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Dopamine Fracking

igerman.cc

51–60 of 446 posts

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#51

> The Strawberry Example Is this really the best example the author could come up with? If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them. In many places you can get a few pounds per for less than the money you earn in one hour . It's pretty much a heaven compared to pre-industrial days. But I guess the analogy of fracking is pretty spot on, just in a way the author didn't realize -- the c…

I was hoping for some examples of dopamine fracking of online communities as they said but was also disappointed.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#52
post #43

> Written by a human. That for some reason uses em dashes and writes in a voice that at times I find hard to distinguish from AI. Man, I'm tired. Are people just lying? Am I just seeing things? Some mystery third option? Is it meta commentary? Everything is poisoned. I suppose it feels incorrect regardless of actual AI use, because it's still the LinkedIn thought leader template with relevant current issue. Which is…

>That for some reason uses em dashes

You'd be surprised that there are folks on this planet who love em dashes. I'm one of them and I used to write a lot with em dashes, but stopped using it altogether in the past few years because of AI.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#53
post #22
post #3

He's right - that phrase evokes what he means better than many alternatives. But this feels like an article where you get all the useful info in the title. The rest is just a rant about the modern internet being bad for your brain.

i got much more out of it and it's intelligently written I see this structure: * introduce dopamine fracking * the wonderful strawberry analogy to what we loose, personally, by giving in to the substitue for the real thing * how they (the author) managed to in baby steps turn down attempts at fracking _their_ dopamine: through awareness of what's happening and what were missing because of it so until there is some bi…

Same here, I enjoyed it too. A lot of people are nitpicking on the strawberry analogy, but there is certainly something to be said about the commodification of everything.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#54

> The Strawberry Example Is this really the best example the author could come up with? If you want fresh strawberries, you can just go to a supermarket and buy them. In many places you can get a few pounds per for less than the money you earn in one hour . It's pretty much a heaven compared to pre-industrial days. But I guess the analogy of fracking is pretty spot on, just in a way the author didn't realize -- the c…

Supermarket strawberries are often bad with not a lot of taste, and little variety, which is a result of their commodification.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#55
I've been forming this thought as well recently, but OP puts it in words perfectly. "Strawberry (+1 for picking it yourself) to Strawberry flavored candy" is indeed "human interaction to my LinkedIn feed", or "intimacy to pron".

All 3 second terms are dopamine hits, feel nice (briefly), you want more and inevitably feel bad and exhausted, useless, weak. Over time you may even loose some important human treats (health, ability to focus, skill in interaction with potential [bed] partners). The firsts are nice rich experiences. Healthy for body and mind (within limits of course).

Humans evolved craving the firsts, as it was difficult to hit unhealthy limits within the world we used to inhabit. The seconds are supra-normal stimuli [0] -> European herring gull chicks will die pecking at a red dot on a pencil as it presents a stronger stimulus than their mother's red dot on the beak (which will make mother bird vomit-up food, example in wikipedia reference). These are good metaphors for what is happening to us: After a long time evolving in the confines of what nature offered, we are suddenly able to manufacture experiences. And we don't think enough about what this means and what it it doing to us, imho.

Or should I say "what we are allowing happen to us"? Not sure if that is good framing, but I think we should take collective action against it. To guard our human-ness. Of course this collides with the personal-freedom principles we build our culture on. I think someday we'll look back on this age as a savage age. As we do. And later generations will find it hard to comprehend how we allowed what is happening at the moment. It's a human (humanity) pattern, but we'll learn, eventually.

Huxley, in Brave New World, predicted this. He could not have foreseen the ways we can now manufacture experiences but isn't "I take a gram and only am" eerily close to Doom Scrolling? “Ending is better than mending” -> "Shop Like a Billionaire" ...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#56
post #43

> Written by a human. That for some reason uses em dashes and writes in a voice that at times I find hard to distinguish from AI. Man, I'm tired. Are people just lying? Am I just seeing things? Some mystery third option? Is it meta commentary? Everything is poisoned. I suppose it feels incorrect regardless of actual AI use, because it's still the LinkedIn thought leader template with relevant current issue. Which is…

>That for some reason uses em dashes You'd be surprised that there are folks on this planet who love em dashes. I'm one of them and I used to write a lot with em dashes, but stopped using it altogether in the past few years because of AI.

Yes but if I am aware enough of the current landscape on the web to put a "written by a human" disclaimer, I am also aware enough of the fact that current em dash perception rightfully isn't very good.

So exactly what you said. You've stopped because you know how it will be perceived.

There is something not checking out with that blogpost is what I'm saying. Things do not feel organic. Which can be AI, but also can be lots of other things, but regardless of that, it smells.

___

Googling the author tells me that they perhaps might just be trying a bit too hard to be taken seriously. Oh well. But anyway

Smell is there. Intent is unclear

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#57

This has been happening in the real world for far longer. It's basically the experience of many modern cities, or even worse suburbs. Starbucks / Chipotle / Orange Theory / Target / Generic Brewery / Lime Scooter / Waymo / Subscribe N Save So much of modern life has been comodified to optimize for things that aren't necessarily what's inline with the users interests and certainly don't do anything for cultural robust…

To nit pick: Micromobility is the opposite of this.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#58

The website is random garbage on my phone: wibble0 4"+##rB' d:iBVv (/-_d?`";KlzxX-g=sfw^w PL^a0p#{QSW=a5XQHm:lH@"[)?h5I>; zaxor4 gronks w,v?OuWdGi'^]~JhD|?L9o=y3nVd(Fm[AU:PEdj`BfLzzFxf7b[ KgXY33 Ax\@9NdFk,8C"kZ&a'rY-y(6TOjH?huP fizzlei gronkm dribble] dxAR~ub`/zX"W^Xc~|TX6mDjN"O\tW}h"^oDB0x|K!sIL&\HluDJ.N;Hl ploosh] florbW florb4 jQd6.TB=}%IFL XuD#r8'.mx0f yA$#J bB@U g[\8 s322Am KfVapVF@)blzJv"}[(D^j+p5W3#m/;48- zaxo…

Looks like the output of Caddy Defender plugin: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JasonLovesDoggo/caddy-defe...

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#59

Anxiety over commodification is very, very old, and tends to miss the upsides of commercial society. Intellectuals, by our nature, focus on problems -- often to the point of creating problems where (perhaps) there were none before. Happily "dopamine fracking" will probably not metamorphose into another menacing sounding anti-commercial phrase. There are enough already. If you are sympathetic, or even curious, about t…

It is noteworthy that this is a German source and German culture is by default pessimism and malaise.

Re: Dopamine Fracking

#60
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a significant contributer to franchize style commoditized homogenization is modern anxiety. Millenials especially seem near exclusively drawn to the 'predictable' and curated 'peer approved' nature of recognizable 'safe' brand signals.

You are seeing the effect for the cause. Humans (life in general) are effort minimizer machines, it doesn’t mean that maximum optimization is the ideal environment for a human to thrive. Any caveman would have loved to have to choose between favourite junk food franchises instead of risking his life chasing woolly mammoths not to starve.

From what I see, there are many people that don't want to be "bored" more than the people that don't want to be "tired". Of course there are many that want to be neither (so we get social media that gives you "not bored" and "not tired"), but I don't think we can generalize for 100% for neither category.
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