It used to go something like this. We experienced the outside world – including arts, culture and fashion – via a combination of community, geography, mass and specialist media, and serendipitous accidents. Exposed to a range of styles, genres and ideas, we would decide what appealed to us, and then attempt (with varying degrees of success) to consume and engage with those things.
This is no longer the case. We increasingly encounter most aspects of the world through a single aperture: streaming and social media platforms. Or, more specifically, the algorithmic feeds of streaming and social media platforms, plus algorithmically optimised search engines and e-commerce sites, from Amazon to Vinted. In many cases, these are programmed to show each individual specific content based on data gathered from their own activities and those of other users – content that will ideally keep them on the platform for as long as possible.
Psychology
BEWARE SOFTWARE BRAIN
theverge.com…everyone in tech understands how much regular people dislike AI. What I think they’re missing is why. They think this is a marketing problem. OpenAI just spent $200 million on the TBPN podcast because the company thinks it will help make people like AI more.
AI doesn’t have a marketing problem. People experience these tools every single day! ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users, trending to a billion, and everyone has seen AI Overviews in Google Search and massive amounts of slop on their feeds.
You can’t advertise people out of reacting to their own experiences. This is a fundamental disconnect between how tech people with software brains see the world and how regular people are living their lives.
Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life
joanwestenberg.comA thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it.
A thin desire is one that doesn’t.
The desire to understand calculus versus the desire to check your notifications are both real desires, and both produce (to a degree) real feelings of satisfaction when fulfilled.
But the person who spends a year learning calculus becomes someone different, someone who can see patterns in the world that were previously invisible, who has expanded the range of things they’re capable of caring about, who has Been Through It.
The person who checks their notifications is, afterward, exactly the same person who wanted to check their notifications five minutes ago.
Chatbots can be manipulated through flattery and peer pressure
theverge.comGenerally, AI chatbots are not supposed to do things like call you names or tell you how to make controlled substances. But, just like a person, with the right psychological tactics, it seems like at least some LLMs can be convinced to break their own rules.
Baggage – Lucy Davidson
vimeo.comPro-AI Subreddit Bans ‘Uptick’ of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions
404media.co“LLMs [Large language models] today are ego-reinforcing glazing-machines that reinforce unstable and narcissistic personalities,” one of the moderators of r/accelerate, wrote in an announcement. “There is a lot more crazy people than people realise. And AI is rizzing them up in a very unhealthy way at the moment.”
Why we can’t stand feeling bored
theguardian.comSo which is it: a fertile, imaginative state or mind-numbing agony?
The answer, according to experts, is both. Like life’s proverbial lemons, boredom is what you make of it.
Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids
theatlantic.comLike a lighthouse that helps sailors avoid crashing into rocks, Lighthouse Parents provide firm boundaries and emotional support while allowing their children the freedom to navigate their own challenges. They demonstrate that they trust their kids to handle difficult situations independently. The key is learning when to step back and let them find their own way.
The Trouble with Friends
newyorker.comThe wonder, and the curse, of friendship is choice.
Moral progress is annoying
aeon.coYou might feel you can trust your gut to tell right from wrong, but the friction of social change shows that you can’t.
Strength Training
thepointmag.comExercise uses energy, burns calories, perhaps maintains a certain level of fitness. Training aims at definite improvement. “The difference between a workout and training,” she writes, “is a smart, predictable increase of intensity.”
How social networks prey on our longing to be known
janmaarten.comAn up close an personal look into why we should be extremely careful when sharing about ourselves online, no matter how shiny an app or network might be.
Amanda, There Is No Audience
kottke.orgYears ago, when I was in my 20s, a bold and artistically daring older friend who has since passed on gave me what I often think was the best advice I have ever gotten. I was worrying what ‘people would think’ of a decision I had made, and she said, “Amanda, There is no audience.”
The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same
theguardian.comThese cafes had all adopted similar aesthetics and offered similar menus, but they hadn’t been forced to do so by a corporate parent, the way a chain like Starbucks replicated itself. Instead, despite their vast geographical separation and total independence from each other, the cafes had all drifted toward the same end point. The sheer expanse of sameness was too shocking and new to be boring.
Talking out loud to yourself is a technology for thinking
psyche.coLike many of us, I talk to myself out loud, though I’m a little unusual in that I often do it in public spaces. Whenever I want to figure out an issue, develop an idea or memorise a text, I turn to this odd work routine. While it’s definitely earned me a reputation in my neighbourhood, it’s also improved my thinking and speaking skills immensely. Speaking out loud is not only a medium of communication, but a technology of thinking: it encourages the formation and processing of thoughts.