Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

Yeah, it's a really surreal bit. The key verse is Gen 11:6: "The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."

The use of "the LORD" at the beginning pegs this as a "Jahwist" passage. It was written fairly early on, when Judaism was much less of a monotheistic religion. The next verse is "Let us go down"..." There are various interpretations of "us", but it suggests that it was written when "Jahweh" was one creator deity among others.

The same author also wrote the bit about the fall from Eden, the story of Cain, and the story of Noah. In general, it seems like a deity that was big on making judgments about people, and keeping them separate from the realm of the deities.

It's a very classic kind of deity, personifying real traits of the world. We've always been "dumb, scared, and fractured", and somebody wanted to tell a story about why that is.

There's a weird kind of hope in it: we really could be god-like if we just pulled together. But God really hated us and so he gave us Facebook and Twitter.

I think it works better if you replace desires with engagement. The biggest problem posed by social media, IMO, is it's optimized towards what keeps people using it the most not necessarily what the users actually want from it. If Jim Bob's photos at the beach is posted after Jim Bob's rant on some political topic you're still pushed to see the rant first and for longer because it's what people engage with the most even if it's what they like the least.

I bet part of it is the dopamine response of getting a lot of likes combined with the uncertainty of when or if you'll get it again.

That's the crux of the skinner box, right?

If you make a post that gets 100+ likes more than usual, it feels good. "I am so smart. I am so clever. Everyone likes me!" you get to say to yourself as the likes roll in.

Then, the feeding frenzy is over and you're back to being you.

Anything that feels good can be addictive. Get enough people whose whole lives revolve around getting dopamine responses from positive social media interactions and you'll have a bunch of people who have MK Ultra'd themselves into being the zombie patsies of a bot farm who provides them with the dopamine they live for as long as they do the things your bot farm has told them to do.

Spin the wheel up enough and let it fly.

Rinse and repeat and you can have an army of happy and well-paid misinformation soldiers at your beck and call backed up by a horde of dopamine junkies willing to say or do almost anything to keep the dopamine flowing.

It's quite terrifying once you step back far enough to see the whole thing.