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Ah ok, then maybe my disagreement is just with @primalpoly's model of what causes people's self-reported addiction to Twitter (that I thought you were endorsing), which doesn't fully match my experiencehttps://twitter.com/primalpoly/status/1092064394920349697 …
My read: in any instance where you can say "my brain's reward system has been hacked," you are making choices to meet some need or desire (effectively or ineffectively). People may point to the neurochemical layer when they're uncomfortable w/ the need or ashamed of their choices
In the same way that "my brain's reward system has been hacked" is both arguably true & a pretty useless frame for why one might feel a real compulsion to hug their partner on sight, it's an arguably true & pretty useless frame for why one might eat sugar, go for a run, or tweet
Oh, maybe we do disagree; I don't think the "my brain's reward system has been hacked" framing is useless at all when it comes to Twitter. Noticing the structural features of Twitter that make it so addictive to me was useful in reducing my overconsumption of it.
I wouldn't say my brain's incessant "check twitter? now??" pings are a choice on my part. I mean, it is a choice whether I indulge them. But I think saying Twitter "hacked my reward system" is just a way to say it's designed to make those pings more frequent & harder to resist.
(Kind of the same way I think it's fair to say that food producers are hacking our reward systems to make our cravings more frequent and harder to resist)
I think everything you said is accurate. I think another reason people look to the neurochemical layer is that technology is becoming better at knowing how to capture attention. Once a person realizes how vulnerable their mind is, it's hard not to retreat to abstraction.
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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 understand
