321–327 of 327 posts
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I signed up just to reply to your post. What you see as true is based on your unique perspective of the world. And I have to say that I am struck by your strange, possibly normal view. Perhaps what you say is true. Maybe society has technologically evolved to the point where we ought to care about what you've fear-mongered. But I must say, your fear-mongering might be a result of your personal fears, and therefore mi…
He was hyperbolic but there most definitely is a ton of pressure to use Facebook and other forms of social media, especially if you are young. In some cases, people perceive the absence of a Facebook account as a red flag and even a sign of weirdness, or as an outright lie (similar to giving a fake phone number). >People don't need lots of friends. They don't need 100s of possibly useful people on a website they have…
How young? Data I've seen say that teenagers prefer Snapchat and think Facebook is for old people. The pressure is not the same across all age groups. That tells me that it's a generational / trend-based problem. And because of that, the pressure you speak of doesn't necessitate that we must use Facebook or .
"having a large network of acquaintances that are conveniently accessible in a single location can indeed improve the quality of your life in a significant way"
Seemingly, but is that really the case? Can you speak of anyone specifically who sees a net benefit from the type of large network you're talking about?
I imagine most people with a gregarious lifestyle also suffer from stalking, harassment, identity-theft, and many other problems that result in them not even having personal social media accounts.
For people who have a large cast of fans to announce news to (musicians, celebrities, companies), social media can definitely help. But I wonder if we're certain of the net benefit, once you factor in all of the negative consequences (a few of which I just mentioned above).
There are other ways for those people to broadcast information to a large number of people without having to depend on Mark Zuckerberg or
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I think it gets twisted partially because the quote is wrong. It should be "if a _service_ is free", not "when something is free." I don't think any of the examples you've listed would be considered a service, but rather either a platform (OS) or product. The quip is certainly overplayed, but I think the notion still stands. It is important to be aware of what intentions service providers and product sellers have. It…
The USG provides the GPS service for free. You can argue that connecting to it isn't free (since you need hardware that can do so), but then connecting to Google and Facebook isn't free either. This took literally two seconds to think of off the top of my head. The quotation is _still_ not accurate. It's a useful perspective on how to think about free services, but it's not a substitute for thought.
That doesn't apply to most services like facebook for which each active user creates extra bandwidth and processing load.
Key is to reduce FB usage to the minimum while still using its features to socialize and network. FB is like alcohol. Once in a while it's great but FB or alcohol 24/7 makes you sick. Having the app installed on your phone is a no-go. FB is super crucial when it comes to networking. It is so easy to follow up/stay in touch with people you just met, thanks to real names, a complete social graph, a smooth Messenger exp…
FB is like alcohol with an entire team of people constantly engineering it to get more and more people using it more and more often.
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The USG provides the GPS service for free. You can argue that connecting to it isn't free (since you need hardware that can do so), but then connecting to Google and Facebook isn't free either. This took literally two seconds to think of off the top of my head. The quotation is _still_ not accurate. It's a useful perspective on how to think about free services, but it's not a substitute for thought.
In what way are tax funded services free?
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Different activities provide differing reward for differing efforts. Water cooler chat, which requires active social engagement and is time bounded, is not as addicting as an endless stream of content accessed with a twitch of the finger. You might not use Facebook in that way, and I similarly don't find it that engaging, but I've certainly experienced it with reddit and HN. And I don't think this is some intractable…
If you're talking about dopamine you're already /inside/ what makes up someone's personality. "Dopamine hits" are called being happy .
Yes dopamine is part of a loop or cycle that is a survival strategy. In a healthy individual in a healthy situation.
When this loop works properly then yes, it is called being happy (there's more things to being happy but a properly functioning dopamine loop is part of it).
Think of a dopamine release and its causes like a particular message in a protocol that runs inside our body.
Our bodies aren't perfect or tested against every possible situation.
Sometimes the combination of the dopamine protocol and the environment causes a weird feedback loop that is no longer beneficial to this survival strategy.
In most of those cases, this results in a state called an addiction. (and in that case we call the dopamine release a "dopamine hit", to emphasize the role of addiction)
Fighting this bad feedback loop can be a constant struggle. A daily, constant struggle that lasts a lifetime once you get stuck in it. If you compare that to "being happy", then I can only assume you've never experienced it (and I hope you never will, but you can still learn compassion).
Sometimes these faults are exploited on purpose, very often for the commercial purposes of the amoral corporations.
It's also the case that certain people are more susceptible to these exploits. For instance ADHD is well-known to be co-morbid with susceptibility to addiction.
Peace :)
The one greatest internet life hack I discovered in the last couple of years is to delete browser autocompletes (cmd + shift + delete or similar). Once I became aware of the "slot machine" effect of websites I deleted the default autocompletes for Facebook and Hacker News, for example. Prior to doing this, if I typed "F" into chrome I went to my Facebook news feed, and "N" in chrome took me to HN. I deleted those def…