[whatshisface]

>"Not everyone has this reaction, of course: people in the fifth or sixth sigma of slot-machine susceptibility go out and[...]"

Every time a new one of these mental attacks gets invented, a new five-sigma cohort falls off the "normal life" wagon. How many times can this happen before expansive hordes of people who have had their priorities destroyed start a new social crisis?

[lmm]

~200000 times, if we take five sigma literally and assume it takes 5% of the population to start a crisis.

One assumes evolution will work its way before that happens.

[gozur88]

I wonder if that's really a problem or if it's the same group people getting manipulated over and over.

[dm319]

I guess it depends when people get afflicted. If you spend your adult life all day playing a slot-machines or a dopamine-enriching computer game, you are unlikely to be starting a family anytime soon, and so it won't be your children who go on to be the afflicted population in the next generation.

If you had children, they might be more aware of the dangers of these attentional assaults, and actually more resistant to it.