Stats for nerds
3recommend
19mentions
6people
2017–2026years
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Read "Supernormal Stimuli" by Barret [1] for an exploration of the psychology of this "mesmerizing" effect - at least in general, if not specifically in short-form video and infinite scroll.
Whether the artificial stimulus comes in the form of junk food, entertainment, social connection, sex, we've seen time and time again that trillion-dollar megacorps employing thousands of the greatest minds of our generation have been able to invent substitutes that are more compelling than evolution has prepared the human brain to be able to deal with.
It does seem like video shorts are especially easy to exploit.
- It's like candy - so tasty that you can't stop eating it until you're diabetic and obese. People will absolutely structure their diets to make them "worse" (less tasty) because they want, at a higher level than their taste buds want sugar, to stay healthy.
A trillion dollar industry exists to profit off of gluing eyeballs to screens. Making the device other than what this industry designed it to be is not self-sabotage, it's self-interested!
Read "Supernormal Stimuli" by Barrett for some other examples of this phenomenon.
- Indeed, they are related. A 2006 book on eating healthier called "The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness" by Douglas J. Lisle and Alan Goldhamer helped me see that connection (so, actually going the other way at first). And a later book from 2010 called "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose" by Deirdre Barrett also expanded that idea beyond food to media and gaming and more. The 2010 essay "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" by Paul Graham also explores those themes. In the 2007 book The Assault on Reason by Al Gore talks about watching television and the orienting response to sudden motion like scene changes.
In short, humans are adapted for a world with a scarcity of salt, refined carbs like sugar, fat, information, sudden motion, and more. But the world most humans live in now has an abundance of those things -- and our previously-adaptive evolved inclinations to stock up on salt/sugar/fat (especially when stressed) or to pay attention to the unusual (a cause of stress) are now working against our physical and mental health in this new environment. Thanks for the reference to a potential anti-addiction substance. Definitely something that deserves more research.
My sig -- informed by the writings of people like Mumford, Einstein, Fuller, Hogan, Le Guinn, Banks, Adams, Pet, and many others -- is making the leap to how that evolutionary-mismatch theme applies to our use of all sorts of technology.
Here is a deeper exploration of that in relation to militarism (and also commercial competition to some extent): https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce... "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ... The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."
Conversely, reflecting on this more just now, are we are perhaps evolutionarily adapted to take for granted some things like social connections, being in natural green spaces, getting sunlight, getting enough sleep, or getting physical exercise? These are all things that are in increasingly short supply in the modern world for many people -- but which there may never have been much evolutionary pressure previously to seek out, since they were previously always available.
For example, in the past humans were pretty much always in face-to-face interactions with others of their tribe, so there was no big need to seek that out especially if it meant ignoring the next then-rare new shiny thing. Johann Hari and others write about this loss of regular human face-to-face connection as a major cause of depression.
Stephen Ilardi expands on that in his work, which brings together many of these themes and tries to help people address them to move to better health.
From: https://tlc.ku.edu/ "We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life. (Stephen Ilardi, PhD)"
GPT-4o, by apparently providing "her" movie-like engaging interactions with an AI avatar that seeks to please the user (while possibly exploiting them) is yet another example of our evolutionary tendencies potentially being used to our detriment. And when our social lives are filled-to-overflowing with "junk" social relationships with AIs, will most people have the inclinations to seek out other real humans if it involves doing perhaps increasingly-uncomfortable-from-disuse actions (like leaving the home or putting down the smartphone)? Not quite the same, but consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
Related points by others:
"AI and Trust" https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/ai-and-trust.... "In this talk, I am going to make several arguments. One, that there are two different kinds of trust—interpersonal trust and social trust—and that we regularly confuse them. Two, that the confusion will increase with artificial intelligence. We will make a fundamental category error. We will think of AIs as friends when they’re really just services. Three, that the corporations controlling AI systems will take advantage of our confusion to take advantage of us. They will not be trustworthy. And four, that it is the role of government to create trust in society. And therefore, it is their role to create an environment for trustworthy AI. And that means regulation. Not regulating AI, but regulating the organizations that control and use AI."
"The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI - Maggie Appleton" https://youtu.be/VXkDaDDJjoA?t=2098 (in the section on the lack of human relationship potential when interacting with generated content)
- In the book "On Caring", philosopher Milton Mayeroff wrote: "Through caring for certain others, by serving them through caring, a man lives the meaning of his own life. In the sense in which a man can ever be said to be at home in the world, he is at home not through dominating, or explaining, or appreciating, but through caring and being cared for."
Given you acted to write something, what does it show you care about?
In "thinking about thinking", it is very easy to drift from observations to speculations and from insights to overgeneralizations. A variation on that is something Bertrand Russel suggested, that every philosopher at some point makes an (usually unacknowledged) assumption and then proceeds from there.
Your observation (generalized) that a person's feelings about other people's feelings affect our behavior seems true (especially for parents and children). That is perhaps a variation of the theme in "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain" by Antonio Damasio that all reason rests on emotion (with emotion giving us a reason to reason)?
Albert Einstein says something similar in "Religion and Science": https://sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm "For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capable, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence. But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly."
Depending on feelings and assumptions about the possibility of moral progress and the nature of the universe, were the human race to vanish, perhaps a long process of growth would just begin all over again for it or something like it eventually? And would such a possibility change the presumed optimum you outline?
Also, on reducing suffering as an optimization criterion, always remember the motivation triad (as explained well by Douglas J. Lisle such as in "The Pleasure Trap") of maximizing pleasure, minimizing pain, and minimizing effort -- where our brains try to optimize all three simultaneously (along with other objectives).
On the general topic of suicide prevention, you may find of interest some resources I collected here: https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations...
Especially the point here from David Conroy: "Suicide is not chosen; it happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain. That's all it's about. You are not a bad person, or crazy, or weak, or flawed, because you feel suicidal. It doesn't even mean that you really want to die - it only means that you have more pain than you can cope with right now. If I start piling weights on your shoulders, you will eventually collapse if I add enough weights... no matter how much you want to remain standing. Willpower has nothing to do with it. Of course you would cheer yourself up, if you could. Don't accept it if someone tells you, "That's not enough to be suicidal about." There are many kinds of pain that may lead to suicide. Whether or not the pain is bearable may differ from person to person. What might be bearable to someone else, may not be bearable to you. The point at which the pain becomes unbearable depends on what kinds of coping resources you have. Individuals vary greatly in their capacity to withstand pain. When pain exceeds pain-coping resources, suicidal feelings are the result. Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance of pain versus coping resources. You can survive suicidal feelings if you do either of two things: (1) find a way to reduce your pain, or (2) find a way to increase your coping resources. Both are possible."
Here is a summary of key ideas from Mayeroff's book in more blunt language: https://thoughtcatalog.com/kyle-eschenroeder/2016/11/this-is... "In 1971 a philosopher named Milton Mayeroff wrote the manifesto on giving a shit. It’s titled On Caring (for us, On Giving a Shit) and we’ll pull from it to help understand how giving a shit can change our lives and how we might learn to give higher quality shits."
As mentioned there, Mayeroff also wrote: "No one else can give me the meaning of my life; it is something I alone can make. The meaning is not something predetermined which simply unfolds; I help both to create it and to discover it, and this is a continuing process, not a once-and-for-all. "
Also related: https://www.wikihow.com/Find-Meaning-in-Life
Or, as Richard P. Feynman said: "Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all."
For example, your post shows you care about philosophy as well as reducing suffering -- and there are a lot more ideas and actions you can explore starting from those two areas. If you do so, please keep in mind the extra complexity of the motivational triad and other possible human objectives. And along with "The Pleasure Trap", please also perhaps reflect on the book "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose" by Deirdre Barrett and the essay "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" by Paul Graham as they explore the dark side of modern society and technology relative to human inclinations adapted for a more tribal culture within an environment with different abundances and scarcities. As Stephen Ilardi writes about in "The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs": "We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life."
All the best in discovering and/or making meanings in your life -- including from loving caring.
- Two related books you may find of interest along the lines of Paul Graham's insightful "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" essay:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book argues that human instincts for food, sex, and territorial protection evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not for today’s densely populated technological world. Our instincts have not had time to adapt to the rapid changes of modern life. The book takes its title from Nikolaas Tinbergen's concept in animal ethology of the supernormal stimulus, the phenomena by which insects, birds, and fish in his experiments could be lured by a dummy object which exaggerated one or more characteristic of the natural stimulus object such as giant brilliant blue plaster eggs which birds preferred to sit on in preference to their own. Barrett extends the concept to humans and outlines how supernormal stimuli are a driving force behind today’s most pressing problems, including modern warfare, obesity and other fitness problems, while also explaining the appeal of television, video games, and pornography as social outlets."
And also "The Pleasure Trap" from 2006 by Douglas Lisle and Alan Goldhamer, which is mainly about food but much the same idea. They say humans are adapted to eat a certain variety of nutritious foods. But modern industry has made it possible for businesses to sell large quantities of tasty but non-nutritious foods which people get used to. The foods destroy people's health over time in various ways by malnutrition from missing micronutrients and fiber which leads to cancer, heart disease, stroke, and so on. Getting back to enjoying healthy eating generally requires four to twelve weeks of suffering through "neuroadaptation" to appreciate the more subtle tastes of whole healthy foods. The book is summarized here in detail: http://web.archive.org/web/20160418155513/http://www.drfuhrm...
Here are some other related books emphasizing how children are being harmed by pervasive commercial media and what parents can do (all easier said than done) include:
* "The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online"
* "Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time"
* "Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids-and How to Break the Trance"
* "So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids"
* "The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
Or, as I summarize in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
- I highly recommend Deirdre Barrett's book Supernormal Stimuli for a fascinating and detailed review of this phenomenon in its various manifestations in human societies.
