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Comment by jodrellblank | Hacker News Reader

"If people have the right to be tempted - and that's what free will is all about - the market is going to respond by supplying as much temptation as can be sold." - Eliezer Yudkowsky, LessWrong, "Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization, March 2007

https://www.lesswrong.com/s/MH2b8NfWv22dBtrs8/p/Jq73Gozjsuhd...

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More and more I fear this is our generation's 'smoking'

Both things use chemical reactions in the brain to create an addiction. The only difference is that smoking is regulated.

I do not think they are the same. People addicted to social media can be locked in a room for a week, without social media, and show no adverse withdrawal symptoms. If you try the same to people addicted to drugs, they might die.

They’re also not the same thing because one is named “drugs” and the other is named “TikTok”

But putting pointless distinctions aside, an addiction is an addiction. Gambling addicts won’t die if you lock them in a room for a week (with food and water…), but they’ll go back gambling once you let them out.

Same with TikTok and other social media. They’re creating real addictions in people with real consequences. I’m not an expert scientist doctor man, but afaik addictions are bad.

Huh? I do believe they'd act the same as nicotine addicts; that is, irritable, bored, unfocused, antsy

Literally anything you do creates a "chemical reaction in the brain". That's how brains work.

It’s worse

Smoking can't be harnessed to control people, social media can be.

Also, smoking is socially neutral at worst, arguably even positive. You don’t stop seeing your mates because you really want to stay at home chain smoking. In fact, you probably smoke with your mates.

On the other hand, the constant drip feed of dopamine from social media sites does make people care less about real social interactions.

How and what is LessWrong doing? I haven't heard much about it in years. In a way, it's not a good fit in the 'post-truth' era.

From themselves, via about and a link there "A Brief History of LessWrong" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/S69ogAGXcc9EQjpcZ/a-brief-hi...

> In 2015-2016 the site underwent a steady decline of activity leading some to declare the site dead. In 2017, a team led by Oliver Habryka took over the administration and development of the site, relaunching it on an entirely new codebase later that year.

> The new project, dubbed LessWrong 2.0, was the first time LessWrong had a full-time dedicated development team behind it instead of only volunteer hours. Site activity recovered from the 2015-2016 decline and has remained at steady levels since the launch.

> The team behind LessWrong 2.0 has ambitions not limited to maintaining the original LessWrong community blog and forum. The LessWrong 2.0 team conceives of itself more broadly as an organization attempting to build community, culture, and technology which will drive intellectual progress on the world’s most pressing problems.

I'd be curious about their funding

Thank you! That page addresses the question only in the one quoted sentence, "In 2015-2016 the site underwent a steady decline of activity leading some to declare the site dead.". This page, which I found via the link in the parent, says much more:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MKrrnrCDv6zm4SL9a/why-hasn-t...

I suspect it's connected to the political rejection of post-modernism (in its actual meaning, not the politically loaded meaning) and with it the Enlightement ideas of reason/rationality (replaced by 'winners' - brazenness and aggression), fact (replaced by 'post-truth'), intellect, universal rights and humanitarianism (replaced by nationalism and reactionaryism), and through those things the power and obligation of humans to better their world and themselves. That rejection was widely normalized, I suspect, in the election of 2016, IME. A problem with talking about these things is a factual basis.

Yeah, that's wrong: the market is quite obviously limited by the ability to produce temptation, not consumer's finite ability to buy it.

As in: before TikTok, there was lots of TikTop-Temptation to be sold. Demand didn't change, supply did.

I think that's what the article is saying. The market will continue to innovate to provide greater temptations because that's a competitive and profitable strategy even though it will have some downsides.

And you don't need AI for this. There are lots of media outlets with entertainment news that at best, lack nuance, but most often just spread misinformation in an echo chamber they built.

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