I'm just one person so you shouldn't just drop everything and suddenly do everything completely different just because I said so. I am mostly irrelevant.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#390

Post by 0xffff2 »

nick__m wrote: post #289
barbs wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 des…

I grew up with the fake stuff, and have lately done quite a bit of taste testing of the various grades of real stuff. Grade A golden is the only one with a distinct enough difference in flavor for me to care, and even then it's very much an acquired taste, not immediately and distinctly better. Given the stark price difference, my conclusion is that the maple syrup elitism is a silly hobby horse for people with too much money.
Post reply on HN