I think I would be willing to play Hilary’s hand here. She is saying that there are drivers within the culture that are creating pathways to “happiness,” or at least, guiding the human experience. For illustration, I would compare and contrast two decades in US cultural history, the 1950’s and the 1980’s. In both resources for the people were plentiful, and at this point I won’t venture into what people did with their spare time and money. But some have argued that the 1980’s was a much more destructive period. The rise of advertising and glamor and how it affected people were unprecedented. Of course, not everyone fell prey to it, but many did. But this shift made fashion companies rich practically overnight. NatGeo had a program called “80’s, The Decade that Made Us.” There was a quote by a journalist that summed up the era perfectly. She said, “This is when we went as a nation from ‘We the people’ to ‘Me the person.” I don’t feel that the 50’s saw this type of cultural shift, though elements were beginning which facilitated the coming of the 80’s. For both eras, people followed their passions, as diverse as they were. But in both cases, or throughout human history, the definition of the proper human experience has yet eluded proper examination.
Thanks for a thoughtful post. Your thesis - that we have agency, that we can just say no -- runs counter to a lot of widely accepted thinking in the 12 step community. There whole thing is about accepting the idea that willpower is of little use against "cunning, baffling" addiction and that the only way out is to turn, not to ourselves, but to a higher power.
"Just say no!" turns out to be the only thing the war on drugs got right. It really should be up to the individual, and anything that gets in the way of that is going to be ineffective... and probably more harmful than not. Prohibition is the clear, obvious example (besides the overwhelming evidence you mention from the war on drugs itself).
I think a good niche for you is, "I agree mostly with what this author says, but not this one thing", and then have that author's supporters get mad. It's like a fun little game!
Perhaps the best way to take power from corporations is to remove the monetary system. We saw what happened after the creation of the Federal Reserve. The government influence in economy is as old as industrial policy and state security. Social engineering and DEI are fairly new. Corporations, overall, make money by fulfilling some perceived need, including the use of chemical addiction. But imagine, if you will, a life in which basic physical needs were met, as has been promised by the AI and android revolution. What next for human evolution? History is useful to predict what humans will do. In other circles internal reflection and spiritual enlightenment was a worthwhile pursuit — an area where organized religion has yet to evolve.
I agree - for anything about personal agency, the commitment of the individual is essential. Your example is good in that it shows that it's possible to do it, even in the face of adversity, but it does not show that everybody can do it. And whether or not a given individual can do it is influenced by external factors, at least some of which are outside of their control: health, supportive social networks, money (should it be needed), and so on.
It's like getting rich (and I'm aware that I'm heading us into the rehashing of old arguments): in principle, anybody can get rich. Some people do. But you are more likely to be able to achieve that if you have a decent education, starting capital, good health, etc.
So yes, the individual is central, and yes, some people succeed even though everything seems set against them. But this type of success (and I think this goes both for beating addiction and for becoming wealthy) is strongly influenced by things that go beyond the individual.
Thanks Michael, your article was very helpful in making ourselves clearer.
Here is our response:
In summary our view is that it although it can be upsetting, even a bit embarrassing, to realise how easily we can be manipulated, it can also be empowering to see more clearly just how and why it happens and that we are not as weak, or lacking in will power as we are often made to feel. Millions, in fact billions of ‘normal’ people are addicted to these products for very good reasons of economics and power.
We argue that the Addiction Economy model is both disempowering and empowering, but that this framing ultimately leads to the most empowering & effective solutions of all - changing the environment that allows addictive companies to flourish - regulation.
I've been wrangling with this for the past hour but I can't get around that the only way we can stop it is to demand it be stopped. It has to be ME who makes the demand. My skin crawls with the "It's not you it's them." But then who stops it? "I need them to fix it?" No wonder we are in this pickle.
You said: "You do not have to continue on this path. You do not have to continue to allow people to manipulate your emotions, your dopamine, and your brain”
With the advent of powerful AI systems, don't you think we need to know who these "people" are? Potentially a hot and unpopular opinion, but I am beginning to think that I am in the camp of those who think that AI developers and engineers, as well as product managers and decision-making people, need to be publicly evaluated for their merits and personalities, in order to prevent malignant sociopaths/psychopaths and other undesirable traits from developing these kinds of systems.
I have no problem saying: "I have been discriminated against by white people in the past. However, most of my heroes are white, my wife and son, whom I love very much, are white, and I have no ill will toward white people as a whole, but my biases need to be assessed in situations where my decisions might affect white people". Just as an example. It would take a lot of courage and honesty to publicly disclose your biases, but I think that is the only way we are going to be able to develop technology that does not harm people, including addiction. I think we need to start questioning who these Silicon Valley developers are, their quirks, their beliefs, because otherwise we are designing a society in which we are subservient to developers we do not know, and sometimes who do not even know how their technologies are being misused (e.g. in the case of researchers who may not be directly involved with product or consumer-facing interfaces).
I hope my position doesn't get me blacklisted in Silicon Valley, where I want to work, but I think we need to increase the amount of information we provide to the public about who the people are who are developing these technologies in order to create a greater sense of agency.
We cannot pretend to solve the problem of addiction through agency when most people do not even understand that they are being manipulated by algorithms whose creators are professionals who live in Silicon Valley, make a lot of money, and have very little regard (or awareness, due to the insularity of these large tech companies and the high profits that keep them in a kind of bubble of disregard for society) for the livelihoods of their users.
So I would start this process by demanding that tech companies reveal their hand and identity to society, only then can we objectively demand that people use their own agency to solve their problems of overreliance and addiction. I am not afraid to be who I am and to hold the beliefs that I do, and I am proud of them and I am comfortable with my moral and ethical compass, and so must Silicon Valley and software engineers and ML engineers and everyone involved in the pipelines that influence and sometimes negatively affect the lives of millions of people. Am I being cynical and extremely naive? is this a really cringy take? Does it sound like a nightmare for the people involved? (the developers of AI systems and algorithms). I think at least an AI Hippocratic Oath needs to be instantiated.
I think I would be willing to play Hilary’s hand here. She is saying that there are drivers within the culture that are creating pathways to “happiness,” or at least, guiding the human experience. For illustration, I would compare and contrast two decades in US cultural history, the 1950’s and the 1980’s. In both resources for the people were plentiful, and at this point I won’t venture into what people did with their spare time and money. But some have argued that the 1980’s was a much more destructive period. The rise of advertising and glamor and how it affected people were unprecedented. Of course, not everyone fell prey to it, but many did. But this shift made fashion companies rich practically overnight. NatGeo had a program called “80’s, The Decade that Made Us.” There was a quote by a journalist that summed up the era perfectly. She said, “This is when we went as a nation from ‘We the people’ to ‘Me the person.” I don’t feel that the 50’s saw this type of cultural shift, though elements were beginning which facilitated the coming of the 80’s. For both eras, people followed their passions, as diverse as they were. But in both cases, or throughout human history, the definition of the proper human experience has yet eluded proper examination.
Thanks for a thoughtful post. Your thesis - that we have agency, that we can just say no -- runs counter to a lot of widely accepted thinking in the 12 step community. There whole thing is about accepting the idea that willpower is of little use against "cunning, baffling" addiction and that the only way out is to turn, not to ourselves, but to a higher power.
Do you disagree with this approach?
Great write up. From the attention economy to the addiction economy
"Just say no!" turns out to be the only thing the war on drugs got right. It really should be up to the individual, and anything that gets in the way of that is going to be ineffective... and probably more harmful than not. Prohibition is the clear, obvious example (besides the overwhelming evidence you mention from the war on drugs itself).
I think a good niche for you is, "I agree mostly with what this author says, but not this one thing", and then have that author's supporters get mad. It's like a fun little game!
Perhaps the best way to take power from corporations is to remove the monetary system. We saw what happened after the creation of the Federal Reserve. The government influence in economy is as old as industrial policy and state security. Social engineering and DEI are fairly new. Corporations, overall, make money by fulfilling some perceived need, including the use of chemical addiction. But imagine, if you will, a life in which basic physical needs were met, as has been promised by the AI and android revolution. What next for human evolution? History is useful to predict what humans will do. In other circles internal reflection and spiritual enlightenment was a worthwhile pursuit — an area where organized religion has yet to evolve.
I agree - for anything about personal agency, the commitment of the individual is essential. Your example is good in that it shows that it's possible to do it, even in the face of adversity, but it does not show that everybody can do it. And whether or not a given individual can do it is influenced by external factors, at least some of which are outside of their control: health, supportive social networks, money (should it be needed), and so on.
It's like getting rich (and I'm aware that I'm heading us into the rehashing of old arguments): in principle, anybody can get rich. Some people do. But you are more likely to be able to achieve that if you have a decent education, starting capital, good health, etc.
So yes, the individual is central, and yes, some people succeed even though everything seems set against them. But this type of success (and I think this goes both for beating addiction and for becoming wealthy) is strongly influenced by things that go beyond the individual.
“Demon, in the book, comes from that level of inequality in spades. Yet he exerted his agency and righted his own ship”
People say that travelling to a magical faraway kingdom is impossible. But Dorothy, in the book, is carried to one by a cyclone!
“I read a novel in which somebody did it so it must be possible” does not seem like the strongest of arguments.
Thanks Michael, your article was very helpful in making ourselves clearer.
Here is our response:
In summary our view is that it although it can be upsetting, even a bit embarrassing, to realise how easily we can be manipulated, it can also be empowering to see more clearly just how and why it happens and that we are not as weak, or lacking in will power as we are often made to feel. Millions, in fact billions of ‘normal’ people are addicted to these products for very good reasons of economics and power.
We argue that the Addiction Economy model is both disempowering and empowering, but that this framing ultimately leads to the most empowering & effective solutions of all - changing the environment that allows addictive companies to flourish - regulation.
https://www.theaddictioneconomy.com/news-insights/economicmodelofaddiction-wz42s
I've been wrangling with this for the past hour but I can't get around that the only way we can stop it is to demand it be stopped. It has to be ME who makes the demand. My skin crawls with the "It's not you it's them." But then who stops it? "I need them to fix it?" No wonder we are in this pickle.
You said: "You do not have to continue on this path. You do not have to continue to allow people to manipulate your emotions, your dopamine, and your brain”
With the advent of powerful AI systems, don't you think we need to know who these "people" are? Potentially a hot and unpopular opinion, but I am beginning to think that I am in the camp of those who think that AI developers and engineers, as well as product managers and decision-making people, need to be publicly evaluated for their merits and personalities, in order to prevent malignant sociopaths/psychopaths and other undesirable traits from developing these kinds of systems.
I have no problem saying: "I have been discriminated against by white people in the past. However, most of my heroes are white, my wife and son, whom I love very much, are white, and I have no ill will toward white people as a whole, but my biases need to be assessed in situations where my decisions might affect white people". Just as an example. It would take a lot of courage and honesty to publicly disclose your biases, but I think that is the only way we are going to be able to develop technology that does not harm people, including addiction. I think we need to start questioning who these Silicon Valley developers are, their quirks, their beliefs, because otherwise we are designing a society in which we are subservient to developers we do not know, and sometimes who do not even know how their technologies are being misused (e.g. in the case of researchers who may not be directly involved with product or consumer-facing interfaces).
I hope my position doesn't get me blacklisted in Silicon Valley, where I want to work, but I think we need to increase the amount of information we provide to the public about who the people are who are developing these technologies in order to create a greater sense of agency.
We cannot pretend to solve the problem of addiction through agency when most people do not even understand that they are being manipulated by algorithms whose creators are professionals who live in Silicon Valley, make a lot of money, and have very little regard (or awareness, due to the insularity of these large tech companies and the high profits that keep them in a kind of bubble of disregard for society) for the livelihoods of their users.
So I would start this process by demanding that tech companies reveal their hand and identity to society, only then can we objectively demand that people use their own agency to solve their problems of overreliance and addiction. I am not afraid to be who I am and to hold the beliefs that I do, and I am proud of them and I am comfortable with my moral and ethical compass, and so must Silicon Valley and software engineers and ML engineers and everyone involved in the pipelines that influence and sometimes negatively affect the lives of millions of people. Am I being cynical and extremely naive? is this a really cringy take? Does it sound like a nightmare for the people involved? (the developers of AI systems and algorithms). I think at least an AI Hippocratic Oath needs to be instantiated.