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Engineered Addictions

masonyarbrough.substack.com

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Re: Engineered Addictions

#461

Post by news_hacker »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #153

The problem is not the apps, the problem is the users. Which means the problem is human nature. Make a photography site for people to share photographs and it will inevitably turn into a site for people to share selfies of them pretending to live a life that they do not actually live and can not actually afford, but which you will inevitably compare yourself against. Make a site for people to share opinions and it wi…

Absolutely not. People are not asking for dark patterns to engineer their behavior to maximize retention. This is like locking a kid in a room full of candy, and then blaming them for gorging themselves.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#462

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

wonderwonder wrote: post #435
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am sure you know this due to your extensive research and simulations but the average life span of the tribes you mentioned is in the low 20s... Some of your examples are even less than that. Only 40% of the Aka and Mbuti actually survive to age 15 or greater I look forward to you explaining how this is actually a good thing. Because currently it looks like your argument is that the 9 billion people on earth should…

I am sure you've looked at this through a nuanced lens that examines the impact of colonialism on each of those tribes. I'm sure you've taken into account what's causing the deaths.

There's no way this is a dismissive colonially racist take without depth.

Longevity is not quality of life. This is still a culture that, despite all the modern world has done to these people, managed to survive 150k years. If longevity is what you're after, there's your longevity.

You're talking about averages, which ignores all the white supremacy embedded in these systems, ignores the decline of US lifespan, and especially ignores quality of life of those living in poverty.

From here on out, any further disingenuous comments get an AI response.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#463

Post by GreenWatermelon »

bgnn wrote: post #320
Ekaros wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you really think about it, this also applies to very many publicly traded companies. Tech especially, always searching to present next growth area. And then often shortly abandoning it or wasting massive resources on it... Really does make me cynical on investing...

We make fun of the state run businesses of old communist regimes, how wasteful they were, how mismanaged they were, how they produced stuff nobody wanted and so on. I'm increasingly getting a similar feeling for VC fueled tech. It's all smoke and mirrors of hype (was blockchain or web3.0 yesterday, AI and quantum today). There is so much wasted money, especially after quantitative easing and negative interest rates o…

> state run businesses of old communist regimes, how wasteful they were, how mismanaged they were, how they produced stuff nobody wanted

I'm increasingly convinced that this is pure western capitalist propaganda. From what I observed in the 8 or so years I've been an adult, Western Capitalist economies (especially US) are much more bloated and wasteful. Nothing demonstrated this more clearly than Crypto/Web3 Hype-Bubble.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#464

Post by GreenWatermelon »

MangoToupe wrote: post #445
account42 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You force them to pay for the negative externalities they cause so that their profit incentives are not as misaligned with what is good for the rest of the world. This includes making companies pay for pollution but also for much more abstract damages like the reduced consumer choice from monopolies.

> You force them to pay for the negative externalities they cause Surely Capital would just purchase more convenient terms from politicians.

in which case you just have a failed state. Just like Drug lords run Mexico, VC and investors run the US, and citizens suffer in both cases.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#465

Post by euroderf »

klik99 wrote: post #20

> Then it raised venture capital, hit scale, and needed to hit growth numbers and meet quarterly metric goals. The focus shifted from “authenticity” to “daily active users.” Having spent a few years in the VC world I have been increasingly convinced outside investment is the biggest reason why companies lose their morals. The legal obligation to represent shareholders erodes morality. When the people running these co…

Someone help out my memory here.

I'm pretty sure that there was a case before the Supreme Court (or other federal court?) back in the late 1980s, where shareholders of a firm sued for the firm to focus exclusively on profit, when the company had been taking a broader view of stakeholders (community, workers, etc.).

Re: Engineered Addictions

#466

Post by GreenWatermelon »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #290

So what’s wrong with open source social network ? They don’t have the issue mentioned, because they don’t have investor there is no need to optimize kpi and when it’s optimized the infrastructure cost can be minimized a lot. See mastodon for instance. Yet it doesn’t catch up in popularity, seems like people do prefer the traditional Facebook, twitter and instagram. You can only show a donkey where water is but you ca…

Well, for one thing, they aren't backed by billion-dollat corporations hell-bent on shoving them down the throat of every man, woman, child, infant, and pet they can reach.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#467

Post by notShabu »

Games around who does the grunt work requiring maintenance of a status hierarchy or a constant inflow of interns do affect quality and time to delivery though.

The current problems are oversupply of who does the creative work as well as no longer requiring interns.

There is both less of a need for new inflow and a problem with existing overproduction.

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