Paul Graham: crack, meth, internet and facebook
The Acceleration of Addictiveness
What unites alcohol, cigarettes, heroin and crack? That they are all the more concentrated form of their predecessors, which were less addictive. Most of the things (if not all) that we describe as addictive are. The worst thing is that the process of their creation is accelerating.
We would not want to stop him. This is the same process that cures diseases: scientific and technical progress. Technological means of progress allow things to work better than we want. If some kind of new technology makes solar cells x% more efficient, we are strongly convinced that these batteries are better.
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When progress concentrates on something that we don’t want - when it turns opium into heroin - it seems to us that this is bad. But this is the same process. [one]
No one doubts that this process is accelerating, which means an increase in the number of things that will turn into something that we don’t really like. [2]
As far as I know, there is no word that would mean that we like something too much. The closest in meaning is the word addictive (from the English. Addictive - addictive). It began to be used quite often. And this is understandable: a huge number of things appeared that fit this definition. At the extreme end of the spectrum are crack and meth. Through the combination of agriculture and food industry innovations, food has been transformed into something much more profitable and you can see the result in any American city. Checkers and Solitaire were replaced by the world of Warcraft and FarmVille. Television has become much more interesting, but even so, it cannot compete with Facebook.
The world has become more addictive than 40 years ago. And if the forms of technological progress that produce these things do not obey other laws, the world will become even more dependent in the next 40 years.
Translation: Diana Sheremyeva
Translation support - Edison (which develops online gambling sites and software SMPP gateway ).
The next 40 years will give us a lot of great things. I do not urge you to avoid everything. Alcohol is a dangerous drug, but I prefer to live in a world in which there is wine than in a world in which there is no wine. Most people can coexist with alcohol; you just need to be careful. The more things we like, the more caution is needed.
But not all people will abide by it unfortunately. When the world becomes more addictive, the concept of “living a normal life” becomes different for everyone. For some, the norm is the so-called static norm: what everyone does. For others, the norm is what works best.
These two views are very far from each other. The one who is already trying to live well will seem eccentrically abstinent. This phenomenon is increasingly being made public. Now, if people do not think that you are strange, it means that you live badly.
Society eventually developed antibodies to addictive things. I saw what happened with cigarettes. When cigarettes first appeared, they spread like an infectious disease. Smoking is incredibly fast (according to statistics) has become the norm. Ashtrays were everywhere. When I was a child, there were ashtrays in our house, despite the fact that my parents did not smoke. Ashtrays stood for guests.
When information about the dangers of smoking spread, customs changed. In the past 20 years, smoking has been transformed from something that seemed perfectly normal to a rather dubious habit: from something that movie stars did in public, is now done behind closed doors in small drug addicts. All these changes were made thanks to the legislation, of course, but this would not have happened if the habits had not changed at first.
However, it took time - about a hundred years. And unless the speed with which society develops a kind of immunity to addictive things, does not exceed the speed with which technological progress creates them, it will not be possible only to rely on habits to protect us. [3]
If we don’t want to be held hostage by every new addiction — people whose sad examples become lessons for future generations — we need to figure out what to avoid and how. As a result, a rational strategy is developed to consider everything new as potentially dangerous. But in fact, even this will not be enough. We need to worry not only about new things, but also about the fact that existing ones can become more addictive. This is what oppresses me. I avoided most addictions, but Internet addiction overtook me in the process of using it. [four]
Most of my friends have problems with Internet addiction. We are all trying to develop special habits that would allow us to break free from it. For this reason, for example, I do not have an iPhone; The last thing I want is for the Internet to accompany me everywhere. [five]
One of my last tricks is long hikes. I used to think that running is better than tourism, because it takes less time. Now the duration of the hikes seems to me an advantage, because the more time I spend on the track, the longer I think without a break.
Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn't it? It always happens when you try to solve your problems, but you still have no habits that would guide you. Perhaps I cannot consider myself an Occam's razor; maybe I'm just an eccentric. But if I am right about the acceleration of addiction, then such a fate awaits all who will fight with their addictions. We all are more determined by what we say no.
Notes
[1] Could you limit the technical progress in the desired areas? Only in a limited form, not turning into a police state. And even then your limitations will have undesirable side effects. “Good” and “bad” technological progress are inextricably linked with each other and you cannot slow down one without affecting the other. And in any case, as the “war on drugs” shows, bans often do more harm than good.
[2] Technology is constantly accelerating. By the standards of the Paleolithic, technology evolves rapidly in the Neolithic.
[3] Unless we produce social habits. I suspect that the recent revival of evangelical Christianity in the United States is partly a reaction to drugs. In desperation, people are drawn to the sledgehammer: if children do not listen to their parents, maybe they will listen to God. But this decision has broader implications than you can imagine. Children will say “no” not only to drugs, but also to science. I'm afraid we are approaching the future, in which only a few will be able to build their own route, the rest will book a tour package. Or even worse, the government will book for them.
[4] People usually use the word “procrastination” to describe what they do on the Internet. I think this is too soft description. In fact, you just do not work. When someone gets drunk instead of working, we do not call it a procrastination.
[5] Many people told me that they like the iPad, because it allows them to use the Internet in situations where the laptop is very striking.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/313608/
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