
‘Limbic Capitalism’ Preys on Our Addicted Brains - jsf
https://quillette.com/2019/05/31/how-limbic-capitalism-preys-on-our-addicted-brains/
======
lordnacho
I've been thinking about this a lot. In terms of political economy, there's a
lot of reliance on the ideas of information, free will and rationality.

To cut a long story short, if people have information about the market, they
can use their knowledge of their own desires to act, which creates some sort
of efficiency. Glossing over a load of stuff here because it's a large
subject, but that's sort of the spiel you get when people are talking about
all sorts of political/economic decisions. And you can generate both leftie
and rightie policies depending on how you think about things.

The problem is if deciding things depends on free will and information, what
do we do when it seems there are exceptions? I'll leave aside information
problems since we're more talking about rationality.

But if it turns out people can know what WoW does to your studies, and they
still end up doing this, how should we think about this? Easy answer is that
their real desire is to play WoW all day, but that doesn't seem very
satisfying. If they're making an irrational decision, that has other
consequences on our society.

For instance, a whole load of behaviours need to be controlled. Obvious things
like smoking and drugs, but what about overeating? Too much soda? Social
media? And what exactly is the correct policy response to irrational
behaviour? Keep in mind solutions like taxes/subsidies also rely on
rationality.

~~~
CyanBird
Our entire idea of "agency", "individuality" and even "freedom" needs to be
re-thinked. Basically all of what we have built resides in one way or another
on the idea that individuals bar exceptions such as with physical drugs have
some sort of inalienable agency to them. That entire rockbed is simply not
really true, and more like highly idealized thoughts from thinkers of the
1800's

Policy makers and politicians have been struggling with these problems for the
last +150 years, and increasingly so in the last 30 ever since the creation of
political microtargetting and the perfection of advertising, cambridge
analytica and digital microtargetting+psychographics is just the cherry on top

Planet Money released an episode touching on all of these subjects "Ep 915 How
to meddle in an election"

[https://www.npr.org/2019/05/24/726536757/episode-915-how-
to-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/05/24/726536757/episode-915-how-to-meddle-in-
an-election)

Also, anybody that hasn't should absolutely watch "Century of the self" by
Adam Curtis

~~~
microcolonel
Now imagine for a moment that you're not better than everyone else at thinking
for them.

Agency is the only option. It's not like the concept of agency was thought up
in a society with no dumb people.

If you want to live in a society where the state doesn't believe in agency,
and where your difficult decisions will be made by people who are (on average)
more intelligent than you, go ahead and move to the PRC, they're right up your
alley!

People are actively opting out of advertising, which is why major advertising
businesses are pulling out all the stops (see Google's recent announcement
that they will restrict advertisement and tracking blockers); these businesses
will suffer with the new generation of "consumers".

~~~
api
This is exactly the problem: the fallacy of self exclusion on the part of
those who would rule or otherwise think for us.

If humans are all vulnerable to all these manipulative tactics, where are we
supposed to get humans who are not?

There is another alternative: reclassify exploitation of cognitive failure
modes as a type of initiation of force. We already do this with deception in
certain areas like con artistry, giving false testimony, bad faith in
business, etc. Maybe we need to vastly expand our notion of tortious or
civilly actionable deception to include clear use of dark patterns.

The idea that we are perfectly rational and can deal with any form of
deception is perhaps the intangible analog of saying we are impervious to
bullets. If that's not true, then it is the responsibility of law enforcement
to protect us.

This is kind of radical of course. It would lead to regulations on speech that
classify certain kinds of speech as assault.

The more I see of this emerging mass mind control dystopia the harder it is
for me to think of non-radical solutions.

~~~
microcolonel
> _...reclassify exploitation of cognitive failure modes as a type of
> initiation of force._

Yeah, I think there's some room for that, and the law (as you point out) is
already somewhat headed that way. I think we need to be careful also not to
write laws we can't afford to enforce fairly, or read too much into people's
private interactions.

I remember having to help my employer prove that they were not the reason I
wasn't in school when I was 17; and I think even with that they were still at
my mercy. As a result of this, and a pretty large number of other experiences,
I'm very _very_ sensitive to the unintended outcomes of the law, and the
limits of legislators' ability to understand what _precisely_ they are doing.

------
tomcam
Back in the day, I began my career in programming intending to be a game
developer. Coming from a family of addicts I noticed even in the late 1980s
that games and chat-style apps could be powerfully addictive. (This awareness
kept me off Twitter, Facebook, and so on.)

I moved into compiler work and line of business apps, which surprisingly I
find just as enjoyable. I never really regretted avoiding games because there
are enough things to get me in trouble already.

------
LifeLiverTransp
The individual, is basically legacy hardware, and we refined hacking this
legacy hardware over the past 20 years. The combined interest in hacking this
hardware will always be more effective and cheaper then all defense, bugfixes
and updates the individual and his peers can muster.

We should criminalize the act of hacking individuals, as the hardware can not
be changed and applying security updates and bugfixes has proven ineffective
or impossible. It should be viewed not as a weakness of the person but a vile
act on a vurnerable creature. Similar in nature to the human rights, in which
we grant us one another - animals as we are - inmuteable dignity. This dignity
is violated, if one is hacked/manipulated against his/her own interest to
serve the interests of another individual, cooperation, nation-state or a
idea.

This sort of behaviour is not new. There have been precedences, where gurus,
churches and whole nations, have overriden the individuals possibility to
think or act different.

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manfredo
How do we differentiate from a compelling and effective form of entertainment
with an addictive activity? Most people wouldn't look down on someone who
stays up till 3 AM reading a gripping book, but many would if we swap the book
with a video game. Definitely people who can't hold down jobs or education due
to addition to video games or social media is a problem, but I suspect that a
lot of the concern is due to an overall negative view towards games and
internet use.

What I do think is a problem is the fact that we have much better data
collection on how people use video games and internet services. Absent that
information, developers had to think about crafting a good overall experience
that people were willing to pay for. With that information, people optimize
for overall time used instead of the quality of the experience. Hours and
dollars spent is an easy metric to show to executives, judging the overall
quality of the experience is much more subjective.

~~~
CyanBird
>ow do we differentiate from a compelling and effective form of entertainment
with an addictive activity?

Just like we have always done, if something constantly disturbs day to day
activities, then it is an addictive behaviour

>That is, the addictive behavior “spills over” into several dimensions of
one’s daily life

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3210595/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3210595/)

_______

>What I do think is a problem is the fact that we have much better data
collection on how people use video games and internet services

I think this doesnt get to the core of the issue, and that's that, humans have
always sought better and more efficient ways to get enjoyment out of things,
people would infuse their rectums with alcohol way back in Egyptian times to
get a stronger alcohol "high".

The difference between lets say, 1980's arcades and modern mobile games is
simply the tools available, the aim is the same. Only now we can do it faster
with A/B testing, with the knowledge of Skinner boxes, etc

Having worked in GameDev, one of the most flooring things I have faced is
people asking me for me to introduce said addictive inducing systems and
mechanisms.... They want the enjoyment, _they want to be "addicted"_, they
want a game "so good" that they can't put it down.

And when it comes to what you mention of the metrics, yeah, 100%, modern
digital era metrics are all based in the so called "Attention Economy",
specially for social platforms, in the case of Netflix or Fortnite, their
biggest competitors are people _actually working_ , or asinine things like
taking a walk, cooking, spending time with family, etc. We are in a race to
the bottom for people's attentions and lives, HackerNews itself is yet another
Skinnerbox for those that enjoy learning things. Reddit, Twitter, Youtube they
all are _designed_ to be addictive, Limbic Capitalism, and to not do so would
mean that said platforms would lose in the free market against others that did
employ said tactics...

We are optimizing for human pleasure, yet what happens when said pleasure is
actually a potential enemy?

~~~
manfredo
> Having worked in GameDev, one of the most flooring things I have faced is
> people asking me for me to introduce said addictive inducing systems and
> mechanisms.... They want the enjoyment, they want to be "addicted", they
> want a game "so good" that they can't put it down.

This is what I'm talking about though. Back when games were bought on a disk
or cartridge and didn't feature any sort of micro-transactions there was no
point in making a game addictive. It didn't matter if players played the game
for 2 hours or 200 hours. All that mattered is that the game was _good_ so
that people enjoyed it, became popular, and sold well. In some sense, getting
players addicted to any one game might actually be undesirable as it would
reduce willingness to pay for subsequent games.

Nowadays, so many games are trying to be "lifestyle games" that are meant to
be continuously consumed instead of played through once or twice.

~~~
CyanBird
> there was no point in making a game addictive.

This is what you are missing, _they were already addictive_ , it was only not
a wide spread thing because games in general didn't had mass appeal back then,
it was a niche thing that could be ignored by the broader population.

There's a quasi-infinite amount of stories of people becoming addicted to
playing StarCraft Broodwar, and that game came in 1998, same with Quake,
Counter Strike, Age of Empires.

Yes, it is true that said games have become multiplied, but said games are
simply filling what people ask for.... As I stated in my previous comment,
_people want this_ , they want the addictive parts of said games, and
Capitalism will always be happy to provide...

Also, what you mention of "games that can be played once or twice", I think
that you are seriously misunderstanding the situation, Go has been played for
thousands of years, same with Chess, compact self contained games with
campaigns are actually something quite modern, the standard has been for games
to be multiplayer.

The games that usually destroy people's lives are those that have social or
competitive roots, and it is because we as humans are intrinsically tied to
our relations, ego, personal achievement, etc. "Addictive games" are not
something external to the individual, but they _use the individual itself_.

Lastly, the very reason why StarCraft, Age of Empires, Counter Strike/Half
Life, Quake all sold so well early on is _exactly because_ they were
addictive/enjoyable. Had they not been then they wouldnt have

________

Quick question to all HN's; Is Dark Souls "Addictive"?

~~~
manfredo
> Quick question to all HN's; Is Dark Souls "Addictive"?

I don't think so. I'm a heavy dark souls fan plus Bloodborne and Sekiro. I've
been playing since Demon's Souls. Probably one of my top 5 favorite franchises
of all time, aggregate playtime probably in the high hundreds maybe thousands
of hours.

Personally, I can play the game more than maybe a couple hours at a time
because they require a level of attention so great that I'm exhausted after a
couple hours. I _have_ to put it down after some time.

------
dgudkov
This is why the advances in AI sometimes look scary to me. "Limbic capitalism"
(great term, btw) existed and thrived long before the internet and AI era -
tobacco, alcohol, credit cards, etc. Finding and monetizing a human addiction
has always been extremely profitable. What worries me, is that the power of AI
and the easy ability to reach millions of people at once through social media
and internet advertisement will make finding new human additions and
exploiting them easier than ever. There is nothing that can stop businesses
from basically hacking the human limbic system (aka lizard brain) and
monetizing it using the vast power of AI. Facebook just pioneered it, but many
will follow.

The most dangerous AI is not the killer robots scorching the Earth a-la the
Terminator movie. The most dangerous AI is the one that will make humans fall
in love with it.

------
mettamage
I have to say: this is one fancy title that is fun to pronounce!

The meaning is less fun.

------
CyanBird
"Limbic Capitalism"

Oh god that's such a wondrous name, the perfect descriptor

------
michalu
.

~~~
GuiA
China’s Great Leap Forward: 50 million deaths

Stalin’s regime: 10 million deaths

Khmer Rouge: 2 million deaths (25% of Cambodia’s population)

East Germany “denazification efforts”: tens of thousands of deaths, possible
as high as a hundred thousand

I don’t entirely disagree with the nuance you’re trying to make, but it’s
worth keeping in mind that some things are very measurable when it comes to
these communist/totalitarian regimes.

~~~
CyanBird
I'm sorry, but this is such a cheapo propaganda like comment to what the other
guy said

Throwing numbers around as if the decentralized killing or the fami es within
non-totalitarian systems weren't comparable is just silly

The guy is t advocating for anything of the sort, and the article doesn't
mention governments themselves, but decentralized profit driven
enterprises....

~~~
GuiA
One does not exclude the other. You can bring up the numbers for other
governments if you wish, they’re interesting to discuss as well.

Regarding your accusations, it’s hard to settle anything now that the author
deleted their comment. However, I stand firm by my statement that one cannot
make claims to the effect of “life wasn’t so bad in $past_totalitarian_regime”
without keeping numbers of direct human deaths - from executions, interment
camps, famines - at the forefront of our minds.

------
lostmymind66
Should we include weed and booze in this as well?

~~~
manfredo
Probably not weed, and definitely not alcohol. Chemical addiction is a
physiological phenomenon. Behavior addictions are psychological.

~~~
narag
I agree with your later sentences, but I have doubts that it implies the
former. It's possible you have no physiological addiction to alcohol but you
do have an addictive behaviour that involves alcohol.

------
PaulHoule
A good article on Quillette, wow...

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, and especially not flamebait,
which this is.

Instead, when there's a good article, post a substantive comment if you have
one, or simply don't post.

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gtt
I think usage of Capitalism here is a misnomer, because replacing 'capitalism'
with 'human greed' or 'human fallibility' changes nothing.

The problem is not caused by markets or property rights. If anything,
competition actually makes games least toxic. Look how pay2win games being
replaced by vanity items selling games.

~~~
coldtea
Yes, but capitalism is the system that says "human greed is good" and that
basing everything self-interest turns out for "the best".

From Adam Smith: "“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer,
or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own
self-interest."

To Gordon Gecko:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed_Is_Good_(disambiguation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed_Is_Good_\(disambiguation\))

Via countless others...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Understand there's a difference between 'greed' and 'self-interest'. One in
consuming; the other, enlightened.

~~~
coldtea
Destroying others for one's own gain is fully compatible with self-interest --
there's nothing enlightened about it.

Altruism, yes, is enlightened.

