Supernormal stimuli
by Deirdre Barrett · first published 2010
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I highly recommend Deirdre Barrett's book Supernormal Stimuli for a fascinating and detailed review of this phenomenon in its various manifestations in human societies.
on “The Acceleration of Addictiveness (2010)” ↗…healthy. A trillion dollar industry exists to profit off of gluing eyeballs to screens. Making the device other than what this industry designed it to be is not self-sabotage, it's self-interested! Read "Supernormal Stimuli" by Barrett for some other examples of this phenomenon.
on “My phone is an ereader now” ↗Two related books you may find of interest along the lines of Paul Graham's insightful "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" essay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard…
on “'Our minds can be hijacked': tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia” ↗…areas. If you do so, please keep in mind the extra complexity of the motivational triad and other possible human objectives. And along with "The Pleasure Trap", please also perhaps reflect on the book "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose" by Deirdre Barrett and the essay "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" by Paul Graham as they explore the dark side of modern society and technology…
on “Life Is a Ponzi Scheme (2009)” ↗…the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness" by Douglas J. Lisle and Alan Goldhamer helped me see that connection (so, actually going the other way at first). And a later book from 2010 called "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose" by Deirdre Barrett also expanded that idea beyond food to media and gaming and more. The 2010 essay "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" by Paul Graham…
on “GPT-4o” ↗Read "Supernormal Stimuli" by Barret [1] for an exploration of the psychology of this "mesmerizing" effect - at least in general, if not specifically in short-form video and infinite scroll. Whether the artificial stimulus comes…
on “Smartphones and being present” ↗…spare time. Another aspect of the challenge is having a mind tuned for a scarcity of something like information being having difficulty coping with an abundance of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published ... in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book…
on “Elon Musk emails employees about 'extensive and damaging sabotage' by employee” ↗…these same elements independently. I no longer have the book on hand, but read a few months ago that this correlation between juvenile traits and domestication was one of the main theses of Barrett's "Supernormal Stimuli" in Chapter 4. She cited a few studies of fox domestication [1], [2] and other works to support these theories. [1]: https://courses.washington.edu/anmind/Trut%20on%20the%20Russ... [2] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(05)...
on “Raccoons are showing early signs of domestication” ↗…these days can be problematic in the 21st century. And that is even ignoring the "Acceleration of Addictiveness" (Paul Graham) "Pleasure Trap" (Douglas J. Lisle & Alan Goldhamer) potential of watch-based "Supernormal Stimuli" (Dierdre Barrett) given the "pretty neat idea" of digital watches networked to large organizations with problematical short-term profit-driven goals involving socializing costs and privatizing gains.…
on “You're enlightened – now what?” ↗Yes, the wikipedia article also mentions: > Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett argues that supernormal stimulation govern the behavior of humans as powerfully as that of animals. In her 2010 book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose, she examines the impact of supernormal stimuli on the diversion of impulses for nurturing, sexuality, romance, territoriality, defense, and the entertainment…
on “Sean Parker unloads on Facebook “exploiting” human psychology” ↗Similarly, I'm reading "Supernormal Stimuli" now, and there's a whole section on infants raised by various animals (chimps, wolves, chickens, leopards, etc, etc). When they are found and brought back to human societies, basically none of them develop…
on “Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards” ↗> Similarly, I'm reading "Supernormal Stimuli" now, and there's a whole section on infants raised by various animals (chimps, wolves, chickens, leopards, etc, etc). When they are found and brought back to human societies, basically none of them develop…
on “Words Are a Byproduct of Consciousness. For LLMs, It's Backwards” ↗…should not be surprised when they don't work out that well in a different context like the internet or with abundant cheap unhealthy easy-to-consume exciting food and information (e.g. internet trolls, "Supernormal Stimuli", "The Pleasure Trap", "The Acceleration of Addictiveness", "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy", "The Cyber Effect", and so on). I spent a year hanging around Hans Moravec's robotics lab (at the CMU Robotics…
on “The Last Invention of Man” ↗…happy people live for a long time -- and a lot of it is just about getting the basics right like in the Philip Hickey quote above. And then when things get going well (or even before), watch out for "Supernormal Stimuli", "The Pleasure Trap", and "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" (see two books and an essay by those names). One nurse who was critical of one of Dr. Andrew Weil's books on Amazon pointed out that much…
on “The Depression Thing” ↗@jstewartmobile Thanks for you comments! On "trajectory", books like "The Pleasure Trap" and "Supernormal Stimuli" discuss the theme of our scarcity-shaped inclinations being out-of-date for our world of abundance. http://web.archive.org/web/20160418155513/http://www.drfuhrm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli…
on “A few words on Doug Engelbart (2013)” ↗