3 ms·

There are too many apps causing too many dopamine hits. How is anyone supposed to do the meaningful work or gain the appropriate skills in the supposedly AI/ML

by 0xCMP 8y ago

There are too many apps causing too many dopamine hits. How is anyone supposed to do the meaningful work or gain the appropriate skills in the supposedly AI/ML dominated future without doing deep work away from these things? Everyone deletes these apps and turns their phones to gray scale so they can focus. Speaking of focus, one thing I want to focus less on is the continual security/privacy nightmare of using Facebook to post content. Either I want to know 100% it's public (Twitter/Instagram/Blogs) or it's essentially[0] 100% private and hopefully short lived (private insta, snapchat). [0]: Obviously not PGP private and etc. But from a practical perspective. On Facebook you can do graph searches to identify someone based on a few pieces of data. On snapchat you have to already know their username and be added to see anything on their story or in messages to you. etc.

soared 8y ago
What? Are saying the existence of apps makes it impossible to study/do work? This makes no sense. You could make the same (flawed) claim about tv, books, newspapers, sports, friends, etc.
- 0xCMP 8y ago
  If you can't concentrate because of these apps you can't do work. Yes, it happens to me and I've seen it happen to others. The fact is that the internet and other tech has likely made everyone, but particularly those who grew up with technology, more susceptible to ADD/ADHD like symptoms. The key with things like Facebook, which makes them different, is not that it takes you away as much as they are designed to trigger dopamine levels in ways TV, books, etc that you mentioned never could. Constantly and at a very high rate. You can't be thanked 100x times by friends... unless you have a super popular post with comments and reactions and now you can. You can't read 10-20 sensational articles back to back on a newspaper like you can on an endlessly scrolling page or even watching videos on Facebook ( I have ended up losing hours on this before). There are fundamental differences which let them do what previous mediums or activities could do but in a way which our brains are simply not equipped to deal with without intervention. It's similar to refined sugar or highly refined anything works. By itself it isn't bad except it's addictive and often leads you astray from your self-set goals. So, in fact, it makes total sense that people would realize this and increasingly control or remove it from their lives. And more importantly that they'd focus on using only a few of them not every single app there is. Which means two things: 1) people are wary of being sucked in like this and 2) they are likely not willing to leave an app/network where they already spend their time.

by 0xCMP 8y ago

soared 8y ago

What? Are saying the existence of apps makes it impossible to study/do work? This makes no sense. You could make the same (flawed) claim about tv, books, newspapers, sports, friends, etc.

0xCMP 8y ago
If you can't concentrate because of these apps you can't do work. Yes, it happens to me and I've seen it happen to others. The fact is that the internet and other tech has likely made everyone, but particularly those who grew up with technology, more susceptible to ADD/ADHD like symptoms. The key with things like Facebook, which makes them different, is not that it takes you away as much as they are designed to trigger dopamine levels in ways TV, books, etc that you mentioned never could. Constantly and at a very high rate. You can't be thanked 100x times by friends... unless you have a super popular post with comments and reactions and now you can. You can't read 10-20 sensational articles back to back on a newspaper like you can on an endlessly scrolling page or even watching videos on Facebook ( I have ended up losing hours on this before). There are fundamental differences which let them do what previous mediums or activities could do but in a way which our brains are simply not equipped to deal with without intervention. It's similar to refined sugar or highly refined anything works. By itself it isn't bad except it's addictive and often leads you astray from your self-set goals. So, in fact, it makes total sense that people would realize this and increasingly control or remove it from their lives. And more importantly that they'd focus on using only a few of them not every single app there is. Which means two things: 1) people are wary of being sucked in like this and 2) they are likely not willing to leave an app/network where they already spend their time.