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Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

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Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#31

Post by ants_everywhere »

samrus wrote: post #7
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…

I think the access to so much information itself isnt bad. Cuz access to all of wikipedia wouldnt do this. People would get bored because its still work to digest that information I think this access gave opportunities to bad actors whose incentives are misalligned with society's. Social media companies. They use this opportunity to serve us easily digestible garbage thats going to get us hooked. Its a not some grand…

> misalligned with society's

It's hard to think of a society where this is the right measure. A better measure would be the user's best interest.

Arguably social media is significantly worse when it's aligned with the society's incentives AND those incentives are bad.

For example, consider hypothetical always-on addictive social media in the following societies:

- Ancient Egypt

- Any fundamentalist religious community

- The Congo Free State

- Antebellum South in the United States

- East Germany

- Sparta

- The Assyrian Empire

Alignment with society isn’t a virtue when society is sick. And a society is almost always sick, or at least there's noticeable room for improvement.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#32

Post by tcfhgj »

the_snooze wrote: post #29
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's not even just children in safe situations like bedtime. I regularly see adults crossing the street typing on their phones while having headphones on.

Do you have to be worried being killed by a driver all the time?

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#33

Post by easton »

hugh-avherald wrote: post #30
ericmcer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In 1980s Star Trek it was used for porn. (TNG: The Perfect Mate , Hollow Pursuits )

And the Replicator was locked out from producing mass amounts of unhealthy food (unless you told it not to).

Maybe the lesson we should learn is our hardware should come with built in limits on use to keep our brains intact? That sounds dystopian.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#34

Post by Marsymars »

godelski wrote: post #26

I always feel conflicted when I see this problem phrased as "smartphones". I understand why but at the same time I wonder how much, if any, it detracts from solving the actual problems. The article discusses the usual surveillance capitalism and social media stuff[0] that we're probably all pretty familiar with here. But where I feel uneasy is the blaming on the device or technology itself. Smartphones, and even soci…

I suspect that "smartphone" isn't just shorthand, and that the friction-free nature of smartphones (and their by-default emotive-triggering functionality that the article mentions like notifications, face ID, etc.) have a large hand in the problems.

If we had the same modern platforms for infinite scrolling social media and news, sports gambling, microtransaction-powered games, etc., but if we all carried dumb phones, and when you wanted to get your tiktok fix you had to walk to the desktop computer in the living room, log in, and open up the web browser to browse tiktok, I suspect that the problems would get markedly better.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#35

Post by noir_lord »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #24
ericmcer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>In real Star Trek the holo deck would be used for porn This is lampshaded in Lower Decks

DS9 had frequent if oblique references to it as well, Quark’s Bar had holodecks, I think Major Kira threatened to break his arm if she found out she featured as a character in one episode.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#36

Post by noir_lord »

samrus wrote: post #7
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…

I think the access to so much information itself isnt bad. Cuz access to all of wikipedia wouldnt do this. People would get bored because its still work to digest that information I think this access gave opportunities to bad actors whose incentives are misalligned with society's. Social media companies. They use this opportunity to serve us easily digestible garbage thats going to get us hooked. Its a not some grand…

Some people wouldn’t, we call it falling into the wiki hole for a reason.

I’ve spent more hours than a sane person should just hopping from one topic to another and often end up reading about something I had no idea was a thing an hour earlier.

But I also use YouTube only for documentaries and read a lot generally, my only social media is HN and Reddit (though not a lot).

I’m just not wired for engagement the way most the people in my life seem to be.

Other than Bank App, Kindle and Firefox I have nothing installed on my phone it didn’t come with, iOS is basically same on my iPad.

I don’t find the modern web very engaging and use unhook/ublock origin to keep YT what I want it to be which is a no distraction source of documentaries.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#37

Post by array_key_first »

lijok wrote: post #11

Notice under “Managing dependency”, the focus is exclusively on technological solutions. There is no technological solution to this. We have the equivalent of unlimited crack in everyone’s pocket 24/7 with no possible oversight over its use and no way to reel it back in. The genie has been out of the bottle for a while now. Just like gluttony, there is no solution, only management strategies and they’re all very huma…

We actually don't know that there isn't a solution to gluttony, addiction, and other self-destructive and compulsive behaviors.

The brain is somewhat stupid and can be tricked by very primitive things, like bright lights. We might also be able to un-trick it, maybe with medication. That's kind of what were seeing with GLP-1 agonists.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#38

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

As long as you're scheduling use of the holodeck it's not going to be the same kind of impulse problem.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#39

Post by godelski »

Marsymars wrote: post #34
godelski wrote: post #26

I always feel conflicted when I see this problem phrased as "smartphones". I understand why but at the same time I wonder how much, if any, it detracts from solving the actual problems. The article discusses the usual surveillance capitalism and social media stuff[0] that we're probably all pretty familiar with here. But where I feel uneasy is the blaming on the device or technology itself. Smartphones, and even soci…

I suspect that "smartphone" isn't just shorthand, and that the friction-free nature of smartphones (and their by-default emotive-triggering functionality that the article mentions like notifications, face ID, etc.) have a large hand in the problems. If we had the same modern platforms for infinite scrolling social media and news, sports gambling, microtransaction-powered games, etc., but if we all carried dumb phones…

But is this not abuse of the smartphone rather than inherent to the smartphone itself?

I'll put it another way: can you have a smartphone without infinite scrolling, microtransactions, advertising, overloading of notifications, etc.

Certainly the answer is "yes".

We can have GPS without tracking. We can have notifications without advertising. We can have phone calls without spam calls. We can have games without microtransactions. We can have software without locking everything down. So on and so on.

You might call this a pipe dream, but we're just talking about technical feasibility here. There's no doubt we can do those things! Funding those things is a different conversation, but it can't start to happen if we don't even recognize that it is possible. We can't make progress if we don't have direction. The pipe dream doesn't have to be completely achieved to make success, it stands as direction to work towards.

  > but we all carried dumb phones
I'm sure this would be better too, but it is also better to blow my nose when I'm sick but the Kleenex doesn't cure my flu. It treats symptoms, relieves them, makes them less problematic, but it does not solve them or address the underlying issues. By not fixing the underlying issues we still leave the environment setup for abuse. To be blunt, I think you are illustrating my concern.

Why do we have to try to fix everything with duct tape? That's not a fix, that's a patch.

And let's be honest, getting rid of a phone with internet and GPS is basically a non-starter for most people.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#40

Post by NoPicklez »

godelski wrote: post #39
Marsymars wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that "smartphone" isn't just shorthand, and that the friction-free nature of smartphones (and their by-default emotive-triggering functionality that the article mentions like notifications, face ID, etc.) have a large hand in the problems. If we had the same modern platforms for infinite scrolling social media and news, sports gambling, microtransaction-powered games, etc., but if we all carried dumb phones…

But is this not abuse of the smartphone rather than inherent to the smartphone itself? I'll put it another way: can you have a smartphone without infinite scrolling, microtransactions, advertising, overloading of notifications, etc. Certainly the answer is "yes". We can have GPS without tracking. We can have notifications without advertising. We can have phone calls without spam calls. We can have games without micro…

Its possible, but the point is that people don't really want it.
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