HACKER Q&A
📣 desertraven

Why is the UX of the human brain so user-hostile?


why do we act in ways which harm ourselves? Why is it so hard to change ones ways?


  👤 gregjor Accepted Answer ✓
Using terms from technical/software fields to talk about brains and behavior leads to inapt analogies. People are not computers.

Brains evolved from the material available, to serve some basic purposes: improve chances of survival and reproduction. Brains were not designed and don’t have “UX.” What each of us experience is an emergent property, or side-effect, of the brain’s evolution.

The concept of rationality is a human invention (like morality). Neither are inherent properties of the brain, they are learned behaviors and social constructs.


👤 jstx1
Because up to this point on the evolutionary scale the brain UX hasn't been a sufficient enough deterrent to reproduction.

You're not owed a good experience, or a healthy brain, or a nice life. There isn't a manager to complain to. I'm sorry.


👤 eimrine
Would you define some of your words? I have never seen such combination of words as "UX of human brain".

> Why is it so hard to change ones ways?

So hard like what? If it is rational to change then you change, otherwise you don't. Have I just missed something?