3 ms·

> As an individual you almost have no chance to escape unless you put in a lot of effort to get better information and even then it's hard considering how much

> As an individual you almost have no chance to escape unless you put in a lot of effort to get better information and even then it's hard considering how much misinformation is being put out. There are a couple of facets here, so I'll address them separately. For one, it's not remotely my experience or that of my social circles to say you have "almost no chance" of healthy social media use (or abstinence, if that's your thing). It seems roughly as "inescapable" as "not going to the gym" or "not reading enough". I can't even imagine how you arrived at this conclusion. There are plenty of people who are either off social media or very happy with their level of usage, and they got there with sustained incremental effort, just like any form of self-improvement. Spreading the message that you're utterly helpless and your only hope is regulatory rescue isn't helping people, it's actively harmful. To forestall the often-ludicrous charge of "victim-blaming": it has nothing to do with blame to realize that the ultimate consequences fall on you, and that it's a good idea to do what you can to mitigate those consequences. This isn't independent of advocating for regulatory action. My gut instinct is against regulation of social media, but from what I've seen, there are people out there who think of their social media usage as closer to involuntary addiction than a fun vice to indulge in, so I don't want to dismiss offhand any suggestions for regulation. I just simply can't imagine why you'd want to tell people (or yourself!) that they have no hope of getting to a better place.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
“I just simply can't imagine why you'd want to tell people (or yourself!) that they have no hope of getting to a better place” Sure you can get to a better place and you should try to do so. What I am saying is that it’s very hard and that it’s not your personal failing if you don’t succeed. Some things are easy for some people that are hard for others. For example I have never had weight problems and naturally eat relatively healthily. But I see people who try really hard to not eat fast food but somehow can’t stay away. For these people the constant advertising and availability of fast food is deadly. I think that we should not allow the seducers to do whatever they want.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > Sure you can get to a better place and you should try to do so. What I am saying is that it’s very hard and that it’s not your personal failing if you don’t succeed. Agreed, of course. I'd go so far as to so this is a prerequisite for doing anything difficult. But I interpreted the following quote as a considerably more hopeless outlook: > As an individual you almost have no chance to escape unless you put in a lot of effort to get better information and even then it's hard considering how much misinformation is being put out. It doesn't take Herculean effort to fix these habits, it just takes a sustained attempt to change your habits, without even pushing that hard. (and of course, there are the particularly-susceptible for whom even sustained effort won't work). My pushback was against the sentiment often expressed here that there's no hope at an individual level, but it sounds from your second comment like you don't agree with that either.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    "It doesn't take Herculean effort to fix these habits, it just takes a sustained attempt to change your habits, without even pushing that hard. (and of course, there are the particularly-susceptible for whom even sustained effort won't work)." For you maybe. But you have to understand that there are a lot of highly educated, highly paid people trying to figure how to make their products as addictive as possible to as many people as possible. So a lot of people stand no chance because their weaknesses are being exploited with precision. Do you have no habits that annoy you but keep coming back no matter how much you try too get rid of them?
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      > But you have to understand that there are a lot of highly educated, highly paid people trying to figure how to make their products as addictive as possible to as many people as possible. So a lot of people stand no chance because their weaknesses are being exploited with precision This is the leap I don't buy. First of all, it's factually incorrect: you're not being targeted with anything like precision. I worked in AI research before the boom and work between research and product now, I'm likely better than most of the highly educated, highly paid people you're talking about, and ML models aren't the otherworldly wizardry that people think they are. They work well on average; there's no highly paid team dedicated to analyzing wutbrodo or ididntdothis's usage and building a custom model. If you're making a mild effort to recognize and push back against mindless media consumption, you've already moved yourself away from the center of mass being targeted. And frankly, these companies aren't going to chase after you when the bulk of their usage comes from the chunks of the population whose behavior clusters better. > Do you have no habits that annoy you but keep coming back no matter how much you try too get rid of them? Honestly? No, I don't. I don't think I'm even particularly good at moment-to-moment willpower either. I just look at it differently. To take my diet as an example, it's almost exactly where I want it to be from a health perspective. It's to the point that my friends assume I'm some sort of iron-willed ascetic continually putting in effort to eat well, but it's completely effortless for me. But it took a literal decade for me to get here, through incremental change and letting my habits (and probably biology) adjust. If I had been in a rush and gotten repeatedly frustrated at my lack of rapid progress, I doubt I would have ever ended up here. Reducing mindless media consumption and usage is similar (though in my experience, takes far less time), and is helped along by any number of apps and extensions. This isn't a general argument that this is trivial for everyone, nor that regulation is inappropriate to help the average person who hasn't recognized the problem. What I'm pushing back against is the claim that "there's no hope of escape" for most, barring some extreme level of informedness or willpower. There are highly paid people with decades more experience making junk food hyperpalatable too. But while there's scope for regulation to help the average person, it'd be both inaccurate and unhelpful to claim that "there's no hope of escape" for an individual from the Standard American Diet.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

“I just simply can't imagine why you'd want to tell people (or yourself!) that they have no hope of getting to a better place” Sure you can get to a better place and you should try to do so. What I am saying is that it’s very hard and that it’s not your personal failing if you don’t succeed. Some things are easy for some people that are hard for others. For example I have never had weight problems and naturally eat relatively healthily. But I see people who try really hard to not eat fast food but somehow can’t stay away. For these people the constant advertising and availability of fast food is deadly. I think that we should not allow the seducers to do whatever they want.

wutbrodo 7y ago
> Sure you can get to a better place and you should try to do so. What I am saying is that it’s very hard and that it’s not your personal failing if you don’t succeed. Agreed, of course. I'd go so far as to so this is a prerequisite for doing anything difficult. But I interpreted the following quote as a considerably more hopeless outlook: > As an individual you almost have no chance to escape unless you put in a lot of effort to get better information and even then it's hard considering how much misinformation is being put out. It doesn't take Herculean effort to fix these habits, it just takes a sustained attempt to change your habits, without even pushing that hard. (and of course, there are the particularly-susceptible for whom even sustained effort won't work). My pushback was against the sentiment often expressed here that there's no hope at an individual level, but it sounds from your second comment like you don't agree with that either.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  "It doesn't take Herculean effort to fix these habits, it just takes a sustained attempt to change your habits, without even pushing that hard. (and of course, there are the particularly-susceptible for whom even sustained effort won't work)." For you maybe. But you have to understand that there are a lot of highly educated, highly paid people trying to figure how to make their products as addictive as possible to as many people as possible. So a lot of people stand no chance because their weaknesses are being exploited with precision. Do you have no habits that annoy you but keep coming back no matter how much you try too get rid of them?
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    > But you have to understand that there are a lot of highly educated, highly paid people trying to figure how to make their products as addictive as possible to as many people as possible. So a lot of people stand no chance because their weaknesses are being exploited with precision This is the leap I don't buy. First of all, it's factually incorrect: you're not being targeted with anything like precision. I worked in AI research before the boom and work between research and product now, I'm likely better than most of the highly educated, highly paid people you're talking about, and ML models aren't the otherworldly wizardry that people think they are. They work well on average; there's no highly paid team dedicated to analyzing wutbrodo or ididntdothis's usage and building a custom model. If you're making a mild effort to recognize and push back against mindless media consumption, you've already moved yourself away from the center of mass being targeted. And frankly, these companies aren't going to chase after you when the bulk of their usage comes from the chunks of the population whose behavior clusters better. > Do you have no habits that annoy you but keep coming back no matter how much you try too get rid of them? Honestly? No, I don't. I don't think I'm even particularly good at moment-to-moment willpower either. I just look at it differently. To take my diet as an example, it's almost exactly where I want it to be from a health perspective. It's to the point that my friends assume I'm some sort of iron-willed ascetic continually putting in effort to eat well, but it's completely effortless for me. But it took a literal decade for me to get here, through incremental change and letting my habits (and probably biology) adjust. If I had been in a rush and gotten repeatedly frustrated at my lack of rapid progress, I doubt I would have ever ended up here. Reducing mindless media consumption and usage is similar (though in my experience, takes far less time), and is helped along by any number of apps and extensions. This isn't a general argument that this is trivial for everyone, nor that regulation is inappropriate to help the average person who hasn't recognized the problem. What I'm pushing back against is the claim that "there's no hope of escape" for most, barring some extreme level of informedness or willpower. There are highly paid people with decades more experience making junk food hyperpalatable too. But while there's scope for regulation to help the average person, it'd be both inaccurate and unhelpful to claim that "there's no hope of escape" for an individual from the Standard American Diet.