I actually think most of my “to the right” stuff is synthetic! For example, when I’ve posted on LessWrong, (too) frequently checking to see how the post is received is self reinforcing with a random spaced reward. Nobody did this to me per se; mostly my brain created the loop itself from the available landscape.
On the other hand, deliberately addictive stuff is (in my experience) usually self limiting. Like, I enjoy Fall Guys because it scratches the large group competition itch but isn’t violent or scary. It also has all the dark patterns to keep you engaged. I voluntarily fell for those a bit, but never became a durable Fall Guys addict. It just sort of got old. I expect TikTok would be the same. Even WoW, that glorious ambrosia, wears out its welcome within a year or two (much faster now that I’m married, courtesy of my wife).
So I don’t think avoiding new stuff would work for me as a heuristic here; there’d be false positives and false negatives. Perhaps I’m unusual!
I expect the fact that addictive things wear out their welcome faster thanks to your wife generalizes.
Maybe one defense against new addictive things is to have people with whom you are in close relationships, who are not trying the same things at the same time, and can remind you it would be bad to sink a bunch of time or effort into an addictive thing, because (among other things) it would hurt your important relationships.
If you are relying on your own self-control to deal with something designed to overcome or compete with your self-control, one misstep could be doom. But with someone else whose judgment you rely on, both minds would have to be compromised at the same time.
Doesn’t work for instantly-effective perfect addictors, but for anything you can recover from, a supportive group of people will plausibly help. Maybe as our tech advances, “our friends monitor us for new addictions and help us recover” should become a low-shame social norm. Along with “friends avoid trying the same new thing at the same time”.
I actually think most of my “to the right” stuff is synthetic! For example, when I’ve posted on LessWrong, (too) frequently checking to see how the post is received is self reinforcing with a random spaced reward. Nobody did this to me per se; mostly my brain created the loop itself from the available landscape.
On the other hand, deliberately addictive stuff is (in my experience) usually self limiting. Like, I enjoy Fall Guys because it scratches the large group competition itch but isn’t violent or scary. It also has all the dark patterns to keep you engaged. I voluntarily fell for those a bit, but never became a durable Fall Guys addict. It just sort of got old. I expect TikTok would be the same. Even WoW, that glorious ambrosia, wears out its welcome within a year or two (much faster now that I’m married, courtesy of my wife).
So I don’t think avoiding new stuff would work for me as a heuristic here; there’d be false positives and false negatives. Perhaps I’m unusual!
I expect the fact that addictive things wear out their welcome faster thanks to your wife generalizes.
Maybe one defense against new addictive things is to have people with whom you are in close relationships, who are not trying the same things at the same time, and can remind you it would be bad to sink a bunch of time or effort into an addictive thing, because (among other things) it would hurt your important relationships.
If you are relying on your own self-control to deal with something designed to overcome or compete with your self-control, one misstep could be doom. But with someone else whose judgment you rely on, both minds would have to be compromised at the same time.
Doesn’t work for instantly-effective perfect addictors, but for anything you can recover from, a supportive group of people will plausibly help. Maybe as our tech advances, “our friends monitor us for new addictions and help us recover” should become a low-shame social norm. Along with “friends avoid trying the same new thing at the same time”.