Comment by haswell
2 days ago
> you aren't a winner if you are unlocking social media. You are opening the gate to loserdom
That is not a psychologically healthy way to frame this.
And I think it’s a stretch to say that screaming “I’m a loser” is positive punishment, which seems just as likely to reinforce negative self beliefs that lead to the outcomes described in the parent comment’s research and opposite of what the user presumably wants.
To your point, just flipping this around to “I’m a winner” doesn’t seem quite right either. But more importantly, reinforcing the idea that “I’m a loser” seems counterproductive either way.
> And I think it’s a stretch to say that screaming “I’m a loser” is positive punishment
A positive punishment is giving the subject something they don’t like. For example corporeal punishment.
A negative punishment is taking away something the subject does like. For example food.
Importantly punishments need to happen after the unwanted behavior. So being punished before the behavior occurs doesn’t make any sense.
> Importantly punishments need to happen after the unwanted behavior. So being punished before the behavior occurs doesn’t make any sense.
Also importantly, punishment as a mechanism for changing behavior is generally considered less effective than reinforcement approaches, which tend to be more effective and carry fewer downsides (like internalizing the idea that I'm a loser).
Positive in the conditioning sense just means "something you have to do" where a negative punishment would be something being removed. It doesn't specify if the outcome is bad or good
Fair. I was conflating this with positive reinforcement, and the nuance of the terminology got a bit mixed up.
To your last point, I think the conclusion remains similar. Even if yelling “I’m a loser” qualifies as “something you have to do”, it seems unlikely to be an effective “punishment” in that framework for the reasons explored above.
Just because surveys say X = Y it doesn't necessary mean it has to apply to everyone's mindset.
In practice, I have never encountered a person who benefits from such negative self beliefs in the long term, or anyone who would claim they were beneficial. My perspective on this is driven by many years of real world experience with addiction and related communities, and more personal exploration of the negative bias than I can quantify.
There’s a good reason addiction recovery is now often focused on the underlying issues of shame and other negative self beliefs. They tend to be at the root of the issue, despite being the default reaction people feel towards themselves due to social conditioning.
Your not wrong, I do agree. But for a pet-project, it's a bit of fun? Or should we just face it.
Everyone is a loser for using social media?
3 replies →
Of course not everyone. That goes without saying, everyone is different and you’ll always find someone who is an exception. But when you build something for other people to use, it is useful to understand what is the most common mindset for your audience.
> To your point, just flipping this around to “I’m a winner” doesn’t seem quite right either. But more importantly, reinforcing the idea that “I’m a loser” seems counterproductive either way.
Maybe the solution would be to have to shout something embarrassing but not deprecating towards your own self-worth. Like “I eat spaghetti through my nose” or “my poop comes out really soft”. You’d certainly avoid using social media in public.
I think the issue is more broad though.
While a “punishment” that involves calling oneself a loser is a problem, the entire approach of punishment-based learning has given way to reinforcement approaches because they tend to be more effective in the long term without the negative effects of punishment-based approaches.
To put this another way, using punishment to stop using social media is probably not a good approach either way. Yelling “I’m a loser” is just one of the worst variants of this specific approach.
> That is not a psychologically healthy way to frame this.
But lying to yourself is so much worse. Eventually you won’t hold the illusion anymore and you’ll crash hard. It’s better to be honest and grounded in reality if you want any improvement to be sustainable