Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
medium.com
medium.com
If you like browsing pictures of butts you'll get lots of butts and of the exact kind that you'd like. I'm not sure how they do it. I don't even post on Instagram. And yet I'm addicted now to the Explore tab. They've genuinely managed to build something addictive in a way that other networks are not.
Also Instagram is completely sanitized of politics and any other hot button stuff. So its just a space where you zone out.
Instagram is the crack cocaine of social media. A cocktail of addiction and narcissism refined into its most potent form. I predict that Instagram will continue to grow and might one day rival Facebook itself.
Count yourself lucky that Instagram looks politically sanitized!
I was baffled when I saw their recommendations: They recommended me some old classmates and my university without having any direct interaction from me.
I understand how cookie syncing/matching works and I know Facebook probably knows a lot about me even without an account, but that still got me by surprise.
If your university's alumni association imported their contact list, it's even worse.
There is a pathological strain of individualism divorced from reality that understands freedom not as freedom from all those things that are opposed to human nature (and especially our own vices), but as the right to arbitrarily will and do anything with no reference to human nature. Indeed, there is a hostility to the very idea of human nature because it is seen as an impediment to freedom.
There is this comic [2] about supernormal stimulus that shows how man, and man alone, has the ability to overcome it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
[2] http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/supernormal-stimuli/
I believe Sir Mix-A-Lot studied the problem thoroughly in the 1990s, but in the end, had to concede that he was unable to take control of his own reptile brain.
I often think that salmon has it better than us humans. The salmon is focused on doing what it's doing at the moment, and doesn't have the time or capacity to build a sense of 'self' that they are proud or ashamed of, that colors their actions and gives them pain in the moment because it wasn't what they wanted or thought it would be. They just want to get up stream.
To your point about being unable to control his own reptile brain, however, I don't know how much I buy that. From the get-go, SMA acknowledges that "[he] cannot lie", which I think is a concession to determinism more so than one to biology.
I expected to pick holes in it and make critical comments here. Then as I read it, I realized that while I am not too addicted to posting shit on Facebook, I get the same dopamine release when I post responses here. Sure I feel a bit smarter because its usually involves a bit more reasoning than a selfie on Faceboook, but the end effect is the same. The reading of the article was the first step in chasing that dopamine hit.
But we still lack any sort of warning in the greater contemporary society about the risks of overuse of the hyper stimulus that comes along with social media. I am definitely beginning to see this take shape in our society (with people rejecting social media applications, articles like this, the way people speak to the overuse of such platforms)
You'll also notice that people start making the same comments and having the same conversations over and over again. Instead of having an ongoing conversation about, say, space exploration, you have the same beginning of a discussion happening whenever the topic comes up, and then stopping before it really matures.
That's not to say that the comment section here is bad, but it's still worth paying attention to some of its drawbacks. Particularly because it shares the urgency and compulsive aspects that permeate a lot of current sites.
The only real addictive bit is the points system on HN. I'd be fine with that just going away. It wouldn't be the first time I've refreshed posts I've made repeatedly to see the tally go up.
The old style of forums didn't have the same kind of compulsive pressure, since you could always respond the next day/week/month and the topic would bump back up to the top of the post. If you don't respond on HN or Reddit quick enough, no one is going to see your comment. I frequent some sites that has the older system, and I'll find myself occasionally saying "This isn't that important; wait a few days and see if you feel like responding." But that's not really much of an option here - how many people are going to read your comment if you make it several days later?
And it wouldn't be hard to devise a system that actively discourages compulsive posting behavior. If you, say, had a web forum where everyone could only post once a week, you'd have much less of that urgency (and you'd get a discussion with more users, not just the fraction that habitually post everywhere).
The fact that the 'shape' of the threads changes all the time does not help either (the way the messages are ordered, depending on the upvotes, the freshness, and whichever mysterious other criteria may be involved).
Conversations at a depth higher than 5 or 6 levels is also difficult to follow, so I think not many people read them, let alone take part in them (on Reddit, such deep threads even suffer a penalty twice, and the second one, which requires opening a new tab or window if you don't want to have to reload the whole page once you come back, is probably fatal to almost all of the readers).
(I won't tell how much I miss Usenet and newsreaders once more, I promise :-D )
It's been implied that this is an intentional means of keeping engagement low, as the quality of comments tends to diminish over time, while the likelihood of flamebait and spam increases as comment distance diverges from the root. This is also apparently the reason there are no notifications for new comments. I don't know if it's true or one of those features the community is reading too much meaning into, which only exists as it does because pg wasn't interested in expanding on it.
In any case, I really hope they consider adding more ways to sort the threads - sorting by time rather than karma would be very helpful. They could even keep the karma sort the default so no one else has to complain about the layout changing.
I'm especially fond of the noprocrast feature. I don't know of any other site/app that will kick their users out if they use it for too long.
There's an interesting page where they show the results of 200,000 users of an app called Moment[1] where you can see which apps make people the least happy. Additionally, you can see the time limits at which users start to feel happy about their usage.
http://www.timewellspent.io/app-ratings/
I came upon the movement after incorporating suggestions from Tristan Harris' "How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist[2]" into my every day life.
[1] - https://inthemoment.io
[2] - https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-technology-hijacks-peop...
The post is just material copied from Hooked (which is a creepy book worth reading!), plus observations that have already been made (social media causes us to compare ourselves to everyone else's highlight reel), followed by a bunch of generic, currently popular fads/lifestyle advice (keto diet, exercise, meditate, stoicism).
A far simpler solution is available to all of us: stop using Instagram.
Easier said than done, no? That's basically saying "opt out of modern society," which I personally agree with, but it's not a reasonable solution. These companies that spend b/millions on psychological research to condition consumers is not going away anytime soon.
Hahahaha... oh man... at what point did a photo sharing social media website become "modern society"?
> These companies that spend b/millions on psychological research to condition consumers is not going away anytime soon.
Look, if you're already considering drastic measures like fundamentally altering your diet, your exercise regime, or the very way you perceive the world and interact with people, I think it reasonable to suggest smaller, more achievable changes like opting out of the very things that are making you unhappy.
Simply removing the apps from your phone, which will take you mere seconds, would go a long long way by limiting exposure. Disabling or deleting your account entirely takes only seconds more, if you're willing to take the leap. This isn't like trying to kick a crack habit. You have a choice.
You're deliberately ignoring the idea of addiction, consumerism, and conditioning to feel superior because you think you can "quit" being influenced by our culture and society.
But with social media, their business model is to make me click on or look at things. That's just where it ends for them. And the productivity value is just not there. Yes, you can find helpful information, but I have to sift through so much noise.
I really enjoyed commuting by bike, to the point I would go to certain places solely for the bike ride, and leave within a few minutes. I was also addicted to smoking. HN is like my bike addiction, while FB and Twitter feel more like my smoking addiction.
AdTech companies use the same strategies that newspapers used to use. Yellow journalism has become fake news. Tabloids are now blogs fueled by rumor mills. Newspapers trying to promote celebrities are the same as having a twitter / snapchat / instagram account.
A rose by any other name is still a rose.
I never did see what "the 'gram" meant.
Uh, we have the Roman alphabet, the English language we can write using the Roman alphabet, and dictionaries where we can look up words in the English language written with the Roman alphabet. Commonly we can also use Google to look up such meanings.
Then acronyms such as PPL and abbreviations such as "the 'gram" are not in an English dictionary and, thus, are obscure and poor means of communications. Similarly for icons.
So, in the interest of clear communications, ease of use, and a good user experience (UX), the Web pages for my startup are in English using the Roman alphabet and have no acronyms, abbreviations, or icons, obscure or otherwise.
Doing the same, the OP would be easier to read.
I did a year of very low carb, and was pretty good after about the first couple weeks. I just really like pasta, bread, etc. I've been heading in that direction again, as I did a lot better on beef, bison, elk, etc than poultry or legume sources. Also have noticed the effects of secondary animal products and what they're fed more than I expected.
I just wish soy free eggs weren't so much more difficult to find... and making my own mayo/ranch isn't so bad, just time consuming for a product that spoils relatively quickly. But I feel a lot better when I don't have the stuff.
Aside: trail mix is a whole new level of fun when you can't have legumes (peanuts), and are badly allergic to cranberries. Have to make my own.
Is that really true? I've heard this kind of argument so many times that it seems right, but I've rarely seen any scientific evidence to back it up. Surely our bodies have evolved in some subtle and diverse ways over many thousands of generations?
How biopharma is enabling the worst in us.
Anything in excess is terrible. It's why so much of news industry and people who watch too much too get depressed.
People who religiously watch foxnews and the members of NPR or subscribers to the NYTimes are just as depressed.
Ultimately, this is an article that says nothing. It's a clickbait form of water is wet. And yes, too much water is also bad for you.