Live data from Hacker News

I Used to Be a Human Being

nymag.com

31–40 of 230 posts

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#31
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "extreme suffering" was in relation to his emotional crisis, not because he was unable to use his phone.

Hyperbole makes a point weaker, not stronger.

And judging someone's self-described suffering as hyperbole misses the point altogether.

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#33
post #13

Just wait until machine learning gets really good at providing information that's of value that you "must have" to get through the day.

This service does a rather good job of summarising individual articles: http://smmry.com/

I'm not sure nxzero (and I) think that is a good thing.

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#34
post #14

I read somewhere recently that smart phones have essentially become random gratification engines in the same way as slot machines. Sometimes on a slot machine you win the jackpot, because of this every pull gives you an endorphin kick, each time we pick up our phones or get a notification it might be an important/interesting thing, therefore we get a little endorphin kick that keeps us checking. Because of this I tur…

Look up "Skinner box." Basically codified the psychology behind a slot machine. A mouse hits a single lever that either releases or doesn't release food. When the lever is set to Always release food, the mouse soon gets bored and only eats when he's hungry. When the lever is set to Randomly release food, the mouse gets addicted, compulsively hitting the lever all day without concern for how fat he is getting.

To expand on this a bit, BF Skinner founded the behaviorist area of psychology (which is important in later fields like neuroscience for training animals on various experiments), he specifically investigated operant behavior (behavior where the organism does something to its environment) and various schedules of reinforcement. The schedule you're thinking of is one of the strongest schedules for inducing behavior, and that's the variable ratio schedule, where reinforcement occurs after a variable number of responses from the organism. Skinner was actually one of the first to try and bring more rigor to psychology.

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#35
post #23
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slack is one of the biggest interrupting factors while coding these days, more so than IRC ever was for me, so I try to have chunks of time during the day with it closed. I used a client which enables me to mute most of the notifications, which is pretty nice. > For personal things, I deleted Facebook and feel quite a bit better. I like it, but I only check it once in the morning and once in the evening, from my de…

Surprisingly, I think you can fully disable G+ on Android. But somehow, G+ has never been in the way for me. It almost feels like a grown up version of Facebook.

> It almost feels like a grown up version of Facebook.

Yup, I really like it, although recently (as it's emptied out) the public communities have gotten significantly worse.

'Facebook for adults' sounds like a wonderful thing. My hope now is that maybe we can build it as a community, rather than as a product.

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#36

I'd be interested to hear everyone's strategies to combat this, as I assume many of us that work in the industry encounter similar problems of distraction and inundation. First, I don't use any devices directly after waking up. I meditate for about 20 minutes upon waking and then try to read fiction for 40 minutes. So, all in, somewhere around an hour of no device distractions before starting my day. Slack is one of…

Since you already experiment with things like meditation and psychedelics, you should look more into finding out more about your psyche and feelings, and other self-development themes. Find out more about your inner being, about the structure of your (and in general, human) soul, what motivates you, what deep fears you have, in what ways are you still unconscious about yourself. There are tons of books, trainings, co…

What do you do if the situation you are in do not allow time to sit down and perform deep introspective behavior? I find myself very easily falling into introspection to the point where my mind often cries out for it if I go without for a while. However, my current work and the balancing of multiple careers (as a programmer, as a writer) and social obligations mean I often don't have time and feel intense stress/distress at the inability to commune with myself for long periods of time. I also know I suffered greatly in college due to similar distress. How does one find the time to oneself when the world demands ones time?

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#37

I read somewhere recently that smart phones have essentially become random gratification engines in the same way as slot machines. Sometimes on a slot machine you win the jackpot, because of this every pull gives you an endorphin kick, each time we pick up our phones or get a notification it might be an important/interesting thing, therefore we get a little endorphin kick that keeps us checking. Because of this I tur…

I've been saying this for years. You open Twitter and you may or may not get something cool. Same thing for Facebook or mail or whatever. It's inherently addictive.

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#38

I read somewhere recently that smart phones have essentially become random gratification engines in the same way as slot machines. Sometimes on a slot machine you win the jackpot, because of this every pull gives you an endorphin kick, each time we pick up our phones or get a notification it might be an important/interesting thing, therefore we get a little endorphin kick that keeps us checking. Because of this I tur…

https://medium.com/@tristanharris/how-technology-hijacks-peo...

Related - you may have read it here.

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#39

I read somewhere recently that smart phones have essentially become random gratification engines in the same way as slot machines. Sometimes on a slot machine you win the jackpot, because of this every pull gives you an endorphin kick, each time we pick up our phones or get a notification it might be an important/interesting thing, therefore we get a little endorphin kick that keeps us checking. Because of this I tur…

Regarding "smartphones as slot machines", the piece you are remembering is this one by Tristan Harris, probably:

https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds...

"How Technology Hijacks Minds"

Re: I Used to Be a Human Being

#40

I read somewhere recently that smart phones have essentially become random gratification engines in the same way as slot machines. Sometimes on a slot machine you win the jackpot, because of this every pull gives you an endorphin kick, each time we pick up our phones or get a notification it might be an important/interesting thing, therefore we get a little endorphin kick that keeps us checking. Because of this I tur…

This is the daily reminder that technology is not politically or socially "neutral".
Post reply on HN