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Engineered Addictions

masonyarbrough.substack.com

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Re: Engineered Addictions

#201

Post by Jensson »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #172
aianus wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of humans' needs is for status which is by definition zero sum. Same with mating. If anything those two are probably the most important needs so it's not possible to build such a system.

If one of human needs is status and status is zero-sum, then why does it matter what economic system is in place at all? We could equally rely on feats of strength, or games of chess, or rolling dice for all I care. Besides why can't one of human needs also be an economic system that doesn't have the failure mode of poverty?

> We could equally rely on feats of strength, or games of chess, or rolling dice for all I care.

Those aren't very productive, our current system makes people produce value for others in their chase for status. Older systems people destroyed value for others in that chase, creating wars or other miseries, we have much less of that today.

I'd much rather have another billionaire than another authoritarian warmongering dictator.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#202

Post by Jensson »

asdf6969 wrote: post #177
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can. You can vote to get rid of corporations, and you'll get outvoted. Ergo: we. You don't understand how kings work if you think it's equivalent to your situation in a western democracy.

[flagged]

Voting obviously works, you can vote away capitalism, some countries did that.

The only reason it "doesn't work" is that the countries that did vote away capitalism didn't fare very well, so other countries people are very reluctant to try that again. But they absolutely could if they wanted.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#203

Post by satvikpendem »

smikhanov wrote: post #131
Jensson wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VC-funded means you have money for marketing.

But for a paid social network you can do marketing too. All you need is for CLV to be higher than CAC.

Where will you get the initial money to do said marketing, if you have no (paying) users yet?

Re: Engineered Addictions

#204

Post by cardanome »

klik99 wrote: post #20

> Then it raised venture capital, hit scale, and needed to hit growth numbers and meet quarterly metric goals. The focus shifted from “authenticity” to “daily active users.” Having spent a few years in the VC world I have been increasingly convinced outside investment is the biggest reason why companies lose their morals. The legal obligation to represent shareholders erodes morality. When the people running these co…

> Stanford Prison Experiment

Just a heads up, the experiment was complete fraud and could never be replicated.[1]

I agree with you that outside investment can work as a strong accelerator for these things. It enables founders to externalize responsibility.

However, it is not the main reason. Exploitative companies have existed long before venture capital was invented. In the end every company exists to make money and so is inherently immoral. That is why the state is needed to regulate the market so companies don't hurt society too much.

Those founders didn't get corrupted by evil venture capital, they didn't have that strong of a morality to begin with.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper...

Re: Engineered Addictions

#205

Post by Avicebron »

fragmede wrote: post #199
Avicebron wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's not a neat little pet theory though, it's an opening up of the conversation, thinking in binary.. It's a "poor vs rich" disease isn't helpful. Thinking in gradients is... "It's 50% more likely in people with this income level vs 10% in this other population", that's still a problem. The point is to address problems, not hand wave them away as "complicated" etc etc, something something engineering

the article is about digital addictions, and not gambling or drugs. The point of saying it's complicated isn't to dismiss the problem, but to invite a deeper understanding of the problem itself so as to be better equiped to help solve the underlying issue, rather than show up, guns blazing, and then not actually fix anything.

Well maybe we can agree that addiction is a form of escapism, and the question then becomes why do people want to escape their current situations?

Re: Engineered Addictions

#206

Post by shortrounddev2 »

baxtr wrote: post #170
klik99 wrote: post #20

> Then it raised venture capital, hit scale, and needed to hit growth numbers and meet quarterly metric goals. The focus shifted from “authenticity” to “daily active users.” Having spent a few years in the VC world I have been increasingly convinced outside investment is the biggest reason why companies lose their morals. The legal obligation to represent shareholders erodes morality. When the people running these co…

Yes, and there is a huge problem connected to that: If you don’t play this game you’ll lose. Look at Europe for example, they haven’t played the VC game properly and thus have no really significant tech player compared to the US / China. So what options are left? Play the game or be ruled by those that play it. I’d rather play even if moral erosion is required.

I think Europe is moving g toward digital independence even more. They've still got Instagram and WhatsApp and everything, but I can see them moving more aggressively toward Facebooks core business model (ie, programmatic adverising) and essentially creating a European internet bubble. Would be nice for Europeans to be able to have their own social media sites which operate less aggressively on your attention span - like Facebook circa 2009 or even MySpace. Chronological feeds, less invasive advertising practices.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#207

Post by heyjamesknight »

Avicebron wrote: post #189
api wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t all this company is the product stuff an obvious side effect of wealth inequality? There is way way more money up top looking for investments than there is in the hands of customers, so it’s far more profitable to chase that money and make the stock the product than it is to care about the actual product much. It’s a special case of the more general big dumb money problem that happens whenever too much money en…

I would be willing to bet addiction in general (gambling, drug, dopamine, etc) is probably a symptom/side effect of wealth inequality. Desperation -> "relatively cheap method of short term emotional/sensory boost" -> Further Desperation not mitigated by outside forces -> repeat

You must not know many rich people if you think addiction is not an issue for the wealthy. The drugs of choice are less immediately destructive, but cocaine, pills, MDMA and ketamine are all wildly abused by the 1%.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#209

Post by heyjamesknight »

moefh wrote: post #140
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read a history book about why corporations were invented and allowed to exist.

There's an old saying: The purpose of a system is what it does[1]. You can't (well, shouldn't) judge something by its intended purpose if what it ends up doing goes against it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Capitalism has pulled more people out of poverty worldwide by an order of magnitude than any other competing system or ideology.

What capitalism does is apparent in its worldwide success.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#210

Post by amarait »

quaintdev wrote: post #29

> We need a fundamental re-evaluation of what our phones should be for, whether these platforms can ever return to their original purpose of actually bringing us together instead of keeping us scrolling Unpopular opinion but I think we need to stop building social networks if we want to bring people together. Let people meet each other in real life. Let the relationships flourish organically. No amount of tech will e…

This is an idealized version of real life. If youre autistic you know the pains of having to feign every time in order to not stand out because of your inexpressions or how you dont find what others say very interesting. On top of that, most things youre interested on are in some small forum on the internet where its the only small space where you find your peace. I agree with some things especially about how we spend so much time on unreal things but lets not idealize real life where if you dont talk about something, youre boring. And that something is most of the time about critisizing others all the time. We truly prefer being angry or very sad rather than alone. Thats basically why the algorithm works. It exploits our solitude. But its being built exponentially, its just the natural step on books, radio, tv , each medium more summarised, quick and polarising and monolithic than the previous one.
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