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Engineered Addictions

masonyarbrough.substack.com

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Re: Engineered Addictions

#241

Post by benreesman »

klik99 wrote: post #118
apples_oranges wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why „historically“?

For the last 5-10 years I've noticed a lot of people here are more willing to question VC as the sole or even ideal way to start a company, and since a major chunk of YC is to train how to raise money and connect people via demo day or mentors to VC, I think that marks how the HN community has departed from the YC community. Obviously there's a lot of overlap, and HN clearly has it's roots in YC by it's literal found…

YC parted ways with the broader HN community at some ill-defined moment coming up on a decade ago. YC started as an inspiring rejection of credentialism and cronyism and slick people jumping the queue in front of tech-focused problem solvers from diverse backgrounds. The values of HN around curiosity, technical meritococracy, tangible solutions to real pain points in the lives of real people underserved by big money tech establishment dynamics were completely aligned with early YC, they went hand-in-glove.

But it got captured by slick dealmakers who managed to cop the hoodie aesthetic and youthful ambition vibe but were the same born-to-privilege punks that have always ruined everything good in computing eventually. Now its messaging is vibe code and gladhand and suck up to whichever political party won last. Its a more insular, more inbred, less substantial network of the "right" kinds of people than the Ivy League was when it stepped on the scene.

And there's nothing inevitable about it, no "big money always goes to shit" story here: its 4 or 5 key people who abruptly had a serious seat at the table and chose very fucking selfishly.

HN is still here geeking out and being a gem on the internet.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#242

Post by trollbridge »

lrvick wrote: post #237

> We’ll keep wondering why we can’t just put our phones down, not realizing that billion-dollar companies have spent a decade making sure we can’t. I deleted an app every month until my phone was so boring I threw it in a drawer and canceled my cell phone subscription. It confuses and annoys everyone around me, but my attention span, happiness, and productivity have skyrocketed so I really do not care what the addict…

No cell phone at all, or do you carry a feature phone?

Re: Engineered Addictions

#243

Post by Nifty3929 »

sailfast wrote: post #236
Nifty3929 wrote: post #234

I think the problem is more fundamental than this: When your monetization model is tied to usage, then of course you will try to maximize usage, rather than user benefit. It can't be any other way if your reward function is tied to product usage. Contrast with a car: Their monetization model does not depend on how much I drive it - as long as I find it useful enough to buy. Or a gym, where it actually runs in reverse…

And yet probably less alone than when using polluted and terrible social media. I would pay, FWIW. I am actively looking for a decent community of humans online that isn’t run by selling data to AI farms or trying to get my eyeballs all the time. Unfortunately social media ate many of the places I previously used to call home.

[flagged]

Re: Engineered Addictions

#244

Post by osigurdson »

One positive that I have seen lately among older teens, is they are starting to realize how much of a waste of time staring into a screen all day is. At some point, you realize that life is short and watching short clips for hours on end is robbing you of that.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#245

Post by AlexandrB »

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...

> The purpose of a system is what it does

This is a dumb saying. And if you start to apply it to everything capitalism still seems pretty ok. For example: "The purpose of Communism is killing 20+ million people"[1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Sovi...

Re: Engineered Addictions

#246

Post by bohemian1 »

DaveZale wrote: post #196

Are we overthinking this? Old school specialty sites are still around, with topics, categories, and discussions around the whole site emphasis. As someone who likes to grow a little food in a semi-rural area, I enjoy permies.com - every day, a volunteer posts a new question or reposts a relevant topic, depending on the season or recent interest or whatever. But they're not trying to make a billion dollars. Or even a…

totally

"i want to help people connect!!! but i gave up when i noticed i wasnt gonna get easy money"

then you dont wanna help people..

Re: Engineered Addictions

#247

Post by sotix »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #198
DaveZale wrote: post #196

Are we overthinking this? Old school specialty sites are still around, with topics, categories, and discussions around the whole site emphasis. As someone who likes to grow a little food in a semi-rural area, I enjoy permies.com - every day, a volunteer posts a new question or reposts a relevant topic, depending on the season or recent interest or whatever. But they're not trying to make a billion dollars. Or even a…

I use tildes.net quite a bit. It’s not for everyone but it’s great to have for those that like it.

Ooh that looks like a great site! Would you consider sending me an invite? My email is in my profile.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#248

Post by esperent »

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.

Only if people pay. Which they won't when there's nobody else on there. How do you get your first 100k users?

You might say, well, start with 1000 users. But 1000, or 10,000 isn't enough to make a social network interesting. Maybe you could get around this by making it about a specific niche to start with. But that probably won't work, and if it does, you'll end up stuck in that niche.

On the other hand, I don't think this idea is as impossible as people say it is. It's just highly unlikely to be successful, and far more complicated than simply paying someone on Upwork to make it for you.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#249

Post by Atlas667 »

Right on.

The problem is capital. Of course many people are allergic to Marx, but the dude hit the nail on the head with his critique.

The problem is not individuals, it's a system of ownership over assets. And 99% of people will use their ownership to generate profits through hiring labor. Why? Because it's easier to have other people work for you, instead of you doing the work.

This becomes extended in the digital age beyond the original form of employees generating profit from the difference between their pay and the monetary value of their work (the original Marxist definition of profit), but also to end-users generating raw material as information for the further generation of profits through the selling of information services or plain data.

Tech has workers AND users in the formula for the generation of capital.

And if we, plebs, know this, you know the industry has already crafted their bourgeois science of this info extraction mechanism.

This monetary influence has already spread over the creation of hardware as well as software. This will follow in all of the tech-realms. They will influence the organizations that create the hardware and software specs. They will influence the law to ignore these ills. They are the creators of mass-use hardware and software.

The average end-user will live in a tech prison and the state is gonna become way more invasive. Democracy is on the line like it never has been before. They WILL use your instincts against you and they will use your data against you.

Just like capitalization has taken over every aspect of modern commodity/service production, and therefore modern life, so will data-capitalization.

There was never enshittification, it was just capital.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#250

Post by moefh »

AlexandrB wrote: post #245
moefh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> The purpose of a system is what it does This is a dumb saying. And if you start to apply it to everything capitalism still seems pretty ok. For example: "The purpose of Communism is killing 20+ million people"[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Sovi...

I agree that when taken literally, it's a dumb thing to say: literally (i.e., the dictionary definition), the purpose of a system is the reason why it was built, not what it does. But it's a slogan, and slogans don't always make sense taken literally. The point of the slogan is to remind people of the (obvious, I hope) fact that, as I wrote:

> you can't (well, shouldn't) judge something by its intended purpose if what it ends up doing goes against it

If you check my Wikipedia link it shows that the original quote says more or less the same thing: "[this slogan] makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgement, or sheer ignorance of circumstances".

In other words, it doesn't matter what's the historical context of why corporations were created, what matters is what they do now. You can argue, like it was argued, that corporations as a whole currently are a net benefit. My point is that bringing up the historical context of their original purpose adds nothing to the discussion.

As to your other point, I completely agree that it would be useless to try to defend the Staling regime by pointing out what communism was intended to be. That's more or less the point I was trying to make.

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