Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes • Hacker News Board

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#151

Post by AlecSchueler » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

timschmidt wrote: post #147

AlecSchueler wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering. I'm not debating that. I have no moral issue with shooting a clay duck, I just see using explosives to shoot anything as an act of viol…

All tools have potential use for violence. Hammers are as good at smashing heads as building houses. Even nuclear weapons have been used for constructive purposes. No tool is inherently good or evil, safe or violent. Those are properties of verbs. Everything is in the application and choices of the user. Blaming a tool does seem like a convenient way to avoid personal responsibility.

Again I'm not making a moral argument here. I'm not talking about good and evil. I'm talking about violence and non-violence. A gun being used for "a good purpose" doesn't make it less violent.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#152

Post by AlecSchueler » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 10:03 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #146

AlecSchueler wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering. I'm not debating that. I have no moral issue with shooting a clay duck, I just see using explosives to shoot anything as an act of viol…

You seem to be making some sort of qualitative argument about weapons (bullets, arrows... fishing rods?) vs non-weapons (baseballs), but I'm not seeing what makes archery categorically different from, say, playing darts, or shot-put (in all cases, a sport involving rapidly accelerating a projectile towards a goal of some kind)

No, not about weapons, about effects. Fishing is violent because it harms fish, not because a fishing rod is categorised as a weapon. I don't think archery is categorically different than darts. Shot-put is somewhat different in that nothing need be damaged in performing it but you're right that the launching of the projectile could be seen as violent. The former two meet both definitions of violence whereas the latter meets only one. The thing with a gun is that any use of them involves violence of multiple kinds.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#153

Post by timschmidt » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 1:04 AM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #151

timschmidt wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All tools have potential use for violence. Hammers are as good at smashing heads as building houses. Even nuclear weapons have been used for constructive purposes. No tool is inherently good or evil, safe or violent. Those are properties of verbs. Everything is in the application and choices of the user. Blaming a tool does seem like a convenient way to avoid personal responsibility.

Again I'm not making a moral argument here. I'm not talking about good and evil. I'm talking about violence and non-violence. A gun being used for "a good purpose" doesn't make it less violent.

So to you a flare gun is violent? It's a gun. Takes 12ga cartridges / shells. It can certainly be used to kill someone, but is designed and intended for saving lives. Is a knife violent? How about a letter opener? What about rope? Does it become violent only when certain knots are tied in it? How does this violent / non-violent object dichotomy work for you?

Violence, to me, is a verb someone can do to someone else, very specifically, with just about any object since the discovery of the rock and pointy stick.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#154

Post by Throaway152 » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 2:10 AM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #12

quacked wrote: post #5

Bo Burnham put it succinctly, although he was talking about children on apps: "When they go to sleep at night, they have to choose between all of the information ever published in the history of the world, or the back of their eyelids." The smartphone is a perverted implementation of the goal that people use to fantasize about back in the early days of the computer revolution: a personal terminal to the world of audi…

It isn't even a perverted implementation, we just overestimated ourselves. All our sci-fi futurism of the 70s/80s showed enlightened humans elevating themselves with technology. In real Star Trek the holo deck would be used for porn, the computer would be used to play shitty podcasts while they procrastinated work and the replicator would be churning out donuts and fried foods. It's philosophically a weird time, beca…

Hogwash. Give people smart phones that haven't been fine-tuned to be addictive and see what happens then.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#155

Post by Throaway152 » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 2:11 AM UTC

jonfw wrote: post #115

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the freedom to be able to choose to engorge yourself on twinkies is maybe a good thing, the fact that some folks are willing and able to indulge that impulse is probably less good

> the freedom to be able to choose to engorge yourself on twinkies is maybe a good thing In isolation, freedom is wonderful. In practice, maybe not? If a member of the star trek crew abused twinkies to the extent that they were lethargic or unhealthy, it would negatively impact the mission. There is some compromise between freedoms and social resposibility

Yes, and what if we saw what happened on Ferengi ships, with Ferengi replicators? Perhaps those are controlled by profit-seeking corporations, and have no such limits in the name of "personal freedom?" ;)

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#156

Post by freejazz » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 2:25 AM UTC

abc123abc123 wrote: post #109

bognition wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you’re being coy or pushing the trope but you’re right guns don’t actually kill people. The bullets and blood loss tend to do that. That said, denying people access to guns does result in fewer gun related fatalities.

But note that this is deeply unethical and amounts to denying people the right to self-defense, and by extension, denying people the right to freedom. The only thing that happens when guns are denied is the rise of corrupt and totalitarian politicians, and that the common man is either oppressed by them or by criminal gangs. Enter guns, and the common man can defend himself against both, which is a blessing. Thankful…

> the rise of corrupt and totalitarian politicians

Doesn't seem to track in the US

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#157

Post by superkuh » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

idle_zealot wrote: post #56

superkuh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not like 'unlimited crack' because that is a chemically addictive substance that bypasses any need for stimuli enjoyment and directly increases wanting. Multi-media screens do not and cannot do this. Can we agree on that? Science does. At the very least they have to initially be intrinsically rewarding. They are a very different kind of stimuli and pretending they are chemical drugs that immediately bypass perc…

Ok, it's not crack. Not chemical, just social. It's like a hyper-optimized version of gambling. Slot machines in everyone's pockets. Or am I not allowed to make that comparison either, because the government regulates that too? Wouldn't want to accidentally call for government violence.

You can compare it to gambling disorder, certainly. Just stop comparing it to chemical drugs. That's dangerous misinformation.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#158

Post by mmooss » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 6:43 AM UTC

abc123abc123 wrote: post #109

bognition wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you’re being coy or pushing the trope but you’re right guns don’t actually kill people. The bullets and blood loss tend to do that. That said, denying people access to guns does result in fewer gun related fatalities.

But note that this is deeply unethical and amounts to denying people the right to self-defense, and by extension, denying people the right to freedom. The only thing that happens when guns are denied is the rise of corrupt and totalitarian politicians, and that the common man is either oppressed by them or by criminal gangs. Enter guns, and the common man can defend himself against both, which is a blessing. Thankful…

Could you provide some examples of these things actually happening? Many of the most stable, most free, least corrupt countries have strict gun laws.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#159

Post by mmooss » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 6:44 AM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #99

Rebuff5007 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this response to poke a hole in the parent comment, but it is worth noting that smartphones and guns are different in a pretty massive way: Smartphones can be useful and valuable in many ways separate from the ways they can be used harmfully. Guns exist only for physical violence (or to threaten physical violence).

This is a fairly recent transition in gun use - it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people (both through hunting, and through keeping predators away from livestock/crops)

> it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people

To where and when are you referring? In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#160

Post by swiftcoder » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 7:19 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #159

swiftcoder wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fairly recent transition in gun use - it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people (both through hunting, and through keeping predators away from livestock/crops)

> it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people To where and when are you referring? In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians.

> In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians

My understanding is that the mobilisation for the Civil War is the only time in US history that military stockpiles of firearms have outnumbered civilian gun ownership (although possibly also at the height of WWII).

Though large standing militaries (versus recruiting large numbers of civilians into militias) is a fairly recent phenomenon, so the calculation is often not as cut and dried as one might expect.