The question presented here, though, is whether or not allowing Facebook to monopolize the industry is a threat to society. Services provided are irrelevant. This is a matter of centralization.
Don't mistake addiction for contentment. How many of those people would like to be doing something else, but just can't pull themselves away from the slot machine?
But I can tell you almost anything creative / productive / self-developmental feels more rewarding than the time I fritter away doing nothing on the internet, like idly scrolling Reddit.
I'm not content that my default mode is to do things that never feel rewarding. So any minute I can reclaim for something more self-developmental, like a Duolingo Spanish exercise, makes my life a little better and satisfying in my own eyes.
My point was that people often seem to romanticise fairly arbitrary personal development goals as being a lofty intent, but when push comes to shove you'll find them in front of the TV or playing a game. What does that say about our internal reward system and the value of forcing yourself to do something that you tell yourself you'll enjoy over something you genuinely enjoy? The idea that entertainment is a "lower pursuit" and learning arbitrary skills is a "higher pursuit" smacks of social construction.
That something is "enjoyable" in the short-term does not mean that it is beneficial in the long term.
Doing drugs, getting high, gambling, any other short-term dopamine hit is easy, and feels good in the moment, yet can pretty easily be characterized as bad in the long term, and objectively worse than alternative actions that in the short term are not as pleasurable and enjoyable. I use obviously extreme examples to illustrate the logic.
Figuring out which pursuits and behaviors fit into which bucket certainly is not quite so straight forward. But I think the OP you are responding to has something right when they describe it challenging to escape the easy/addictive and replace it with the difficult/beneficial.
If you only characterized exercise as "practicing picking up a heavy weight and putting it over there. Why do you need to do this? etc." then certainly the benefits can seem ridiculous.
That there is no direct practical need to learn Spanish, doesn't mean learning to speak it doesn't garner ancillary benefits.
I'd be terribly unhappy if all I did was surf Reddit, but I was also equally unhappy when I just tried to work, produce, and learn all the time.
Engineers who have identified a systemic risk to society.
Couldn't your argument apply all the same to heroin?
If people are happy doing heroin all day, who are we to challenge them?
What's more, games often help people connect to others, sometimes from around the world, in a shared interest. For people who are socially stressed or are going through a rough time without enough support in real life, this can be extremely helpful. And even for those who have plenty of social life, it's often fun to meet people in game.
I say this as a lifelong game player, and it's not to discount their positive effects - I think I'm a much better strategist and planner as a result of playing games as a kid.
It's precisely this property of videogames that allows so many people with similar problems to feel achievement.
I've had to put the kongregate minigames site into my own /etc/hosts file as 0.0.0.0 to stop myself playing the "Idle"/"Clicker" genre.
Positive games do exist, but they are thinner on the ground than they used to be. I think.
A lot of videogames focus on instant gratification and variable time rewards. There have been some games focused on problem solving - games where instead of simply playing you'd find yourself spending 20 minutes looking over your handwritten notes trying to puzzle something out - but they're a minority.
The problems come when something has a feedback loop which promotes more usage beyond normal usage. Alcohol has this, and so does heroin. Different games have this to different degrees. Like most things I've mentioned, different people are susceptible to this to different degrees, which complicates the issue.
(btw what you have said is basically the Godwin's Law of talking about happiness)
Me personally? No. We as a society in which that person lives? Yes, to the degree that it affects us. That's why we have public education and vaccination.
If you want to retire to a remote cabin in the woods with a ton of heroin and finish out your days, I have no complaints. If you want to do it such that others need to clean up after you (whether that be garbage on the street or an unpaid hospital bill from an emergency room visit), then you are subject to their desires to a greater or lesser degree. You aren't allowed to have the benefits of society without the drawbacks. That's what civilization is.
Cogs that don't fit get ground down. That's not meant as some dig against modern society, all human groups feature this to some degree. Your prototypical small native american tribe is no different.
Because that happiness is an illusion. One that prevents them from seeing the seriousness of their situation. Whether it's texting-and-driving, or climate-change-denial. This "tool" is going to do us more harm than good.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-sc...
Great example of this.
The article is excellent. It's well structured and insightful. It also leads us to ask excellent questions and provides relevant content to mull over. As an example, Zuckerberg's message was fascinating in what it didn't say.
My superficial value add to truthhawk's article is as follows.
1. How much sway does Facebook actually have? Do most people seek information outside of Facebook? If they hear/see something enough, does it become truth?
2. Would Zuckerberg want to be president? I've always viewed the President as being a servant to power brokers behind the scenes. Wouldn't Zuckerberg have more influence by striking deals with potential candidates and hold leverage through Facebook profile analysis? Does Zuckerberg have the power to be more than a president?
3. Does anyone actually have the power to take on Facebook? Might that person be subjected to extra criticism (eg. during the next election) if they don't play ball?
4. Facebook exists and it is particularly powerful. If you were to decentralise the leadership (as discussed by truthhawk), would that add benefit? How? I see potential for a fragmented committee, or worse. Could Zuckerberg be like Jobs was to Apple?
5. Long term, assuming Facebook and Zuckerberg survive the test of time, who takes over? What sort of people would gravitate to that role? What might that mean for this wealth of information on many citizens of the world? Even if Zuckerberg is a benevolent dictator, the potential vacuum of power that will be created horrifies me, especially thinking about the personalities that may fight for it.
I don't believe Facebook will disappear any time soon. There are serious questions around Facebook that we desperately need to consider. This article is excellent as it helps focus us on this goal.
This is why I (mostly) love HN. It really makes me think about the world around me in so many interesting and meaningful ways. I may have given up on MSM and once-brilliant sites like Ars Technica (who now thrust biased gender and governmental politics down our throats). I hope HN can keep its secret sauce flowing.
Thanks truthhawk
Side note: the user who submitted this to HN is an Ars Technica co-founder!