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Engineered Addictions

masonyarbrough.substack.com

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Re: Engineered Addictions

#371

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #195
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common good: humans, according to systems theory, have the same needs and there's a finite set. We can map them & then design systems so as to satisfice all of them.

Humans don't generally have the same needs, and to the extent they do they're competing over limited resources. At one extreme you get theories like communism or socialism that treat humans as disposable cattle to be murdered or starved when they stand in the way of whatever the party leaders decide is the common good. The common good is something that has to be worked out deliberatively and is more like taking the r…

> Humans don't generally have the same needs, and to the extent they do they're competing over limited resources.

Would you cite sources for this claim?

Re: Engineered Addictions

#372

Post by Jensson »

bgnn wrote: post #322
mschuster91 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of the current AI products and stories are cost-competitive due to that bloat itself, so some amount of rightsizing will help the industry. The problem is, any amount of rightsizing has the potential to tank the entire economy. Too big to fail, just that it isn't banks this time but a bunch of companies who went all in on "AI".

Capitalism as we know it so far only reacts after a crash happens because of the fear of crashing the economy with any corrective action. My very personal opinion is this is more psychological than scientific.

No, the reason is because these "crashes" are very small so on average you lose more trying to avoid them than just staying invested. The emotional part is trying to avoid them, the rational part isn't.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#373

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

wonderwonder wrote: post #191
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common good: humans, according to systems theory, have the same needs and there's a finite set. We can map them & then design systems so as to satisfice all of them.

Over human history the best system we have come up with and implemented to ensure this has been capitalism. Nothing else has come close

This is capitalist mythology. You'll need to account for "best" here because millions of people under the thumb of large-scale genocide, such as the policy decisions to implement poverty (which capitalism requires), likely have something to say about what you think is "best".

Re: Engineered Addictions

#374

Post by Jensson »

everfrustrated wrote: post #344
rwyinuse wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many EU countries are pretty nice places to live, and didn't need a violent revolution to make it happen. All it took was democracy, a population willing to stand for its rights, and an elite which understood that building a welfare state is preferable outcome over having a violent Communist/Fascist revolution. A capitalist system with right amount of social democracy to prevent worst concentration of wealth is the b…

>and didn't need a violent revolution to make it happen You really need to read more history about Europe.

There was no such revolt in the country where I live, and in many others. Also if you are talking about France it was to create democracy, not to change the economic system, with democracy you can change the economic system without a revolution.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#375

Post by absolute_unit22 »

thenobsta wrote: post #364

I was talking with a friend who is a camp counselor for a small summer camp the other day and they said that 4 of the 35 or so kids at the camp left because they couldn’t be away from their devices. This power intermittent reinforcement in the on-ramp of addiction is scary powerful. Do we have any ways to innoculate ourselves and the future generations against it? The author poses changing the game which is support.…

> said that 4 of the 35 or so kids at the camp left because they couldn’t be away from their devices.

Wow that’s scary. Such powerful addiction at such a young age

Re: Engineered Addictions

#377

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #346
trinsic2 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the etymology of the word: common(adj.) c. 1300, "belonging to all, owned or used jointly, general, of a public nature or character," from Old French comun "common, general, free, open, public" (9c., Modern French commun), from Latin communis "in common, public, shared by all or many; general, not specific; familiar, not pretentious." This is from a reconstructed PIE compound ko-moin-i- "held in common," comp…

The idea of common good is centuries older than the appearance of French or the English translation. It has nothing to do with shared values. It's exactly as I described it above. Notice the reconstructed PIE means to move together. Common good is about the interests of groups that co-move rather than groups that share values. This makes sense even in family contexts. What is good for the family is often different fr…

And avoiding orienting around needs makes all of us susceptible to desires & values we've larvely been indoctrinated into.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#378

Post by spwa4 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #316
bruce511 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps to formally understand who is who. Every company has staff, customers, suppliers and product. If you go the VC route then the VC is the customer. Since any good business is focused on customer satisfaction, a VC funded business is focused on VC satisfaction. VCs want an exit. Which necessarily means switching funding model. The only switch that has worked so far is advertising. Advertising requires attention…

> Amazon is the poster child for B2C success, but makes most of its money from AWS (which is B2B). Amazon still makes the most revenue from ecom.

That's what you get when an expert financial trader makes a company. He wanted billions from the start ... so how to do it? There's only one way, really: a pyramid scheme. But an atypical one: get lots of sales, lots of revenue and change any profit into capital. This is quite a common plan in Western Europe, and that's why it doesn't work there.

Why would you do that? Well companies are taxed on profit. And the money you pay to investors ... is also paid out of the profit. No profit -> all the money stays in the company, under the control of management, ready to be deployed on yachts and castles for the CEO. Governments get nothing. Investors get nothing.

Jeff Bezos (and very early investors) get everything. If they get desperate there is a buyback (no doubt matched by a greater stock package for the top of the company).

This is a pyramid scheme because the whole company only works because it only makes extremely minimal profit. If it starts demanding profit it will be eaten alive by competition in no time at all. Money has to be invested in, flows to the top, and is taken out at the top. No doubt Bezos was utterly baffled by the success of it and therefore isn't yet out, but ...

Re: Engineered Addictions

#379

Post by jajko »

j7ake wrote: post #168
carlosjobim wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're never going to be able to change the economic system for the entire population where you live. Better to vote with your feet and move to a country where all economic activity is arranged for "the common good". There are many, many such countries. You're not the first with that idea. That of course won't mean that you will have the privilege of deciding for everyone else what counts as "the common good". It's u…

Please name a few such places

Switzerland... the best actually long term sustainable and working capitalism I've seen.

All freedom US craves so much for (and much more) while stronger social state than next to nothing US has for its weaker part of society

Re: Engineered Addictions

#380

Post by djsavvy »

This is all true, but it's definitely not the full story. I'm addicted to HN despite it not being engineered for engagement. (though _technically_ it has taken investor money hahaha)
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