Yeah. Let's not fetishize "real world". Offline space is often boring and most people suck. There's a reason why we prefer to be looking at the screens. Having said that, I think that it makes sense to be more cautious about screen time and interact more with the offline space. Not because offline space is better, but because our brains are fried and they peceive online space to be better than it really is, we're literal addicts. I'm trying to teach myself that it's okay to be bored.

My hypothesis is: Humans are social and need social interaction to thrive. However we are not wired for the diversity of interacting with 7 Billion people and all the derivatives.

We thrive in small groups where there is high trust social networks and generally being around people with the same culture and belief system.

maybe there's no core just unchecked forces due to technology removing barriers

No, our nature is to satiate our dopamine system. That system evolved to keep us fed, nourished, and to make us make friends and belong and have sex to make more humans. The problem is that we are now so smart and clever that we can start learning how the dopamine system works and hacking it.

This isn't new. We've been doing it for a long time with booze, porn, drugs, sexual excess, gambling, pointless consumerism, certain kinds of religious fervor, endless things.

But almost all of those things are self-limiting. They're either costly, dangerous, in limited supply, or physically harmful enough to our health that we shy away from them and taboos develop around them.

Addictive digital media may actually be more dangerous than those things precisely because it is cheap, always available, endless, and physically harmless. As a result it has no built-in mechanism that limits it. We can scroll and scroll and chase social media feedback loops forever until we die.

AI slop feeds are going to supercharge this even more. Instead of human creators we will have AI models that can work off immediate engagement feedback and fine tune themselves for each individual user in real time. I'm quite certain all the antisocial media companies are working on this right now. Won't be long before they start explicitly removing human creators from the loop and just generating endless customized chum with ad placement embedded into it.

Some people have the discipline to push back, but many do not either for psychological/neurological reasons or because they are exhausted and stressed and unable to summon the energy. Humans do not have infinite willpower. So I've been predicting for a while that eventually we're going to heavily regulate or tax this space.

This concerns me too due to the free speech implications and the general risk of overreacting and overcorrecting. It'll be tempting for politicians to regulate or tax only the platforms they don't like, or to use the regulatory mechanism to crack down on legitimate speech by grouping it in with addictive chum. We've seen similar things with attempts to regulate porn or hate speech. But it's coming. I have little doubt. I think we'll see this when GenZ and GenA start entering politics.

It's really still shocking to me. If you went back in time and told me in, say, 2006, that our engagement-hacking would be so successful that it became an X-risk to humanity, I'm not sure I'd believe you. I never would have believed how effective this stuff could be. It's just a damn screen for god's sake! I think a lot of people are still in denial about this problem because it seems so absurd that a touch screen can addict people as well as fentanyl, but it's true. I see it around me all the time.

Edit:

My preferred way to go about reeling this back in would be to strike at the root and start taxing advertising the way we tax booze, drugs, gambling, and other vices. Advertising revenue is the trunk of this tree. The entire reason these systems are created is to keep people staring so ads can be pushed at them. Take that away and a lot of the motive to build and run these things goes away.

Another, which we're already seeing, is to age-restrict antisocial media. Young minds are particularly vulnerable to these tactics, more so than adults, and all addiction pushers try to addict people early.

Lastly, we could start campaigns to educate people. We need schools teaching classes explaining to kids how these systems addict and manipulate them and why, and public PSAs to the same effect. It needs to be treated like a health issue because it is.

Taxes, education, and age restriction is how we almost killed cigarettes in the USA, so there is precedent for these three things together working.

We also need to be a lot more precise in our language. The problem is not the Internet, phones, computers, "tech," AI, etc. The problem is engineering systems for engagement, specifically. If you are trying to design a system to keep people staring at a screen (or other interface) for as much time as possible, you are hurting people. What you're doing is in the same category as what the Sackler family did with oxycontin. Engagement engineering is a predatory destructive practice and the people who do it are predators. I think it's taken a long time for people to realize this because, again, it's just a damn screen! It's shocking that this is so effective that we need to have this societal conversation.

Would be funny if the "great filter" is not nukes or some other weapon, but social media.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

https://www.reddit.com/r/calvinandhobbes/comments/6pontu/wha...

;-)

... This is relevant how?

Dump advertising into the ocean. The motivation for maximizing engagement on social media is to maximize ad impressions for revenue. Every algorithm, every dark pattern, every UX tweak, is aimed toward that sole end. The issue cannot be fixed by regulating social media itself; it is the enormous monetary incentive that is the root of the problem and until the flow of money is choked off, corporations will still doggedly pursue that revenue.

:-D I do love the image of hurling GPU’s into the sea!

My suggestion was much more modest. Put down the phone and delete your socials. Disengagement is the ultimate act of rebellion.

I'd love to lobby for "the right" to opt out of AI features.

When I google search "why is the sky blue" , it spins up an LLM. This is incredibly wasteful for simple, known answers.

When my friend googles the same thing, it spins up the LLM again. Google was a pioneer of search indexing, and now it seems like we don't attempt to index answers at all. They're spinning up an LLM every time because they're trying to run up the AI "adoption" metrics.

I'd love to be able to ask for simple things, like the address of the local restaurant 3 blocks away, without firing up a GPU in an AI data center.

I don't always want to "talk with" a computer. Sometimes I just want to "use" a computer. Maybe that makes me a fool. Or an old man yelling at clouds.

I think it’s easier than that. We can literally start the revolution from our beds:

1. For every social media account you have: post “I’m leaving. You should too”

2. For every social media account you have: close it.

3. Profit

Given to the direction we're going, I don't believe this digital world will be one in which we're free either.

Maybe the problem is that you're looking for content to consume, instead of art to enjoy and participate with. The distinction is important because how you frame a problem changes how you solve it.

There's way more good content available than an employed adult human has time to consume. I have watched five great seasons of TV this year (Frieren, Apothecary Diaries, Dandadan, Blue Box, Stranger Things, all on Netflix) and zero movies (no time with kids!), and have read twelve good books (ranging from prize-winning literature to incredible graphic novels). I have zero time for anything else besides two other hobbies, both of which involve the creative act: coding, and writing fanfiction.

When I hear "there's nothing good available," I assume the person is a dullard. Like where are you looking that you can't throw a rock and hit something worth watching?!

This is absolutely social media. And like all addicts, people here loudly proclaim that it's less toxic.

Whether or not is it indeed less toxic is up for debate.

What:s the difference between reddit and HN beyond the form?

It seems to be obviously social media to me

HN is definitely social media, even if it isn't explicitly labeled as such. Ostensibly Instagram is just a photo sharing site, but we all know it is social media.

> isn't HN more like professional news/discussion place?

I see enough racist and misogynist comments here to know that isn't true. And that's not even considering the low-knowledge comments offered up as expertise.

I long for the days of a Slashdot where you could filter out anyone with a UID greater than 200K or so, and it'd be nothing but 20yr experts in IT dropping rugged after rugged of tremendously insightful analysis. (Granted there was also plenty of GNAA frist psot stuff.)

As KMFDM once said: We want to stop reading magazines, stop watching TV, stop caring about Hollywood but we're addicted to the things we hate