>Expose brain to something, record it somehow, see if brains reaction in the recording helps you understand more about who we are and what cognition is.

It also helps companies like Moonbug Entertainment (Candle Media) understand how to build better Distractatrons.

    It’s a small TV screen, placed a few feet from the larger one, that plays a continuous loop of banal, real-world scenes — a guy pouring a cup of coffee, someone getting a haircut — each lasting about 20 seconds. Whenever a youngster looks away from the Moonbug show to glimpse the Distractatron, a note is jotted down.

    “It’s not mega-interesting, what’s on the Distractatron,” said Maurice Wheeler, who runs the research group. “But if they aren’t fully focused, they might go, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ and kind of drift over. We can see what they’re looking at and the exact moment when they got distracted.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/06/17/cocomelon-chil...

What a world.

Breaking news: TikTok is bad for you

On telegram?

Isn't there that one Harry Potter warning. I think it was the potion guy who said too much luck is dangerous. I guess that is somewhat of a parallel to this. Too much positive visual stimuli is dangerous or bad.

Others on Telegram? Some sort of a HN channel?

Or as SCP calls them, cognitohazards.

Also relevant: <https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-theory-for-why-people-...>

My understanding is that those who work with the mentally handicapped use bright lights and other stimuli to soothe and control them. It is also my understanding that the autistic are stimulated by vibrant colors (coughcoughMy Little Ponycoughcough).

Who is to say that the rest of us are not also vulnerable to such controlling stimuli?

The plan is to get content producers out of the loop to reduce revenue share and boost profits.

This does indeed seem comically evil. While surely this may provide somewhat interesting insights in how our brain processes things, this seems squarely past the "should" part of "you scientists were so obsessed with whether you could you failed to consider whether you should"

I'd say we're already well past that point. Short-form "content" already exists and is messing with people's brains, this is the same thing just taken a few steps further. By the time the tech companies start using it, it will already be too late and we'll be left discussing whether the next man-made nightmare they come up with is the point where the tech industry must be stopped.

I get that people see this and think: ads and social media. My first thought was cognitive neurorehabilitation and brain stimulation.

Realistically, probably ads, but maybe not only that?

(AI start-up idea: one of our ads a day keeps dementia away! /s)

You can't say things like this on this website. On here, every new tech thing is a "progress" /s

Its also an interesting way to discover what that part of the brain is for, right.

what the brain needs is Default Mode Network, not more stimuli

Think of the shareholders (it's time to start using physical force to stop people)

Am I the only one who is avoiding even clicking the link just in case?

If you read the techbique it reads like something far less remarkable being PR’d to sound like a big deal.

The fact it’s bucketing by making images of lighting and facial expressions, the fact it doesn’t natively do the video it does an image then video generates from it.

The results look really bad and samey. Doubt this would work for the actual thing they’re pitching it for.

My current theory is that these are similar to cigarettes. Nobody likes the first draft, it burns your lungs, your entire body wants to reject it. But the nicotine stimulates just the right receptors so that if you keep at it for just long enough, you'll be hooked and start disregarding the terrible taste, smell, tar in your lungs, and yellowing of your teeth.

All of this to say, if you subjected yourself to just enough TikTok scrolling on just the right topic, you might find yourself using it occasionally after that initial hump, then slightly more frequently, then daily.

You might still not "like" it, but the habit is what matters.

You're not alone!

I hope my brain is also different. I also have never spent hours scrolling through short-form videos on Instagram, TikTok, Facebok, etc. I never ever walk outside with my phone in my hand, instead enjoying the view.

I do enjoy watching YouTube videos at home, on the living-room flatscreen, on a variety of topics, but I select them manually, one at a time, from the vast selection The Algorithm(TM) offers me, plus my own searches.