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One of the most pervasive and lazy ways to think about humans is that we're rational (homo economicus [0]), and any deviation from that is a personal failing. While some people have better impulse control than others, or have different weaknesses than a particular issue at hand, it's mostly a lack of self-awareness that prevents people from seeing that they too are driven by forces other than pure logic.

An ever so brief study of psychology shows this is a bad model to predict human behavior, and an even worse model to use when constructing and shaping our environment. It leads us to construct hostile environments and experiences where we always have to be on edge, and diminishes our humanity.

The usual retort to this is that hostile environments are a good way to teach us to be sharper, but that's just a lazy way of rationalizing the current situation [1], and represents a lack of understanding of how people learn.

If you want to teach people to be more rational you need to create environments where they are set up to succeed and make challenges within reach. In other words, it matters a lot the exact degree to which the environment is hostile or extractive (and to whom), and if you go over that, people are set up for failure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus

[1] which itself is an irrational bias toward maintaining status quo belief, because it requires less cognitive effort to unwind its knock-on effects

So are you agreeing with the parent? Setting up environments sure sounds like regulating the shit out of facebook which the parent comment hinted at.

Yes they are a drug cartel pushing Dopamine. You pay in Attention which they trade with Advertisers for $$$.

How much Dopamine they can sell to their addicts has to be regulated because as with all addiction, people's ability to control their own behavior degenerates in the face of never ending free dopamine rewards.

I think of so many human problems as the "sugary food" class of problems now. Internet addiction†, pornography, gossip, sensationalist headlines. All sugary food. Our brains are wired to seek out that hit of glucose or dopamine in resource scarce environments and it's maladaptive in the long-term for resource rich ones.

† which is why I'm here on HN, if I'm honest

"Internet addiction" seems like a different thing than the rest of those to me.

Being addicted to discovering new information and sharing with others sounds pretty healthy to me. I think the difference with HN vs FB is that at some level, you are driving your HN interaction, while FB is driving your FB interaction.

I think it only becomes "internet addiction" when you're not the one in control.

I was "addicted" to discovering new information before the internet existed. I biked 20 kilometers to the city to spend hours in the library and dig around in the shelves. When I got got access to the internet in the early 90s I spent hours to search in Usenet news and gopher sources (www hadn't been invented yet). I would not call that always a healthy behavior. It can be pretty inefficient and lacking any direction. Yeah, I sometimes wonder how narrow knowledge my fellow programmers or my early colleague from university who is a professor of computer science today can have.

My interaction on HN could be more focussed to learn something new and not comment something old...

I agree. I think "cheap dopamine" is a good way to describe this.

I fully agree, we should strive for systems that cause it's users to fall into the pit of success[1]. We do this when it comes to driving, road diets[2] or roundabouts[3]. We should have systems to ensure healthy social media use as well.

1. https://blog.codinghorror.com/falling-into-the-pit-of-succes... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_diet 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout

Wow thanks :) I had not come across this idea before! I've thought about this before, but not directly. I feel it is an excellent way to think about what our internet services could be if they were not the product of a hyper-capitalist culture.

As a side note, and relevant to what I am working on, MakeCode and Scratch are very good at encouraging coders to fall into the pit of success. I find it quite difficult to find a real program breaking bug in MakeCode scripts for the Micro:bit. Which helps make it excellent as a teaching tool because you can focus on things that will engage younger learners in coding and engineering.

Yeah, personally I have no issues with something like Netflix. Netflix is actually quite healthy for me. It's a way for me to relax, it's fast, and there's no addiction at all. Same with TikTok or Twitter.

I have no impulse to watch the kind of things that make me feel bad, but many people do. I hear of people wanting to break Netflix addiction. I think certain types of people tend to indulge in certain types of entertainment, and they get drawn into bad behaviour that they wish they could stop.

I agree with this view, and that Netflix must be quite negatively addictive for some. Following from that, I wonder why we don't see similar articles about Netflix as we do about quitting facebook? It has the same kind of relevance to HN but I can't remember ever engaging in discussion about Netflix addiction here.

It sounds like survivorship bias. Netflix is a passive hobby and Facebook is an active one. The people who discuss on HN are likely to indulge in unproductive discussion. Whereas the people who lurk HN quietly and excessively may be likely to indulge in slothful behaviour.

Well, facebook is designed to exploit addictive behavior so it should be no surprise.

I think you are right, but there is a larger group who merely think they 'have it under control' and are unaware of how unhealthy their use of social media actually is.

Like people who drink too much but will absolutely refuse to acknowledge they have a drinking problem, even if they can't remember when a day has gone by without using a glass or two.

That's a pretty good way to think about the problem. However, do we think food manufacturers are doing a good thing by adding filler like sugar and salt to food that doesn't need it to get people eat more of it?

> Whenever this topic comes up, there are always a lot of comments to the effect of "facebook isn't the problem, you are". Maybe it is best to think of facebook like sugary food. Many people have no trouble having one piece of chocolate and then leaving the rest for later.

I have posted such comments. But they are usually in response to people telling me it’s also the best thing I can do. When people make sweeping statements, they should expect pushback.

Yeah the problem is partly that both sides do not understand each other. I was hoping my analogy would help people understand the problem that facebook presents to some people. That way we can start to think beyond sweeping statements and start doing things to help those who need it.

I understand that. And I understand that some people have a problem with that. I used similar analogies (alcoholism, gambling, etc.) as you did before.

> Many people have no trouble having one piece of chocolate and then leaving the rest for later. Many other people are unable to stop themselves from downing the whole 200g block.

This is me. :(

Can you block the entire newsfeed with Ublock origin and only visit specific people's pages when you want to see their updates?

But then how would you know when a given person has updates to see? Sure you could just check periodically, but say there are a dozen people you care about seeing updates for - it gets a lot less convenient than seeing those all in one place. I'd suggest unfollowing everyone except people who's updates you actually want to see, but you'd still have "sponsored" & "suggested" posts etc from FB

Ah. That all seems like too much work for me (unfollowing everyone etc) but I just don't log into it.

Gamification helps. Unfollow as you scroll through the feed for a different sort of dopamine hit ;)

You can install an extension/add-on in firefox and chrome that will block it. That's how I block my newsfeed.

Even the platform specific issues aside, they're all "A Mark Zuckerberg production" and many people may not wish to use the products of a sociopath

It seems extremely hyperbolic to call someone a sociopath for creating a platform for people to share news about themselves with friends and family. As much as I don't really enjoy using Facebook, it is still the single best way for me to keep up with what's going on in the lives of my extended family.

It might not be strictly psychopatic, idk, not a doctor. However when you call your users dumbfucks, recognizing you are exploiting them and still continue to do it... Why would I use (trust) any of his products?

That was a very long time ago. You never said things that would be "problematic" if publicly known?

I probably said a lot of things that would be problematic in this current climate and it doesn't mean I changed my opinion on any of them in particular :)