There’s a few books I recommend for you, if you’re open to learning more about this subject.

The first is “Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas” by Natasha Dow Schüll. The second, and arguably more direct and fascinating, is “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshanna Zuboff. Both are incredibly eye-opening in their treatment of technology and how it is designed to influence behavior.

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superkuh 11 hours ago | parent [-]

And for you, to help understand the vast gulf that is the difference between drugs that directly modifify incentive salience and simple normal perceptions of multi-media screens via our senses (that don't), https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/berridge-lab/selected-review-art...

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Balinares 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not seeing where the content you linked is supporting your argument.

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superkuh 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's background education in the basics so you can understand what drug addiction is and the neurological differences in the active populations for wanting versus liking. I guess I can spell it out.

Addictive drugs directly increase wanting via directly activating the downstream targets of dopaminergic populations which predict the valence of stimuli and control of wanting and motivation. By taking a chemically addictive drug you don't even have to enjoy the stimuli related to it. You will still be conditioned to want it and be motivated to re-experience the stimuli surrounding it.

This is vastly different in mechanism and result than simply seeing or hearing a screen. These things cannot directly increase incentive salience regardless of actual valance of the stimuli. You have to actually enjoy the thing and the experiences to form habits.

Do you see the difference now? One thing, the chemical drugs, are addictive. The other things are enjoyable. One will addict everyone because they're addictive. The other only leads to addiction-like behaviors in the context of say, random interval operant conditioning, if you actually enjoy the thing intrinsically first and are of the fairly small subset of that subset that is predisposed to behavioral addictive behaviors.

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46493168 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This strikes me as a distinction without a difference.

	▲	superkuh 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You're right in an important sense. There's not much difference in outcome between direct manipulation of wanting with drugs and using enjoyable stimuli in some form of unethical non-consensual conditioning program (aka advertising). What I am trying to get across, and what I'd hoped all the conditionals and premises I laid out in my original comment made clear, is exactly what I've been explaining in detail: Screens are not drugs. They are not somehow uniquely and magically addictive (like drugs actually are). The multi-media is not the problem and not the device to be regulated. The corporate structure and motivations are the problem. This issue literally applies to any possible human perception even outside of screens. Sport fishing itself is random interval operant conditioning in the same way that corporations use. And frankly, with a boat, it's just as big of a money and time sink. I am saying it's important not to think of screens as the problem. The problem is the corporations' behavior because the human people who commit the acts are insulated from consequence. That's a big difference in terms of the legislation used to mitigate the problem and the people to which it will apply.