Good point. I guess my concern -- recognizing this makes me sound like a Luddite or someone going on about "humans were never meant to know about this" -- is that the results of research like this aren't going to be used for the betterment of mankind. Rather, it'll be all about how to use a new mental vulnerability to get more eyeballs on someone's content or to increase the dopamine hits from browsing the site.
What I would love -- and what I would eagerly opt-in to -- would be a system where Facebook could educate users on irrational behaviors. "We noticed that 60% of users like you spent an average of 30 seconds more looking at this kind of content... this is because your brain etc etc etc". Creepy, perhaps, but if there were a way to help people be more aware of and defend against advertisement that would be neat.
> Rather, it'll be all about how to use a new mental vulnerability to get more eyeballs on someone's content or to increase the dopamine hits from browsing the site.
Sadly, you've made a great point here. It's very likely that the end results of research will be used exactly for that - as it already happens with most of psychology.
I hope though that some of that research will be used to create better policies and help the society.
> What I would love -- and what I would eagerly opt-in to -- would be a system where Facebook could educate users on irrational behaviors.
I'd happily opt-in to that as well (and opt-in all my relatives too ;)). I don't expect Facebook to ever do that, as it'd exactly opposite to their goal to be able to a/ influence their users, and b/ cater for advertisers, but there already are websites doing exactly that (e.g. LessWrong). They're niche places though; I'd love to see something popular enough to reach general audience.
What I would love -- and what I would eagerly opt-in to -- would be a system where Facebook could educate users on irrational behaviors. "We noticed that 60% of users like you spent an average of 30 seconds more looking at this kind of content... this is because your brain etc etc etc". Creepy, perhaps, but if there were a way to help people be more aware of and defend against advertisement that would be neat.