One thing we don't talk about is that—it's
sort of hard to talk about this—our minds
have theses kind of back doors.
There's kind of—if you're human and you
wake up and you open your eyes there is a
certain set of dimensions to your experience
that can be manipulated.
When I was a kid I was a magician, and you
learn all about these limits, that short-term
memory is about this long and there's different
reaction times, and if you ask people certain
questions in certain ways you can control
the answer.
And this is just the structure of being human.
To be human means that you are persuadable
in every single moment.
I mean the thing about magic, as an example,
it’s that magic works on everybody, sleight
of hand, right?
It doesn't matter what language you speak,
it doesn't matter how intelligent you are,
it's not about what someone knows: it's about
how your mind actually works.
So knowing this, it turns out that there's
this whole playbook of persuasive techniques
that actually I learned when I was at the
Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab and that
most people in Silicon Valley in the tech
industry learned as ways of getting your attention.
So one example is: we are all vulnerable to
social approval.
We really care what other people think of
us.
So for example, when you upload a new profile
photo of yourself on Facebook, that's a moment
where our mind is very vulnerable to knowing,
“what do other people think of my new profile
photo?”
And so when we get new likes on our profile
photo, Facebook—knowing this—could actually
message me and say, “oh, you have new likes
on your profile photo.”
And it knows that we'll be vulnerable to that
moment because we all really care about when
we're tagged in a photo or when we have a
new profile photo.
And the thing is that they control the dial,
the technology companies control the dial
for when and how long your profile photo shows
up on other people's newsfeeds, so they can
orchestrate it so that other people more often
end up liking your profile photo over a delayed
period of time, for example, so that you end
up having to more frequently come back and
see what the new likes are.
And the problem is that they don't do this
because they're evil, they do it because,
again, they're in this race for our attention.
And we should also ask, is that necessarily
such a bad thing if they're orchestrating
it so that other people like my photo?
I mean that might feel good to me.
So we have to have a new conversation about,
as these technology companies use these techniques,
these vulnerabilities in our minds, when is
that actually aligned and good for us?
When is that ethical?
When is that honest?
When is that fair?
And when is that dishonest and unfair?
Because they're actually manipulating our
minds in a way that doesn't add up to our
spending our time well on the screen.
Well, so another vulnerability in our mind
is something called a variable schedule reward,
and that's like a slot machine in Las Vegas.
It turns out that slot machines make more
money in the United States than baseball,
movies and theme parks combined.
People become addicted to slot machines, I
think it's two to three times faster than
any other kind of gambling in a casino.
So it's insane.
And why is that?
Because it's very simple: you just pull a
lever, and sometimes you get a reward and
sometimes you don't.
And the more random it is and the more variable
it is the more addictive it becomes.
And the thing is, that that turns our phone
into a slot machine, because every time we
check our phone we're playing the slot machine
to see “what did I get?”
Every time that we check our email, we're
playing the slot machine to see, “What did
I get?
Did I get invited to an interview at Big Think
or did I just get another newsletter?”
Or if you're on a dating site like Tindr and
when you're swiping, each swipe is: you're
playing the slot machine to see “did I get
a match?”, I'm playing the slot machine
to see, “did I get a match?”
And the problem is that this dynamic, these
variable schedule rewards or this slot machine
mechanic, is so powerful that it's the best
thing at addicting people and putting you
in the zone.
One of the original designers of the Facebook
newsfeed told me that the thing that made
the newsfeed work at the very, very, very
beginning back in 2006 was in part a hardware
innovation.
And I looked at her and I said, "What do you
mean?"
And she said it was actually the scroll wheel
on a mouse, because with the scroll wheel
on a mouse your hand never had to leave its
resting position—you just scroll to see
the next thing.
Because before that you had to click on the
down button or move your mouse and drag the
arrow down and scroll the page that way.
When you don’t, you can take your two fingers
on a track pad and do this, or you can just
scroll on a scroll wheel—it just means your
hand never has to leave its resting position,
and it's more like a slot machine: you can
just keep swiping and playing just like in
Vegas where there's the button right there.
They actually changed it.
In fact, it used to be a lever, and now it's
just a button in Vegas because they found
it's easier just to get people to see if they
get a match this way.
So, how much on our phones, when we use our
technology, Instagram is like a slot machine?
What's going to come next on the feeds?
Snapchat is a slot machine, each time you
see the red notifications and you don't know
what's behind it you're playing the slot machine
when you click on it to see “what did I
get?”
And so it's sprinkled all throughout these
products because it's a very compelling way
of getting people's attention.
