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Engineered Addictions

masonyarbrough.substack.com

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Re: Engineered Addictions

#411

Post by notepad0x90 »

deepdarkforest wrote: post #356
notepad0x90 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sound like you are well educated on the mechanics of addiction, using terms like "dopamine" as if that indicates addiction. People get dopamine from all sorts of every day activities and interactions, care to explain how that indicates addiction? If I exercise habitually (which gives tons of dopamine) do I have an addiction or just a habit I enjoy? Did you know that even LSD/Acid has no biological/medical addictio…

the difference is simple, addiction is the compulsive/habitual action of something that does not have positive effects, more likely negative than neutral. For example, being "addicted" to gym is fine, because even if you enjoy the dopamine after, not the actual exercise, it's still good for you overall, and you cannot really overdo it. Caffeine makes you more productive, and you cannot really spiral, hence why caffei…

If a person has a bad habit of needing to drink a bottle of beer and drive to work every day, would you call that an addiction or just a bad habit? I would call the drinking an addiction but the drinking-and-driving a bad habit.

Caffeine is a good example you mentioned, it is in fact addictive. It forms a chemical dependency similar to nicotine. Not all addictions are harmful and not all bad habits are addictions. The 'dependency' is what qualifies the habit as an addiction, in other words, you can't function or function well without the habit.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#412

Post by notepad0x90 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #395
notepad0x90 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientifically speaking, I would expect that pattern of habit to be studied, and for individuals to be unable to quit, and for actual electro-chemical rewiring of the brain (as nicotine,caffeine and harder drugs do) to be established. Until then, why can't it just be called a habit? addiction very strongly implies inability to quit. Have you seen the 90's congressional testimony of tobacco CEO's all swearing on oath…

I disagree, consider someone who is rich enough to afford a heroin addiction without ending up dead, in jail or institutionalized. They may never have a rock bottom that makes them question their use and try to stop. Their quality of life might drop, they may lose friends, family, business, etc, but they are insulated from the kinds of real pressures that force people without means to stop. I would not say that perso…

In your example, I agree with you, they do have an addiction. It does not contradict with what I said. The person not needing to stop and their inability to stop if they tried are two different things. Heroin does form a chemical dependency, where it could even be life threatening to quite cold-turkey, and therefore it is addictive.

Unlike mental illness, addiction is defined by formation of a dependency. sometimes that dependency is at the biological/chemical level, sometimes it is a psychological dependency (can be caused by mental illness), not nevertheless a dependency must exist that prohibits the addict from functioning without the cause of the addiction. Bad habits can cause adverse impacts just as addictions can, and addictions (like coffee - which forms an actual biological rewiring/dependency, people get severe migraines when trying to quit it) can be harmless unless you're trying to quit.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#413

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

wonderwonder wrote: post #410
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going by how people in the global majority, victims of imposed poverty by empires through debt slavery, who also experience OTHER forms of genocide & recognize poverty for the genocide it is. Check out the quality of life of the Aka, Baka, and Mbuti tribes. They're genetically and culturally linked to a mother tribe 150k years ago. So a culture has kept these people going for 150k years. Capitalism has no such ca…

Friend you are comparing civilizations that support hundreds of millions of people to small tribes of pygmies that total maybe 30k people and survive on hunting and gathering. Additionally they only exist in little groups of 50 to a few hundred individuals. How do you see billions of people surviving as hunter gatherers? Or do you forsee the need to cull 95% of humanity? This is not a realistic comparison friend and…

Friend, go run the simulations at scale and get back to me before you keep peddling the religious belief that capitalism is the only way to feed billions.

You have no idea how to scale up collaboration due to separation from indigenous cultures that were praxised for tens of thousands of years & cultivated food forests across America without price tags.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#414

Post by [deleted] »

rsync wrote: post #389
maxverse wrote: post #381

I read and enjoyed the post, but also found it a bit directionless. Yes, I think a lot of people agree that addictive social media is a problem. What's the solution? > The deeper issue is that we’ve outsourced our human connection to systems designed for profit. Real connection happens in the margins that can’t be monetized. The conversations that don’t generate data, the relationships that don’t scale, and the momen…

"The problem is, as the author definitely knows, that running systems that enable connections costs money." It's not that much of a problem because it doesn't cost that much money. A full rack and 1gb at he.net costs something like $350/mo. I think it's $500 if you get the entire 10gb. Very fast servers are available for, basically, shipping charges on ebay. The cost that seems prohibitive is all of the flashing ligh…

[deleted]

Re: Engineered Addictions

#415

Post by ants_everywhere »

trinsic2 wrote: post #382
ants_everywhere wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So "Common Good" is directly related to "Common Law" which showed up in 509-27 BC Rome during the Republic period and it was a way to have a common understanding between the "Common People" when Rome's political state was trying to use political law against non-Romans. The common people needed a way to protect themselves from the rising emperors and their decrees. So I understand that you think its about families, bu…

Again that is not what common good is and it does not originate in the Roman Republic.

I'm honestly not sure it's worth responding here or what you're trying to say about Rome. It sounds like you may be confusing the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire, which started much later in 31 BCE. For one thing the Roman Republic did not have an emporer. For another it wasn't expanding militarily or ruling non-Romans.

And you also seem to be confusing different uses of "common".

Common generally means something held collectively by a group. By extension it can mean "customary" as in common law rather than statutory law. By extension it also can mean "ordinary" or "plain", as in "common house cat". "Commoners" or "common people" are just "ordinary" people; that is, people without titles.

The only connection between the "common" in "common good" and "common people" is the use of the string "common". The word means different things in the two contexts.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#416

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

rsaz wrote: post #295
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You effectively need or greatly benefit from gas, water, electricity and an ISP. What do you really get out of social media? I mean other than most of you getting crippling anxieties about things that aren’t even real, of course. Sure sure, I know, everyone wants it because they need to share photos of the kiddos with grandma out of country. No one needs it because they enjoy the shallow bullshit and dopamine and sna…

Social media is relied on by a lot of people for official notifications. When I was in high school, my only use for Twitter was checking if my school was closed or not on snow days. I'm sure there are lots of valid reasons for schools, hospitals, emergency services, garbage collection, official media networks etc. to have social media accounts, and for regular people to follow them. I've always thought it would be a…

> my only use for Twitter was checking if my school was closed or not on snow days

Believe it or not, they post that on their own websites.

We had to turn on the TV and watch the marquee they would add to all shows. If you missed your school you had to go to another channel to see where in the alphabet they were.

You have not made a convincing argument. Social media has specifically moved away from synchronous time-prioritized posting in favor of algorithm engagement. So I can’t accept “notifications” as a legitimate use.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#417

Post by tavavex »

heyjamesknight wrote: post #394
tavavex wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All humans are susceptible to addictions and addictive behavior, but the 1% that you mention are mostly shielded from their negative effects. It's far less of an issue for them, and it's not even just about choosing the less destructive drugs. If we talk about just drug addictions, their wealth ensures that: 1. They always have a reliable supply of their preferred drug. No matter how much they need, many of them will…

That is a fundamentally different argument than the one GP was making.

Yeah, I agree, sorry. I went on a bit of a tangent, but still wanted to post it. But hey, I tried to bring it back in the last sentence.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#418

Post by abdullahkhalids »

Gigachad wrote: post #301
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose you could try to make a social media platform without dark patterns and charge a monthly fee for it, but how many people would pay for it? In 2022, mastodon.social was provisioned at a cost of 0.6EUR/year/user for 191k users [1]. This price is payable even by many people in poor countries. People would pay for something like this same as they pay for other stuff, assuming it was well designed and gave use…

The server costs would be tiny compared to moderation, legal, and R&D.

0.6 EUR/year/person was the entire cost including moderation and R&D. I don't think any legal costs were incurred. If you built a federated social media where individual instances are responsible for their own moderation, then the software maker doesn't have to incur those costs.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#419

Post by jrowen »

sapphire42 wrote: post #409
jrowen wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely wild to me. I honestly do most of my clothes shopping through Instagram/Facebook ads. I enjoy that targeted advertising shows me new products and companies that I'm interested in, often very niche stuff that I don't come across otherwise. I would so much rather see that than ads for life insurance, penis pills, ambulance chasers, or whatever other bullcrap goes to the lowest common denominator. The…

Worshipping the elite won't make you become one of them...

Very thoughtful contribution, thank you.

I'll just say this: make the algorithm work for you.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#420

Post by johanneskanybal »

It’s very obvious in 2025, have deleted all my social accounts, (maybe still a bit of reddit). Kids are definitly not allowed even close to it.

100% correct it’s about the business model/funding. Just make it in your basement and don’t take vc capital and let it take a decade and you’ll be the only used social network.

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