‘Limbic Capitalism’ Preys on Our Addicted Brains

Just like we have always done, if something constantly disturbs day to day activities, then it is an addictive behaviour

>That is, the addictive behavior “spills over” into several dimensions of one’s daily life

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3210595/

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>What I do think is a problem is the fact that we have much better data collection on how people use video games and internet services

I think this doesnt get to the core of the issue, and that's that, humans have always sought better and more efficient ways to get enjoyment out of things, people would infuse their rectums with alcohol way back in Egyptian times to get a stronger alcohol "high".

The difference between lets say, 1980's arcades and modern mobile games is simply the tools available, the aim is the same. Only now we can do it faster with A/B testing, with the knowledge of Skinner boxes, etc

Having worked in GameDev, one of the most flooring things I have faced is people asking me for me to introduce said addictive inducing systems and mechanisms.... They want the enjoyment, they want to be "addicted", they want a game "so good" that they can't put it down.

And when it comes to what you mention of the metrics, yeah, 100%, modern digital era metrics are all based in the so called "Attention Economy", specially for social platforms, in the case of Netflix or Fortnite, their biggest competitors are people actually working, or asinine things like taking a walk, cooking, spending time with family, etc. We are in a race to the bottom for people's attentions and lives, HackerNews itself is yet another Skinnerbox for those that enjoy learning things. Reddit, Twitter, Youtube they all are designed to be addictive, Limbic Capitalism, and to not do so would mean that said platforms would lose in the free market against others that did employ said tactics...

We are optimizing for human pleasure, yet what happens when said pleasure is actually a potential enemy?

This is what I'm talking about though. Back when games were bought on a disk or cartridge and didn't feature any sort of micro-transactions there was no point in making a game addictive. It didn't matter if players played the game for 2 hours or 200 hours. All that mattered is that the game was good so that people enjoyed it, became popular, and sold well. In some sense, getting players addicted to any one game might actually be undesirable as it would reduce willingness to pay for subsequent games.

Nowadays, so many games are trying to be "lifestyle games" that are meant to be continuously consumed instead of played through once or twice.

To cut a long story short, if people have information about the market, they can use their knowledge of their own desires to act, which creates some sort of efficiency. Glossing over a load of stuff here because it's a large subject, but that's sort of the spiel you get when people are talking about all sorts of political/economic decisions. And you can generate both leftie and rightie policies depending on how you think about things.

The problem is if deciding things depends on free will and information, what do we do when it seems there are exceptions? I'll leave aside information problems since we're more talking about rationality.

But if it turns out people can know what WoW does to your studies, and they still end up doing this, how should we think about this? Easy answer is that their real desire is to play WoW all day, but that doesn't seem very satisfying. If they're making an irrational decision, that has other consequences on our society.

For instance, a whole load of behaviours need to be controlled. Obvious things like smoking and drugs, but what about overeating? Too much soda? Social media? And what exactly is the correct policy response to irrational behaviour? Keep in mind solutions like taxes/subsidies also rely on rationality.

The meaning is less fun.