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Tame your inner dictator!
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We can't rely on the illusion of an even playing field to limit the influence of predatory capital like zukerberg's. Big social media products are designed around the chemistry of decision making in the brain - they can win using an inferior, exploitative product with the worst user experience that could possibly bear profits.
I'm not necessarily in favor of defed-ing anything that zuck's claws are in, but I think it's very important to be wary of what opening the door for one of the world's most genocide-encouraging social media companies could mean.
You know what else is designed around “the chemistry of decision-making in the brain”?
Every attempt at persuasion. All debate, marketing, art, seduction, all of it.
The brain makes decisions via chemistry.
As one of my favorite psych professors always likes to say: “The question isn’t why people do cocaine. That’s completely obvious. The question is why doesn’t everybody do cocaine all day every day.”
And his answer to that question is that there are higher-order patterns which can exert even more powerful decision-making influence than dopaminergic drugs. The thing is, those patterns are called “meaning” and they’re nicely aligned with personal health and happiness.
Cocaine hacks the brain. Meaning uses it.
I guess what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is that a person can cultivate the ability to tell when they’re being fed short term dopamine hits, and I think it’s better if we try to develop the ability to say no to cocaine (via developing the reason no to) rather than trying to create a cocaine-free environment.