5 ms·

> In that scenario, we're effectively no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. This is a self contradict

by dmfdmf 9y ago

> In that scenario, we're effectively no longer in control of our own free will as long as someone else can profit by controlling it. This is a self contradiction. You always have the choice to turn off or tune out the distractions and focus your attention on more important things (which is the essence of free will). That people don't feel like doing that is a psychological problem not a problem with capitalism or profit seeking.

eyeinthepyramid 9y ago
That raises interesting questions -- how much free will does an addict have? Are those who exploit an addiction for profit complicit in that addiction?
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >Are those who exploit an addiction for profit complicit in that addiction? When it comes to drug law, precedent would show that they are far more culpable than the user/addict.
  - Jach 9y ago
    Behind every addict there's usually an enabler in some form. Sometimes there's a nasty feedback loop. Of course that doesn't negate human agency or its importance, however it makes for a convenient excuse. Agency seems unevenly distributed, but it also seems to vary within a single individual depending on what sorts of things they face and what excuses they have to avoid exercising it. Humans have a wide range of adaptations. In the modern world where even the very poor can live better than the wealthiest in olden times, exercising much agency isn't that important.
branchless 9y ago
In London there are adverts on the steps I walk up on the underground. The busker spots are "sponsored". It's like the Clockwork Orange "aversion therapy" in terms of making you watch. I'm very aware of what the media is doing but it has to get through on some level. Much of advertising is telling you that you are incomplete and product x will complete you / cement friendships etc. Of course that is crap, but even just being told the first part has to have an effect.
- hindsightbias 9y ago
  First company that integrates something like Google glasses and adblock gets my money.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    The sentiment sounds like a good idea, but a nitpick. Google glass is not "mixed reality" or whatever the best term is. It's just a small display you can glance over to. It covers/integrates with nothing.
alansammarone 9y ago
Exactly. If you can't consciously choose to turn off your phone and go read a book, you never had anything that remotely resembles free will.
- mirimir 9y ago
  That's easy to say. But what if family, friends and work are so tied up with your phone that doing so would hurt too much? Sure, you can change your work and friends, and cut off your family, but that's hard.
  - erikbye 9y ago
    For most, I think there are easy ways to massively reduce time spent on their phone without an adverse effect on career or relations otherwise, but that's predicated on a want to. Besides, I see plenty of people who are on their phone all the time, yet their life is almost void of physical interaction with others. I think it's very common to overestimate the importance of being "on", and even more common to think it has a positive effect on their lives.
  - Mz 9y ago
    It can be hard. It may be less painful to do it slowly and gradually over time rather than some sudden pronouncement. To some degree, any time anyone says they "can't" do something like this, they are saying they don't want it bad enough. I have done a lot of rearranging of my life to get things to work in a satisfactory fashion. This includes but is not limited to changing my relationship to how I use my phone. I used to be a big phone person. I now do most stuff online. After a long time of doing very little with my phone, I am slowly doing more with it these days. But there is also this: If your family, friends and work all are basically making you crazy, they would probably do so even if phones did not exist. So, this might be an indicator of deeper problems. Or it might be an indicator that you aren't being driven as crazy as other people, so it just isn't really that important to you.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  There is a spectrum. If you want to guess the outcome of a coin toss, no strings attached, you're completely free to choose heads or tails. But a lot of bright minds are working very hard to convince you to pick up that phone and not the book. You're being told to pick tails by a man with a gun, offered a reward if you do and pain if you don't. Perhaps this man is quieter for you, or maybe you have never let him in. But he is very real for a lot of people.
pmichaud 9y ago
This is wrong because it looks exactly one layer deep and ignores the greater complexity. Of course the answer to a DOS is to not accept the incoming requests. It's tricky to distinguish between the malicious requests and the legitimate ones, and doing so doesn't cost nothing. One way to break the defense of a DOS is to DOS the system that does the sorting. Further, The "requests", in this case bids for our attention, exist on a spectrum from "legit" to "malicious"-- or more precisely "information I will endorse having gotten in long-term retrospect" to "information I will have wished I had no gotten in long term retrospect." So we're already fucked, because you can't even make that determination in a meaningful sense. When do you eventually settle on a filter that is an approximation of the above, you'll find that it's trivial to DOS that filter too since we're made of meat and exist in a low trust environment. You can live in the woods or whatever, but since you're posting on HN, I assume you haven't chosen that. And you can look at the other posts in this threads for examples of just how intrusive and unavoidable the bid for attention actually are. And all this is only the first layer of complexity: the difficulty/impossibility of individually choosing to "free will" your way of this issue. The next layer is that we're not even talking about individuals. We're talking about Capitalism, by which I mean we're talking about systemic issues. That's a whole different can of worms, but the headline is: in response to global, systemic issues if you find yourself saying a variation of "it's simple! humans just need to be different/better," then you're doing it wrong. You're missing most of the relevant dimensions, so you will not solve the problem, nor is your voice likely to be particularly helpful in the discussion about potential solutions.
- dmfdmf 9y ago
  I never denied it was complex, I denied that it was an attack on free will which is impossible. I think it is a real psychological problem and I think blaming capitalism or the "the system" or "the man", etc. are themselves rationalizations and misdirection that prey on people susceptible to suggestion or manipulation, i.e. emotionalism, to advance political agendas.
Super_Jambo 9y ago
I challenge you to cross London without seeing or sensing an advert or artificial call to buy something. Mind the gap and the buses with your blind fold on. Don't forget your nose plugs. It's true, you could do it but would it be a life?

by dmfdmf 9y ago

eyeinthepyramid 9y ago

That raises interesting questions -- how much free will does an addict have? Are those who exploit an addiction for profit complicit in that addiction?

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>Are those who exploit an addiction for profit complicit in that addiction? When it comes to drug law, precedent would show that they are far more culpable than the user/addict.
- Jach 9y ago
  Behind every addict there's usually an enabler in some form. Sometimes there's a nasty feedback loop. Of course that doesn't negate human agency or its importance, however it makes for a convenient excuse. Agency seems unevenly distributed, but it also seems to vary within a single individual depending on what sorts of things they face and what excuses they have to avoid exercising it. Humans have a wide range of adaptations. In the modern world where even the very poor can live better than the wealthiest in olden times, exercising much agency isn't that important.

branchless 9y ago

In London there are adverts on the steps I walk up on the underground. The busker spots are "sponsored". It's like the Clockwork Orange "aversion therapy" in terms of making you watch. I'm very aware of what the media is doing but it has to get through on some level. Much of advertising is telling you that you are incomplete and product x will complete you / cement friendships etc. Of course that is crap, but even just being told the first part has to have an effect.

hindsightbias 9y ago
First company that integrates something like Google glasses and adblock gets my money.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  The sentiment sounds like a good idea, but a nitpick. Google glass is not "mixed reality" or whatever the best term is. It's just a small display you can glance over to. It covers/integrates with nothing.

alansammarone 9y ago

Exactly. If you can't consciously choose to turn off your phone and go read a book, you never had anything that remotely resembles free will.

mirimir 9y ago
That's easy to say. But what if family, friends and work are so tied up with your phone that doing so would hurt too much? Sure, you can change your work and friends, and cut off your family, but that's hard.
- erikbye 9y ago
  For most, I think there are easy ways to massively reduce time spent on their phone without an adverse effect on career or relations otherwise, but that's predicated on a want to. Besides, I see plenty of people who are on their phone all the time, yet their life is almost void of physical interaction with others. I think it's very common to overestimate the importance of being "on", and even more common to think it has a positive effect on their lives.
- Mz 9y ago
  It can be hard. It may be less painful to do it slowly and gradually over time rather than some sudden pronouncement. To some degree, any time anyone says they "can't" do something like this, they are saying they don't want it bad enough. I have done a lot of rearranging of my life to get things to work in a satisfactory fashion. This includes but is not limited to changing my relationship to how I use my phone. I used to be a big phone person. I now do most stuff online. After a long time of doing very little with my phone, I am slowly doing more with it these days. But there is also this: If your family, friends and work all are basically making you crazy, they would probably do so even if phones did not exist. So, this might be an indicator of deeper problems. Or it might be an indicator that you aren't being driven as crazy as other people, so it just isn't really that important to you.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
There is a spectrum. If you want to guess the outcome of a coin toss, no strings attached, you're completely free to choose heads or tails. But a lot of bright minds are working very hard to convince you to pick up that phone and not the book. You're being told to pick tails by a man with a gun, offered a reward if you do and pain if you don't. Perhaps this man is quieter for you, or maybe you have never let him in. But he is very real for a lot of people.

pmichaud 9y ago

This is wrong because it looks exactly one layer deep and ignores the greater complexity. Of course the answer to a DOS is to not accept the incoming requests. It's tricky to distinguish between the malicious requests and the legitimate ones, and doing so doesn't cost nothing. One way to break the defense of a DOS is to DOS the system that does the sorting. Further, The "requests", in this case bids for our attention, exist on a spectrum from "legit" to "malicious"-- or more precisely "information I will endorse having gotten in long-term retrospect" to "information I will have wished I had no gotten in long term retrospect." So we're already fucked, because you can't even make that determination in a meaningful sense. When do you eventually settle on a filter that is an approximation of the above, you'll find that it's trivial to DOS that filter too since we're made of meat and exist in a low trust environment. You can live in the woods or whatever, but since you're posting on HN, I assume you haven't chosen that. And you can look at the other posts in this threads for examples of just how intrusive and unavoidable the bid for attention actually are. And all this is only the first layer of complexity: the difficulty/impossibility of individually choosing to "free will" your way of this issue. The next layer is that we're not even talking about individuals. We're talking about Capitalism, by which I mean we're talking about systemic issues. That's a whole different can of worms, but the headline is: in response to global, systemic issues if you find yourself saying a variation of "it's simple! humans just need to be different/better," then you're doing it wrong. You're missing most of the relevant dimensions, so you will not solve the problem, nor is your voice likely to be particularly helpful in the discussion about potential solutions.

dmfdmf 9y ago
I never denied it was complex, I denied that it was an attack on free will which is impossible. I think it is a real psychological problem and I think blaming capitalism or the "the system" or "the man", etc. are themselves rationalizations and misdirection that prey on people susceptible to suggestion or manipulation, i.e. emotionalism, to advance political agendas.

Super_Jambo 9y ago

I challenge you to cross London without seeing or sensing an advert or artificial call to buy something. Mind the gap and the buses with your blind fold on. Don't forget your nose plugs. It's true, you could do it but would it be a life?