Bad incentive structures are ruining tech with this manifesting in several important ways

Enshitification

At the start of each section I will in bullet points make my broad predictions and trajectories.

Slopfeeds

  • people in mass are going to begin hating any and all content creators because of the creators making slop
  • people will begin dehumanising content creators to a large extent
  • eventually money will leave influencing (if everyone hates them they lose value)
  • as money drains out infighting will occur
  • eventually slopcreators will leave the space or be forced out
  • money will come back into the space
  • repeat

‘slopfeeds’ are a form of content that is not only low quality (in terms of value) but also exists in a continually ingestible form.1

This type of content can only exist due to it’s easy digestibility and it’s existence in the context of an algorithm that is trying to hijack your brain to remove your consent. If you pick a video and click on it you’ve made a choice, if you scroll you have not made the choice it’s been made for you. If the algorithm itself uses mechanics similar to a slot machine (winners vs losers ratio) so that your neurochemistry makes you less able to stop not only do you not consent to the content that is writing information to your brain, altering you mood but the feed has intentionally also lowered your ability to consent.

All content is writing someones beliefs to your brain, their belief about what is funny, important, true, entertaining etc. This is usually fine, if I watch a video I can disagree with their beliefs I might not find it funny or I might disagree with other factors. How can I disagree with a video I spend 5 seconds looking at before my brain is forced to pay attention to another video?

Within maybe ten minutes of scrolling I’ve watched about 120 videos, each video probably writing an average of 5 beliefs, lets assuming only 10% of beliefs are related to politics2 that means in a 10 minute scroll 60 political beliefs have been written into your brain from complete strangers.

They were written so quickly you can’t meaningfully assess any of them but lets say you have enough peripheral knowledge that your models can instantly correctly assess 80% of political beliefs (which would be incredibly good), that would mean 12 political beliefs got written to your brain without you being able to assess it, you might not integrate them but they did get written and all of this is the absolute best case scenario. This is the best case every single time you spend 10 minutes on a slopfeed. This I believe is central to why they are so corrosive, you cannot protect against them.

The preselection of slop creators is also worth noting, creating slop is not fun, it’s not satisfying, it doesn’t require you to be smart, it doesn’t require you to care - ask yourself what type of person would decide to dedicate their time and energy to producing it, then ask yourself again do you want these people writing their beliefs into your brain when the best case scenario of the hundreds of beliefs per day you can only assess 20% of them. This applies to most online content that fits the criteria of slop, any short form video, the comments on most youtube videos, the titles of anything that makes it’s way to /r/all the comment section of any reddit post and the entirety of any online content centered around drama.

Gambling

  • Gambling addiction is going to reach new highs
  • Because prediction markets are corrupt and the people running them are greedy crypto as a whole will be hurt
  • Gambling will gradually return to being socially stigmatised and people gambling will be mocked for it
  • Prediction markets will eventually be exposed for knowingly allowing insider trading.

In regards to gambling not much can be said, if you gamble you are either an addict or statistically illiterate, Theres an exception for skill based games like poker but everything else, slots, blackjack, roulette etc the house has an edge and you don’t understand basic maths, I don’t care how much money you have, you are a loser for buying a lotto ticket or video game lootcrate. You should feel bad about it and you should feel ashamed when you do it. Unless you’re a gambling addict, in that case you should get help - in regards to people who push gambling on people they are evil. I mean that with the full weight it carries, gambling is one of the most harmful addictions. If you’re willing to promote something like gambling to your fans for money you are a loser, being rich doesn’t change that, being famous doesn’t change that, having loads of fans doesn’t change that; You’re a loser and you make the world a worse place.

Anti social tech

When I talk about anti-social tech I’m talking about technology that lowers your physical existence in the world, watching a video doesn’t do this, watching a slopfeed does, using headphones doesn’t do this, using noise cancellation does.

I do not think I’ll be able to explain this any clear than I could explain the experience of seeing red to mary.3 does it take you out of the world? it’s that simple.

I’ve had conversations with several friends that illustrate this, they started using noise canceling headphones in public and now can no longer tolerate being in public without them. They firmly make you anti social - if I can be controversial and brave I think technology that essentially tries to remove other people from shared spaces is actually harmful to both society and the individual. Since anti-social tech is just hardware that embeds and encourages anti social behaviours and mindset we can keep this simple and because it’s not addictive like the other forms I think it’s closer to a bad habit.

  1. Slop itself is just something (usually videos) that has been made without the usual cost of creating it and the way the cost is lowered inherently makes the content itself worse ↩

  2. or upstream from politics, beliefs that inform politics or political action ↩

  3. mary in the red room is a common AI thought experiment about if experience is a form of knowledge see here ↩