Reading some of the other comments, I think I need to note that there is an important difference between this article, mine, and pg's.
When I wrote my article in Feb 09 Eliezer commented on HN with something like "hey! I already did that!"
Since my piece (http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology_is...) received such a high rating on HN, I did a bit of research to determine who came up with what idea when. Mainly because I am vain, yes, but I was also interested in how several people come up with the same thing around the same time. I hadn't read anything along the lines of what I wrote. How many more articles were out there?
Not many, as it turned out, but that's not the point. The point was I learned there are some distinctions in how people see the problem.
Eliezeer makes the point that electronic goods "super-stimulate" -- an importatnt piece of the puzzle. I believe when people argue "but no, this isn't really the end of the world" they attack this piece first.
What Eliezer missed at the time in his piece is that this is an evolutionary process. It's not just that digital goods can stimulate just like drugs. The killer part is that there is a survival of the fittest process going on where the digital drugs keep adapting to optimize their hold on our brains. This was the point I made.
I think it's an important distinction and deserves re-mentioning. There is a good and scary reason why pong from the 1970s looks so dumb yet we spent 30 minutes playing it, while games from 2010 look so awesome and we spend 30-40 hours a week playing them. Our games today will be pong to somebody in 2025.
PG makes the point that this is accelerating. Not only are various electronic goods competing for time on our brains, not only are these goods evolving to self-optimize, the evolution process itself is accelerating.
So the timeline goes 2007: it's a drug, 2009: it's an endlessly self-optimizing drug, 2010: it's adapting at an accelerated rate.
Ouch.
I'm not trying to yell the sky is falling, and I remain an optimist for the species as a whole. I just don't think waving your arms around (with a game controller in your hand, no doubt) while you say something like "nothing to see here folks, please move along" is going to cut it anymore. We have some work to do.
Laissez-faire(not troll) viewpoint: People will be unequally susceptible to these new super-stimuli, and humanity will keep on evolving. If the victims, who will have their genes excluded from the gene pool, leads happy lives, what's the problem?
edit: Felt a need to play devils advocate to get a more complete discussion, but just saw that it had already been done in the comments to pg article. so, eh, never mind.
The point I really wanted to make was that I'm not worried that this will be the end of humanity, since not just super-stimuli, but also humanity keeps on evolving.
I didn't reread this piece when I posted the link, so I can't say whether it talks about how "electronic goods" superstimulate, but the general point of the LW discussions includes novels and manga. For example, in one of the other essays, EY wrote "It's bad enough comparing yourself to Isaac Newton without comparing yourself to Kimball Kinnison."
When I wrote my article in Feb 09 Eliezer commented on HN with something like "hey! I already did that!"
Since my piece (http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology_is...) received such a high rating on HN, I did a bit of research to determine who came up with what idea when. Mainly because I am vain, yes, but I was also interested in how several people come up with the same thing around the same time. I hadn't read anything along the lines of what I wrote. How many more articles were out there?
Not many, as it turned out, but that's not the point. The point was I learned there are some distinctions in how people see the problem.
Eliezeer makes the point that electronic goods "super-stimulate" -- an importatnt piece of the puzzle. I believe when people argue "but no, this isn't really the end of the world" they attack this piece first.
What Eliezer missed at the time in his piece is that this is an evolutionary process. It's not just that digital goods can stimulate just like drugs. The killer part is that there is a survival of the fittest process going on where the digital drugs keep adapting to optimize their hold on our brains. This was the point I made.
I think it's an important distinction and deserves re-mentioning. There is a good and scary reason why pong from the 1970s looks so dumb yet we spent 30 minutes playing it, while games from 2010 look so awesome and we spend 30-40 hours a week playing them. Our games today will be pong to somebody in 2025.
PG makes the point that this is accelerating. Not only are various electronic goods competing for time on our brains, not only are these goods evolving to self-optimize, the evolution process itself is accelerating.
So the timeline goes 2007: it's a drug, 2009: it's an endlessly self-optimizing drug, 2010: it's adapting at an accelerated rate.
Ouch.
I'm not trying to yell the sky is falling, and I remain an optimist for the species as a whole. I just don't think waving your arms around (with a game controller in your hand, no doubt) while you say something like "nothing to see here folks, please move along" is going to cut it anymore. We have some work to do.