"A 6 year old's brain has no chance against a team of trained data scientists. We all know this."
Hell, I'd argue that many 40-50 year old brains clearly don't stand a chance against a trained data scientist.
Hell, I'd argue that many 40-50 year old brains clearly don't stand a chance against a trained data scientist.
I'd argue a prime-of-their-life 34 year old _data scientist_ doesn't stand a change _against their own algorithms_ if they immerse themselves. It's addiction.
We need to stop acting like it is "weak-minded" people (children is a dog-whistle for this) who are susceptible to tech addiction.
The idea of "standing a chance" is literally like saying you can consciously control your dopamine receptors to actively limit dopamine uptake in your brain.
I asked what she did... a game designer at Zynga.
If I see myself spending too much time on my phone, for instance, I'll put it away for a while.
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You just kinda ignored the whole point of the person you're replying too. This is an addiction, phone games or alcohol or lotto tickets, just because you can stop doesn't mean other people aren't addicted.
This doesn't mean simply wishing an iron willpower on yourself, but one thing that worked wonders for me is modifying my environment to put barriers between me and bad things. I come from a family with a history of addiction and mental illness, and I think my personality can be a bit addictive along a variety of axes, but I consider my interactions with a host of addictive things (drugs, unhealthy food, screens, etc) to be pretty healthy. I know I have a sweet tooth and enjoy the occasional toke, so I don't keep junk food in the house; if I want anything unhealthier than cottage cheese, I can walk my high ass down to the store and get it. There are plenty of apps and extensions to limit screen time: zenscreen is good for mobile, feed eradicator for Facebook, blocksite for Reddit et al, YouTube has a setting to remind you to take a break after N minutes of watching, etc etc etc. I don't have any particular tricks for drugs, but I never developed the caffeine addiction most have because it was beyond crazy to me to start your day with feeding a physical and psychological addiction. [1].
I get that this pattern-matches to a hyper-individualist "external forces don't matter" take on the world, and it's not. But I think of it like defensive driving: feel free to dvocate for external changes and blame external forces, but when it comes down to it, you are the person who has the most invested in yourself and the person with the most power to change your habits. HN's historical fatalist consensus of all-powerful algorithms before which we can only cower in fear seems hugely counter-productive, and honestly a little silly.
[1] Caffeine is a particularly easy physical addiction to kick, given how brief and mild the withdrawal is. More powerfully physically addictive drugs like tobacco or heroin are in another category which I've avoided entirely, so I'm making no claims about them.
All these algorithms need to convince someone who is aware of their downsides is that the upsides are worth it. Instagram needs to convince someone that, sure Instagram isn't good for their mental health, but staying off Instagram means they will have less friends which will be worse for them. This will almost certainly work for a teenager. Other stuff may work for an adult.
And with the way social networks work, something like this can simply become a self fulfilling prophecy.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy. The machines are optimized around numbers and parameters and have no idea what a person is or what a weakness is or what the concept of "weakness" means at all. They are statistical optimization algorithms designed to make one number get as close as possible to another number, by tweaking the values of a whole bunch of other numbers.
Like, a person who knew your weakness and had bad intentions would hone in on the weakness and then use it to manipulate you and take pleasure from interactions where you feel bad and they feel good. The computer is just existing at a higher level of ideas than your feelings, and will simply steam-roll your brain into mush as a minor side-effect of its effort to make that one number look like the other number.
These issues were being raised as far back as 2005-6 when debates were raging about whether likes/clicks/views and other "easy to collect" numbers were the right proxies for peoples needs and feelings. We know which camp prevailed.
What's changed is people's reaction and awareness. Hopefully we learn how to inject some love into the machine and dilute the apathy.
Look, these people are not working to protect you. They're working to create addictions and deepen existing ones. Frankly I think the medical types should lose their licenses for violation of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm" indeed. Making devices and software more ADDICTIVE, deliberately creating and encouraging mental illness (addiction) is a disgraceful violation of this oath.
This is an open secret in the video game world, to the point that some COUNTRIES are banning things like 'loot boxes' because they are naked gambling.
The problem began when users became the product being sold. Now the companies feel that they have a right to your mind and eyes, and are not above fostering or even creating clinical addiction to ensure they have access.
I lived in Russia during the time when slot machines were literally standing in the open on the streets, and yes, mentally infirm people were wasting themselves on them. Normal people did not.
It requires one to completely lack logic reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of a slot machine is to waste his or her time and money.
The same way, it requires a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of a smartphone app throwing 20 bling bling popups per second on you isn't different.
You don't need to be a genius to understand that clickfarming app must be removed, and to do so.
My former high school classmate who did not manage to leave Russia is running a typical "smartphone fixer" kiosk. He said few years ago that the most common request he gets from people is to "remove Google nagware and lock, block or delete Google Pay" so their child will never ever buy anything "in that Internet thing"
At least Chinese and Russian parents understood long ago that Google's business is all about "pocket slot machines (this is how people really call smartphones there)." Why wouldn't American parents do that too?
Casino — a business specifically mathematically engineered to make sure that nobody wins against a casino, to maximize your losses, and to make money from it. By the very definition, nobody "wins" against it. Yet, some people still come and play.
Same thing with google pocket slot machine — the very reason they link the game to your bank account is to milk money from you, or god forbid, your children.