alt Hacker NewsFundamentally, I think having a source of "free dopamine" on tap is not going to do any good. If I can get distracted from my real world tasks anytime, anywhere, the immediate incentives to work on real things disappear. Effectively, one can get stuck in a local minimum.
I don't know how to solve it, but personally I've chosen to block as many feeds/algorithms as I can, so I have to make a conscious decision to search for something (making it just as hard as making the conscious decision that I'm likely putting off). The only feeds I have right now are the FT and Hacker News. Everything else is just a blank home screen with a search bar.
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But if things interest you, does that not also provide dopamine? If the interesting things are easily available, are they "free" and addictive and bad? If they're good because they're interesting, is TikTok not interesting to those who like it? If you had a pinball machine and it distracted you, would that be bad, or a hobby? Is TikTok more compelling than pinball because of the algorithm? Is the algorithm not merely providing things that will likely interest you? Is interest bad now?
This is what drugs and alcohol can become if not used in moderation.
Once we have the AI holodeck (the full-sensory interactive, possibly multiplayer one), can you only imagine?
TikTok is only the punch card phase of this. TikTok may as well be black and white television. Just imagine what we might have in twenty years.
Maybe this is why we haven't found alien life. If their biologies have attention mechanisms like ours, maybe they automate highs and turn inward instead of outward. (I do like that better than AGI gray goo taking over galaxies.)
I was reading a few weeks ago that it's more about easy dopamine rather than free that is so incredibly destructive.
Scrolling for hits of satisfying novelty is a proposition that will not be sustainably met.
Part of me also wonders if things like this can be used for not so great things, can they be used for good things?
> If I can get distracted from my real world tasks anytime, anywhere, the immediate incentives to work on real things disappear. Effectively, one can get stuck in a local minimum.
> I don't know how to solve it, ...
> but personally I've chosen to block as many feeds/algorithms as I can, ...
I think you solved it :) (at least, for yourself)
There are many things "out there" that are addictive and distracting and thus unhealthy, but we all have to find some way to overcome