Social media news feeds are generally well-known to put people into a trance-like state, which is often akratic. In addition to the constant stream of content, which mitigates the effect of human preference differences with a constant alternative (scrolling down) that continually keeps people re-engaged the instant they lose interest in something, news feeds also utilize a Skinner Box dynamic. Short-video content like Tiktok and Reels is even more immersive, reportedly incredibly intense […] It makes sense that social networks that fit the human brain like a glove would expand rapidly […]
Hm, this is not my model of cognition.
My model of cognition is that people who became put into a trance-like state have a part of them that wants to be in a trance-like (read: dissociative, numb) state. Alfred Adler thought similarly.
Meanwhile, if such a person integrates their want, then they are no longer susceptible to such mediums.
How else do you explain why not everyone is addicted to social media and not all of the time?
So I don’t think it’s that “Social media […] put people into a trance-like state […] which mitigates the effect of human preference differences”, but instead that there’s some sort of handshake between the user and the platform. The user (a part of the user) allows it to happen.
I’m not saying that it’s impossible to scan someone’s brain, predict it forward in time, and reverse engineer the outputs, no— but I’m saying that I doubt there’s a universal intervention that hacks all humans— instead of just temporarily hacking a subset of humans with the same insecurity. And it’s completely possible to integrate one’s own vulnerabilities.
Hm, this is not my model of cognition.
My model of cognition is that people who became put into a trance-like state have a part of them that wants to be in a trance-like (read: dissociative, numb) state. Alfred Adler thought similarly.
Meanwhile, if such a person integrates their want, then they are no longer susceptible to such mediums.
How else do you explain why not everyone is addicted to social media and not all of the time?
So I don’t think it’s that “Social media […] put people into a trance-like state […] which mitigates the effect of human preference differences”, but instead that there’s some sort of handshake between the user and the platform. The user (a part of the user) allows it to happen.
Also see: Defining “aggression” for creating Non-Aggressive AI systems (draft, feedback wanted)
I’m not saying that it’s impossible to scan someone’s brain, predict it forward in time, and reverse engineer the outputs, no— but I’m saying that I doubt there’s a universal intervention that hacks all humans— instead of just temporarily hacking a subset of humans with the same insecurity. And it’s completely possible to integrate one’s own vulnerabilities.