Steven Novella

I mean, I also think there's analogies to be made for anything that you could argue has an addictive component to it.

So, like, imagine, like, you know, for example, we don't want to market cigarettes to kids with colorful child-luring packaging, right?

That's, again, that's sort of a psychological behavioral kind of approach.

So imagine, I don't think this exists anywhere, but imagine if slot machines, if that were being actively played for a certain amount of time, 20 minutes or so, a screen would come and say, hey, maybe you want to take a break.

You've been at this for 20 minutes.

Yeah.

That wouldn't be – there's no reason for the casinos to do that unless they were regulated to do that.

But you could make an argument for that kind of thing.

Like when you provide a calibrated addiction machine that there's sort of a built-in, even if you're not like forcing people to gamble or whatever, that it's sort of an emergent behavioral thing.

Right.

You can make an argument for saying that we need to protect people against that.

Yes.

But they're not just providing the content.

It's not passive.

They're providing the algorithms as well.

It's like oh, that's cool You know, I would probably would not have actively found that myself what I would say is

That I would prefer it, and I think it might be better for humanity, if the algorithms prioritized quality over clickbait a little bit more.

You know what I mean?

Because with so many interactions, subtle biases in the priorities of the algorithm can have a huge effect on society and culture, as we're seeing.

I know, but I've had that experience too.