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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

#51

Post by godelski »

NoPicklez wrote: post #40
godelski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People don't want what? To get rid of their smartphone? To be tracked? To have the problem solved?

There's too many ways to interpret your sentence, you need to be more specific

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#52

Post by rstuart4133 »

Rileyen wrote: post #41

Sometimes I wonder if I’m using my phone, or if it’s using me. I know things like notifications and vibrations are designed to grab my attention, but the phone always seems to know exactly when I’m at my weakest. The moment I feel even a little bored or empty, my finger just taps open that familiar app before I even realize it. Have any of you found ways to break out of this cycle of being led around by your phone?

> Sometimes I wonder if I’m using my phone, or if it’s using me.

It's always both. The phone is a doorway. On one side is you trying to exploit the resources on the other side. On the other side is the rest of the world, trying to exploit you.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#53

Post by NoPicklez »

godelski wrote: post #51
NoPicklez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

People don't want what? To get rid of their smartphone? To be tracked? To have the problem solved? There's too many ways to interpret your sentence, you need to be more specific

They don't really want to get rid of their smartphone and get for example a dumb phone.

I can't speak on behalf of others but whilst I do spend a little too much time scrolling, I would like it taken away from me too. But that doesn't fix anything, before endless scrolling we simply had more and more pages of information.

Smartphones were not always as addictive as they once were, the tiktok, reels, shorts have really tapped into something we haven't had before, which is essentially TV or breaking news on steroids.

Its another avenue which is addictive like gaming, gambling, alcoholism etc and we need to treat it carefully and be able to pull ourselves out of it. I have had smartphones for over a decade and I no doubt use mine way more in the past say 5 years.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#54

Post by noduerme »

throwaway290 wrote: post #48
noduerme wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah, but that type of protection isn't compatible with freedom. Neither the freedom to consume nor the freedom to iterate on a product. I don't blame companies for making their products addictive. I smoke cigarettes. I drink. Sometimes I crave a Big Mac. I don't blame them for selling me poison, as long as I recognize it as unhealthy. The best way to protect yourself is by educating yourself to recognize manip…

How to tell you're being hypnotized?

Slow, rhythmic speech pattern. Relaxing tones. Asking you to focus on your heart rate or breathing. Counting, or asking you to count mentally. Low lights or candle light. These are the things that come to mind.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#55

Post by superkuh »

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…

It is not like 'unlimited crack' because that is a chemically addictive substance that bypasses any need for stimuli enjoyment and directly increases wanting. Multi-media screens do not and cannot do this. Can we agree on that? Science does. At the very least they have to initially be intrinsically rewarding. They are a very different kind of stimuli and pretending they are chemical drugs that immediately bypass perception and directly cause wanting is dangerous misinformation. I am not saying people don't have problems. But this is not at all an addiction like chemical addictions. Applying chemical addiction paradigms will lead to the same calls for use of government violence in regulation. An outcome far more damaging than the situation.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#56

Post by idle_zealot »

superkuh wrote: post #55
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…

It is not like 'unlimited crack' because that is a chemically addictive substance that bypasses any need for stimuli enjoyment and directly increases wanting. Multi-media screens do not and cannot do this. Can we agree on that? Science does. At the very least they have to initially be intrinsically rewarding. They are a very different kind of stimuli and pretending they are chemical drugs that immediately bypass perc…

Ok, it's not crack. Not chemical, just social. It's like a hyper-optimized version of gambling. Slot machines in everyone's pockets. Or am I not allowed to make that comparison either, because the government regulates that too? Wouldn't want to accidentally call for government violence.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#57

Post by r14c »

array_key_first wrote: post #37
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.

We know how to cure addiction though, and its really low tech. People (and rats) with adequate social lives and decent living conditions are able to consistently overcome addiction. In fact, addiction has come to be understood as a coping mechanism for living in an unpleasant environment. Imo the issue with phones is really a symptom of our lack of leisure time, pleasant outside settings, and affordable third places.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#58

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

DavidPiper wrote: post #14

> Short of powering off or walking away ... We could all stop any time we want, but we don't. :(

I find it helps to leave the phone at home when I'm running errands. It helps that I work from home so I can mostly just leave it in my bedroom all day.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#59

Post by protocolture »

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…

>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."

Ok but is the issue the information, or is the issue the presentation?

I am an outlier, but I used to cure insomnia with excessive reading. I reckon if I had no other outlet, I would probably choose information over sleep.

But we know that the 5 websites put a lot of energy into making them extremely desirable to cruise for hours, regardless of content. It feels like everyone has my unique problem, but its not really "information" they are after, its this one giant never ending pit of despair and bullying.

Re: Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes

#60

Post by ares623 »

noduerme wrote: post #42
wlesieutre wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than framing it as "protection from my own impulses," I think it's more fair to frame it as "protection from teams of professional researchers and engineers and marketers whose entire life's work is fine tuning how to most effectively profit from my impulses"

Well, yeah, but that type of protection isn't compatible with freedom. Neither the freedom to consume nor the freedom to iterate on a product. I don't blame companies for making their products addictive. I smoke cigarettes. I drink. Sometimes I crave a Big Mac. I don't blame them for selling me poison, as long as I recognize it as unhealthy. The best way to protect yourself is by educating yourself to recognize manip…

How does a child learn this if they are peer pressured to be on these platforms? The parents can say no up to a point. But eventually the environment demands a child to be on these platforms to participate in their social circles.

How do you enforce a rule to a large group of barely related individuals?

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