[amarant]

I don't like this narrative. I'm a person, and HN is the only social media I use.I tolerate this one because I find the addictiveness off-putting, but unlike other social media HN doesn't engage in that much.

I'm not some sort of prodigy or anything, just a random schmuck. If I can do it, anyone can. People just really like blaming others for their own vices instead of owning up to having a vice.

HN is a vice too. One of many that I have. And they're all mine. I've chosen them all. In most cases knowing full well that I probably shouldn't have.

[afavour]

> If I can do it, anyone can.

Right, but they don't. Not to mention a significant portion of the target market are children whose brains are still developing.

Smoking is a vice. Anyone can stop smoking any time they want. But it was still incredibly popular. Government regulation put warning labels everywhere, tightened regulation to ensure no sales to children, provided support to quit. And then the number of people smoking plummeted. Society is better off for it.

"Anyone can do it" is an ideological perspective divorced from lived reality.

[dinfinity]

Exactly. It's not that the producers or distributors (of food, content, etc.) are not malicious/amoral/evil/greedy. It's that the real solution lies in fixing the vulnerabilities in the consumers.

You don't say to a heroin addict that they wouldn't have any problems if those pesky heroin dealers didn't make heroin so damn addictive. You realize that it's gonna take internal change (mental/cultural/social overrides to the biological weaknesses) in that person to reliably fix it (and ensure they don't shift to some other addiction).

I'm not saying "let the producers run free". Intervening there is fine as long as we keep front of mind and mouth that people need to take their responsibility and that we need to do everything to help them to do so.

[programjames]

Doesn't the government try to ban heroin?? You have to live in the real world, not your ideal world, and in the real world people are not perfectly rational agents. They make mistakes. Each and every mistake could have been avoided if the individual just had a stronger will, was a little smarter, a little more prudent, or took a little more time to think, but just because mistakes can be avoided and some people are better at avoiding them than others does not change the fundamental issue: drugs, tobacco, gambling, and TikTok are trying to increase the rate at which mistakes are made. Wouldn't you rather live in a society where they aren't out to get you?

I think there's an argument that can be made, like, "well maybe 10% of the time people consuming alcohol is a mistake, but I just use it recreationally. The government shouldn't prohibit all drinking!" And sure. If it is really the case that people would take the same actions even if they had more time to think things through and were in a good mental state, the government should probably not be intervening for the 10% of the cases that doesn't hold. But you have to draw the line somewhere.

[dinfinity]

> I'm not saying "let the producers run free". Intervening there is fine as long as we keep front of mind and mouth that people need to take their responsibility and that we need to do everything to help them to do so.

[programjames]

> You: It's that the real solution lies in fixing the vulnerabilities in the consumers.

> Me: Just because mistakes can be avoided and some people are better at avoiding them than others does not change the fundamental issue: drugs, tobacco, gambling, and TikTok are trying to increase the rate at which mistakes are made. Wouldn't you rather live in a society where they aren't out to get you?

[dylan604]

> If I can do it, anyone can.

This is such a normie perspective and shows just how unfamiliar you are with addiction. Yes, some people can avoid becoming addicted. Yes, some addicts can break the habit and detox and stay clean. At the same time, a larger number of addicts can detox but relapse in a relatively short time. There are also addicts that have not yet admitted they have a problem, and there are addicts that are okay with being an addict. Just because you have the emergency stop button that you can hit does not mean everyone else is the same way. Your lack of empathy is just gross

[TheOtherHobbes]

You haven't chosen anything. That's the point - the illusion of choice and agency.

If you can't stop cold at any time if/when you decide to, you don't have the agency to make a free choice.

[amarant]

I can though, that's the whole point. I chose to quit Facebook and Reddit. I chose to stop drinking alcohol. I chose to keep smoking weed. Some choices are better than others, from certain perspectives, that doesn't make them any less my choices!

[CJefferson]

That feels like it applies to so many things we make illegal, scams of all kind, snake-oil medical sellers, baby powder full of asbestos. Sure, people can handle all of these things, but we've decided, as a society, it's better not to allow them.

So then the question is, is it better to let these things happen, as a society?

[amarant]

False equivalence. Unless you can point to an instance where tiktok claims to cure cancer or erectile dysfunction with their recommendations.

To be clear: I don't like these addictive recommendation engines. That's why I avoid them. Some people do like them. I don't want to take their fun vice away from them. I also don't want them to take my fun vices away from me!

Yes it'd probably be better for my health if I stopped with a few of them. I don't care. I like it. It's my health, and I'm an adult. If I can choose my vices, why shouldn't others be allowed to? Will they make choice I wouldn't have? Of course! That's the point! It's THEIR choice!

This logic does not apply to scams or firearms, there's no informed consent in getting shot. It also doesn't apply to asbestos baby powder(wtf?)

Getting scammed is not a choice. Scammers lie to you. Recommendation engines never claim to do anything other than recommend stuff you're likely to interact with based on previous behaviour. They give you exactly what's on the package label. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want something like that, but I also don't understand why people eat surströmming. I say let them, anyway. I can put up with the stink, it's not the end of the world.

[CJefferson]

Question, do you have the same feeling about heroin? That people should be allowed to take things which are known to be highly addictive and bad for them?

[amarant]

Sure! They do anyway, or did you think heroin disappeared since it was banned?

It does need to be regulated. Doing it well will be difficult in a lot of places. I'd suggest modeling heroin sales after Nordic alcohol market: there's a single state-owned company that has a legislated monopoly, and no profit goals whatsoever. This makes it available, you can know that it's not mixed with anything cheap and deadly, and you also avoid anyone trying to push people to buy something that is quite obviously bad for them. I'm not saying it's an ideal situation that people do heroin, it is _quite_ destructive. But people do it anyway so let's make the best of that situation.

The harsh truth of reality is that people will make bad choices no matter what you do. Thinking you can ban something out of existence is naive and harmful. Best you can hope for is the entity selling drugs not using peer pressure to push it on kids who were only looking for weed. Which is what we have now if that wasn't clear.

To be perfectly clear, I do not encourage anyone to inject heroine, it's a terrible idea! Don't do it! But I'm realist enough to realise that some people are going to anyway, bans and common sense be damned,and I want to make that bad choice as safe as possible for them. I do not condone throwing drug addicts under the bus as we currently do, pretending that they're less than human and that they have no place in our society. I don't think the "outcast" status has ever helped anyone quit, in fact I'm quite sure it makes it harder. For example in Sweden being under the influence is illegal, so you could get in trouble for seeking help with your addiction. No wonder the druggies hide!

Well out of sight != Out of mind. At least not for me.

[programjames]

You should model yourself as a rational agent that makes mistakes sometimes. Suppose it is the case that, if you had heroin on your shelf at home, you would inject it on 0.1% of days. Maybe because you are especially sad/sick/in pain once every few years. If this were the case, you would not want to buy heroin and put it on your shelf at home. 99.9% of the time you will have the willpower to not inject it, but you still expect yourself to be addicted within a decade. The point of bans is to decrease that to 0.0001%, except for those who are actively seeking it.

[Quarrelsome]

> just a random schmuck

if you've even on this website you're a tiny niche of the population. You like text? Check out the weirdo over here... oh wait that's all of us.