Johnny Belgium

Our gut and brains evolved for hundreds of millions of years in nature. Civilization has created hyperstimulating products that hijack our primitive reward system. For instance. We are programmed by evolution to seek out salt, fat and sugar. So corporations make products loaded with those. We are programmed to achieve goals, so corporations make video games. We depend on others in nature, with social media we can connect to everyone in the world. And organizations, legal or otherwise, sell drugs that chemically trigger a reward directly, like alcohol, tabacco, cocaine or weed. Sometimes an addiction can be productive. Like a work addiction, an exercise addiction or an addiction to optimizing your diet for health. But productive addictions can also lead you down a harmful path.  Dopamine is the motivation chemical. It actually releases in anticipation of something exciting. You get your first hit of dopamine before your behavior. Another name for addiction is habit-forming. When you...

The meme is that the algorithms of the internet are just giving you more of what you want. That is not my experience. My internet is trying to change my mind. It's trying to turn me into a right-wing meat-eater. Before you zone out and click away, I would also like you to know that YouTube and Reddit have edited my posts. I have had it happen that YouTube and Reddit changed my posts without the post showing it had been edited. One post I remember was about how you shouldn't trust know-it-all influencers because it's impossible to be an expert in everything. People would respond to the original post and then the content would change. Isn't that a form of identity theft? YouTube is a monopoly that is hard to boycott. I am always polite in my comments.  In 2011 when I was using YouTube to find educational videos on economics, the algorithm would spam me with conspiracy theories about the illuminati and reptilians. Around 2015 I was watching car videos and atheist videos on...