[ot][crazy] Theories of Mind Control: Repeated Short-term Reward

[Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many]

Today's xkcd showed the author has mysterious difficulty exercising,
even as he gets better at it.

I was thinking of the various mainstream mind controls, and how that
might develop in both him and me.

A constant feedback pattern is of people checking e.g. their mobile
devices for e.g. their email, texts, or whatever. This pattern has
been developing since the 90s. My understanding is that most people
check for updates more frequently than is necessary, even if there is
generally nothing new, and then portals like facebook or youtube can
capitalize on that by introducing influence content.

I'm thinking of a sense of satisfaction or reward developing in the
mind, and that encouraging habit formation and preference building, to
repeat the behavior. When this happens, it's not including reasons:
it's feeling-based. If there are rational reasons, they are heavily
weighted by the feelings present and the environment of being mostly
exposed to the same influences.

So instincts we have, like to run around outdoors, have to do their
thing in context of that continuous reinforcement.

As we go throughout the day, or minds go through different states. We
process different things around us; we daydream, brainstorm, plan, or
pursue goals; we're at different points in our biological cycles,
getting hungry, tired, aroused, etc.

So each time these feedback loops of checking messages reinforce in
some way, they are doing so in exposure to different things in the
mind and body. And they're' doing so without solid logical reasons,
which could make it hard for the mind to know which parts are relevant
to the reinforcement.

The theory then, is that as different parts of mind activate during
reinforcement, the reinforcement slowly spreads to those different
parts, as it happens during their activity. All the different parts of
our cycles start deciding it's helpful to check for updates on our
phone -- or the habits of checking for updates, gain footholds in
these parts, reducing the cognitive events during the normal human
parts that support those normal human parts on their own.

I imagine the behavior slowly spreading through the brain, like an arm
of the corporation running the product it's associated with. They can
stimulate more and more of the human brain by simply delivering an
email or showing a meme, the longer the human uses them. And it
becomes harder and harder to do other things.

This specific theory may be less relevant nowadays as influence has
gotten much craftier than simply the reward of getting an email from a
friend, but it seems still relevant.