 super stimuli man dies after three-day internet gaming binge influencer dies after binge drinking on live stream digital content designed to grab attention by exploiting human psychology fast food is killing you slowly are the allegations true that you're secretly a lizard um dopamine dopamine dopamine it is surprising that we have ended up in this place isn't it the great challenge of our century is learning to consume less who has never killed an hour not casually or without thought but carefully a premeditated murder of minutes the violence comes from a combination of giving up not caring and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish so you kill the hour you do not work you do not read you do not daydream if you sleep it is not because you need to sleep and when at last it is over there is no evidence no weapon no blood and nobody the only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share a life on the savannah 10 000 years ago shaped people's instincts for food sex and guarding their territory these instincts were not designed for a life in a society filled with sophisticated technology and a lot of people our natural tendencies have not had enough time to adapt to the rapid pace of change that characterizes the contemporary world now look into space and in physiology which is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system a stimulus is something that causes a physiological response and bringing detectable change in the chemical or physical structure of an organism's internal or external environment our ability to detect a change in the internal or external environment is called sensitivity or excitability and has played a huge role in our evolution as it can produce systemic responses throughout the entire body in the 1950s nicotine bergen a biologist and ornithologist started carrying out a series of studies in which he designed what we now call supernormal stimuli the stimuli consisted of unnatural representations of beaks and eggs as well as other biologically significant objects that were painted primed and magnified in these tests young herring gulls showed greater interest in pecking at large red knitting needles than at adult herring gull beaks this was likely due to the fact that the knitting needles were more vibrantly colored and longer than the beaks themselves if you view present-day movies as a herring gull then sex violence and adrenaline are your fake knitting needles similarly if you view present-day junk food as a herring gull then the multicolored processed food is your fake knitting needle richard dawkins a student of tinbergans gave the dummy a rounder and more pear shaped appearance which prompted a bigger amount of desire he referred to these play things as sex bombs outside of the laboratory male australian jewel beetles have been seen attempting to have sexual relations with beer bottles made of glossy brown glass as the light reflections on the bottles match the form and color of female beetles dawkins and john crebs used the phrase supernormal stimulus in 1979 to describe the amplification of pre-existing indicators generated by social parasites using the manipulation of baby birds hosts to show the power of these signals normal stimuli are things that animals have evolved to react to in certain ways over the course of their evolutionary history supernormal stimuli disrupt these normal responses because they amplify the features of the stimuli that the animals are adapted to react to this causes the animals normal responses to be distorted even when i go fishing nowadays i am almost forced to adapt to buy the right kind of artificial bait to excite the fish now animals routinely change or exaggerate traits in order to attract imitate frighten or defend themselves from members of the same species as shown by research on the evolution of signaling for example female firefly species mimic the light patterns of other firefly species females causing males from those other species to attempt to copulate with the deceptive females who then eat them however only humans are capable of engaging in conscious manipulation of signals in real time using customized instruments as opposed to relying on gradual genetic changes that have occurred over evolutionary time in the world of humans the existence of remarkable artificial signals produced by more sophisticated cultural tools is something to be wary of sexualized capitalism all we need to do is compare photoshopped images to the unretouched originals the perceptions of the same face with and without cosmetics artificially created exaggerations can be quite effective in eliciting heightened positive responses that may be consequential such as making one buy a specific product a growing body of evidence suggests the way women's beauty ideals are constructed and prescribed varies with such factors as socioeconomic status gender role stereotyping and sexual orientation by contrast research on what constitutes an attractive male body has not received the same level of attention despite evidence that both women and men hold strong beliefs about male attractiveness indeed women tend to prefer men whose torso have the shape of an inverted triangle that is a narrow waist and a broad chest and shoulders in keeping with physical strength and muscle development in the upper body and with the societal internalization of muscularity ideals a cereal bar is a super stimulus it has a higher concentration of sugar salt and fat than anything else that was present in the environment that our ancestors evolved in the flavor of a cereal bar is similar to taste buds that developed in an environment of hunter-gatherers but it is similar to those taste buds in a far stronger way than anything that really existed in an environment of hunter-gatherers the signal that was originally consistently connected to nutritious food has been hacked and masked by a point in taste space that was absent from the training data set humans find this almost impossible to resist your regular tech company now uses subliminal advertising to collect tons of personal data so that it can serve you the best type of cereal bar and even if you don't like cereal bars they will still push you one of their other products as there are a handful of companies that own the world's most popular brands if you are not into cereal bars try chocolate chip cookie if you are on a diet you have our nutritious water and maybe you can throw in some honest tea as well now that we can get far more than we need with little effort our evolved neediness serves us poorly however there is no evolutionary mechanism to rid ourselves of these powerful desires so we become fatter and fatter along with the profits of fast food corporations you don't simply want to eat at a restaurant anymore what we now have is a combination of eating entertainment and even punishment you are receiving all of these stimuli just by eating food in tech there's a whole new level of super stimuli oftentimes when I stare almost mindlessly into my tiny phone doing things I feel like I'm having an out of body experience the world fades away and I lose track of where I am then when I look up I'm astonished to remember I'm still in the same world sometimes it can feel like everything happening to you is not actually happening to you but rather to an alternate specter version bombarded by super stimuli this specter lives inside your password protected device in the world of data you rarely have to resurface to the real world just to maintain a conversation check the traffic light or pay as your next in line but that's not the real you for now that's just a superficial copy willing to give the real world a chance and if the world's not that interesting you retreat back into your device but when you wake up the specter the ghost does not suffer as everything transfers over so you get to pay you slowly become the projection devices become faster with slower queue times and fast responsiveness no more button pressing and feeling there's a layer you have to pass the touchscreen is fast and makes it more addictive knowing that whatever you can do you can do it fast makes you more willing to stay there and do more sometimes it feels so random that you have to follow random threads and randomness is addictive in rats addiction is also fueled by randomness a characteristic that's not only cherished by humans burris frederick skinner one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century discovered that yes randomness is addictive by simply studying the mind of rats skinner developed boxes with levers attached so that when the rat pressed the lever food pellets were dispensed rat happy he also developed another set of boxes where when a lever got pressed the result was not one pellet but it could also be none or many pellets sounds familiar this is the heart of gambling this is why tiktok is recommendation based you do not know what you are going to get and this is why other digital casinos switched their strategy as well recommendation based not chronology based scrolling instagram is not even that fulfilling like you finish that hour and you're like i know that was a waste of my time yeah but it was like over the threshold where you couldn't quite it's hard to put the phone these companies generally decide what you can get they also decide if you can decide or not so i believe yes it is the appropriate experience for an ideal well and why don't you let your eight-year-old child on tiktok i have seen this news articles i would like to address that my kids live in singapore and in singapore we do not have the under 13 experience if they lived here in the united states i'll let them use the under 13 experience tiktok engineers have created an app that is extremely bingeable it caters to interests you had no idea you had it sifts through an infinite ocean of content to find the videos that will make you say just one more it is the equivalent of a dopamine drip tiktok on the other hand wants me to believe that my willpower and their timer are all i need to limit my usage you can do a quick exercise right now and look at the app usage on your smartphone most of you probably won't do it as we are inherently afraid of the truth i'm not saying that you cannot learn stuff but most of it is going to be rather trivial i remember that at some point someone sent me a 30 to 60 second tiktok video talking about physics and quantum mechanics and the origins of the universe and while the intention was good i could not help but wonder the percentage of people who actually remember something from that video as most of us are still struggling when creating spaced repetition decks to remember a few words when learning a new language tiktok and other similar companies are creating screen time tools as a first step in their journey down the path of arguing that addictions are personal failings and overcoming them is a personal responsibility the same way global warming is on you you have to recycle you have to dim the lights so you have to fight it by installing blockers and try to unplug yourself more often you have to stay on guard as your persecutors are getting stronger i had been equating social media with digital nicotine but the casino metaphor substantially improves upon that notion nicotine is a natural substance that triggers parts of our brains that cause us to want more of it the main point of cigarette corporations is to determine the best delivery platform shape size flavor etc and profit off our brains response we created new types of casinos to be like miniature amusement parks for our minds they now push buttons like family status instead of buttons like pleasure or relax it seems to me that social media is on a completely new level than the good old nicotine when coupled with instant feedback loops that may optimize the input for each distinct user in real time tiktok twitter facebook instagram and possibly all upcoming social media apps are worse than cocaine in some ways because cocaine is always cocaine the white powder does not track how you use it or change itself so that the way it comes to you becomes more addictive in ways that are purposefully imperceptible to you and even if you might not fit the type of individual who can easily get addicted to social media that's ultimately an engineering problem these activities are getting you into a state of flow in positive psychology a flow state also known colloquially as being in the zone is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus full involvement and enjoyment in the process of the activity in essence flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does and a resulting transformation in one sense of time we also have the dark flow which is a pleasurable but maladaptive state where individuals become completely pulled in providing an escape from the depressing thoughts that characterize their everyday lives this is most commonly observed in the behavior of slot machine players who have difficulties remaining on track in their regular life but the reinforcing sights and sounds of slot machines rain in their otherwise wandering brains and create flow like experiences is there a difference between dark flow and good flow isn't it the same thing just in a different context well it is not that simple some of the things the white flow and the dark flow have in common are losing time perception and the out of body experience but the outcomes of being in each state are different the dark flow is easier to get into and it is more predictable but also harder to get out of the dark flow surely feels similar to the white flow with your senses sharpened fast reaction time speedier progress but you are still reacting to the inputs you have rules you have the feedback but you are missing the challenge skill balance you can obtain the flow without skill this is why it is so addictive as everyone can do it watching a 20 minute video is harder as it requires large amounts of attention in today's world and to get something out of it requires contemplation thought critical thinking while a 30 second video gives you the illusion of deep learning and does not put any pressure on you getting into the flow when say writing an essay is hard you have to prepare your stuff you have to be organized you have to collect resources read comprehend you oftentimes have to stop and think read it again struggle to keep yourself there the activity needs to be balanced so that it is not easy enough but also not too hard to make you stop it needs to be tuned to give you enough frustration but also enough evidence that you can do it you can complete the objective when learning a language using an app such as Duolingo the basic stuff works great and keeps you in the zone because the mental activity is so simple setbacks and mistakes are minimal and small enough to be assimilated into at least a semi flow state however it does not appear to work when you get to the rough part of the learning curve which is more about hard work and clean focus and there are no apps in that region you may acquire the basic starting stuff extremely well but in any field I've seen them handle they quit exactly when it becomes challenging at the point of transition from amateurism to beginning professional levels of ability in short the failure of a positive flow state will either make you transition to a normal state or stop take a break and maybe reset on the other hand the frustration you get during a dark flow state will lead the individual back into the game to play harder scroll harder as maybe just maybe you will get something astonishing with the next input the white flow has a clearer end point a clear goal the chess player will drop out of the flow when the game is over a climber when reaching the top of the mountain a surgeon when finishing the surgery gambling has no clear finish line you are playing to extinction perhaps we might consider these activities to be instruments that we use for a number of reasons and other people just keep returning to that easily accessible peak of realization to the point that that brief significant ascent becomes the structural axis of their life around which all other priorities are ordered and all other things are appraised these super stimuli are coping mechanisms to escape life what gamification appears to accomplish is increase in activities natural attractiveness it's a pleasant facade that occasionally covers the steep slope of the effort slash returns function isn't the black flow what happens when a low effort steam blowing fun pastime becomes the dopaminergic pinnacle of an otherwise bleak existence if you had no super stimuli would the life of prison inmates be the same this is a question without a proper answer as i do not have the data outlining the current state of an inmates brain distortion due to subhuman prison conditions but i do know that generally the prison system is pretty dysfunctional a cow uses vr goggles in an attempt to reduce anxiety how bad is this it obviously depends on the type of fence you are looking from with the rise of capitalism and consumer culture subtlety has become a powerful weapon huge banners yelling at you to buy a product are no longer needed people have become smarter in that regard now advertisements need to be carefully packaged polished and nicely labeled to fit a specific category there is a category tailored for everyone in the late 2000s mark fisher an english philosopher and political cultural theorist also known under his blogging alias k punk repurposed the term capitalist realism to describe the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it he expanded on the concept in his 2009 book capitalist realism is there no alternative arguing that the term best describes the ideological situation since the fall of the soviet union in this situation the logics of capitalism have come to delineate the limits of political and social life with significant effects on education mental illness pop culture and methods of resistance the result is a situation in which it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism fisher writes capitalist realism as i understand it is more like a pervasive atmosphere conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action capitalists maintain their power not through violence or force but by creating a pervasive sense that the capitalist system is all there is they maintain this view by dominating most social and cultural institutions fisher proposes that within a capitalist framework there is no space to conceive of alternative forms of social structures he adds that younger generations are not even concerned with recognizing alternatives he proposes that the 2008 financial crisis compounded this position rather than catalyzing a desire to seek alternatives for the existing model the response to the crisis reinforced the notion that modifications must be made within the existing system fisher argues that capitalist realism has propagated a business ontology which concludes that everything should be run as a business including education and health care productivity is encouraged and cherished but technology changed the game you no longer have to go through a difficult or dangerous journey to become an adult instead you may avoid danger and have a comfortable life this is an example of devolution you can have a good time being a degenerate well into your 60s pre-cooked foods constant entertainment and pornography have robbed us of our control over our behavior sure one can blame late-stage capitalism for giving people too much of a good thing capitalism is to blame as people are overworked and seek escapism through these comfort devices but we can see this type of gambling throughout history you have ancient myths describing people and even gods gambling to excess but maybe capitalism is the starting vehicle through which we can acquire life extension and even immortality there is of course a debate on whether or not acquiring immortality is even what we ought to do but that's a topic that i might cover in another video cutting-edge entertainment technology has the potential to induce widespread sterility wireheading population decrease and extinction given the heritability of media consumption habits any such impact would result in rapid human adaptation implying that extinction is practically impossible absent and abrupt collapse or maybe exponentially expanding addiction i feel like we need a different type of tech to incorporate the poor in the hills but we need to ask ourselves can we live completely off grid successfully by leveraging more portable devices which are not wi-fi dependent the smartphone will be almost dead without that what about living completely on the sea on a macro scale tech is ruined if you have to connect to wi-fi having something like wikipedia available offline can catapult one forward and allow for faster bootstrapping if say you want to rebuild civilization let's aim to decentralize the world instead of creating systems that leak power our current systems involve humans and maintenance but maybe we can solve this with ai in the end evolution is essentially a historical statistical macro fact about which predecessors truly reproduced these genes then continue to function as before consequently the organism's behavior is often better explained in terms of what was successful in the past rather than what might be effective in the future the organism's genes are indeed the product of past success not future functionality do superstitions contribute to behavioral addictions at the very least they frequently squander time and money with deceptive promises we find ourselves going down rabbit holes in search of unnecessary information or buying additional items that appear exciting but offer little genuine value less obviously they can negatively impact our responses to natural stimuli such as prioritizing fast food over nutritious meals photoshop models over ordinary people games and entertainment over the slow pleasures of reading novels and nonfiction and an unexamined frenetic lifestyle over a thoughtful one perhaps we should shift our focus away from the super normal and towards the subtle and fine encouraging a closer inspection and deeper appreciation of the beauty and benefits concealed within the ordinary ultimately the final question remains do you truly understand what you are consuming or are you simply ingesting whatever comes your way