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To a larger context beyond Facebook, how else human life could be without getting programmed? Any exposure to culture literally is a process of being programed

To a larger context beyond Facebook, how else human life could be without getting programmed? Any exposure to culture literally is a process of being programed from shopping at BestBuy to watch a movie in a theatre to take a flight with first class and economy cabins. Maybe the argument here is "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops" but is there any study that long-term loops aren't just as powerful as short term feedback programming? Or I guess the concern here is the centralization of programming done by one company, but then again, the process is centralized, but the content is still diverse and mostly created by those who'd have done the programming outside of such process. A fair argument could be the programming now is much more organized and can be done more efficiently toward a certain goal, but I don't think having more efficiency in this context is necessarily a concern - most concepts that can be programmed can also be re-programmed just as quickly. If Facebook is willing to expose a button to de-program a user they should be capable of doing that. We might become inconsistent as individual human beings from this, namely what I believe yesterday is different from what I believe today or the next hour due to facebook, but later on some other programming might ease this confusion and convince you that nature is just as inconsistent as you.

jh925142 8y ago
I believe the distinction is this: primitive influences on behavior through culturization happen because you experience and do things with other people. Being programmed by Facebook is different: you are posting things and getting feedback in the form of likes which boosts dopamine and you end up in a vortex of false gratification and false relationships and false experiences. It's about attention and the need for hormonal drugs, not about the actual experience or person. How can I put this into better words? Maybe an analogy from the inventor of Twitter and Medium: Social media/the internet is like a simple AI that gives you more of what you like. Now, imagine you see a car crash and you look, along with everyone else--you all stop to look. It's natural, it's inescapable. The internet notices this behavior and decides that humans want more car crashes--so it tries to supply more car crashes. That's the kind of programming we're talking about. Humans are vulnerable and have psychological weaknesses. Social media is tailored to attack certain weaknesses because it's lucrative in an attention economy where advertisements = $$.
- watwut 8y ago
  Isn't actual experience with real person about attention and need for hormonal drugs? And for that matter, isn't it about gratification too? Isn't a friend smiling at you and treating you nicer when you say things he likes similar to him hitting like button? The dopamine hit after you see upvoted post is kinda like dopamine hit when you are popular in real life - except less powerful.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
azinman2 8y ago
Because instead of things being obviously ads on TV and the like (which work, but we can still understand the nature of the source), now things are effectively coming from your friends (“trusted”) with a tiny summary such that you don’t even need to read any further if it works with your existing confirmation bias. Combine this with instant, relatively inexpensive and totally anonymous micro targeting, and you have the most advanced psychological warfare weapon yet.
devilmoon 8y ago
You seem to think that the problem lies only with people being programmed to buy things - the choice of word is probably not helping here a lot - but the real issue here is about the validation loops people experience when on social media. It's not that someone else is programming you to vote candidate X instead of candidate Y or that now you want to buy brand Z, it's that we are rewiring our brains to follow the short-term feedback loops in how we act within society, i.e. we don't go places anymore because we want to experience something new but to share the simple fact of going somewhere with our networks and getting validated by them. I think that's the bigger issue here.
- bb88 8y ago
  > ... but to share the simple fact of going somewhere with our networks and getting validated by them. I think that's the bigger issue here. This isn't a new phenomenon. We see this in the form of companies branding strategy. The more you see the brand on the people you respect, the more likely you are to buy it. A couple of examples. 1. Michael Jordan and Nike. Air Jordan's became the shoe to own in the 1980's. 2. Apple gear. Apple chooses their gear to be instantly recognizable. If you buy a mac book pro, say, you are extending their brand, unless you hide the apple logo somehow. You also see this with brands like Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, Hollister, and RVCA, where they sell clothing with the brand front and center on it. So in 2018, the game is being played on Instagram and Facebook instead of college campuses and high schools in the 1980's.
  - crtasm 8y ago
    >unless you hide the apple logo somehow. I once bought a macbook pro while providing tech support for an organisation that used them exclusively. One of the first things I discovered when setting it up was that it takes three layers of silver gaffa tape over the apple to completely hide its glow.
Micoloth 8y ago
Everything you said is true, and I'm glad somebody pointed this out because I really wouldn't like this discussion to overshoot, like most discussions do, and get to the point where criticizing FB becomes the dumb thing to do. This being said, I think you are touching all of the problems but missing most of them: -Yes, it's about short term loops vs long term loops. This is not about control, it's about what is a good way for people to spend their time: it's been shown times and times again that engaging in long term activities has a great positive impact on your sense of fulfillement, and even if, sure, the whole internet is pretty dangerous in this sense, FB is definitely among the worst content suppliers out there, combining the addictive attention grabbing with mostly shallow and unchalleging content, i think. -Yes, it's about centralization: democracy is great, and democracy works with as much plurality as possible. Sure, mass media have existed for a while now (radios have been crucially exploited by all sorts of dictatorships in 20th century btw), but it has never happened that such a large fraction of the attention time of a whole population was cotrolled by a single private organization. This is Obviuosly dangerous. -Yes, it's about efficiency. Like other commenters pointed out, it's also about the sneaky way in which any content arrives to you just like it was directly from your friend, rather than from a recognised news or content outlet. This catches us hugely more off guard, to such an extent that we are not prepared to handle i think. -Yes, it's also probably about the human relations between people- here's where i'm not actually sure it's making things worse, but it's definitely making things different, just like telephone or cellphones did. This is why we should at least be careful, expecially with children. Yeah, of course humans will still be humans in the end, I mean come on. It's just about deciding what is best for us

jh925142 8y ago

I believe the distinction is this: primitive influences on behavior through culturization happen because you experience and do things with other people. Being programmed by Facebook is different: you are posting things and getting feedback in the form of likes which boosts dopamine and you end up in a vortex of false gratification and false relationships and false experiences. It's about attention and the need for hormonal drugs, not about the actual experience or person. How can I put this into better words? Maybe an analogy from the inventor of Twitter and Medium: Social media/the internet is like a simple AI that gives you more of what you like. Now, imagine you see a car crash and you look, along with everyone else--you all stop to look. It's natural, it's inescapable. The internet notices this behavior and decides that humans want more car crashes--so it tries to supply more car crashes. That's the kind of programming we're talking about. Humans are vulnerable and have psychological weaknesses. Social media is tailored to attack certain weaknesses because it's lucrative in an attention economy where advertisements = $$.

watwut 8y ago
Isn't actual experience with real person about attention and need for hormonal drugs? And for that matter, isn't it about gratification too? Isn't a friend smiling at you and treating you nicer when you say things he likes similar to him hitting like button? The dopamine hit after you see upvoted post is kinda like dopamine hit when you are popular in real life - except less powerful.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

azinman2 8y ago

Because instead of things being obviously ads on TV and the like (which work, but we can still understand the nature of the source), now things are effectively coming from your friends (“trusted”) with a tiny summary such that you don’t even need to read any further if it works with your existing confirmation bias. Combine this with instant, relatively inexpensive and totally anonymous micro targeting, and you have the most advanced psychological warfare weapon yet.

devilmoon 8y ago

You seem to think that the problem lies only with people being programmed to buy things - the choice of word is probably not helping here a lot - but the real issue here is about the validation loops people experience when on social media. It's not that someone else is programming you to vote candidate X instead of candidate Y or that now you want to buy brand Z, it's that we are rewiring our brains to follow the short-term feedback loops in how we act within society, i.e. we don't go places anymore because we want to experience something new but to share the simple fact of going somewhere with our networks and getting validated by them. I think that's the bigger issue here.

bb88 8y ago
> ... but to share the simple fact of going somewhere with our networks and getting validated by them. I think that's the bigger issue here. This isn't a new phenomenon. We see this in the form of companies branding strategy. The more you see the brand on the people you respect, the more likely you are to buy it. A couple of examples. 1. Michael Jordan and Nike. Air Jordan's became the shoe to own in the 1980's. 2. Apple gear. Apple chooses their gear to be instantly recognizable. If you buy a mac book pro, say, you are extending their brand, unless you hide the apple logo somehow. You also see this with brands like Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, Hollister, and RVCA, where they sell clothing with the brand front and center on it. So in 2018, the game is being played on Instagram and Facebook instead of college campuses and high schools in the 1980's.
- crtasm 8y ago
  >unless you hide the apple logo somehow. I once bought a macbook pro while providing tech support for an organisation that used them exclusively. One of the first things I discovered when setting it up was that it takes three layers of silver gaffa tape over the apple to completely hide its glow.

Micoloth 8y ago

Everything you said is true, and I'm glad somebody pointed this out because I really wouldn't like this discussion to overshoot, like most discussions do, and get to the point where criticizing FB becomes the dumb thing to do. This being said, I think you are touching all of the problems but missing most of them: -Yes, it's about short term loops vs long term loops. This is not about control, it's about what is a good way for people to spend their time: it's been shown times and times again that engaging in long term activities has a great positive impact on your sense of fulfillement, and even if, sure, the whole internet is pretty dangerous in this sense, FB is definitely among the worst content suppliers out there, combining the addictive attention grabbing with mostly shallow and unchalleging content, i think. -Yes, it's about centralization: democracy is great, and democracy works with as much plurality as possible. Sure, mass media have existed for a while now (radios have been crucially exploited by all sorts of dictatorships in 20th century btw), but it has never happened that such a large fraction of the attention time of a whole population was cotrolled by a single private organization. This is Obviuosly dangerous. -Yes, it's about efficiency. Like other commenters pointed out, it's also about the sneaky way in which any content arrives to you just like it was directly from your friend, rather than from a recognised news or content outlet. This catches us hugely more off guard, to such an extent that we are not prepared to handle i think. -Yes, it's also probably about the human relations between people- here's where i'm not actually sure it's making things worse, but it's definitely making things different, just like telephone or cellphones did. This is why we should at least be careful, expecially with children. Yeah, of course humans will still be humans in the end, I mean come on. It's just about deciding what is best for us