Too many bad takes built on reductive ideas about why people do what they do, especially online — less, I think, because they have useful explanatory power, and more because they allow people to skip entirely the layer containing desires they don’t endorse or fully understandhttps://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/1092064394920349697 …
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“This has hacked my brain’s reward system” is a path around thinking about what you’re doing *at all.* It is a science-y sounding replacement for “witches did it.”
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Replying to @amasad
Yes, but the assumption that “an optimization process running on billions of brains to get them to come back and spend more time” doesn’t result in a better product — indeed, a worse one! — is *really* impressive spin
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Replying to @amasad
...yes, but the paperclip maximizer is rendered immediately harmless the moment a human being steps in; the point is that disabling the human is part of the optimization. You can’t compare this to “Twitter addiction” unless you think Twitter is actually, literally mind control
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Replying to @amasad
I dunno, man. I think we probably have really different ideas about what “mind control” is
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The more important thing to me is that the “brain hacking” lens dramatically limits solutions. Critical questions like “what am I getting out of this? Could I get it some other, less costly way?” don’t make sense if you’re being remote-controlled by FB
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