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by blurbleblurble 3081 days ago
Ingrained associations don't die easily. I remember when I first quit facebook. I still had the habit of quickly pressing "F, enter" for months after I quit. After a couple years though, I hardly ever go through that old routine.

Check out Nicky Case's game about neuroplasticity: http://ncase.me/neurons/

Just now I enabled grayscale via the Android developer menu. I noticed an immediate reduction in intensity. It didn't feel like "bullshit" to me! If you want this to help you, you're probably gonna have to give it a little bit more of an open mind. The attitude of "this is bullshit" could very easily sabotage any positive benefits of this exercise. Big things grow from small seeds, but only if you water them, give them light and make sure they don't get crowded out by more aggressive plants.

2 comments

> I remember when I first quit facebook. I still had the habit of quickly pressing "F, enter" for months after I quit.

Same.when I run a distraction blocker, I often don't realize I'm firing another ’ctrl+t,f,enter' sequence until I hit the blocker.

It's made me realize how devilishly efficient companies are at exploiting our dopamine cycles. Case in poin: I tried to disable in app purchases in Google Play, but short of removing all payment options (which breaks my project fi billing), there's no way.

For as frustrating as I find it, though, it's devastating to think of the impact on ppl living in poverty,for whom every source of daily relaxation is probably some well funded dopamine dealer trying to extract their $11 / hr pay one micro transaction at a time.

Everyone loves placebo, but after browsing for half hour in grayscale and turning back color there is some kind of wow effect.
It's not the full solution but it's definitely part of it. Colour on my phone overwhelms me now (i've been gray since June)
Color really does pop!

By the way, I definitely agree with you that color is not the only way computer applications are addictive.