The Internet needs to be robbed of its color!

Sascha · June 2023

Hi Zettlers,

some of you might be already aware of setting your smartphone to greyscale to reduce its appeal and temper its poisonous influence.

I did something similar on my laptop: I created a whitelist via LeechBlock for Firefox. So, everything is grey and boring except for this site and my site on health and fitness.

After reading Dopamin Nation by Anna Lembke I refocused on setting up a low-dopaminergic environment.

So far, I really like that I like the internet less.

Live long and prosper
Sascha

daneb · June 2023

I have recently watched interesting interview with Andy Matuschak and his use of geeky e-ink monitor with his macbook. (I believe I already watched another video where he describes the settings more thoroughly, but I can find only the recent one:

He uses it from different reasons (working in full daylight), but he also mentions that not only the forced black-and-white scale, but also slightly reduced responsibility help him to calm down and focus more. (He discuss it in the first part of the video)

Sascha · June 2023

That is pretty cool!

Andy · June 2023

It is fine to experiment with color versus grayscale on your device displays (or even to resurrect your black-and-white Mac SE/30 from 1990), but I wouldn't take Lembke's account at face value. There is much debate and complexity in the science of addiction. I have not read Anna Lembke's Dopamine Nation, but Lembke is a psychiatrist, and judging by the book description, Lembke is espousing what philosopher Zoey Lavallee called the "received view" about craving:¹

The received view of craving is a neurobiological account which defines cravings as intense urges that result from the pathological effects of drugs on the dopamine system. This account has more or less been taken without debate to capture the phenomenology of addictive craving; in other words, to capture what is going on in the moment when an individual in active addiction or in recovery from addiction feels unable to resist the intense desire to engage in their addiction. In this article, I argue that the received view of craving is inadequate; it misidentifies the content of addictive craving. I propose an alternative explanation of craving. Addictive cravings are psychologically complex desires that aim at emotionally significant experiences that are highly valued in the context of addiction.

I side with Lavallee's position. Lance Dodes is a (psychoanalytically oriented) psychiatrist who espouses a position similar to Lavallee's.²

The first step in resolving your problematic smartphone or laptop use would be to assess whether color really is the cause. Most likely the cause is more complex and is about the meanings of the contents instead of the colors of the forms. I have a color smartphone and have a completely utilitarian relationship to it, not addictive or compulsive at all. I could give a deep analysis of why that is true, but in the present context it simply shows the non-correlation of color and device-addiction for me.

Zoey Lavallee (2020). "Addictive craving: there's more to wanting more". Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 27(3), 227–238; discussion 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1353/ppp.2020.0028 ;↩︎
Lance M. Dodes (2009). "Addiction as a psychological symptom". Psychodynamic Practice, 15(4), 381–393. https://doi.org/10.1080/14753630903230468 ;↩︎

Sascha · July 2023

The first step in resolving your problematic smartphone or laptop use would be to assess whether color really is the cause.

I, in that case, wholeheartedly, disagree.

The first step is to experiment with grayscale and give the experiment enough time (40 days or more in my opinion). Then you re-assess, by using quantitative metrics (e.g. screen time, frequency, productivity etc.) and qualitative data (e.g. journaling).

The reason for the above is that it is a zero cost intervention with a potential huge upside. There is an increasing body of anecdotal evidence on the internet as well.

This account has more or less been taken without debate to capture the phenomenology of addictive craving; in other words, to capture what is going on in the moment when an individual in active addiction or in recovery from addiction feels unable to resist the intense desire to engage in their addiction.

This is not correct in the application, at least in the case of Lembke. The dopamine-model of addiction is a foundation, but it is not the complete construct.
It is an arbitrary drawing of a boundary, what the addiction entails. There can be made a good point that the dopamine-driven feedback loop is the core of addiction and the other stuff is in the periphery and might be relevant but not part of the addiction itself.
If you focus on the usefulness of a model, it is a very useful model to start with because it focuses the user to quite some low-cost behavioral interventions with big potential upsides. The contemporary misuse of that model to justify institutional abandonment by medicating is in my opinion based on both a misunderstanding of the model and most people, including psychiatrists, believing in an individualist-hedonistic foundation for the meaning of life.

I could give a deep analysis of why that is true, but in the present context it simply shows the non-correlation of color and device-addiction for me.

When I lived with my parents, alcohol was always available and present. In my youth, I was very recless -- alcohol consumption included. However, I never had any hint of addiction. That does not mean that alcohol doesn't have an addictive potential for me, nor that alcohol wasn't part of the dopaminergic inventive environment.

I think that if the costs are zero, any suspicious incentive for unhealthy behavior should be removed. The isolated incentive removal might not have a measurable effect. But we live in a world (well, most of us) that kills us with a thousand tiny cuts. That is something to adapt to.

PS: I use my iPod Touch for three tasks: Waking me up, listening to a podcast or audiobook when I walk my dog in the morning and, sometimes, listen to a small collection of audiobooks in the evening (Lord of the Rings, Dune, Nordic Myths). Still, my iPod is turned to gray.

Andy · July 2023

@Sascha said:

The first step in resolving your problematic smartphone or laptop use would be to assess whether color really is the cause.

I, in that case, wholeheartedly, disagree.

The first step is to experiment with grayscale and give the experiment enough time (40 days or more in my opinion). Then you re-assess, by using quantitative metrics (e.g. screen time, frequency, productivity etc.) and qualitative data (e.g. journaling).

Yes, I should have been clearer that experimentation is part of "assessing whether color really is the cause". I didn't mean that the assessment would be a thought experiment. Experimenting with color versus grayscale on your devices can be part of that assessment, but the experiments have to be designed so that they have a chance of falsifying (refuting) the assumption that color is the cause or a relevant factor of a problem to be resolved.

More generally, I agree that it is very important to control your environment, including your tools, so that their effect on your mind and behavior is beneficial. I too do this in many ways.

I don't agree that turning off color is a zero-cost intervention. I was trained and have worked as a graphic designer, so I have done a lot of work with color, and indeed I needed color to do my work for many years. And it is important to me to see how other designers are using color. Our eyes can see color because seeing color is adaptive for us. I have never seen any indication in my life that color is problematic for me, so I don't even have a prima facie reason to turn off color on my devices.

zk_1000 · July 2023

I can see the concerns for robbing the internet its colour from a designers perspective, but the idea is not to see colour as problematic, but simply to look out for other sources for colour, instead. Since colour draws attention, our attention could be drawn away from the screen to the outside of a window.

The display in colour could be time limited. I think it's a great recommendation for any activity we are spending too much time on. Instead of pulling the plug we can continue anything we are working on while being less captivated by it.

Andy · July 2023

@zk_1000 said:

I can see the concerns for robbing the internet its colour from a designers perspective, but the idea is not to see colour as problematic, but simply to look out for other sources for colour, instead.

I don't see how color device displays prevent me from looking out for "other sources for color". I am very attuned to the color around me. I used a black-and-white Mac for years. When I acquired a color display in the 1990s, I usually ran it at two bits (four colors) for many more years, except when I needed more colors, because the lower bit depth was faster and because I was accustomed to the black-and-white interface. I preferred the monochrome interface design, in fact, and I used a low-bit-depth display for about two decades. But I perceived no change in my ability to "look out for other sources of color" when I switched between a monochrome and polychrome display. In that sense, I already did this color experiment years ago!

Since colour draws attention, our attention could be drawn away from the screen to the outside of a window.

The scene outside my window is very green this time of year. I enjoy the greenness. My color device displays do not prevent me from enjoying the greenness outside my window!

The display in colour could be time limited.

Yes, it could. I did time-limited color display for years, as I mentioned above, for reasons of both speed and personal taste. When computers became faster and the Mac interface changed, I no longer had reasons to do time-limited color. It became all color all the time, with no detriment to my health or attention.

I think it's a great recommendation for any activity we are spending too much time on. Instead of pulling the plug we can continue anything we are working on while being less captivated by it.

This is an important way of being, and if you need to rob the Internet of its color to experience that way of being, please do it.

I do not need to rob the Internet of its color to experience that way of being.

Sascha · July 2023

@Andy said:
I don't agree that turning off color is a zero-cost intervention. I was trained and have worked as a graphic designer, so I have done a lot of work with color, and indeed I needed color to do my work for many years.

I admit, that I'd written what @zk_1000 wrote: The world is colorful enough. I didn't say turn the color of everything of, but for anything that is suspicious.

Furthermore, I think we live in such a sneaky and digitalized world that information that it is rational to switch to a guilty-until-proved-innocent approach when it comes to information flux.

The generalized thought is to treat the internet as a suspicious source of incentives and use a whitelist approach.

Solari · July 2023

Interesting on dumbing down color. Somewhat relevantly -- I do my RSS reading and surfing that sprouts from it on a grayscale e-reader/tablet (Boox Nova) and I very much prefer that interface. It is somehow more calming and easier on the eyes, naturally.

I find myself less likely to chase down pretty rabbit holes too which is a bonus IMO. On the laptop or iPad it's a free for all! ; )

Ray

Andy · July 2023

For about 15 years (or more?) I have used a Firefox extension called ImageBlock that blocks all images from loading. It can be toggled on and off from the toolbar. These days, usually I leave it on so that all images are blocked. It is ALWAYS on whenever I visit YouTube (which is rare, since I dislike YouTube in general, but I especially dislike all the thumbnail images in the website's sidebar). I also use the NoScript extension that blocks things like iframes—so I also don't see embedded YouTube videos either, thank God!

It may be that with ImageBlock & NoScript I achieve an effect similar to what @Sascha is seeking to achieve by turning off colors.

ZettelDistraction · July 2023

@Andy I'll try this. I tried setting my Android phone to monochrome. It was so dreary that after a couple of weeks of color asceticism I switched back to Technicolor ®

Sascha · July 2023

@Andy It is exactly in the same spirit.

@ZettelDistraction To associate the internet with dreariness, is exactly the goal of this counter conditioning that I am after.

ctietze · July 2023

@Andy said:
I have never seen any indication in my life that color is problematic for me, so I don't even have a prima facie reason to turn off color on my devices.

As a designer, you're aware of the reason why notification counters are red circles with white text. It draws attention.

So one example where a consumer would likely want to remove color: social media notifications, so that your attention is not drawn -- and so that ideally, you can guide it to things.

Andy · July 2023

@ctietze said:

As a designer, you're aware of the reason why notification counters are red circles with white text. It draws attention.

So one example where a consumer would likely want to remove color: social media notifications, so that your attention is not drawn -- and so that ideally, you can guide it to things.

I had forgotten, and I just remembered, that I used to use a Firefox extension called Stylish to modify CSS on certain websites. (I've been using the web since 1994, and I don't have an excellent memory, so it is hard to remember all my experimentation with it.) Luckily, I stopped using that extension before it was sold and turned into spyware. I see there are now other extensions such as Stylus for the same purpose. I can see why someone would want an easy way to turn off color on websites that use color-design dark patterns.

Good luck to all in your pursuit of an optimal web experience.

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The Internet needs to be robbed of its color!

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