[atrus]

Honestly? They might. A game I play (Torn.com) started using AI and over dramatic ads, and they outperformed (higher signups, and higher retention) the more traditional and even player created ads.

The owner expressed surprise and frustration over it, because it kinda sucks that's what works.

[lawlessone]

Could we(AI ads) be hitting this? "Supernormal Stimulus"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

[hollerith]

Newspapers and cheap gin were already supernormal stimuli 200 years ago.

[lawlessone]

I think you can add to that things like fast foods, snacks etc with carefully tuned levels of fats , salts, sugars etc to keep people eating.

[hollerith]

And cheap paperback novels, movies, TV, pornography and video games. The amount of stimulation or positive reward available through these things with only a small effort and a small risk and a short waiting time are much greater than anything available in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness with a similar degree of effort, risk and waiting time.

[lawlessone]

Not sure if that was an attempt to reduce my argument to an absurdity.. but now we can see many of those things evolve and adapt in real time with lots of testing to reach their maximum potential.

[hollerith]

>an attempt to reduce my argument to an absurdity

Definitely not. I am being sincere.

There is a lot of individual variation in susceptibility to a vice. For example, I never had any significant amount of trouble avoiding any food I believed was bad for me. It just never required much willpower, but it is so easy for me to fall into a habit of overconsumption of video entertainment that I haven't owned a television set in decades (and lichess.org is blocked 3 times in my /etc/hosts: near the top, again near the middle and again near the end of the file).