I thought you were going to conclude by saying that, since it’s unviable to assume you’ll never get exposed to anything new that’s farther to the right of this spectrum, it’s important to develop skills of bouncing off such things, unaddicting yourself, or otherwise dealing with it.
To that end: I think it helps to perceive the creators of a thing as being malicious manipulators trying to exploit you, and to think of certain things as being Skinner boxes or other known exploits. Why does this game or app do this thing this way? If they wanted me to get maximum value out of it and waste minimal time, they would do it another way. Therefore they’re trying to screw with me. I’m not gonna put up with that.
By the way, I do in fact avoid trying out things like skiing, “just to see what it’s like”, partly because I do not want to discover that I really like it, and then spend all kinds of money and inconvenience and risk on it. (A friend of mine has gotten like three concussions skiing, the cumulative effects of which have serious neurological consequences that are disrupting his daily life, and my impression is that he still wants to ski more. (It’s not his profession—he’s a programmer.)) Likewise I’m not interested in “trying out” foods like ice cream that I’m confident I don’t want to incorporate into my regular diet; if it’s a social event then I’ll relax this attitude, but if such events start happening too frequently in a short period then I resume frowning at foods I think are too, erm, high in the calories:nutrition and especially sugar:nutrition ratio.
I thought you were going to conclude by saying that, since it’s unviable to assume you’ll never get exposed to anything new that’s farther to the right of this spectrum, it’s important to develop skills of bouncing off such things, unaddicting yourself, or otherwise dealing with it.
I think this would be nice, but it assumes that it’s possible to develop a skill of bouncing of addictions. I think it’s both fairely genetically predetermined, and hard on average at the extemes (Heroin or potentially future TikTok) even for people in the top 10% of ability in this regard.
By the way, I do in fact avoid trying out things like skiing, “just to see what it’s like”, partly because I do not want to discover that I really like it, and then spend all kinds of money and inconvenience and risk on it. (A friend of mine has gotten like three concussions skiing, the cumulative effects of which have serious neurological consequences that are disrupting his daily life, and my impression is that he still wants to ski more. (It’s not his profession—he’s a programmer.)) Likewise I’m not interested in “trying out” foods like ice cream that I’m confident I don’t want to incorporate into my regular diet; if it’s a social event then I’ll relax this attitude, but if such events start happening too frequently in a short period then I resume frowning at foods I think are too, erm, high in the calories:nutrition and especially sugar:nutrition ratio.
What I’m saying is basically what you’re saying, just with an additional automatic ban on new types of entertainment. The only reason you can evaluate the harm of ski or ice cream is because they’ve been around for a while and know how they work. When <future TikTok> comes out, you can’t know immediately that this isn’t going to have an algorithm that surpasses you abilities to “bounce off addictions”, so you should wait
I thought you were going to conclude by saying that, since it’s unviable to assume you’ll never get exposed to anything new that’s farther to the right of this spectrum, it’s important to develop skills of bouncing off such things, unaddicting yourself, or otherwise dealing with it.
To that end: I think it helps to perceive the creators of a thing as being malicious manipulators trying to exploit you, and to think of certain things as being Skinner boxes or other known exploits. Why does this game or app do this thing this way? If they wanted me to get maximum value out of it and waste minimal time, they would do it another way. Therefore they’re trying to screw with me. I’m not gonna put up with that.
By the way, I do in fact avoid trying out things like skiing, “just to see what it’s like”, partly because I do not want to discover that I really like it, and then spend all kinds of money and inconvenience and risk on it. (A friend of mine has gotten like three concussions skiing, the cumulative effects of which have serious neurological consequences that are disrupting his daily life, and my impression is that he still wants to ski more. (It’s not his profession—he’s a programmer.)) Likewise I’m not interested in “trying out” foods like ice cream that I’m confident I don’t want to incorporate into my regular diet; if it’s a social event then I’ll relax this attitude, but if such events start happening too frequently in a short period then I resume frowning at foods I think are too, erm, high in the calories:nutrition and especially sugar:nutrition ratio.
I think this would be nice, but it assumes that it’s possible to develop a skill of bouncing of addictions. I think it’s both fairely genetically predetermined, and hard on average at the extemes (Heroin or potentially future TikTok) even for people in the top 10% of ability in this regard.
What I’m saying is basically what you’re saying, just with an additional automatic ban on new types of entertainment. The only reason you can evaluate the harm of ski or ice cream is because they’ve been around for a while and know how they work. When <future TikTok> comes out, you can’t know immediately that this isn’t going to have an algorithm that surpasses you abilities to “bounce off addictions”, so you should wait