Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And this is going to be part two of a
Speaker 1: two part episode about the attention economy and the technosphere,
Speaker 1: the war for your eyeballs and the fact that we
Speaker 1: live in a technological economy that in which platforms and
Speaker 1: apps and devices are constantly trying to suck in your
Speaker 1: attention and they're succeeding. They're working so good. If you
Speaker 1: have not listened to our first episode, you should go
Speaker 1: back listen to that first. That's where we lay the
Speaker 1: whole groundwork try to explain the problem of what's going
Speaker 1: on with the attention economy today. But just as a
Speaker 1: quick refresher, if you've already listened to the episode, to
Speaker 1: put it back in your mind, what do we talk
Speaker 1: about last time? We basically talked about the attention economy,
Speaker 1: the idea that your attention, my attention, it is a depletable,
Speaker 1: finite resource. And every time there is a pop up
Speaker 1: on our phone, every time we obey the impulse to
Speaker 1: check Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or what have you,
Speaker 1: it is depleting not only precious time, but precious energy
Speaker 1: and precious will. Right, it's it really matters. It's taking
Speaker 1: us away from the things that we would like to
Speaker 1: be doing with our time ultimately to get what we
Speaker 1: want out of life, the things that really matter to us,
Speaker 1: and instead putting us into these easy, habitual modes of
Speaker 1: passive consumption of digitally supplied information and entertainment that that
Speaker 1: ultimately we can end up feeling hollow and regretful after
Speaker 1: we experience. Right, even if it's not hurting us causing
Speaker 1: us direct harm, that those that I think there's some
Speaker 1: evidence that it is actually hurting us in the sense
Speaker 1: of what we talked about with by constantly interrupting us.
Speaker 1: It's lowering our cognitive performance, making us less smart by
Speaker 1: constantly pulling us out of focus on tasks and interrupting
Speaker 1: us all the time, and just having us always aware
Speaker 1: of like the interruption, threat of a new message or
Speaker 1: notification or something. So it might actually be harming us.
Speaker 1: But even if it's not harming us, it's causing us
Speaker 1: to voluntarily spend our time and attention in ways that
Speaker 1: are not what we want out of life, and we
Speaker 1: end up feeling regretful, and in a way we are
Speaker 1: victims of shock, future shock, Future Shock, tell me about
Speaker 1: future shock? Yes, well, okay, so listen. Long time listeners
Speaker 1: to the show might remember that we we had a
Speaker 1: two parter years and years ago about the about future shock,
Speaker 1: Alvin Toffler, Alvin Toffler's nineteen seventy book and just general
Speaker 1: idea of future shock. Also, there is a wonderful, I
Speaker 1: think nineteen seventy two TV documentary about the Cooper Cronenberg. Yes,
Speaker 1: it has kind of a twilight Zony Cronenbergie vibe, and
Speaker 1: it's narrated by Orson Wells. It's a it's a little overwrought,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine, but it's still very good. It's
Speaker 1: it's all on YouTube. You should be able to find it.
Speaker 1: So I've never actually read this book. I know it's
Speaker 1: a classic work of futurism, uh, and I should read
Speaker 1: it at some point, but I haven't read it. So Robert,
Speaker 1: can you explain to me the idea of future shock? Alright?
Speaker 1: So the book itself, which is still a fine read,
Speaker 1: even though it is again in the decades old book
Speaker 1: at this point, but it touched on a number of
Speaker 1: contemporary and looming aspects of technological advancement, including over choice,
Speaker 1: pressure to keep up with the latest technology, rapidly expanding knowledge,
Speaker 1: information overload, computer fueled society, temporary consumer culture, young new
Speaker 1: transient lifestyles, instant intimacy, as well as more sort of
Speaker 1: sci fi ideas you might say, such as cyborgs, modular bodies,
Speaker 1: and prosthetics. Okay, but how's this come into the idea
Speaker 1: of the attention economy. Did Toffler actually predict that we
Speaker 1: would be in this situation of being surrounded by by
Speaker 1: machines that's so efficiently drained away our attention? He did?
Speaker 1: He did, in fact, so I want to read a
Speaker 1: passage here from future Shock. For while we tend to
Speaker 1: focus on only one situation at a time, the increased
Speaker 1: rate at which situations flow past us vastly complicates the
Speaker 1: entire structure of life, multiplying the number of roles we
Speaker 1: must play and the number of choices we are forced
Speaker 1: to make. This, in turn, accounts for the choking sense
Speaker 1: of complexity about contemporary life. Moreover, the speeded up flow
Speaker 1: through of situations demands much more work from the complex
Speaker 1: focusing mechanisms by which we shift our attention from one
Speaker 1: situation to another. There is more switching back and forth,
Speaker 1: less time for extended, peaceful attention to one problem or
Speaker 1: situation at a time. This is what lies behind the
Speaker 1: vague feeling noted earlier that quote things are moving faster,
Speaker 1: they are around us and through us. So that sounds like,
Speaker 1: for one thing, some recognition of a thing we mentioned
Speaker 1: in the last episode, the ta shifting penalty, right, that
Speaker 1: we're downgrading the quality of our cognition by constantly shifting
Speaker 1: between focus on different tasks. But it's more than that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he He goes on in the section of the
Speaker 1: book and says, quote all this represents the press of
Speaker 1: engineered messages against his senses, and the pressure is rising.
Speaker 1: In an effort to transmit even richer image producing messages
Speaker 1: at an even faster rate. Communications people, artists, and others
Speaker 1: consciously work to make each instant of exposure to the
Speaker 1: mass media carry a heavier informational and emotional freight. I
Speaker 1: want to read just one more quote here from the book,
Speaker 1: because this touches on sort of again. This was like
Speaker 1: nine late sixties that he would have been writing this,
Speaker 1: Uh to to ground it but I think it's very
Speaker 1: applicable to some of what we're discussing here today, he said. Quote.
Speaker 1: The religious fervor and bizarre behavior of certain hippie cultists
Speaker 1: may arise not merely from drug abuse, but from experimentation
Speaker 1: with both sensory deprivation and bombardment. The chanting of monotonous mantras,
Speaker 1: the attempt to focus the individual's attention on interior bodily
Speaker 1: sensation to the exclusion of outside stimuli, our efforts to
Speaker 1: induce the weird and sometimes hallucinatory effects of under stimulation.
Speaker 1: At the other end of the scale, we note the
Speaker 1: glaze stairs and numb expressionalist faces of youthful dancers at
Speaker 1: the great rock music auditoriums, where light shows, split screen movies,
Speaker 1: high decibel scream shouts and moans, grotesque costumes, and writhing
Speaker 1: painted bodies create a sensory environment characterized by high input
Speaker 1: and extreme unpredictability and novelty. Now, now that's a fun passage,
Speaker 1: because there is this sort of sense of oh, the
Speaker 1: the young hippies and their their their craziness. But but
Speaker 1: at at heart, this idea of over and understimulation, this
Speaker 1: questing for bodily stillness in relation to this overly stimula
Speaker 1: added world, I think is crucial to what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, and I think it kind of supports this
Speaker 1: idea that that Alvin Toffler warned us. Alvin Toffler told
Speaker 1: us so he warned us of this future shock. Well,
Speaker 1: it makes me think about the inherent uh fallacy where
Speaker 1: we would tend to assume that boy having lots of
Speaker 1: input coming into the mind, that would essentially be an
Speaker 1: enriching experience. Right, the more input is coming in, the
Speaker 1: more stocks of information and wisdom you should be building up, right,
Speaker 1: But I think that's not necessarily the case. In fact,
Speaker 1: having many information streams coming into the mind tends to
Speaker 1: instead confuse the input processing devices within the mind, and
Speaker 1: instead of enriching the mind, it sort of just numbs
Speaker 1: the mind. Yeah, like the the idea that he touches
Speaker 1: on about over choice, I feel over choice, uh like crazy.
Speaker 1: I feel like any time that I am just casting
Speaker 1: about on say Netflix, to see what I might be
Speaker 1: interested in watching, they're just there's so many options that
Speaker 1: will end up just scaling through them all and not
Speaker 1: watching anything, and hopefully you have a completely unfulfilling experience.
Speaker 1: Because I didn't actually view a movie on this this app,
Speaker 1: this service, this industry that is about delivering me a movie. Now,
Speaker 1: something I want to come back to in a minute
Speaker 1: is it's interesting because that app is different than many
Speaker 1: of the other things we're talking about. Many of the
Speaker 1: things we're talking about demand our attention because they are
Speaker 1: ad supported, or because they're gathering data on the user,
Speaker 1: in which the user's attention and the times they spend
Speaker 1: paying attention to the app is literally what's valuable to
Speaker 1: the content producer or to the platform. Right. Netflix is
Speaker 1: a different thing because it's subscription based and so you're
Speaker 1: paying to have access to it, So like, why would
Speaker 1: they want you to keep paying attention that that's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. We can maybe talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit more. But another point about Netflix I do want
Speaker 1: to make real quick is that, as we I think
Speaker 1: said last time, we don't want to demonize all consumption
Speaker 1: of information or entertainment through digital formats, right, because ultimately,
Speaker 1: what you want when you use Netflix is to watch
Speaker 1: a movie, and we like watching movies. Like watching a
Speaker 1: movie is a valuable activity to me, and when it's
Speaker 1: a movie, I like that, I that I care about Uh,
Speaker 1: that is something that I feel like is worth doing
Speaker 1: with my free time. It's something that that brings me pleasure.
Speaker 1: And I'd say a similar thing for lots of the
Speaker 1: other apps I use. I enjoy the digital content I
Speaker 1: consume through my books apps. I enjoy the digital content
Speaker 1: I consume through my podcast apps. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that makes these apps a little more difficult to use,
Speaker 1: even though we get more enjoyment out of them, is
Speaker 1: that you have to make conscious decisions about how to
Speaker 1: use them, right. You have to seek out the thing
Speaker 1: you want. I know, I want to listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1: I know I want to listen to this musical album.
Speaker 1: I know I want to watch this movie. Whereas we
Speaker 1: are served this content so much more passively and automatically
Speaker 1: by many of these other apps that make us feel regretful,
Speaker 1: by our social media apps and by the games that
Speaker 1: just sort of launch and then it's an incoming stream
Speaker 1: of stimulation. Does that make sense? Yeah? No, yeah, it
Speaker 1: does make me wonder to what extent these various uh
Speaker 1: like Alexa type products UH where you have some sort
Speaker 1: of a smart speaker that you talk to and then
Speaker 1: it fetches what you need. I wonder if that could
Speaker 1: be a way to mitigate this effect in the future
Speaker 1: where it's it's you have this robot that's essentially doing
Speaker 1: the surfing for you. It's going to be the one
Speaker 1: dealing with the and and and ultimately not having to
Speaker 1: deal with the over choice of say a Netflix que Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one thing we should explore in
Speaker 1: the second episode here is the idea of how because
Speaker 1: like I said, we don't want to just demonize technology.
Speaker 1: It's not like digital platforms are inherently bad as a concept.
Speaker 1: It's that they have taken on this form that is
Speaker 1: giving up, that's taking away our attention in our lives
Speaker 1: without really giving us a lot of value, giving us
Speaker 1: always the things we want. Though sometimes we do get
Speaker 1: the things we want out of them, it's just that
Speaker 1: that's not always presented in such an engrossing and addictive
Speaker 1: way as the stuff we don't really ultimately want. Is So,
Speaker 1: how to make technology work better for us to give
Speaker 1: us what we actually want and actually care about that
Speaker 1: that's something that matters, and it's a question we should address.
Speaker 1: But I think maybe we should take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and we come back from that break, we will look
Speaker 1: at an essay about how these apps and devices are
Speaker 1: specifically engineered to hijack our brains. Alright, we're back, so
Speaker 1: let's get into some of the specific tricks that are
Speaker 1: that are involved here, like what what are these devices doing?
Speaker 1: All right? Right here, I want to turn to a
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen essay by a guy we've mentioned, a guy
Speaker 1: named Tristan Harris who's a former Google employee. Now he
Speaker 1: uh found. He's one of the foul unders of this
Speaker 1: movement now called Time Well Spent, which is focused on
Speaker 1: exactly this issue we've been talking about over these past
Speaker 1: couple of episodes, the idea of the attention economy and
Speaker 1: the fact that our technological devices and apps are not
Speaker 1: really giving us what we want in terms of our
Speaker 1: attention investment, but they're they're nevertheless extremely powerful and harnessing
Speaker 1: that attention. And so Harris in this essay is trying
Speaker 1: to explain how it works, how they capture our attentions
Speaker 1: so effectively, so powerfully, and how we are so powerless
Speaker 1: to resist. So he cites the fact that he was
Speaker 1: formerly a design ethicistic Google and he spent his life
Speaker 1: studying security vulnerabilities in the human brain. Ways to trick
Speaker 1: the brain and subvert its will without the person ever
Speaker 1: realizing what's happening. In his words, quote how technology hijacks
Speaker 1: are psychological vulnerabilities, and he goes on the list ten
Speaker 1: ways that technology mapul manipulates and controls us invisibly. I'll
Speaker 1: try to mention them all, but explain a few of
Speaker 1: them in depth. One of them is that when you
Speaker 1: have a technological platform that allows people to use it freely,
Speaker 1: that platform controls the menu of options that people have
Speaker 1: available to them. And yet it's still simulates the feeling
Speaker 1: of having free choice, right. I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like asking a five year old what they want for dinner.
Speaker 1: You you don't you don't let them have free range.
Speaker 1: You don't say what do you want? You say, do
Speaker 1: you want broccoli or spinach? Right? You give them the
Speaker 1: choices that you are already prepared to make, and you
Speaker 1: don't have a third choice that you that you are
Speaker 1: totally not into yourself. Right, And well, that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense with the child, and maybe sometimes with
Speaker 1: certain types of bosses, but that is also how these
Speaker 1: apps work. They have the feeling of giving us a
Speaker 1: lot of choice by giving us a menu of options
Speaker 1: of things to do, but also by discouraging us from
Speaker 1: wondering why aren't I allowed to do different things that
Speaker 1: aren't on this list? Okay, So the idea here is,
Speaker 1: again we have an illusion of choice, but we're still
Speaker 1: being herded into a few pre selected ideal choices, right,
Speaker 1: and generally, what those pre selected ideal choices do is
Speaker 1: keep us engaged with the apps and platforms we're using.
Speaker 1: So instead of uh, instead of thinking of the open
Speaker 1: ended question, who could I hang out with tonight? Instead,
Speaker 1: the apps on your phone encourage you to think, who
Speaker 1: are the most recent people I've been texting with that
Speaker 1: I could pay about this and continue texting with. Or
Speaker 1: instead of what's happening in the world an open ended question,
Speaker 1: you could investigate lots of ways, it becomes let's see
Speaker 1: what's happening on my news app feed? Keeps me engaged
Speaker 1: with the device and with the app on it, Yes,
Speaker 1: and which stories have been updated? And okay are they
Speaker 1: going to be updated? Now? Oh? I better check it again,
Speaker 1: see if that story has been updated once more. The
Speaker 1: second point that Harris makes, I think is maybe the
Speaker 1: most important point on the whole list. He he draws
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to it, And I think this
Speaker 1: is very important. We've discussed slow machines on the show before, yes,
Speaker 1: we I don't think it's uh, it's unfair for us
Speaker 1: to say that that we do not like slot machines.
Speaker 1: They are these highly advanced, very smart, highly developed parasites
Speaker 1: that are engineered perfectly to drain us of money by
Speaker 1: appealing to our reward seeking minds. But why are slot
Speaker 1: machines so addictive? What's the trick like? One of the
Speaker 1: things that has pointed out in harris His essay is
Speaker 1: that he cites the work of the n y U
Speaker 1: professor Natasha Dao school, author of Addiction by Design, which
Speaker 1: found that people get quote problematically involved with slot machines
Speaker 1: three to four times faster than they do with other
Speaker 1: types of gambling. So why would that be? Why are
Speaker 1: slot machines so much more effective at causing problem gambling
Speaker 1: behaviors than a craps table or a poker game. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, it's certainly a farm more
Speaker 1: mindless endeavor. Right, You're just you're just to pull on
Speaker 1: the level, You're just essentially hitting refresh and seeing what happens.
Speaker 1: Am I a winner? This time, I am a winner.
Speaker 1: This time, there's no there's no strategy, there's no there's
Speaker 1: certainly no card counting. It's just let me take another
Speaker 1: go at it and see what life a k A.
Speaker 1: The machine that had been programmed to drain my money, uh,
Speaker 1: to see what it allows to happen. Yeah, and apparently
Speaker 1: the number one factor making slot machines so devilishly irresistible
Speaker 1: and addictive is what's called quote intermittent variable rewards. Intermittent
Speaker 1: variable rewards. This means that you create a circuit where
Speaker 1: a simple user action, just like you're talking about pressing
Speaker 1: a button, pulling a lever, reloading a page, opening an app,
Speaker 1: very simple action to do, leads to a variable reward
Speaker 1: at a variable rate. So variable reward means that when
Speaker 1: you complete the user action, sometimes you get nothing, sometimes
Speaker 1: you get a small reward, sometimes you get a big reward.
Speaker 1: And the variable rate means that it's not predictive will win.
Speaker 1: These rewards will come in a sequence of actions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's like checking Twitter, for instance. Yeah, I refresh,
Speaker 1: and who knows what I'll get. Maybe I'll get to
Speaker 1: have a notification. Yeah, and somebody at mention, Yes, somebody's
Speaker 1: talking to me or about me, or my favorite comedian
Speaker 1: has a funny statement to make. There's a new trailer
Speaker 1: for a movie I want, or oh, nuclear war, it
Speaker 1: could be it could be anything right, or the message inbox,
Speaker 1: likes on a post or a tweet, the matches on
Speaker 1: a dating app. It's all intermittent variable rewards. You keep refreshing,
Speaker 1: you keep checking, hoping that there will be some reward,
Speaker 1: and sometimes there is. Sometimes there's something that's a little
Speaker 1: bit socially gratifying, sometimes there's something that's a lot socially gratifying.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's nothing. There's nothing. A lot of times there's nothing.
Speaker 1: And when there is nothing, that actually really keeps you
Speaker 1: checking it once you keeps you searching that next reward.
Speaker 1: So the intermittent variable rewards matrix is an extremely powerful
Speaker 1: exploit on the human mind. It's a it's a known
Speaker 1: vulnerable pity, and most tech devices like phones and stuff
Speaker 1: and the most used apps are making use of intermittent
Speaker 1: variable rewards. Now, Harris mentions that this kind of thing
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be an intentional design at first, like
Speaker 1: apps could land on these strategies by accident. They didn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't have to say let's make it a slot
Speaker 1: machine from the beginning, But once it works like a
Speaker 1: slot machine, they realize that that's very effective and maximizing
Speaker 1: time on site or user engagement or repeated pickups throughout
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah, it's kind of a parallel evolution type situation,
Speaker 1: right where this particular form moves the fastest through water.
Speaker 1: This is the design that has been selected. Okay. A
Speaker 1: third point Harris makes is that these apps encourage us
Speaker 1: to think, what if I miss something important? Well, we
Speaker 1: have a bit little bit of a fear of missing
Speaker 1: out and all of that, but also, yeah, I do
Speaker 1: want to know if there's nuclear war. I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not exactly sure why. There may not be much that
Speaker 1: I can do, but it's gonna be something. It's it's
Speaker 1: an important event, and I need to know that it
Speaker 1: has happened. Another thing, he mentions our desire for social approval.
Speaker 1: They really play on this, like, we are largely social
Speaker 1: creatures with socially shaped brains, and we're highly motivated by
Speaker 1: feelings of social inclusion and approval and avoiding feelings of
Speaker 1: social exclusion and disapproval. So when somebody thinks to quote
Speaker 1: mention you on Facebook. You've seen this, uh this capability, right,
Speaker 1: you can tag a person's name and a post on Facebook.
Speaker 1: This feels intensely rewarding to people. But I got mentioned
Speaker 1: it was me, I'm I'm what this person was thinking about? Right,
Speaker 1: and then you click and you see, oh wait, they
Speaker 1: tagged everybody, yeah and so. But unfortunately, these mentions, as
Speaker 1: rewarding as they feel, they don't spring forth directly from
Speaker 1: people's social relationships. You'll notice that Facebook tries to get
Speaker 1: people to do this. It tries to make you mention
Speaker 1: other Facebook users as often as possible, suggesting they be
Speaker 1: tagged in photos, suggesting they be named and tagged in
Speaker 1: the post you're making, and so forth. Also, have you
Speaker 1: ever noticed how the Facebook news feed algorithm favors prominent
Speaker 1: and repeated display of posts that have comments saying the
Speaker 1: word congratulations. I have not noticed this. Tried this sometimes,
Speaker 1: like if somebody posts something that has no congratulatory content,
Speaker 1: nothing worth congratulating in it, just start commenting congratulations on it.
Speaker 1: I think that this moves that post up in the
Speaker 1: news feed and more people see it. And because they
Speaker 1: want to get people engaging with some kind of chain
Speaker 1: of social approval, which keeps people glued to the app
Speaker 1: see this is this is probably one of those situations
Speaker 1: where I would have assumed it had more to do
Speaker 1: with my attention, the idea that I'm more inclined to
Speaker 1: notice when somebody else has been congratulated on something, and
Speaker 1: that may go in like negative or positive directions, right
Speaker 1: because it could be somebody that I deeply care about them,
Speaker 1: or it's you know, or it's me, and of course
Speaker 1: I'm invested in them getting congratulate relations or I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I have this kind of bitter feeling where it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: then look at that they got a new puppy dog
Speaker 1: and the getting all these congratulations about it. I don't
Speaker 1: have a puppy dog. Well, either way, you're engaged, aren't you.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if that's the case. I really
Speaker 1: strongly think that's the case. That's not a point Harris
Speaker 1: makes about congratulations. That was just something I think I've observed,
Speaker 1: But I wonder I really do see it seeming to
Speaker 1: get highlighted and moved up. Sometimes Facebook will even like
Speaker 1: bold the word congratulations in the comments as they display
Speaker 1: on your news feed. Another point Harris mentions is playing
Speaker 1: upon our feeling of responsibility for social reciprocity. Somebody followed you,
Speaker 1: better follow them back. Somebody wrote you a LinkedIn recommendation,
Speaker 1: Better write one for them. Here's a really devious iteration
Speaker 1: of this. Why did Facebook start doing that thing in
Speaker 1: Facebook Messenger where it tells the sender that the message
Speaker 1: has been seen. Oh yeah, that's that's It's like they're
Speaker 1: just trying to get you in trouble for for dragging
Speaker 1: your feet. It puts pressure on the recipient of a
Speaker 1: message to respond. You can't pretend you haven't read the message.
Speaker 1: It tells them you saw it, so now you really
Speaker 1: need to spend some time in the app composing a response,
Speaker 1: or or it's something like in a chat where it's
Speaker 1: saying Joe is typing a response and oh, one what
Speaker 1: he's chatting. Oh he's really been going at this for
Speaker 1: a while. This must be great, and then he never
Speaker 1: sends it and he's like, oh, what was it? What
Speaker 1: was this epic poem that Joe was composing. I can't
Speaker 1: remember where I saw this cartoon, but it was hilarious
Speaker 1: where I probably just saw it on some social media
Speaker 1: feed anonymously in the middle of the ether, but it
Speaker 1: was where you you message somebody, Um, hey, what did
Speaker 1: you think of my thing? You know, some something that
Speaker 1: you did, What did you think of my poem? And
Speaker 1: it's like so and so is typing so and so
Speaker 1: is typing so and so is typing so and so
Speaker 1: is typing so and so is typing response It was great. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've seen that's that's sort of affected before as
Speaker 1: well on the whole um, uh, you know following people
Speaker 1: back then, I do have to add that, surely I'm
Speaker 1: not alone when I see like a celebrity Twitter account
Speaker 1: where they either have they either like they'll have like
Speaker 1: you know, several million followers or whatever, but then if
Speaker 1: they follow zero people or only one person or it's
Speaker 1: some pre selected fun number, Um, I kind of always
Speaker 1: have this impulse to say, you're a monster, what is
Speaker 1: the matter with you? Like, I don't have that judgment
Speaker 1: about people who have more followers than than people they're following.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could ultimately only follow so many feeds,
Speaker 1: I feel, uh, and certainly if you were if you
Speaker 1: were a celebrity or there's going to be that imbalance.
Speaker 1: But when when these people have like I follow nobody,
Speaker 1: I am my own voice, or or I follow one
Speaker 1: person and it is the lord, or I don't know this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it always kind of irks me. Okay. The next
Speaker 1: point Harris makes that they use is infinite displays, AutoPlay videos,
Speaker 1: infinitely scrolling news feeds. There's no natural stopping point. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just keep going on and down, down forever, and
Speaker 1: maybe you cannot get to the bottom of the screen.
Speaker 1: It's like playing tetris. Yeah. And this is a psychological
Speaker 1: vulnerability as well, because instead of having to actively select
Speaker 1: that you want to continue doing something. Think about like
Speaker 1: if your Facebook news feed was pageinated and you had
Speaker 1: to click, you had to keep clicking to the next
Speaker 1: page instead of just constantly scrolling down for infinity time.
Speaker 1: It's harder to make a decision to stop and change
Speaker 1: what you're doing, or to make a decision to do something,
Speaker 1: than it is to just continue your passive consumption experience
Speaker 1: that's ongoing and unchanging. The next one, this is a
Speaker 1: big one, instant interruptions. Does your phone wait and update
Speaker 1: you about notifications in batches separated by a few hours, No,
Speaker 1: of course not. I mean most of the time by
Speaker 1: default and there's gonna be differences between different devices and
Speaker 1: apps and how they by default give you notifications, but
Speaker 1: generally they're going to want, by default to say something
Speaker 1: just happened right now, you need to check it immediately.
Speaker 1: It interrupts whatever you're doing to tempt you with an
Speaker 1: intermittent variable reward, and then once it tem tempts you in,
Speaker 1: you're in there. Yeah. Yeah, I've had to turn most
Speaker 1: of those off because it seems like for a while,
Speaker 1: I'd have like a major news organization app on my phone,
Speaker 1: and uh, they would send me an update and I
Speaker 1: think something important happened. I'd get kind of anxious about it,
Speaker 1: or is this was there a nuclear explosion? Was there
Speaker 1: some sort of terrible event that occurred? And then no,
Speaker 1: it's a major sporting events score. Right. It's like I
Speaker 1: didn't even sign up for that. I that's but now
Speaker 1: I'm interrupted by it and now I'm mad about it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Two more Harris mentions are actually three more. Two I
Speaker 1: want to mention briefly. One is putting the most profitable
Speaker 1: or attention grabbing part of the app between you and
Speaker 1: the reason you opened the app. So it's like you
Speaker 1: opened the Facebook app to check on an event or
Speaker 1: to see a message or something. But it's gonna try
Speaker 1: to route you through the news feed. Right, It's kind
Speaker 1: of the gift shop kind of scenario exactly. Next thing
Speaker 1: is increasing the friction and making choices that tech businesses
Speaker 1: don't want you to make. So just making it more
Speaker 1: effort and more difficulty to unsubscribe or opt out of something.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my favorite is of course you cannot unsubscribe
Speaker 1: through the app or the website. You have to call
Speaker 1: a number on a particular day, or how about the
Speaker 1: ones that they make it? Uh, you have to opt
Speaker 1: out to make your account private on something things are
Speaker 1: public by default. You've got to go in and mess
Speaker 1: with a bunch of toggling settings to keep people from
Speaker 1: seeing the stuff you post. Finally, and this is what
Speaker 1: I want to discuss in a little more depth. Harris
Speaker 1: points out that these apps and services use foot in
Speaker 1: the door sales strategies. So, Robert, you've bought a car, right, yes,
Speaker 1: And so if you've ever bought a car, you go
Speaker 1: to the go to the car lot, salesperson is trying
Speaker 1: to sell you on the car, and you'll know that
Speaker 1: the salesperson makes all these kind of little bids for
Speaker 1: your continued engagement that are at no cost to you, right,
Speaker 1: and so they feel easy and no risk, like why
Speaker 1: not just take a little test drive. I know you're
Speaker 1: not ready to buy it. That's fine, you don't have
Speaker 1: to do anything today. Just take a test drive. It's free,
Speaker 1: it's low investment. Just take a few minutes, just see
Speaker 1: what it feels like and make you better inform your
Speaker 1: decision ultimately. And then you do the test drive and
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, well I want to go think about it,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to let you go. They want
Speaker 1: to say, actually, you know, I know you need time
Speaker 1: to think about it. That totally makes sense that we
Speaker 1: don't want to force you to do anything, but I
Speaker 1: do want you to come inside real quick and just
Speaker 1: get something on paper so I can show you what
Speaker 1: kind of deal we can put together for you that
Speaker 1: will help inform your decision making. If you're looking at
Speaker 1: some other cars, you see the same thing with so
Speaker 1: many of these services where it's try it for seven
Speaker 1: days if you like it, and then when you go
Speaker 1: to unsubscribe, they're like, why didn't you like it? Is
Speaker 1: it too expensive? And and maybe they'll say, well, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. Try it off about that. You know
Speaker 1: they'll throw some sort of deal or to say, how
Speaker 1: about this, Maybe don't unsubscribe, Maybe just snooth just for
Speaker 1: a while, and you know you'll come back to it
Speaker 1: a k. You'll forget about us, and then we'll charge
Speaker 1: you for the service. Exactly right. But with the car salesperson,
Speaker 1: what they're doing every time they make a little bid
Speaker 1: for your continued engagement is they're exploiting psychological vulnerabilities. They
Speaker 1: know the more time you spend talking to them, and
Speaker 1: if they can get you into a chair seated across
Speaker 1: from them at a desk looking at a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: their psychologically advancing you toward the sale, making it more
Speaker 1: and more psychologically difficult for you to back out. Even
Speaker 1: though you haven't committed to doing anything explicitly, you're becoming
Speaker 1: more and more implicitly psychologically committed, and they just keep
Speaker 1: doing that. They're always advancing the sale. And so many
Speaker 1: of these social media apps work the same way. How
Speaker 1: about Kenny tagged you in a photo click to see
Speaker 1: the photo. Well, you might be in the middle of
Speaker 1: doing something, but if you get that notification, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I can look at a photo that just takes a
Speaker 1: few seconds, so you click to see the photo. But
Speaker 1: in Harris's words, quote, people don't intuitively forecast the true
Speaker 1: cost of a click when it's presented to them, because
Speaker 1: you think, click to see photo, that I'll just take
Speaker 1: a few seconds. Okay, that's fine. I can invest those
Speaker 1: few seconds and look at the photo. But then you're
Speaker 1: in the app and all of the other stuff in
Speaker 1: the app is there, and you could click on other
Speaker 1: people or click to see more photos, or end up
Speaker 1: back on the news feed, and it's pulling you in.
Speaker 1: And that's how it works. They present you the idea
Speaker 1: that will there will just be a quick little investment.
Speaker 1: Instagram does stuff like this. You know, you want to
Speaker 1: see one thing, You've got a message, or you were
Speaker 1: tagged in a photo, there was something, just one little
Speaker 1: thing you need to check, but then you're scrolling. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Harris ends the article by saying what we need our smartphones,
Speaker 1: notification screens, and web browsers to be exo skeletons for
Speaker 1: our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not
Speaker 1: our impulses first, And so he's advocating that we need
Speaker 1: to read as in our technological landscape to make our
Speaker 1: technology serve what we want out of life rather than
Speaker 1: what's easy for us to do in the moment, because
Speaker 1: what's easy for us to do in the moment is
Speaker 1: so easily exploited by people who are not working in
Speaker 1: our best interests. Yeah, obviously, you know, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this just the other day because, uh, Facebook actually
Speaker 1: rolled out this little questionnaire. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: received this as well, UH, asking you know, what can
Speaker 1: we what can we do to make the world a
Speaker 1: better place? What can we do to to to to
Speaker 1: help the the product? Uh, make your life better? And
Speaker 1: uh And you know, on one hand, I appreciated the outreach.
Speaker 1: I'll be at a you know, a corporate technological outreach.
Speaker 1: But in the other hand, I wanted to say, like,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to a machine. You were not a person.
Speaker 1: You were a corporation. You're a business, You're a technology.
Speaker 1: And I know what technologies want. I know what corporations want,
Speaker 1: and they are not necessar they're they are they almost
Speaker 1: certainly not what I want. People think the wrong way
Speaker 1: about the evil that gets done by like tech businesses
Speaker 1: and stuff. They often think that like, oh, you've got
Speaker 1: the snidely whiplash executives sitting up there thinking about how
Speaker 1: to wreck people's lives, and that that's not what happens.
Speaker 1: I mean, these businesses are like other businesses. They're full
Speaker 1: of people who are mostly decent people who are just
Speaker 1: trying to just trying to do a job and make
Speaker 1: a business and make a product that works. And the
Speaker 1: problem is with the incentives. The incentives in the structure
Speaker 1: of the business. The business incentivizes captivating as much of
Speaker 1: people's attention as possible. This is not presented to the
Speaker 1: people who work in these businesses as an overtly evil
Speaker 1: thing to do. It's presented in terms of things like engagement.
Speaker 1: So we want to make the app engaging. You want
Speaker 1: to make it something that people want to use. If
Speaker 1: people are using your app a lot, doesn't that seem
Speaker 1: like they're getting something out of it. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: not forcing them to do it. They're doing it because
Speaker 1: they want to. And so you can get locked into
Speaker 1: this way of thinking about things without ever making the
Speaker 1: decision to try to be evil and and upset people's
Speaker 1: goals and hurt the quality of their lives. What's kind
Speaker 1: of like with video game design, you know, you want
Speaker 1: to make a really fun game, but then when the
Speaker 1: response is, hey, I'm sorry, you made that game a
Speaker 1: little bit too fun, it's making people sad. And well,
Speaker 1: there are different ways to make a fun game. You
Speaker 1: could make a fun game that people, when they were
Speaker 1: done playing, felt good about the time they spent playing it.
Speaker 1: They're like, I had fun, that was a fulfilling experience.
Speaker 1: I don't regret it. You can also make a fun
Speaker 1: game that when people are done they feel hollow and
Speaker 1: regretful and aren't glad they spent their time that way. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm always reminded of the old saying, uh, leave one,
Speaker 1: they're wanting you to stay. That's I can count of
Speaker 1: that all the time. With these big games like it.
Speaker 1: I like a nice short game. Give me a four
Speaker 1: hour game, a six hour game, one of those games
Speaker 1: that online reviewers criticized for being too short, because that's
Speaker 1: probably the right length. It's these big, open ided games
Speaker 1: where it seems like you just play them till you're
Speaker 1: sick of it. You like, this brings me no joy anymore,
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure why I'm playing it right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an overabundance problem. There's too much supply of stimulating
Speaker 1: game and actually not enough demand of attention, right, um,
Speaker 1: and so I think this is a good way to
Speaker 1: transition to something that we've both read that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: It's an interview with another one of the co founders
Speaker 1: of Time Well Spent whose a guy named James Williams,
Speaker 1: a former Google employee as well, who started thinking trying
Speaker 1: to become a technology ethicist, thinking about like how technology
Speaker 1: can serve what we want out of life and serve
Speaker 1: our values instead of just sucking our attention away in
Speaker 1: these mindless activities. He actually wrote an essay called stand
Speaker 1: Out of Our Light, and one exerpt from it is
Speaker 1: that he pointed out the problem is that digital technologies
Speaker 1: privilege our impulses over our intentions, and instead they should
Speaker 1: help us in achieving our intentions, not just satisfying what
Speaker 1: we impulsively do when given the opera tunity. But he
Speaker 1: talks about several things in this interview with Nautilus from
Speaker 1: that I think are really interesting. One of them is
Speaker 1: that Williams makes an appeal based on the economics of information.
Speaker 1: So he says, like, we used to live in a
Speaker 1: world in which information was scarce and attention was abundant,
Speaker 1: it was hard to find things out. Sometimes it was
Speaker 1: hard to entertain and stimulate your mind. Your local newspaper
Speaker 1: was a critical information resource because in many, many cases
Speaker 1: it was the only way you could find things out
Speaker 1: about the world. And one way I like to think
Speaker 1: about this difference over time is that people used to
Speaker 1: talk all the time about being bored. To me, boredom
Speaker 1: is a word in attention economics, terms of an attention surplus.
Speaker 1: In an information scarce environment, you have attention to spend
Speaker 1: and nothing to spend it on. It's when the attention
Speaker 1: economy is in a state of high demand and low supply.
Speaker 1: Now we live in this completely opposite world where information
Speaker 1: is more than abundant. Your news source, whatever that is,
Speaker 1: is not your news source because you it's the only
Speaker 1: way you can learn about things. It's because it's your
Speaker 1: preferred source among thousands or functionally infinite numbers of sources.
Speaker 1: And the entertainment you turn to is not whatever is available.
Speaker 1: It's not the one channel on your TV. It's what
Speaker 1: you choose from a field of almost limitless options. Now
Speaker 1: what scarce is not information, but the attention you have
Speaker 1: to spend on it. And increasingly the role of information
Speaker 1: sources is not to provide you with information which you
Speaker 1: could access a thousand different ways, but to focus your
Speaker 1: attention to let you know which pieces of information are true,
Speaker 1: which are false, which are important, which are trivial. My
Speaker 1: own observation is that I think people often prefer certain
Speaker 1: news sources over others because they learn which ones will
Speaker 1: make them feel good, yeah, which ones are going to
Speaker 1: confirm their view of reality. Yeah. And so Williams goes
Speaker 1: on to describe this modern technological economy, the attention economy
Speaker 1: as quote a denial of service attack on the human will.
Speaker 1: So a denial of service attack is something you see
Speaker 1: in cybersecurity. It's when you get a bunch of computers
Speaker 1: or something bombarding say a website or some kind of
Speaker 1: user facing service, a website or a network, and they
Speaker 1: they bombard it with so much traffic that it can't
Speaker 1: serve itself to legitimate users. So you try to go
Speaker 1: to the website and it won't load for you because
Speaker 1: it's getting so many requests for loading from all of
Speaker 1: these fraudulent, fraudulent bots and stuff like that. So a
Speaker 1: denial of service attack on the human will is the
Speaker 1: idea that there's so much coming at you and demand
Speaker 1: making demands on your attention, you can't really spend your
Speaker 1: attention intentionally. Yeah, I mean, it's the very real scenario
Speaker 1: of decision fatigue. At the end of the day, you've
Speaker 1: been you've made so many choices already, you cannot make
Speaker 1: the simplest choice of, say, what do I want to
Speaker 1: drink with my dinner? You know, it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's fizzy water milk, but I cannot. I cannot extend
Speaker 1: the willpower to make this one final choice. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know he touches on some of this in the interview.
Speaker 1: One of the quotes was that that stood out to me.
Speaker 1: They keep us looking and clicking. I think this wears
Speaker 1: down certain capacities like willpower by having us to make
Speaker 1: more decisions. And certainly we've covered decision fat dig on
Speaker 1: the show before. We talked about multiple willpower experiments. Uh.
Speaker 1: So many of them seem to involve chocolate cake. The
Speaker 1: most delicious chocolate cake you've ever seen in your life,
Speaker 1: by the way, Uh that they'll they'll show this to
Speaker 1: somebody and then they'll have to deal with some sort
Speaker 1: of additional uh threat to their willpower additional decision challenge,
Speaker 1: and so so the idea here is that we deplete
Speaker 1: our video game esque willpower bar until we have no
Speaker 1: more choice. Do we end up clicking on that ad,
Speaker 1: eating that cake, or making a digital purchase? And I
Speaker 1: find I find it rather interesting that we we take
Speaker 1: for granted the ability to purchase items and have shipped
Speaker 1: to us at any given moment, you know, right from
Speaker 1: our tiny pocket computers. There's this tremendous convenience in this, certainly,
Speaker 1: but it also means that when you were at your weakest,
Speaker 1: perhaps at the end of a long day, in the moment,
Speaker 1: in a moment of foolish pride or drunken confidence, you
Speaker 1: can simply finalize the purchase of just about anything within
Speaker 1: just a few key strokes. It's usually treated as a
Speaker 1: source of humor that people say, like, I got drunk
Speaker 1: and bought X on Amazon, but I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is kind of funny, but it's also
Speaker 1: kind of not funny. Like you're you're in your house
Speaker 1: and you have essentially like decreased your inhibitions to dangerously
Speaker 1: low levels with the power to deplete your bank accounts
Speaker 1: on frivolous purchases while you're doing this, and it need
Speaker 1: not involve alcohol or any substance. It can just be
Speaker 1: a matter of Yeah, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: my willpower was beaten down enough that I decided that
Speaker 1: I deserved that blue ray of screamers, and I simply
Speaker 1: ordered it. Like it, Like your whole day is kind
Speaker 1: of building up to that moment when you finally break
Speaker 1: and give in to not only your your own desires,
Speaker 1: but also the marketing that you are your your hit
Speaker 1: with online. Another thing Williams points out that I think
Speaker 1: is actually really worth considering is the way that the
Speaker 1: media and attention economy landscape affects political values and changes
Speaker 1: in society. Right. Yeah, here's another wonderful, uh slash horrifying
Speaker 1: quote from the interview. Quote. Radio was a huge factor
Speaker 1: in Hitler's rise to power. It's why he put one
Speaker 1: in every house. I think that's an interest in comparison.
Speaker 1: Marshall mclewin, a Canadian media theorist, talked about this. He said,
Speaker 1: when a new technology comes out and we still don't
Speaker 1: know how to wrap our heads around it, there's an
Speaker 1: initial period where our sensory ratios, our perception is re
Speaker 1: acclimating a kind of hypnosis moment. He makes the point
Speaker 1: that the hypnotic effect of Hitler's style of oratory was
Speaker 1: amplified by the hip and antic effect of this new media,
Speaker 1: which is a type of information overload in people's lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Williams makes this fascinating connection between the technological attention economy
Speaker 1: and the recent resurgence of authoritarian populism. Right. So, the
Speaker 1: idea is that technology trains us to live by impulse
Speaker 1: battering down our long term gold driven and value driven
Speaker 1: behavior one distraction at a time. And what does it
Speaker 1: do to your brain when everything you really want to
Speaker 1: do with your time keeps getting interrupted by impulsively tempting
Speaker 1: digital candy. Does it make you complacent with the idea
Speaker 1: of impulsive decision making in other forms, even driving your
Speaker 1: politics towards things that feel good in the moment, regardless
Speaker 1: of whatever you think is really right in the long
Speaker 1: term or in terms of your moral values. This is
Speaker 1: on top of the effect of you know, we haven't
Speaker 1: even really touched on the idea of these platforms rewarding
Speaker 1: certain types of information that are often very negative in
Speaker 1: their political consequences, like fake new is being more viral
Speaker 1: on social media than real news. Yeah, conspiracy theories um
Speaker 1: resonating with view with readers more than like a perhaps
Speaker 1: a more stuffy breakdown of what we we do know
Speaker 1: and what we don't know. Right, Okay, well, I think
Speaker 1: we should take a break and then when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will discuss options for how to fight back against
Speaker 1: this state of affairs. All right, we're back. Let's let's
Speaker 1: get into it. What do what do we need to
Speaker 1: do to aim our video drone cancer gun at the
Speaker 1: TV screen that is threatening us? I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: so there are several options we could look at broadly.
Speaker 1: One of them is that we could hope the attention
Speaker 1: monopolizers will realize what's going on and stop monopolizing our attention.
Speaker 1: You know that they'll like Facebook and all these big
Speaker 1: companies and Apple and Google. They'll say like, oh, people
Speaker 1: aren't really getting the value that they want out of
Speaker 1: all the time that they're spending with these apps and devices.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll just make them less compelling so people go
Speaker 1: spend their time on other things. Let's make our our
Speaker 1: game needs to be less fun because people are playing
Speaker 1: it too much, and our product is because ultimately, the
Speaker 1: sad part about this idea is that we're not dealing
Speaker 1: with people. We're dealing with corporations, which operate like machines.
Speaker 1: They're full of people. People make them possible, and in
Speaker 1: some case, in many cases, there is a particular creator involved,
Speaker 1: but that creator is only a creator. They are no
Speaker 1: longer the master. Yeah, the corporations are mobilized by market incentives.
Speaker 1: And market incentives currently in like an ad supported and
Speaker 1: data collection supported model of the technology sphere, are going
Speaker 1: to incentivize for keeping you glued to the device or
Speaker 1: stuck in the app. They want time on site, they
Speaker 1: want screen time, they want your eyeballs, they want attention
Speaker 1: because that's how they make money. Now, this does make
Speaker 1: you wonder, well, what if they had a different way
Speaker 1: of making money? Could things change? Then? Like what if
Speaker 1: technology largely turned to a paid subscriber model rather than
Speaker 1: an advertising supported model. Then if it didn't matter how
Speaker 1: much time you spent in an app or on a device,
Speaker 1: would everything be okay then? Because then they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: nearly as incentivized to keep you using it. To the
Speaker 1: Netflix problem, right, that's a paid subscriber thing. But you
Speaker 1: notice Netflix introduces things that seem like they're geared to
Speaker 1: keep you in the app, even though it's a paid
Speaker 1: subscriber model. What is what's causing that? Like the AutoPlay functionality,
Speaker 1: the thing on Netflix where it starts playing a movie
Speaker 1: even though you didn't click on it. Why does it
Speaker 1: do that? I think there are maybe a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons for this. One is that how much time a
Speaker 1: user spins on an app is somewhat predictive of whether
Speaker 1: they'll keep subscribing to it. So, even on a subscriber model,
Speaker 1: if you don't watch, you might unsubscribe. So they want
Speaker 1: you to watch so you'll feel like you're getting value
Speaker 1: out of the app and stay a subscriber. It's one
Speaker 1: thing to get the get you to binge watch one show,
Speaker 1: they want you to binge watch multiple shows. They want
Speaker 1: you to subscribe next month as well. Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you realize, hey, I'm never using Netflix, you probably want
Speaker 1: to subscribe, right. Another thing is that the more you
Speaker 1: use an app, the more data the app can gather
Speaker 1: about you, and that data is worth money. If not
Speaker 1: externally then certainly internally. What kind of shows are resonating
Speaker 1: with our average view or the certain demographics of viewers,
Speaker 1: certain demographics of subscribers. Okay, so that's the first option,
Speaker 1: hope they'll stop monopolizing our attention. That doesn't seem super likely.
Speaker 1: Maybe would work a little bit better if there was
Speaker 1: more subscription and less ad driven support for digital content,
Speaker 1: but not clear. The second option is maybe we can
Speaker 1: hope that attention monopolizers will shift to monopolizing our attention
Speaker 1: with things that are truly fulfilling rather than things that
Speaker 1: leave us feeling unhappy, regretful, and hollow. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about this way. What if there was something that was
Speaker 1: as impulsively addictive as your favorite social media app that
Speaker 1: you spend hours just mindlessly wandering through, but it made
Speaker 1: you feel as fulfilled as the stuff you really care
Speaker 1: about doing. Like it it was full of intellectually stimulating
Speaker 1: information and stuff that made you feel like, I'm really
Speaker 1: getting value out of this, this is what I want
Speaker 1: to be doing with my time. Sounds like you're describing
Speaker 1: stuff to blue your mind dot contract. I mean that's
Speaker 1: actually what we hope. Like we are digital content creators,
Speaker 1: we hope people will consume our content. But I hope,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't get the sense based on our
Speaker 1: contact with listeners, that people consume us just mindlessly and
Speaker 1: then they're really regretful later. I hope that's not the case.
Speaker 1: What we're what we hope is that we provide value
Speaker 1: in people's lives. That increasingly we have the thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds a little bit tacky to put it in
Speaker 1: these these terms, but increasingly we can't just market the
Speaker 1: website and say, go check out this website. It has
Speaker 1: our content on it. Uh, it has to go through
Speaker 1: something like Facebook. Facebook is the way that people get
Speaker 1: to your content. Yeah. Yeah, And so we we in
Speaker 1: these episodes by saying, like check us out on social media.
Speaker 1: Isn't that ironic? But I mean, like that is. That's
Speaker 1: sort of like if you've got a store that's in
Speaker 1: the mall, and you you think it's good for people
Speaker 1: to come to your store because you think we have
Speaker 1: really good products and people get a lot of value
Speaker 1: out of coming to our store, but they do have
Speaker 1: to walk through the mall to get to us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe they have to walk by six competitors who
Speaker 1: are willing to pay for better better positioning within the all.
Speaker 1: I mean you see that all the time. Yeah, So anyway,
Speaker 1: can we hold out hope for the fact that maybe
Speaker 1: maybe everybody will try to do it more like this,
Speaker 1: that all these apps and these platforms and everything will
Speaker 1: will focus on making their experience something that's deeply fulfilling
Speaker 1: and aligned with people's goals. I think we can't just
Speaker 1: assume anything like this will happen. We can't hold out
Speaker 1: hope for that. One thing I want to mention is
Speaker 1: that there was an example of an announcement along these
Speaker 1: lines earlier this year. Mark Zuckerberg claimed on a public
Speaker 1: post on January elevenen that quote, one of our big
Speaker 1: focus areas inen is making sure that the time we
Speaker 1: all spend on Facebook is time well spent. So he's
Speaker 1: even using the tagle the phrase time well spent. It
Speaker 1: sounds like he's been influenced by Tristan Harris and these
Speaker 1: other people who are making this argument right. And the
Speaker 1: main way he says, Facebook is going to do this
Speaker 1: by altering the news feed algorithm to reduce the amount
Speaker 1: of stuff people see from pages and publishers and increasing
Speaker 1: what people see from friends and family. And this works
Speaker 1: on the assumption that people like spending time seeing posts
Speaker 1: and comments by people they know, and this will leave
Speaker 1: them feeling less regretful than if they were seeing posts
Speaker 1: by you know, check out our insane videos, or by
Speaker 1: a podcast that they listened to. Say so, to his credit,
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg acknowledged in the post he said, now, I want
Speaker 1: to be clear. By making these changes, I expect the
Speaker 1: time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement
Speaker 1: will go down, but I expect the time you do
Speaker 1: spend on Facebook will be more valuable. So if we
Speaker 1: take him at this word here he's it sounds like
Speaker 1: he's trying to say, I want to make my product
Speaker 1: something that people get value and meaning from in their lives,
Speaker 1: something that is more fulfilling to them. I don't know
Speaker 1: if the strategy will work. I mean, who knows what
Speaker 1: the real motives are. I mean, I try not to
Speaker 1: be super cynical about things, but there could be a
Speaker 1: lot of messaging reasons for putting up a post like this.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if this will actually make things
Speaker 1: all that much better. And then, on top of that,
Speaker 1: even if it did make things better, the business incentive
Speaker 1: for companies generally to do things like this is not there.
Speaker 1: Like apparently, when Zuckerberg announced this on the post, Facebook
Speaker 1: shares went down four. Yeah, because he might be the
Speaker 1: monster's creator, but he is no longer the monster's master.
Speaker 1: He can't dictate the hunger of this beast, at least
Speaker 1: not for long. And I just keep coming back to
Speaker 1: the idea of what does the corporation want? And not
Speaker 1: just a finite and fixed thing either. We're talking that
Speaker 1: the this is a beast that swells and shrinks as
Speaker 1: necessary to survive the changing demands of its economic, political,
Speaker 1: and social environment. It's a monster that wants nothing short
Speaker 1: of complete consumption and endless digestion of you, your loved
Speaker 1: ones in every generation to follow. It's the hungry, jealous
Speaker 1: god that we could only dream of an ages past.
Speaker 1: I want to start applauding, but it would sound kind
Speaker 1: of sad if it's just one person applauding. So imagine
Speaker 1: the crowd applauding. Yeah, Okay, Well, I'm being a little
Speaker 1: negative and cynical about the whole thing. But if it's
Speaker 1: a monster, maybe the creator can't control it. But if
Speaker 1: I know anything about monster movies is that a hero
Speaker 1: can sometimes slay it or drive it away. Right, you
Speaker 1: gotta take defensive measures. So that's what we should talk about.
Speaker 1: What can you literally do to protect yourself against having
Speaker 1: your attention gobbled up by all of these digital slot machines.
Speaker 1: One way you can protect yourself, of course, would be
Speaker 1: to delete apps or block website that you discover are
Speaker 1: making you unhappy or making you spend your time in
Speaker 1: a way you later regret. But that's not always practical,
Speaker 1: is it. Like some people us included, need to use
Speaker 1: social media apps for work, and sometimes you want to
Speaker 1: have the option to stay connected to friends and receive
Speaker 1: messages from family through social media, even though you don't
Speaker 1: want to spend your time being mindlessly hypnotized through a
Speaker 1: flow of content from it. Right, So, if you want
Speaker 1: to still have access to these apps and platforms, but
Speaker 1: to make them less effective at hijacking your mind and
Speaker 1: gobbling up your attention, the Center for Humane Technology recommends
Speaker 1: a few steps specific to mobile devices that will help
Speaker 1: make them less addictive and less able to hijack your attention.
Speaker 1: The first one, turn off notifications if you haven't already
Speaker 1: done this basically, unless it's something you really care about
Speaker 1: knowing immediately when it happens, maybe like direct messages from
Speaker 1: human beings, turn them off. Don't let that just go
Speaker 1: to your phone whenever somebody at mentions you on Twitter
Speaker 1: or whatever. Because the notifications or the foot in the
Speaker 1: door strategy, right, I can check that one notification. Not
Speaker 1: only are they distracting, but they get you in there
Speaker 1: and then they try to push you towards the sale
Speaker 1: of let's get a couple hours from you on this app.
Speaker 1: Another thing, this is a pretty interesting appeal. They say,
Speaker 1: switch your phone to gray scale display in I didn't
Speaker 1: even know that was an option. Yeah, get rid of
Speaker 1: the colors. Apparently you can go into the settings on
Speaker 1: some phones and turn off the color so you just
Speaker 1: see your phone in black and white or in gray scale. Well,
Speaker 1: you can toggle it off and on right, So if
Speaker 1: you want to watch a movie or look at a
Speaker 1: photo or something like that, you could turn the color
Speaker 1: back on. But if you generally have it in gray scale,
Speaker 1: app designers are carefully they've carefully researched how to use
Speaker 1: color to arouse your attention and reward seeking behaviors. And
Speaker 1: if you switch your phone to gray scale, it will
Speaker 1: have less power to lasso your brain with like red
Speaker 1: flag notifications and stuff. Another thing they suggest, sort your
Speaker 1: shortcuts on the phone. You've usually got like a series
Speaker 1: of screens. You got a home screen, you swipe over
Speaker 1: to other screens, and then you've got shortcuts that gets
Speaker 1: you into your apps. You can choose where to put
Speaker 1: the shortcuts and move them around. Right, So, when you
Speaker 1: open your phone on your home screen, are the apps
Speaker 1: that drain your attention the most efficiently? Are they right
Speaker 1: there on the home screen? Maybe you should put them
Speaker 1: in a place that's harder to reach, like sort them
Speaker 1: into a secondary screen, or or just deeper than that,
Speaker 1: like like store them six sudden folders deep and in
Speaker 1: a prison of your smartphone. Right, so you really have
Speaker 1: to make a decision that you're going to go into
Speaker 1: the app. You don't just mindlessly open it every time
Speaker 1: you unlock your phone. You know, I did something like
Speaker 1: this for a while with with one of my social
Speaker 1: media apps. I deleted the app, but I I still
Speaker 1: could access it through the browser, so it didn't keep
Speaker 1: me from checking it, but it made it just a
Speaker 1: little more difficult for me to do it, and it
Speaker 1: it seemed to help, at least for a while. A
Speaker 1: big thing, going back to our first episode here, that
Speaker 1: I would recommend is putting your phone in a different
Speaker 1: room whenever you can when you're in bed. Don't charge
Speaker 1: your phone right beside the bed. Charge your phone in
Speaker 1: a different room in the house. When you're reading, or
Speaker 1: trying to do some work, or trying to watch a movie,
Speaker 1: trying to do anything else that you just want to
Speaker 1: devote your attention to. Don't put your phone beside, you
Speaker 1: put your phone somewhere else. It's it's a nice idea,
Speaker 1: but that then you get into issues of like, well,
Speaker 1: don't I need the phone next to my bed if
Speaker 1: there's an emergency, or like for me, I use my
Speaker 1: phone to play white noise every evening, so I become addicted.
Speaker 1: I'm granted I could get a white noise machine and
Speaker 1: and uh and get around that. Well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a question of do you find yourself having a problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you just use it to play white
Speaker 1: noise and that's helpful to you, then that's fine. Actually,
Speaker 1: then the device is working the way it should work,
Speaker 1: the way that it's good for it to work. It's
Speaker 1: helping you get what you want. But if you find
Speaker 1: that by having it there, you tend to open it
Speaker 1: and you tend to start looking at stuff that's gobbling
Speaker 1: up your time and attention in a way that you
Speaker 1: later regret. That's when the problem comes and maybe it
Speaker 1: should be playing white noise. But on the other side
Speaker 1: of the ring sort of thing. Maybe there are also
Speaker 1: a lot of apps that are designed essentially as defensive
Speaker 1: weapons against the addictive power of the other apps. Right,
Speaker 1: Like we mentioned that one earlier moment that tracks what
Speaker 1: apps you use and shows you so you can be aware.
Speaker 1: But there are a bunch of apps that do stuff
Speaker 1: like this. There are apps that block your access to
Speaker 1: certain websites, so you say, actually, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be able to go to Twitter dot com within the
Speaker 1: next few hours or something like that. Uh, And then
Speaker 1: there are more recommendations you can look up if you
Speaker 1: go to the Center for Humane Technology website. But we
Speaker 1: should point out that these are mundane and specific defenses
Speaker 1: against certain types of attention attacks from our current generation
Speaker 1: of personal devices. They don't really address the larger problem
Speaker 1: that we live in an economy that incentivizes companies to
Speaker 1: get as much of our attention as they can. They've
Speaker 1: come up with really smart, really effective strategies for doing this,
Speaker 1: and their strategies for doing this are only going to
Speaker 1: get better over time and They infect so many areas
Speaker 1: of everyday life that it's difficult to escape them without
Speaker 1: cutting yourself off from mainstream technological society. I think one
Speaker 1: of the more painful things about this whole scenario is
Speaker 1: that I feel like the more people grow up with
Speaker 1: within this world, uh, you know, the more they don't
Speaker 1: know what it's like to live without this current level
Speaker 1: of over stimulation and hyper choice and decision fatigue. For instance,
Speaker 1: in my family, we limit my son's scream time as
Speaker 1: much as possible, but we we do let him watch
Speaker 1: educational shows, play educational games. But we wonder sometimes if
Speaker 1: he truly knows what it's like to be bored. And
Speaker 1: even though you hear kids still use the word board,
Speaker 1: they still talk about being bored. But do they really
Speaker 1: know what it's like to be left with only your
Speaker 1: own thoughts to entertain you and pass the time? Are
Speaker 1: they left with depleted skills for reaching out into the
Speaker 1: real world around them or the inner world of imagination
Speaker 1: to pass the hours of the day. I do worry
Speaker 1: about this. I sometimes think about how I'm never bored anymore.
Speaker 1: I remember being bored when I was a kid, but
Speaker 1: now I've always got ten thousand things to do that
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten to yet, and I can access them
Speaker 1: at pretty much any time. So I mean, I just
Speaker 1: never really experienced boredom. There's always like something I could
Speaker 1: be working on, something I could be reading, something I
Speaker 1: could be getting to that I've meant to get to,
Speaker 1: and boredom might be important. That might be an important
Speaker 1: cognitive space, something that matters for our cognitive health and development.
Speaker 1: What about larger institutional changes though, Yeah, that's something we've
Speaker 1: got to think about. So here's one thing. Some governments
Speaker 1: regulate the design of slot machines, right, which are brilliantly
Speaker 1: created techno drugs that are addictive that serve the function
Speaker 1: of draining people of as much money as possible, getting
Speaker 1: them to play to extinction. Could we also regulate the
Speaker 1: addictive properties of techno drugs designed to drain us of
Speaker 1: as much attention as possible, to play to extinction of
Speaker 1: our attention? Should the government regulate the way things can
Speaker 1: hijack our attention? I'm not saying necessarily should, but it's
Speaker 1: worth considering that the costs and benefits. I want to
Speaker 1: read another exerpt from that James Williams essay, where he
Speaker 1: mentions what we can do about this, He says, quote, First,
Speaker 1: we must reject the impulse to ask users to just
Speaker 1: adapt to distraction. We must also move briskly past the
Speaker 1: illusion that media literacy will ever be enough. Nor can
Speaker 1: we reply that if someone doesn't like the choices on
Speaker 1: technologies menu, the only option is to unplug or detox.
Speaker 1: This is a pessimistic and unsustainable view of technology. And
Speaker 1: of course we can't expect the attention economy to fix itself.
Speaker 1: We must then move urgently to assert and defend our
Speaker 1: freedom of attention. So he ends up advocating essentially that
Speaker 1: we need to create a discipline of studying freedom of
Speaker 1: attention in order to come up with the right uh,
Speaker 1: the right philosophy, the right framework, in the right terms
Speaker 1: in which to discuss this problem, so that it's not
Speaker 1: just something that a few people in the technology ethics
Speaker 1: sphere are observing, but that it becomes a part of
Speaker 1: our moral philosophy, or even just a part of like
Speaker 1: in the same sense that a medication has to pass
Speaker 1: various trials and become approved by a governmental body before
Speaker 1: it can be actually used as a treatment measure, to
Speaker 1: what extent should we get into a situation where an
Speaker 1: app or some other kind of program or social media
Speaker 1: and interface has to be cleared. It has to meet
Speaker 1: certain thresholds of acceptability. I mean, it is difficult because
Speaker 1: the ways in which these technological innovations hurt us are
Speaker 1: not ways that are acute and easy to identify. It's
Speaker 1: not like they caused us to be to become sick,
Speaker 1: or they caused us to die in the show term. Instead,
Speaker 1: what they're doing is depriving us of the attention and
Speaker 1: will to get what we want out of life. And
Speaker 1: this is something that only gets recognized in the large
Speaker 1: scale over long periods of time. Yeah, until suddenly you're
Speaker 1: in a situation where you have to wage a Buttlerian
Speaker 1: jihad against the machines. Right, Well, that that is a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea. So it goes back to the idea and
Speaker 1: Dune that you know there there was, ultimately, at some
Speaker 1: point in the past history of the Dune sci fi universe,
Speaker 1: a war between humans and machines, not all machines, but
Speaker 1: thinking machines, machines that were too smart and that had
Speaker 1: hurt humanity's own sense of itself by recreating sort of
Speaker 1: humans and the image of a machine because they had
Speaker 1: created machines and the image of humans. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think the jihad aspect is key here because you know,
Speaker 1: people who are maybe not familiar with the the the
Speaker 1: Islamic use of the term, you might just think jihad
Speaker 1: is war, jihad is some sort of violent act, But
Speaker 1: jahad means a struggle against depression and it it can,
Speaker 1: it need not be an actual struggle of physical violence
Speaker 1: of forms. Yeah, So, I mean, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: it's unrealistic or overwrought to think of our struggle against
Speaker 1: UH attention fatigue and the design of these various devices
Speaker 1: as being a sort of job and to think of
Speaker 1: it as a form of oppression. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a lot of very real oppression going on
Speaker 1: in the world that is UH, that is beyond the
Speaker 1: scope of mere smartphones. But then it's not like there's
Speaker 1: there's no interplay between the two because our our devices
Speaker 1: are apps. We're talking about news feedes, we're talking about
Speaker 1: political movements, we're talking about um social energy that does
Speaker 1: impact actual physical oppression in the world and our understanding
Speaker 1: of it, our knowledge of it, and our opinions of it. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So there are two things that I'm trying to juggle
Speaker 1: in my mind right now, and one of them is
Speaker 1: this is a thing Tristan Harris points out, is that
Speaker 1: we need to reject the myth that technology is always
Speaker 1: just a neutral tool that you can use how you
Speaker 1: want it. Technologies have content, and sometimes the content of
Speaker 1: the technology has a net positive or negative effect on
Speaker 1: us that's intrinsic to the technology itself. You can't just
Speaker 1: wave your hand and say, well, well, technology is always
Speaker 1: just neutral, it's how you use it. Some technologies really do.
Speaker 1: They really are made in a way that gives us
Speaker 1: things other than what we want, or affects us in
Speaker 1: a way that we ultimately view as negative. But the
Speaker 1: other side of this is that we don't have to
Speaker 1: be technophobic. We don't have to say that technology necessarily
Speaker 1: is bad or necessarily hurts us. Technology in general could
Speaker 1: serve our best needs. It could be a thing that
Speaker 1: helped us get exactly what we want out of life
Speaker 1: instead of subverting what we want to get out of life. Right,
Speaker 1: And I guess it's part of our job to think
Speaker 1: about like how we can each individually work to try
Speaker 1: to shape the world we even and the technosphere we
Speaker 1: occupy to be more like that. To to to steer
Speaker 1: it towards a you know, a positive feedback loop with
Speaker 1: our own goals and desires and dreams and and interests,
Speaker 1: rather than a place of perverse incentives that drives us
Speaker 1: towards mindless consumption. Yeah, to to use it as a tool,
Speaker 1: to keep it as a tool, and to sort of
Speaker 1: maintain it, to cultivate it as a tool. Alright, So
Speaker 1: there you have it, UH fight the power, I suppose
Speaker 1: hopefully in this episode, we you know, we we laid
Speaker 1: some kind of harrowing facts on you, but I think
Speaker 1: we also provided some hope, We provided some tips, and
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from everyone out there about
Speaker 1: you know, for instance, how how it how it goes
Speaker 1: when you start applying some of these tips to your
Speaker 1: own use of social media and various devices in your life,
Speaker 1: or if you have additional tips, additional strategies that you've
Speaker 1: come across, additional thoughts on the on the topic in general. Um.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, head on over to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com if we will find all the
Speaker 1: podcast episodes as well as linked out to those social
Speaker 1: media accounts and uh big thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. And if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us directly but
Speaker 1: let us know feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: or to tell us your personal story, you can email
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com? No,