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card_zero 12 hours ago

We have to be genetically adapted to survive food deliveries and TikTok?

pinkmuffinere 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why not? The claim (which I believe is well supported) is that these things hijack some innate impulses to trap us in bad decisions. If you consistently make bad decisions (eg, put off developing your life) your line is less likely to continue.

This is just like animals that didn’t run from humans — they didn’t know to be scared of us and now they’re dead. Even massive things that could crush us can be killed if we slip through their defenses. The ones that survive are the ones that learn to fear the dangerous thing.

11 hours ago | parent | next [-]
[deleted]
card_zero 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So hopefully future generations develop an instinctive fear of food deliveries and TikTok, or what?

pinkmuffinere 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Just to be clear, I'm arguing that there _does_ appear to be evolutionary pressure here, so we probably will evolve in response. That argument doesn't require predicting how exactly we will evolve; you're kindof asking an orthogonal question. But I don't mind orthogonal questions, and I can imagine some ways that we might evolve in response:

1. Human reward-seeking becomes longer-term, with less of an emphasis on short term rewards. I'd bet this trend has probably already been ongoing for a long time. But I wonder if there are some negative effects of this -- for example perhaps it takes us longer to learn things that truly do have very quick, direct feedback loops. Maybe it takes us longer to learn how to walk, swim, etc as a result.

2. Screen-avoidant communities start to dominate the human population. Eg, Amish communities, "traditionalist" communities like that, your friends that religiously don't use social media, etc. I'd bet this is already happening too! Would be really interesting to look at the proportion of new births, perhaps controlling for usage of birth control. I wonder if this effect could result in humanity generally becoming more religious (as opposed to the recent trend of becoming less religious). Admittedly, this is more of a cultural change than a change in our dna, but I feel it fits the category -- it's a widespread change across humanity in response to the pressure of distracting apps.

3. Humans grow a stronger distaste for blue light. I suspect this wouldn't be the "end" state, because if it happens we'll probably just start buliding devices that put off less blue light.

hackernud3s 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the future they'll just 3D-print humans "al gusto".. if they decide it's even worth the trouble.

quantummagic 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The point is that to the extent it causes certain individuals to lose faith in humanity, or become reclusive, and as a result not reproduce -- it has the effect of altering the overall genetic makeup of subsequent generations. The net result being a population "adapted" to this new environment.