
Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy - wllchng
https://medium.com/wills-newsletter/do-it-for-the-gram-3cffb5741f90?5
======
thewarrior
What I've noticed is that Instagrams recommendation algorithms are creepily
accurate.

If you like browsing pictures of butts you'll get lots of butts and of the
exact kind that you'd like. I'm not sure how they do it. I don't even post on
Instagram. And yet I'm addicted now to the Explore tab. They've genuinely
managed to build something addictive in a way that other networks are not.

Also Instagram is completely sanitized of politics and any other hot button
stuff. So its just a space where you zone out.

Instagram is the crack cocaine of social media. A cocktail of addiction and
narcissism refined into its most potent form. I predict that Instagram will
continue to grow and might one day rival Facebook itself.

~~~
pinky1417
Oh woah, definitely not sanitized of politics. Probably because I follow some
politicians, I get recommendations for these crazy, aggressive political meme
pages. I see some very very hot button stuff on my feed.

Count yourself lucky that Instagram looks politically sanitized!

~~~
mawburn
Why would you follow politicians on Instagram in the first place?

~~~
flubert
Outrage Addiction?

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=outrage+addiction](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=outrage+addiction)

------
danielam
The overall way the author frames the discussion is putting the cart before
the horse and ultimately Procrustean. The author's argument is a bit like a
person with his head in a bucket of water claiming that human beings are
"outdated" because we have this "primitive" need to breathe that's preventing
us from being able to deal with having our heads stuck in buckets full of
water. Maybe we shouldn't be sticking our heads in buckets of water? Maybe
breathing is good?

There is a pathological strain of individualism divorced from reality that
understands freedom not as freedom from all those things that are opposed to
human nature (and especially our own vices), but as the right to arbitrarily
will and do anything with no reference to human nature. Indeed, there is a
hostility to the very idea of human nature because it is seen as an impediment
to freedom.

~~~
apeacox
I don't get your point. The author just used some funny metaphore to explain
how our brain works. And yes, our brain still works with ancestral habits,
this is not a big news after all.

------
jathu
I've been reading a lot about this "ancestral hijacking" lately and have tried
to cut out on a lot of them. My phone now only has two possible notifications:
phone calls and Things app. I have 0 social apps or games. I am also slowly
cutting out sugars and extra carbs. I think you guys should read about
_supernormal stimulus_ [1].

There is this comic [2] about supernormal stimulus that shows how man, and man
alone, has the ability to overcome it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus)

[2] [http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/supernormal-
stimuli/](http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/supernormal-stimuli/)

~~~
devrandomguy
There are times, when I can't honestly claim that my behavior is any smarter
than that of the houseflies that die in front of the window, or the salmon
that spends the remainder of its life searching for a way past a dam. The
environment might be more complex, but the behavior is not. It is helpful to
have a name for the system that is responsible, makes it much easier to
recognize and derail it.

I believe Sir Mix-A-Lot studied the problem thoroughly in the 1990s, but in
the end, had to concede that he was unable to take control of his own reptile
brain.

~~~
taternuts
One of the books that really allowed me to think differently and sometimes
overpower my train of thought is called "The Power of Now". The rhetoric can
be super flowery at times (especially in the beginning), but the point he
tries to get across was incredibly novel to me and there's strategies in there
to help you control your brain and use it more as a tool.

I often think that salmon has it better than us humans. The salmon is focused
on doing what it's doing at the moment, and doesn't have the time or capacity
to build a sense of 'self' that they are proud or ashamed of, that colors
their actions and gives them pain in the moment because it wasn't what they
wanted or thought it would be. They just want to get up stream.

~~~
goatlover
Would you rather be a salmon? I rather prefer the complexity that comes with
having a self.

~~~
EchoAce
That's because you value your power over your peace of mind, which is fine and
true for most people. I think they just meant in terms of a purely happiness
based value system.

------
ejlangev
Seems the author's intentions are good but it's such an odd way to frame it.
He outlines that many companies are explicitly designing products in such a
way as to exploit ("hack") people's brains at great detriment to those people.
But his response is to frame it as that we should place blame on our own
brains rather than on the people doing these things or the social structure
that rewards them. Feels like he could think a little bigger here.

~~~
collyw
I thought it was quite interesting after a bit of introspection.

I expected to pick holes in it and make critical comments here. Then as I read
it, I realized that while I am not too addicted to posting shit on Facebook, I
get the same dopamine release when I post responses here. Sure I feel a bit
smarter because its usually involves a bit more reasoning than a selfie on
Faceboook, but the end effect is the same. The reading of the article was the
first step in chasing that dopamine hit.

~~~
ejlangev
Yeah I definitely think there are some good ideas behind it I just think the
focus is a bit too individualistic. Overall I liked it.

------
theEXTORTCIST
In society we have an endless amount of social warnings, "Don't drink too
much, you'll get ill. Don't do drugs, you'll become an addict. Don't drive
without your seatbelt, you can die. Don't watch too much TV, it's not good for
you."

But we still lack any sort of warning in the greater contemporary society
about the risks of overuse of the hyper stimulus that comes along with social
media. I am definitely beginning to see this take shape in our society (with
people rejecting social media applications, articles like this, the way people
speak to the overuse of such platforms)

------
graphitezepp
Nobody will even bother to listen to me talk about social media anymore,
because I am always telling people it is unhealthy and they should get off it
(and yet I'm here). It is the worst fast food imaginable for our human need to
socialize, transient and shallow.

~~~
overcast
I think comparing a discussion on HN to liking photos, and notifications on
Instagram. Is a bit far fetched. You can easily argue about the addictiveness
of an online forum, and social interaction. We are social creatures after all.
But social media sites like IG, Facebook, Twitter, specifically target those
weaknesses in our brain.

~~~
Chathamization
There are good and really useful comments on here. But there's also a lot of
fluff. Beyond that, the way things are set up encourages compulsive behavior.
If you take several hours to comment on something, there's a good chance your
comment will get buried. Wait a few days, and there's a good chance no one
will read it. After making a comment, there's a certain urgency to check to
see who's replied to you, because if you wait too long chances are the person
has moved on.

You'll also notice that people start making the same comments and having the
same conversations over and over again. Instead of having an ongoing
conversation about, say, space exploration, you have the same beginning of a
discussion happening whenever the topic comes up, and then stopping before it
really matures.

That's not to say that the comment section here is bad, but it's still worth
paying attention to some of its drawbacks. Particularly because it shares the
urgency and compulsive aspects that permeate a lot of current sites.

~~~
overcast
HN certainly isn't a utopia, and a lot of the problems mentioned are just
inherent to online forums.

The only real addictive bit is the points system on HN. I'd be fine with that
just going away. It wouldn't be the first time I've refreshed posts I've made
repeatedly to see the tally go up.

~~~
Chathamization
> HN certainly isn't a utopia, and a lot of the problems mentioned are just
> inherent to online forums.

The old style of forums didn't have the same kind of compulsive pressure,
since you could always respond the next day/week/month and the topic would
bump back up to the top of the post. If you don't respond on HN or Reddit
quick enough, no one is going to see your comment. I frequent some sites that
has the older system, and I'll find myself occasionally saying "This isn't
that important; wait a few days and see if you feel like responding." But
that's not really much of an option here - how many people are going to read
your comment if you make it several days later?

And it wouldn't be hard to devise a system that actively discourages
compulsive posting behavior. If you, say, had a web forum where everyone could
only post once a week, you'd have much less of that urgency (and you'd get a
discussion with more users, not just the fraction that habitually post
everywhere).

~~~
eduren
Do you think it would help to have a comment reply notification built into HN?
Most of the time if I decide not to add a follow-up comment it's because the
user I'm replying to has no way of being notified that I did. Or do you think
it would just exacerbate the urgency issues?

~~~
overcast
Something other than the awful threading would be nice. It's nearly impossible
to keep up with anything but recent conversations.

~~~
krapp
>It's nearly impossible to keep up with anything but recent conversations

It's been implied that this is an intentional means of keeping engagement low,
as the quality of comments tends to diminish over time, while the likelihood
of flamebait and spam increases as comment distance diverges from the root.
This is also apparently the reason there are no notifications for new
comments. I don't know if it's true or one of those features the community is
reading too much meaning into, which only exists as it does because pg wasn't
interested in expanding on it.

In any case, I really hope they consider adding more ways to sort the threads
- sorting by time rather than karma would be very helpful. They could even
keep the karma sort the default so no one else has to complain about the
layout changing.

------
Boothroid
Its difficult to want to be too critical about this since I think the author's
motives are only good in that he seems to genuinely be trying to impart good
advice; but so what, I'll criticise anyway. This reads like parody of a
certain time, peppered as it with trendy buzzwords and ideas; it just happens
that the time it is unintentionally parodying is right now. There's a faint
air of desperation about the whole thing: the banality of a life punctuated by
'cheat days' rather than one lived with dietary equilibrium; the tacit
assumption that the world is right and we are primitive; the unspoken message
that we are effectively living in a world that is hostile to us, but that the
problem is not the world, and we should rather learn to adapt to it instead of
bending it to serve our interests as human beings.

------
randomdrake
More information about how you can avoid making apps that do this, or how you
can control your own app usage, can be found here:

[http://www.timewellspent.io](http://www.timewellspent.io)

There's an interesting page where they show the results of 200,000 users of an
app called Moment[1] where you can see which apps make people the least happy.
Additionally, you can see the time limits at which users start to feel happy
about their usage.

[http://www.timewellspent.io/app-ratings/](http://www.timewellspent.io/app-
ratings/)

I came upon the movement after incorporating suggestions from Tristan Harris'
"How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design
Ethicist[2]" into my every day life.

[1] - [https://inthemoment.io](https://inthemoment.io)

[2] - [https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-technology-hijacks-
peop...](https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-
minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3)

~~~
nnd
Thank you for sharing this.

------
zzalpha
Didn't add much to the discussion, unfortunately.

The post is just material copied from Hooked (which is a creepy book worth
reading!), plus observations that have already been made (social media causes
us to compare ourselves to everyone else's highlight reel), followed by a
bunch of generic, currently popular fads/lifestyle advice (keto diet,
exercise, meditate, stoicism).

A far simpler solution is available to all of us: stop using Instagram.

~~~
bluntfang
>A far simpler solution is available to all of us: stop using Instagram.

Easier said than done, no? That's basically saying "opt out of modern
society," which I personally agree with, but it's not a reasonable solution.
These companies that spend b/millions on psychological research to condition
consumers is not going away anytime soon.

~~~
opportune
Almost all males I know are not on instagram, and I'm in my early twenties.
It's not like Facebook in that you might "miss out" on things like invitations
to events or participation in groups. It's just a photo sharing website.
Calling it "modern society" is just ridiculous hyperbole

~~~
ashark
None of the males in my circle of friends (spanning mid 20s to mid 30s) who
aren't single are on social media _at all_. The two single ones are only on
social media because that's where they coordinate dates/hookups. Events and
get-togethers are organized ad hoc over text or instant messaging (Whatsapp).
I don't even know what possible use I'd have for Instagram or Facebook.

------
mnm1
Tldr: diet, exercise, sleep, meditation, relationships, and self reflection
will improve your life because that's how humans have always thrived. It's a
little wordy but on point. Since I stared focusing on these things, I have
felt better, been less depressed, much more energetic, etc.

------
suresh70
Instagram follows the same path as Facebook when it comes to curating content
to the core of user's likes and dislikes. When a content that is tailored to
the user's preference starts to surface more on the feed ,it tends to keep the
user engaged passively even if not active, leading to ad revenue for the
company. Once you are out of the platform and exposed to different, if not
opposing views,people find it tough to handle and lead to depression.

------
overcast
This goes for just about all "social media", and just one of the factors for
my removal from them. The other being toxic communities.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Parts of the cycle are also relevant for community forums such as HN.

~~~
overcast
Agreed, at least it's civil here, and related to my occupation.

~~~
addicted
Also, the minimal design, and the lack of an algorithm targeting my personal
preferences with the express intention of tricking me into reading more
stories makes a huge difference.

I really enjoyed commuting by bike, to the point I would go to certain places
solely for the bike ride, and leave within a few minutes. I was also addicted
to smoking. HN is like my bike addiction, while FB and Twitter feel more like
my smoking addiction.

~~~
overcast
That's a good analogy. Yes, HN is from an era before the social engineering
began.

------
visarga
Every week, news articles and people here on HN say that neural nets can be
easily fooled by adversarial images. Yet human behavior has the same flaws.
Apparently there are adversarial triggers for unintended/undesired human
behavior.

------
zitterbewegung
Why are people treating engagement as a new thing?

AdTech companies use the same strategies that newspapers used to use. Yellow
journalism has become fake news. Tabloids are now blogs fueled by rumor mills.
Newspapers trying to promote celebrities are the same as having a twitter /
snapchat / instagram account.

A rose by any other name is still a rose.

~~~
cirgue
This rose has a much tighter action-reward loop, both for consumers and
producers. Yellow journalism, tabloids, etc were taking advantage of the same
human tendencies, but the speed and volume of the message is orders of
magnitude greater than in the past.

------
graycat
To read the original post (OP), I had to look up the meaning of the acronym
PPL -- "push, pull legs".

I never did see what "the 'gram" meant.

Uh, we have the Roman alphabet, the English language we can write using the
Roman alphabet, and dictionaries where we can look up words in the English
language written with the Roman alphabet. Commonly we can also use Google to
look up such meanings.

Then acronyms such as PPL and abbreviations such as "the 'gram" are not in an
English dictionary and, thus, are obscure and poor means of communications.
Similarly for icons.

So, in the interest of clear communications, ease of use, and a good user
experience (UX), the Web pages for my startup are in English using the Roman
alphabet and have no acronyms, abbreviations, or icons, obscure or otherwise.

Doing the same, the OP would be easier to read.

------
deltafreq369
I tried 80% fat diet and blood ketone monitoring for a few months. I felt more
energetic and happy. My girlfriend tried the same thing, she felt lethargic. I
think individual customization based on genetics and lifestyle is necessary if
you want to do any effective biohacking.

~~~
tracker1
Agreed.. I recently discovered I specifically don't react well to legumes...
nothing huge, just some upset stomach etc... but when I avoid them
successfully, I do much better... I falter (get fast food fried in "vegetable"
ie soybean oil), it's worse every time.

I did a year of very low carb, and was pretty good after about the first
couple weeks. I just _really_ like pasta, bread, etc. I've been heading in
that direction again, as I did a lot better on beef, bison, elk, etc than
poultry or legume sources. Also have noticed the effects of secondary animal
products and what they're fed more than I expected.

I just wish soy free eggs weren't so much more difficult to find... and making
my own mayo/ranch isn't so bad, just time consuming for a product that spoils
relatively quickly. But I feel a lot better when I don't have the stuff.

Aside: trail mix is a whole new level of fun when you can't have legumes
(peanuts), and are badly allergic to cranberries. Have to make my own.

------
anotheryou
also important: your friends always have more friends/likes than you.

edit:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox)

~~~
gipp
Not a contradiction, it's a statistical certainty.

~~~
Govindae
Someone must have the most likes. But it's true for the rest of us. If there
are disconnected graphs, they'll have a local king of the popularity hill.

------
1337biz
To be honest I found instagram much more real than other social media
platforms. Especially the story modus seems to make people more open to show
their real emotions even when they are unhappy.

~~~
overcast
The only thing Instagram is good for at this point, is marketing your
business.

------
jonmc12
For more on cultural evolution and the impact on evolution of our brain, check
out Joseph Henrich's "The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human
Evolution". There are many youtube videos of the author discussing the book as
well. The ideas in the book give deeper context to cultural evolution
discussed in the Wait But Why Neuralink article.

------
justzisguyuknow
> Today, we live in a completely different world as our ancestors. Yet, our
> biology is still exactly the same.

Is that really true? I've heard this kind of argument so many times that it
_seems_ right, but I've rarely seen any scientific evidence to back it up.
Surely our bodies have evolved in some subtle and diverse ways over many
thousands of generations?

~~~
logicchains
Our ancestors couldn't digest cow milk as adults. We've only had farming for
around 10,000 years, but people in regions that practiced dairy farming have
already developed lactose tolerance.

------
danschumann
I don't know what the "right" thing to post on social media is. I don't want
to brag, nor complain, nor talk about how average my day is. I usually just
end up posting cool articles and never anything personal. I thought about
automatically posting the #1 HN article to my timeline every day, for the
likes.

------
whipoodle
Maybe what's inside our brains isn't the problem. Maybe it's what's outside.

------
cyanexttuesday
I was half expecting a point on nearly half of all women are on something like
Xanax.

How biopharma is enabling the worst in us.

------
TrickyRick
Is it just me who's hooked on Hacker News? :(

------
atemerev
I wonder how the same set of banalities repeated for years can be passed for
incredible revelations. Perhaps our brains are indeed buggy.

------
davidreiss
It also applies to media and websites like medium.com that use clickbait to
make money for itself.

Anything in excess is terrible. It's why so much of news industry and people
who watch too much too get depressed.

People who religiously watch foxnews and the members of NPR or subscribers to
the NYTimes are just as depressed.

Ultimately, this is an article that says nothing. It's a clickbait form of
water is wet. And yes, too much water is also bad for you.

------
chairmanwow
YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT SHADY TACTICS SV ENTREPRENEURS ARE USING TO GET AHEAD.
NUMBER 8 WILL MAKE YOUR JAW DROP!

~~~
Fenicio
That and the fact the graphs are stolen from waitbutwhy

