[jumper_F00BA2]

No. That's not how human behavior works. The "dopamine-fix/pleasure-addiction" concept is deeply flawed, and serves only as Pop Culture's mental crutch, occupying place where an explanation for a deeper problem belongs.

It's hand-wavey, unverifiable magic that fits in broadly with anyone's self image, without contaminating the circumstances by laying blame or guilt at the feet of the individual.

The truth is that many of us have a lot of down time, and we don't know what to do with ourselves. We don't know what to do with ourselves, because so many other optional behaviors have been rationalized away from us, and removed from any normal equation.

If you were reading a book or knitting a sweater or mowing the lawn, your behavior would similarly directed into yet another pointless passtime, gifted with a deceptive sense of seeming purpose. But the cause-and-effect relationship interacting with electronic media, while intellectually occupying, suffers from effects that evaporate as soon as you pull the plug or as soon as the battery dies. This leaves a gaping feeling of wasted time, as soon as the power goes out, when there's no more electricity.

So, what if we turn our attention to activities where we can cause some sort of effect, which has no basis in electronic systems demonstrating evidence of the effect we have? Surpise! 99% of what you're legally permitted to do is essentially pointless time wasting, where you spin your wheels until you die unfulfilled, only to pass a world of questions to the next generation, with no answers to match.

One might say that our society, our culture is hollow, empty and meaningless, but with enough of a deconstructivist outlook, everything starts to look like that. When you take things apart (a bicycle for example), disassembling recognizable objects or concepts to their fundamental building blocks (handle bars, pedals, chain, wheels), often this destroys something beyond recognition, only to leave one with a feeling of regret at the loss of the thing they once knew.

With advanced technology, we've disassembled fundamental aspects of human civilization, at a pace where the people who have lived through previous decades, now must cope with a near total reorganization of typical modes of behavior, while also raising the next generation, without having many answers for what comes next.

On both sides of this equation, this feels like a near total loss of control. And for some, it actually is.

Gee, what to do with all this spare time you have on your hands, now that communication is near effortless, crosses the globe in an instant, discounting inflated prices built to accomodate a previously well-understood overhead cost, of staying organized in a world where staying on the same page with someone hundreds of miles away used to require carefully concerted planning?

Beats me, partner. Just don't hurt anybody. The times, they are a'changin'. Maybe knit a sweater?

[thekaltur]

I am sorry, but I beg to differ. This concept is built onto basic insights into how the human reward system works, why else would Design (cf. Tristan Harris tristanharris.com/essays or Chamath Palihapitiya https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk&t=1220) and Advertisement use this to try to shape peoples desires (and in turn consumer choices)?

What you are drawing is in my opinion a false equivalency. It is not at all the same doing things in real life like reading a book, mowing the lawn or knitting a sweater and skimming a news feed or interacting with social media. The main reason for that imo is the amount of effort you have to put in to get a reward. When you take the offline work you (in the case of a book) at least have to go to the bookshelf, pick a book, take it in your hand and whilst reading have the rough content of the previous pages in your head or (in the case of mowing the lawn) actually physically move. This delays the gratification you get when having finished reading the book or mowing the lawn.

With social media or quickly skimming articles from a news feed the delay you get on your gratification when scrolling through is literally given by the speed with which you can scroll and read. This makes dopamine so cheap for your brain, that it will of course reward you when you engage in these activities. (Incidentally it also makes it more susceptible to future easy dopamine hits (too lazy to find online sources, will look a little later. Joachim Bauer: Selbststeuerung is a very good book on this)).

And no, it is nihilistic to think that 99% of what we are allowed to do is pointless. Having these discussion for example is a great source of meaning. Really: educating yourself, talking to other people and forming opinions on different topics is also very meaningful as it will influence your perspective on the world in a lot of (sometimes even positive ;) ) ways.

I must admit, that I don't quite get your point on the disassembly of fundamental aspects of human civilization (although it sounds very good :D). To me the equivalency would be a bicycle becoming an ebike, which drives nearly effortlessly. The difference between today and before is that before you had enough time to think where you want to go while riding the bike (as it was tedious and slow to ride) and today the bike is going so fast that some people just ride it for the rush of speed and don't actually know where they want to go.

So the lesson to me is: Get off the bike. Sit down, enjoy the view and figure out where you want to go first and then drive the hell out of it in that direction.

[jumper_F00BA2]

So some self-important "tech luminary" claims to have engineered a secret weapon feedback loop, and it's so incredible that it hacked everyone's brain, and wowee, he's so smart.

It's easy to pin post-hoc rationalizations for his own success, onto a self-aggrandizing personal narrative, after becoming successful. Believe whatever airbrushed fish story you like.

B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov showed us the truth about operant conditioning for sure. And indeed, the principle extends to Great Apes if you reward them with delicious snacks for using an iPad correctly.

But humans have executive function, and more downtime than we know what to do with lately, because modes of behavior are more efficient now, than even one decade ago, and there's a gap left behind, leaving a preoccupation vacuum in it's wake. We don't know what to do with ourselves, and that imparts a malaise of idle restlessness, especially relative to the pace of change.

Computers, mobile devices, ubiquitous applications, smart appliances, have become something like a ball hog in a game of basketball. They keep grabbing the ball and scoring, and never pass the ball to a human, because they always possess a better chance of scoring themselves, so it would be irrational to put the ball into a human's hands. Except we're the ones that wanted to play the game. We didn't show up to sit on the bench and watch a game played by robots.

It's less about the operant conditioning of our pleasure centers (oh, oh, excuse me! fancier words: dopamine receptors, because neuroscience) than the fact that we've truly got nothing better to do than watch Saturday morning cartoons. We're bored, the world is scary, and funny cartoons in our bedroom is safe.

You're conflating something to fit in with your world view, regarding the bicycle analogy. Motorcycles have existed since the early 1900's, and people already ride them at high speeds. It's not about the bike. It's not about The Mind Bike. It's about seeing the forrest for the trees.

The B.F. Skinner box for our dopamine drip is but one tree, and there is an entire forrest of drastic change shaping new social norms.

If you consider what will happen to traditional family structures in India, if you took away arranged marriage, I suspect you'd begin to notice a massive sea change in world views among those affected in less than a decade.

That's the degree of transformation unfolding, everywhere emerging technologies find new ways to alter routine daily behaviors, although such transformative effects are not limited to family structures or courtship rituals. It also affects culturally agnostic activities like driving a car or mailing a letter.

If one deludes themselves into a postive outlook of sunshine and smiles because the perception of nihilism seems detestible, expect to be unpleasantly surprised now and again, because taking a hard pragmatic look at what's right under your nose is necessary, to not get blindsided by others who aren't always so cheerful.

If I come across as negative, it's probably only relative to your preferred frame of reference. I tend to stay neutral and objective wherever possible, since life is pretty much always this way. The deconstructivist concept isn't a personal invention of mine. In fact, I think it's rooted strongly in zen/buddhist ideology. It finds it's basis in the understanding that while the whole is the sum of its parts, each part, taken as an island unto itself, has less purpose, when removed from the greater context of the whole.

A bodily organ cannot stand alone, but what we are doing to the various cultural norms, around the globe, is experimenting with the transplant of synthetic organs, to see if society can survive, if we take away the heart and lungs in exchange for a heart and lung machine. Maybe this, by turns, is truly an achievement for some, but not everyone sees a payday for these efforts. Some don't get their organs back.

[ryeguy_24]

Bravo. I second the first reply. I reread this a few times just to make sure I got it all. Are you an author?

[jumper_F00BA2]

Thanks again! I am not an author. It'd be tough to carve out a niche for myself with mere words.

[brogrammer5]

I love how you write. I would read a book or blog if you wrote it. You bring up some very interesting concepts.

[jumper_F00BA2]

Thanks!

I could probably write something, but the world wouldn't let me enjoy it. So I languish in pointless tech jobs producing executable web fluff that lives between the browser and the database ('middleware'), that will go into the trash in less than five years, because you're supposed to pantomime productivity in exchange for food and shelter.

Whelp! Back to the treadmill!