Indeed, they are related. A 2006 book on eating healthier called "The Pleasure Trap: Mastering 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 also explores those themes. In the 2007 book The Assault on Reason by Al Gore talks about watching television and the orienting response to sudden motion like scene changes.
In short, humans are adapted for a world with a scarcity of salt, refined carbs like sugar, fat, information, sudden motion, and more. But the world most humans live in now has an abundance of those things -- and our previously-adaptive evolved inclinations to stock up on salt/sugar/fat (especially when stressed) or to pay attention to the unusual (a cause of stress) are now working against our physical and mental health in this new environment. Thanks for the reference to a potential anti-addiction substance. Definitely something that deserves more research.
My sig -- informed by the writings of people like Mumford, Einstein, Fuller, Hogan, Le Guinn, Banks, Adams, Pet, and many others -- is making the leap to how that evolutionary-mismatch theme applies to our use of all sorts of technology.
Here is a deeper exploration of that in relation to militarism (and also commercial competition to some extent):
https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ... The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."
Conversely, reflecting on this more just now, are we are perhaps evolutionarily adapted to take for granted some things like social connections, being in natural green spaces, getting sunlight, getting enough sleep, or getting physical exercise? These are all things that are in increasingly short supply in the modern world for many people -- but which there may never have been much evolutionary pressure previously to seek out, since they were previously always available.
For example, in the past humans were pretty much always in face-to-face interactions with others of their tribe, so there was no big need to seek that out especially if it meant ignoring the next then-rare new shiny thing. Johann Hari and others write about this loss of regular human face-to-face connection as a major cause of depression.
Stephen Ilardi expands on that in his work, which brings together many of these themes and tries to help people address them to move to better health.
From: https://tlc.ku.edu/
"We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life. (Stephen Ilardi, PhD)"
GPT-4o, by apparently providing "her" movie-like engaging interactions with an AI avatar that seeks to please the user (while possibly exploiting them) is yet another example of our evolutionary tendencies potentially being used to our detriment. And when our social lives are filled-to-overflowing with "junk" social relationships with AIs, will most people have the inclinations to seek out other real humans if it involves doing perhaps increasingly-uncomfortable-from-disuse actions (like leaving the home or putting down the smartphone)? Not quite the same, but consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
Related points by others:
"AI and Trust"
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/ai-and-trust.... "In this talk, I am going to make several arguments. One, that there are two different kinds of trust—interpersonal trust and social trust—and that we regularly confuse them. Two, that the confusion will increase with artificial intelligence. We will make a fundamental category error. We will think of AIs as friends when they’re really just services. Three, that the corporations controlling AI systems will take advantage of our confusion to take advantage of us. They will not be trustworthy. And four, that it is the role of government to create trust in society. And therefore, it is their role to create an environment for trustworthy AI. And that means regulation. Not regulating AI, but regulating the organizations that control and use AI."
"The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI - Maggie Appleton"
https://youtu.be/VXkDaDDJjoA?t=2098 (in the section on the lack of human relationship potential when interacting with generated content)
In short, humans are adapted for a world with a scarcity of salt, refined carbs like sugar, fat, information, sudden motion, and more. But the world most humans live in now has an abundance of those things -- and our previously-adaptive evolved inclinations to stock up on salt/sugar/fat (especially when stressed) or to pay attention to the unusual (a cause of stress) are now working against our physical and mental health in this new environment. Thanks for the reference to a potential anti-addiction substance. Definitely something that deserves more research.
My sig -- informed by the writings of people like Mumford, Einstein, Fuller, Hogan, Le Guinn, Banks, Adams, Pet, and many others -- is making the leap to how that evolutionary-mismatch theme applies to our use of all sorts of technology.
Here is a deeper exploration of that in relation to militarism (and also commercial competition to some extent): https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce... "There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ... The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."
Conversely, reflecting on this more just now, are we are perhaps evolutionarily adapted to take for granted some things like social connections, being in natural green spaces, getting sunlight, getting enough sleep, or getting physical exercise? These are all things that are in increasingly short supply in the modern world for many people -- but which there may never have been much evolutionary pressure previously to seek out, since they were previously always available.
For example, in the past humans were pretty much always in face-to-face interactions with others of their tribe, so there was no big need to seek that out especially if it meant ignoring the next then-rare new shiny thing. Johann Hari and others write about this loss of regular human face-to-face connection as a major cause of depression.
Stephen Ilardi expands on that in his work, which brings together many of these themes and tries to help people address them to move to better health.
From: https://tlc.ku.edu/ "We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life. (Stephen Ilardi, PhD)"
GPT-4o, by apparently providing "her" movie-like engaging interactions with an AI avatar that seeks to please the user (while possibly exploiting them) is yet another example of our evolutionary tendencies potentially being used to our detriment. And when our social lives are filled-to-overflowing with "junk" social relationships with AIs, will most people have the inclinations to seek out other real humans if it involves doing perhaps increasingly-uncomfortable-from-disuse actions (like leaving the home or putting down the smartphone)? Not quite the same, but consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
Related points by others:
"AI and Trust" https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/12/ai-and-trust.... "In this talk, I am going to make several arguments. One, that there are two different kinds of trust—interpersonal trust and social trust—and that we regularly confuse them. Two, that the confusion will increase with artificial intelligence. We will make a fundamental category error. We will think of AIs as friends when they’re really just services. Three, that the corporations controlling AI systems will take advantage of our confusion to take advantage of us. They will not be trustworthy. And four, that it is the role of government to create trust in society. And therefore, it is their role to create an environment for trustworthy AI. And that means regulation. Not regulating AI, but regulating the organizations that control and use AI."
"The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI - Maggie Appleton" https://youtu.be/VXkDaDDJjoA?t=2098 (in the section on the lack of human relationship potential when interacting with generated content)