Sam Harris used to post on Twitter multiple times daily. Anyone who had quit social media could tell it wasn’t improving his life.

He was responding to its engineered cues to drive using it. Its engineers refined the techniques its industry evolved to addict people. Doing something he didn’t value but felt he couldn’t stop led him to rationalize and justify after the fact. Doing so enough led him nearly to believe his rationalizations and justifications.

Once he stopped, the rationalizations and justifications stopped and he came to his senses, as the freedom this snippet of one of his podcasts reveals:

We all follow this pattern with doof, social media, shopping online, flying, binge-watching TV, and many parts of life

We’d all benefit from ending our dependence on these things. Then we’d feel the freedom he found.

Here’s a picture of addiction, which Sam described:

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