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Dopamine Fracking

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Re: Dopamine Fracking

#101

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

tsss wrote: post #93
designerarvid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guessing by your examples that you are American. Maybe you are aware, or perhaps not, that in Europe many view your culture as the one that has taken this to its extreme. Some envy it, some don’t.

Don't act as if the cities in Europe look any different. I don't know what a "subscribe n save is" but I can find a Western Union, gambling hall and vape shop on every street corner.

> Don't act as if the cities in Europe look any different

They do look different, claiming otherwise is just American cope

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#102

Post by stymaar »

raumgeist wrote: post #61

Reminds me of Adornos "Dialektik der Aufklärung" and its take on what he calls the "Kulturindustrie". Almost 100 years ago he foresaw how the cultural offerings of society get commodified and chopped into bite sized chunks for each individual to receive theirs. He did not forsee us taking it this far, nor the addictive nature of the consumption though. An additional danger is how this pulls all of us down. Staying wi…

> Almost 100 years ago he foresaw how the cultural offerings of society get commodified and chopped into bite sized chunks for each individual to receive theirs. He did not forsee us taking it this far, nor the addictive nature of the consumption though.

Ray Bradbury did anticipate all of that in Farenheit 451, including the addictive nature of it.

I read Farenheit 451 in 2010, and I was shocked to see that he had anticipated Twitter, but his predictions didn't stop there and he also anticipated that the next step would be what is now Tik Tok.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#103

Post by brikym »

raincole wrote: post #49

> The Strawberry Example Is this really the best example the author could come up with? If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them. In many places you can get a few pounds per for less than the money you earn in one hour . It's pretty much a heaven compared to pre-industrial days. But I guess the analogy of fracking is pretty spot on, just in a way the author didn't realize -- the c…

> If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them

Whut? It's a perfectly relatable example. Commercial fruit genetics are selected for shipping and shelf life. Nutrients and taste come way down the list of priorities. I've noticed the strawberries in my supermarket have a more consistent quality every year. Consistently awful. It seems like one company have taken over the market and the berries are hard and bland. But they look nice. As each layer of the chain consolidates it forces adjacent layers to consolidate and you end up with sameness. The small strawberry companies probably went bust because the big supermarkets pushed hard. Now I have to buy my strawberries from a roadside farmer and they're great.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#104

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

raumgeist wrote: post #61

Reminds me of Adornos "Dialektik der Aufklärung" and its take on what he calls the "Kulturindustrie". Almost 100 years ago he foresaw how the cultural offerings of society get commodified and chopped into bite sized chunks for each individual to receive theirs. He did not forsee us taking it this far, nor the addictive nature of the consumption though. An additional danger is how this pulls all of us down. Staying wi…

You have a whole strand of German and French cultural pessimism that foresaw the convergence of mass media to the current point to some degree.

> Staying with the articles example, by adding artificial strawberries flavour to everything those that could have enjoyed the natural experience never get the opportunity to do so, preventing them from acquiring the taste.

I would go so far to say, that even if people tasted the real thing, they would prefer the artificial product. For example, we have Sauce Hollondaise in my country, and most people were probably raised on the convenience product. The original sauce is very cumbersome to make and almost no one makes it fresh. So, I've noticed that even if people taste the 'real' sauce, they prefer the convenience product.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#105

Post by lagrange77 »

I've noticed as a kid, that strawberry flavoured candy doesn't actually taste like strawberries. They are clearly and collectively recognisable as strawberry candies, but that's just pattern matching and conditioning on wording. The flavour has not much to do with actual strawberries, even the sweetness is vastly exaggerated. The synthetic aroma is much less complex, as the author noted. We just fell into the habit (or trap) of using the same word for both flavours.

On the other hand i'm wondering if that's just an implementation detail. A temporary imperfection in simulating the real thing due to constraints in (chemical) engineering and cost, not a hard limit.

Neural Networks are universal function approximators. Throw enough resources at them and they will mimic the most complex function to an arbitrary level of detail.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#107

Post by Tade0 »

> The constant search for the next big thing, the next big hit of dopamine,

The search itself is the dopamine hit. I think the author, if anything, meant endorphins, it's just that there's so much misleading pop science about this, that everyone blames poor old dopamine for their woes.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#108

Post by rkuzsma »

The strawberry example reminds me of the Instant Mashed Potatoes non-book review [0].

> Since World War II and the large-scale industrialization it fully unleashed, a core method driving ‘progress’ across many different fields of human endeavor has been to shred something real and reconstitute it into a faster, easier, less appealing IMPish substitute for what we used to make out of it. This is the parsimonious recipe for industry to fulfill our urges. We’ve got the food processor whirring, and absolutely everything is going in.

[0] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-my-fathers-inst...

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#109

Post by nicoburns »

iceman28 wrote: post #36
hattmall wrote: post #25

This has been happening in the real world for far longer. It's basically the experience of many modern cities, or even worse suburbs. Starbucks / Chipotle / Orange Theory / Target / Generic Brewery / Lime Scooter / Waymo / Subscribe N Save So much of modern life has been comodified to optimize for things that aren't necessarily what's inline with the users interests and certainly don't do anything for cultural robust…

I don’t know if I’d club fast food restaurants into the dopamine factory category. I see it as more of a necessity as I don’t think I can go hunt or gather food during my lunch break at the office.

I used to work near a food market where there were dozens of independent good stalls that were setup to serve working people lunches. The food was still fast, but a lot healthier, and you could go to one place and have a wide choice of options.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#110

Post by almogo »

brikym wrote: post #103
raincole wrote: post #49

> The Strawberry Example Is this really the best example the author could come up with? If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them. In many places you can get a few pounds per for less than the money you earn in one hour . It's pretty much a heaven compared to pre-industrial days. But I guess the analogy of fracking is pretty spot on, just in a way the author didn't realize -- the c…

> If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them Whut? It's a perfectly relatable example. Commercial fruit genetics are selected for shipping and shelf life. Nutrients and taste come way down the list of priorities. I've noticed the strawberries in my supermarket have a more consistent quality every year. Consistently awful. It seems like one company have taken over the market and the…

If the corporate berries are really so bad, the invisible hand will push the company in the direction of society's aggregate wallet vote. Sounds like most people are fine with them. Outside of truly autocratic systems, sounds like these berries are WAI.
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