Toxic lncentives

you

Well-known member
Okay. I didn't mean well-being in a psychological sense at all. I meant it more as being healthy and functioning well enough to survive.

Pandering to out-dated reward protocols doesn't help with that.

OCD works along a reward protocol of positive reinforcement (like phobia cultivation) but it doesn't aid survival.

BtPP territory here.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Okay. I didn't mean well-being in a psychological sense at all. I meant it more as being healthy and functioning well enough to survive.

Pandering to out-dated reward protocols doesn't help with that.

OCD works along a reward protocol of positive reinforcement (like phobia cultivation) but it doesn't aid survival.

BtPP territory here.
Oh okay, well then yeah I’m inclined to agree. And I also agree that pandering to some of these reward processes doesn’t necessarily have any discernible benefit for survival. I suspect holistically these reward sensations can amount to a survival optimizing mechanism - but singled out and exploited, as in the case of certain social media mechanisms, I don’t think they have the same importance.
 
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you

Well-known member
I don't think it requires the intervention of something like 'social' media to render our reward neurology useless for survival. It's been useless for survival for a long time. Our wants were outdated long before the silicon chip. See sugar etc.

What's interesting is how business continues to exploit these and the conditions that allow/make the dynamic most effective. It goes beyond Candy Crush rewards.
 

sufi

lala
there must be humans whose rewards are a nice run or swim, surely? straight edge and body positive etc, but the reward mechanisms still reside in the mind, isnt it?
some mild pleasurable hormones, monotonous but perhaps a little bit meditative repetitive activity, a feeling of satisfaction...
but not actively damaging yrself

what is so wrong about that? (A lot imho, but i'm not sure why)
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
there must be humans whose rewards are a nice run or swim, surely? straight edge and body positive etc, but the reward mechanisms still reside in the mind, isnt it?
some mild pleasurable hormones, monotonous but perhaps a little bit meditative repetitive activity, a feeling of satisfaction...
but not actively damaging yrself

what is so wrong about that? (A lot imho, but i'm not sure why)
I definitely agree, I just think that some of the baser gratifications are lower-hanging fruit as far as our primordial urges are concerned.

Otherwise, one can just remove these stimuli from their immediate world, or else put in work to start transcending them
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
this talk reminding me a bit of K-punk's Spinoza-riffs about "sad passions"

Sad for Spinoza (I assume, never read) meaning you are sad while in the throes of an unfulfilled passion and then sad when it's fulfilled because the filling only makes you empty, and you immediately start to wanting something else

("Sad" inevitably taking on a different tinge for Brits cos of its sense of "sad trousers", "saddoes" etc - pathetic and ridiculous. That idea of how any passion seen from sufficient distance seems absurd - either someone else's, or your own back in the past.)

But then again, do I think passions are sadness-engendering? They ache - but that is much better than the emptiness of existing without passions. The passion of wanting but not having is its own kind of fullness.... the pursuit or the longing is the satisfaction rather than the supposed culmination of possession. Courtly love as ecstatic suspension etc.

I know this is wandering some ways from the kind of buzz you get from eating a bag of crisps where every bite has been gastro-engineered for its crunch and its savory kick.... the glucose rush of a chocolate chip cookie.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
Does anyone watch the TV show Industry? The characters are all addicted to sex, drugs, drink as well as to "performance highs" - trades, client breakthroughs (but also betrayals and backstabbing career moves). It's like a diagram of neurocapitalism. In one episode when some scheme involving a huge career move and skullduggery is being cooked up, and someone new is recruited as a co-conspirator, a character says "I guess it's lucky everyone is unsatisfied"
 

you

Well-known member
I can hear a sniffly Slovenian invoking 'lack'. I can also see that ultra violent 80s satire novel being brought up. But facetiousness aside... this is one of Hari's arguments... that addition forms in a vacuum, a poverty where other needs are not met.

I've not seen season 2 of Industry. I thought the first was excellent. That line—"I guess it's lucky everyone is unsatisfied"—feels Thatcherite though, that drive and want is somehow productive. 'Keep'em keen' etc

There is, going back to the original post and thread title, the shadow of the Old Testament.... the apple.... that pleasure is bad, bad for you, full of guilt etc. Surely someone has pointed out the Apple logo and damaging smart phone addition resonance? It's a lazy equivalence... but then the logo does have a bite out of it.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
I've not seen season 2 of Industry. I thought the first was excellent. That line—"I guess it's lucky everyone is unsatisfied"—feels Thatcherite though, that drive and want is somehow productive. 'Keep'em keen' etc

The second season is really good too - grimmer. You see how and why the characters are damaged and how that pulled them into a damage-perpetuating system.

It's Thatcherite - but it's also all of modern-era Western society maybe.

But yeah there is something Eighties about it - an echo of "greed is good" in Wall Street. Bright Lights Big City. Cocaine etc. I suppose there is a line age of this kind of drama set in the financial world (Wolf of Wall Street) where the moralizing is almost totally outweighed by the fact that the most charismatic characters are the hungriest / emptiest, the most unscrupulous. .

Industry is particularly good on neuro-engineering and drugs - used in the workplace to enhance performance and then to blow off steam.

Also the thematic of fronting and impression-management - the characters are always acting, performing a theatre of confidence and decisiveness,

But this is off topic.
 

version

Well-known member
there must be humans whose rewards are a nice run or swim, surely? straight edge and body positive etc, but the reward mechanisms still reside in the mind, isnt it?
some mild pleasurable hormones, monotonous but perhaps a little bit meditative repetitive activity, a feeling of satisfaction...
but not actively damaging yrself

what is so wrong about that? (A lot imho, but i'm not sure why)

You can get hooked on healthy rewards to the point of unhealthiness, e.g. people who exercise to excess.
 

version

Well-known member
Some of the stuff discussed earlier puts me in mind of Lyotard talking about what we view as greed perhaps being a process at work on human beings rather than something to do with desire,

"It is often thought that if the economic system is led to behave in this way, it is because it is guided by the thirst for profit. And indeed, the use of scientific technologies in industrial production allows an increase in the quantities of surplus-value by saving on labour-time. Yet it seems that the 'ultimate' motor of this movement is not essentially of the order of human desire: it consists rather in the process of neg-entropy which appears to 'work' the cosmic area inhabited by the human race. One could go so far as to say that the desire for profit and wealth is no doubt nothing other than this process itself, inasmuch as it works upon the nervous centres of the human brain and is experienced directly by the human body."

-- Lyotard, Time Today
 

version

Well-known member
It's neurology and brain chemistry, rather than capitalism per se - if the endocrine system and limbic system worked differently, then capitalism would exploit those fault lines.

When you get into the online realm this stuff can feel like a negative digital acupuncture, virtual needles seeking pressure points.

Sometimes you can almost feel the weight of the accumulated machinery bearing down on the nervous system; the headlines trying to fire you up, the recommended videos begging for your attention, the comments daring you to respond.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
When you get into the online realm this stuff can feel like a negative digital acupuncture, virtual needles seeking pressure points.

Sometimes you can almost feel the weight of the accumulated machinery bearing down on the nervous system; the headlines trying to fire you up, the recommended videos begging for your attention, the comments daring you to respond.
You have to watch/read Watchmen
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I think the film is mediocre. The motion comic and the HBO follow-up series are both great, in my opinion. I'm sure the comic itself is the best, but I don't have a copy.
 

sufi

lala
I think the film is mediocre. The motion comic and the HBO follow-up series are both great, in my opinion. I'm sure the comic itself is the best, but I don't have a copy.
I read it avidly when it came out, and saw the film at some point...
but what is the relevance?
 
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