Child inventory, curiosity, and addiction
Three things worth reading
Hey there and Happy Thursday to you.
This is the first issue of 3 Things Worth Reading (or 3TWR if you will). I’m going to publish an issue every month with the three things out of all the things I’ve read recently that I think are worth your time to read.
Now onto the show:
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To Whom Do Children Belong?
By Jeff Shafer
“Here we might think back to the beginning of the Ukraine war and the photos that made international news showing rows of cribs containing uncollected infants in Ukrainian surrogacy facilities. The ongoing war had kept consumers from flying in to retrieve the children they had ordered. Certain of these children ultimately may live out what they already symbolically represent: abandoned inventory and display models of the new archetype of humanity.”
Jeff Shafer writes one of the most harrowing articles I’ve read in a long time, perhaps of all time. He details the ramifications of helping people to have children through Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) — in particular, surrogacy — which he calls “the industrializing of human reproduction.”
Helping someone who can’t have a baby sounds good on the surface, but it doesn’t end up that way when you think it all the way through.
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Curious
By Ian Leslie
“To search” used to mean embarking on an arduous quest. It implied a question that led to more questions….We're becoming so used to easy answers that we're forgetting how to ask questions…The Guardian asked Singhal if his efforts to refine Google's accuracy are being boosted as users learn how to enter search terms with greater precision. “Actually,” Singhal replied, with a weary sigh, “it works the other way. The more accurate the machine gets, the lazier the questions become.”
This book was both easy to read and informative. It challenged some of my assumptions — in particular, that we no longer need to learn facts because we can look them up. As it turns out, “the more we know, the better we are at thinking.” Moreover, Leslie includes that Larry Page described the “perfect search engine” as one that would “understand exactly what I mean and give me back exactly what I want.” Leslie’s response to this vision was, “But what if I don't know what I want?”
This is a big issue for the value economy. You can grab a copy in the WTP bookstore.
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Six Reasons Why the Terms “Addiction” and “Disorder” Interfere with Understanding and Treating Problematic Internet Use
By
“Psychological research has shown repeatedly that people who have a sense of agency, of control, of empowerment, are much better at solving whatever problems they face than are people who have what psychologists call an “external locus of control,” that is, who feel they are controlled by forces outside of themselves. When Mike Langlois tells a client, “What you have is a time management problem,” he is telling them, “Hey, you can do this.” That’s the opposite of the implied meaning of, “You have an addiction.” Management is something you do; addiction is something done to you.”
I’ve wondered about the overuse of the word “addiction” for quite a while and appreciated Peter’s perspective on the issue. His six reasons are:
False Analogy to Substance Addictions
Disempowering the Person Who Has a Problem
Stereotyping the Person Who Has a Problem
Implying that the Behavior Is Causing the Problem When It May Be a Consequence of the Problem
Demonizing the Activity and Promoting Bans, Especially for Kids
The Problem of Diagnosis
He makes a compelling case that’s worth your consideration. I find it an example of something being taken too far and causing negative effects, particularly to individual agency. A double whammy from my point of view.
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