Hyperpalatable Systems
For the majority of human history we lived in a production market. We now live in a curation market, excess has been reached and we must carefully select what to take. Only the truly elite can afford to pay the premium of quality to ensure they are not trapped, even then it may not be enough. Now it is not enough that there is enough, it is that we must be cautious and tasteful when selecting our life. Curation is the key, and any new artist of food, media, or connection should be aware that only through this paring down of choice can quality be maintained.
The effect of curation vs. production is manifold, while before humanities primary concern was to have enough of a thing, now we need to ensure that what we have won’t cause significant harm. Such efforts are seen in the dual incentives of making something better for a process and better for humanity. Frequently there are consequences that only appear once satiety is reached and the market attempts to recapture it’s initial momentum via innovation. The children of this philosophy are rarely grounded in what is actually good for the consumer, as the consumer has already met their needs.
Companies need to make money, and the methods by which they do so are driven by what consumers will give them money for. Usually this means integrating their product into some form of reward circuit so that purchasing, via money or attention, comes not from need but desire. The consumers brain is hijacked by this mechanism and as a result their life shifts to accommodate this new norm. Worse still the choices of suppliers and other people directly dictate the consumers access as products that are purchased frequently are subsequently more accessible.
We have created self-reinforcing systems that survive via addiction on physical, psychological, and social levels. What is new is that people are slowly recognising these dangers as the distortion of a persons life is becoming more uncomfortable than the pleasure given by the addiction. Unfortunately, as of yet, the push back on this is relatively slow and difficult due to the requirement for either a fundamental technological breakthrough or the shifting of institutions that live and die on these feedback loops. Even the cures can have a hint of poison added, because it will only be a matter of time before the original system adapts and attempts to integrate the prior solution as another step in its chain.
Hyperpalatable Food
For the majority of human history we lived in a production market for food. We searched for that which tasted well but there was never enough to fill the void. Only the truly elite could afford to import enough food to reach the point of excess. This has changed drastically, to the point where gastronomical indulgence, once a marker of a well-to-do family, has become a symbol of American poverty. Only those with “discerning palettes” who consume nutritious and exotic meals are considered exempt.
The effect on our physicalities is striking, at first we were merely well fed but through the wonders of technology we suddenly could feed orders of magnitude more! One can easily trace the history of meeting our dietary needs using height as a marker; by the 1800s we began our take off and finally levelled off globally around the 1980s. Interestingly this can then be compared to rates of obesity which spiked in the 1990s, right after we had finished meeting our needs. Thus the invisible hand of the market spoon feeds consumers by engineering hyperpalatable foods and making them more accessible.
Companies need to make money, and historically food is a notoriously low margin industry meaning that scale is the best way to make money. After the 1980’s they needed to get consumers to eat more, enter hyperpalatable food which is capable of hacking the brains reward system to make humans hungrier. Thus we gained a perverse incentive where things that kept people full, like fiber, were selected against; the North American microbiome rose to the challenge, selecting for Bacteroides that quickly colonize any immigrants replacing the fiber digesting strains. The result is that humanities hormonal systems are damaged and hunger is a norm, it’s not just in your head it is harder to stay healthy than it used to be.
Now humans are stuck in individual extinction vortices, our bodies hunger, our mind craves, and our society takes advantage of both for a bit more profit. However, there has been a push in the inverse, the discomfort of the body has begun to outweigh the engineered cravings of the body. Thus the invisible hand of the market returned, this time bringing GLP-1 agonists (AKA Ozempic); a veritable cornucopia of effects are listed, but most powerfully it simply makes you less hungry in a way that doesn’t damage your body. Now people are getting healthier, using a drug that makes you less hungry to counteract the effect of an over-effective food and beverage industry, a fully self-inflicted wound on the level of a society.
Hyperpalatable Media
For the majority of human history we lived in a production market for stimulation. We searched for that which interested us but there was never enough to fill the void. Only the truly elite could afford to import art, plays, and information to reach the point of excess. This has changed drastically, to the point where extensive knowledge of a subject, once a sure sign of culture, has become a symbol of intellectual poverty. Only those with “discerning taste” who consume unique and important information are exempt.
The effect on our cognition has been striking, with the ability to spread media and information at the speed of light fundamentally altering how we think. Information used to be constrained by physical limitations, with the rare individual bringing back an interesting pigment or art that sparks a revolution. As humanity has modernised creation and distribution of content became exponentially cheaper and easier. As a result culture has begun to “flatten” and incentivise attention gathering over any other metric of quality.
Companies need to make money, and stimulation has become the primary currency to promote products and create markets. A memetic arms race has emerged, with companies attempting to “go viral”, while various groups attempt to socially engineer populations for power. Techniques like the distractotron and eye tracking software human attention can be fed into models with perversive incentives, resulting in targeted ads to perpetuate depression in teenagers for engagement. The result is our attention systems are being damaged, as rates of neurological disorders skyrocket
Now our systems are feeding off of each other, with wellness apps that sell information to the very companies that are able to profit off your mental distress. With meme cycles moving faster and faster humans tend to seek information that conforms to existing biases to reduce stress. With the advent of AI that are more human than humans and write indistinguishable poetry that is “more relatable” than humans, how long is it until we have the torment nexus from David Foster Wallace’s famous book “Infinite Jest”? There is no media GLP-1, the constant refrain is to touch grass, to reduce screentime, to just focus on “better” stimulation; a series of statements reminiscent of anti-obesity campaigns rendered ineffective by research on doritos.
Hyperpalatable Connection
For the majority of human history we lived in a production market for relationships. We searched for that which connected us but there was never enough to fill the void. Only the truly elite could afford to import partners, parties, and prostitutes to reach the point of excess. This has changed drastically, to the point where a wealth of followers, once a sure sign of interpersonal quality, has become a symbol of shallowness. Only those with “discerning connections” who maintain deep and meaningful relationships are considered exempt.
The effect on our society has been overwhelming, we can now find a forum for any interest that may be conjured from making metal flowers to the most unholy ship dynamic conceived! We used to only have a limited number of possible connections, constrained as we were by interaction methods and survival. Now there are myriad methods to form connections from anonymous imageboards to full on business personas. Unfortunately this also appears to have made our connections shallower and people are lonelier than ever.
Companies need to make money, by selling relationships apps like Tinder make money, but their incentive isn’t for people to find a long-lasting romantic relationship. This has created a game where finding the best way to make someone feel attended to will draw them back, with cultural concepts of relationships and what we deserve pushing us deeper down that rabbit hole. Now we have things such as Character.ai which creates AIs that will always attend, always want to talk, always be the type of person you imagined them to be, taking away the risk inherent in relationship building with humans. That is a hyperpalatable connection, where all the scary and new edges have been sanded down because it draws people inwards to be able to have that level of control.
Now our relationships are increasingly compromised by memes pushed by the media and structured by our social platforms, losing grip on normal human interactions. COVID showed us this danger, but it will only grow more potent as we continue developing alongside these platforms. AI is now poised to create the “perfect” companions, and much of the population fundamentally lack defenses against this, look at how you respond to this, are you exhibiting a hyperpalatable self so that people like you? Again humans are told to put down the phones, to go outside and meet people slowly, and indeed that is the cure, but the question is how can we create a system to incentivise this behaviour without suffering through communal obesity.