The Front
- Thread starter sus
- Start date
luka
Well-known member
why i was a child there was a programme on telly called why dont you and the premise of the show was why dont you stop watching telly and do something more fun instead. i think they suggested making things out of pipe cleaners and so on.
shiels
_
of course not. nobody believes that. but did the military building the proto internet think about VR porn?
you are a cybernetic systems thinker you so you know that evry system exists and evolves within a complex system of systems and all kinds of unintended consequences emerge in spite of the intention of system builders.
zuckerberg probably honestly believes in his vision of connecting the world, he also wants to become very rich and powerful. now is behemoth is beyond his control and bad ppl can use it to do bad things. introduce lucrative advertising opportunities and things change drastically. I agree theres a weird problem in attributing the blame / all the power to him, as if he knows how to fix it!
its a mind boggling collaborative effort in increasing interestingness. Apple, facebook, google may not have set out to see individuals averaging 5 hours on their phone but with incentive the ratchet will move that way
sufi
lala
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
I do think its obvious that the mechanism of emoji reacts makes a significant impact here.
My main issue with the neurochemical stuff is that the various neurotransmitters seem to have effects that don't just reduce down to the characteristics of any one given neurotransmitter, but instead depend on complex interplays and combinations of neurotransmitters. It seems like at least some of them can have both inhibitory and excitatory effects, depending on immediate circumstances, such as which other neurotransmitters are present.
So I suspect that, while dopamine probably does have empirical evidence that strongly associates it with feelings of pleasure, to reduce either pleasure down to dopamine, or to limit dopamine's function down to pleasure, would be misguided given the complexity of the system.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
It may be that certain neurotransmitters are more regionally specific than others, but I don't know anything about that. I just know that the observed neuropsychological effects of these neurotransmitters are often broad and overlapping, rather than this one being the pleasure chemical and that one being the anxiety chemical.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
That said, I do suspect there is a substantial argument to be made, and neurochemical evidence to support it, that certain UX elements are strongly correlated with higher or lower levels of pleasure qua short-term happiness. But I don't suspect Zuckerberg was aiming for this when he was creating facebook.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
There does seem to be a sort of logic at play in our neural network, albeit one far more complex and baroque than the boolean logic at play in our computers.
There are binary mechanisms in the brain, like the firing of action potentials (no gradient, just yes or no, to my knowledge), but there are also mechanisms that are far from binary, such as the inputs of these neurons (qua natural logic gates).
Instead of the input being uniformly binary across all receptions, yes electrical signal or no electrical signal, the input consists of a variety of neurotransmitters that either have a direct chemical effect on the post-synaptic neuron or else mediate an electrical signal between neurons. Beyond this, the quantity of neurotransmitter also seems to make a difference, in terms of determining whether or not the action potential crosses the firing threshold.
One thing I still don't understand is how different neurotransmitters confer different effects on neurons, but I presume it just has to do with how their chemical structure reacts with specialized receptors in post-synaptic neurons. But it may be way more complex than that.
There are binary mechanisms in the brain, like the firing of action potentials (no gradient, just yes or no, to my knowledge), but there are also mechanisms that are far from binary, such as the inputs of these neurons (qua natural logic gates).
Instead of the input being uniformly binary across all receptions, yes electrical signal or no electrical signal, the input consists of a variety of neurotransmitters that either have a direct chemical effect on the post-synaptic neuron or else mediate an electrical signal between neurons. Beyond this, the quantity of neurotransmitter also seems to make a difference, in terms of determining whether or not the action potential crosses the firing threshold.
One thing I still don't understand is how different neurotransmitters confer different effects on neurons, but I presume it just has to do with how their chemical structure reacts with specialized receptors in post-synaptic neurons. But it may be way more complex than that.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
And also it seems like the "function" of a given neurotransmitter is made all the less clear in light of how some of its receptions activate excitatory signals and some activate inhibitory signals. Thus the function of a given neurotransmitter is partially exogenous to its chemical structure, if I understand correctly.
This is all to say, the dopamine argument as it is often employed seems facile and almost pseudoscientific to me, if even incidentally accurate in many cases.
This is all to say, the dopamine argument as it is often employed seems facile and almost pseudoscientific to me, if even incidentally accurate in many cases.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
More generally, I think this is a good example of how the pursuit of a thing's meaning, irrespective of that thing's context, can be misguided - as if nothing was learned from structuralism/poststructuralism.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Arguably the thermodynamic takeaway from poststructuralism is that there is no such thing as an isolated system.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Dopamine isn’t just cocaine though is it. Old reptile brain, far older than anything mammalian with regards to boredom, stimulation and attention. The subconscious at its basement/cellar levels. So it’s just a matter of chance that these facets conflate in the way people navigate and keep returning to them? C’mon, you’re smarter than that and working in addiction the processes are almost identical - event/stimulation, emotional response, choice as actions (clicks) and finally all variety of outcomes
You’re taking your Tea tack here and, again, conflating observation with tabloid journalism as founding opinion. At 26 I was a dick too fwiw
Again, conflating a “public version” with anxious, parachuting parents (it’s an expression here for hyper-anxious parents who constantly seize upon completing a child’s tasks for them). You could infer the opposite too, that no-one cares, and that wouldn’t work either
I grew up in an era where albums had parental warning stickers, but Carcass never had the reach of specific internet apps
Lazy, dismissive, diversionary and inattentive. Again
sus
Moderator
Other things people are "addicted" to include:
- books
- music
- movies and television
- sex
- porn
- skiing
- racing motorcycles
- eating
- long-distance running
- working in the office
- going to the gym
- parachuting out of planes
I'm just not sure what we get when we say an activity is "designed to hijack your dopamine"—all these activities, short of maybe distance running, have been honed over time to give more rewards. Authors learned to write more engrossing novels, music is in a competition for attention and pleasure the same way social media is, thrill-seekers are rewarded every year with new slopes, better equipment for bigger rushes, etc.
Sure, dopamine plays a role in all these systems, and the creators of all media are likely optimizing indirectly for neurochemical response, but if there was a panic over authors "engineering" their books to "hijack brains" I'd be rolling my eyes too. And indeed, there was exactly such a hysteria in the Victorian era.
So we know this kind of fearmongering around the powers of new tech is a story as old as mankind. We know there are a thousand things that are being engineered or incremented or selected on the basis of "attention-grabbing"/pleasure disbursement. So it just really doesn't make sense to me, taking the media narrative about dopamine hijacking at face value. When I mean "tabloid" BTW I mean all journalism.
Like Luka said, I think we look for mindless pursuits constantly, the lower effort/more engrossing the better, then our Protestant desire to be Productive, or our socialized belief that screens are "less real" than the outside world, kicks in, we feel intensely guilty, and we try to find someone else to blame.
Yes, our desire for mindless pursuits means that we will, as a species, slowly engineer lower and lower effort, higher stimulus activities and technologies. But this "zoomed out" picture of general human activity and superstimulus is a tale as old as time, and is a radically different narrative than the specific, hysterical, targeted attitude towards Facebook and Instagram that boomers love to take.
- books
- music
- movies and television
- sex
- porn
- skiing
- racing motorcycles
- eating
- long-distance running
- working in the office
- going to the gym
- parachuting out of planes
I'm just not sure what we get when we say an activity is "designed to hijack your dopamine"—all these activities, short of maybe distance running, have been honed over time to give more rewards. Authors learned to write more engrossing novels, music is in a competition for attention and pleasure the same way social media is, thrill-seekers are rewarded every year with new slopes, better equipment for bigger rushes, etc.
Sure, dopamine plays a role in all these systems, and the creators of all media are likely optimizing indirectly for neurochemical response, but if there was a panic over authors "engineering" their books to "hijack brains" I'd be rolling my eyes too. And indeed, there was exactly such a hysteria in the Victorian era.
So we know this kind of fearmongering around the powers of new tech is a story as old as mankind. We know there are a thousand things that are being engineered or incremented or selected on the basis of "attention-grabbing"/pleasure disbursement. So it just really doesn't make sense to me, taking the media narrative about dopamine hijacking at face value. When I mean "tabloid" BTW I mean all journalism.
Like Luka said, I think we look for mindless pursuits constantly, the lower effort/more engrossing the better, then our Protestant desire to be Productive, or our socialized belief that screens are "less real" than the outside world, kicks in, we feel intensely guilty, and we try to find someone else to blame.
Yes, our desire for mindless pursuits means that we will, as a species, slowly engineer lower and lower effort, higher stimulus activities and technologies. But this "zoomed out" picture of general human activity and superstimulus is a tale as old as time, and is a radically different narrative than the specific, hysterical, targeted attitude towards Facebook and Instagram that boomers love to take.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
I mean I wouldn't be surprised if actual neuropsychology factored into UX design here and there, facebook or elsewhere. But yeah its not necessary to integrate such science in order to just build a product/service that happens to be more pleasurable.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
I thought you were Jewish and wtf has Protestantism got to do with a lizard brain seeking rewards? I’m only about 35 years out of ingrained Catholicism, so any sectarian “dialectic” here is contrived at best. It’s like saying zee Germans are efficient, as tabloid mindset ridden as it gets
Scaremongering is about a decade too late for data harvesting too. There’s a galaxy of difference between a solid, intriguing read and endlessly app hopping. So, over to you
ps love you piece of shit Nokia, can’t even receive emojis, stay disconnected
Scaremongering is about a decade too late for data harvesting too. There’s a galaxy of difference between a solid, intriguing read and endlessly app hopping. So, over to you
ps love you piece of shit Nokia, can’t even receive emojis, stay disconnected
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
And yeah optimizing a product/service in terms of pleasurability seems like a natural reaction to consumer demand. I suppose once biometrics and big data enter the picture, people get more uncomfortable about it.
sus
Moderator
WYH don't pretend this war against Facebook is some organic, bottom-up grassroots movement, when you know perfectly well it's a top-down media narrative drummed up as part of a massive inter-corporate war between Old Media and New Media. As if people could possibly come up with this dopamine garbage on their own.
sus
Moderator
Anyone who knows anything knows Protestant work ethic isn't a religious value anymore, it long ago seeped into the cultural water supply. It's a major difference between Northern Europe and Southern Europe, for instance. All you have to do is compare Germany's economy/20th C history with Italy's if you want examples. One nearly took over the world twice, got bombed to pieces, was literally divided in half between two warring superpowers, and has still emerged as a top-5 economy in the world, just decades later. The other is basically bankrupt and giving away free real estate because all the old people sit around drinking espressos in cafes and any young people with ambition leave immediately.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
lol, just lol
Never joined FB precisely because of data disclosure and not wanting to be found by school divs
Over to you
Never joined FB precisely because of data disclosure and not wanting to be found by school divs
Over to you