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The Acceleration of Addictiveness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#61

Post by thisrod »

andreyf wrote: post #32

Sounds familiar: Anathem is set on and around the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the events in the novel, society was on the verge of collapse. Intellectuals entered concents, much like monastic communities but without the religious elements. Here, the avout—a term for intellectuals living under vows and separated from saecular society [...]—retain only limited access to tools and technology and are watche…

That's different. In Anathem, the world suffered one Manhatten project too many. Governments isolated the geeks and confiscated their toys as a survival measure.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#63

Post by gort »

fmora wrote: post #22

Being addicted to cigarrettes is one thing. They are bad but not as bad as drugs like Marijuana (Maybe, don't know, I don't smoke). It seems that for a lot of people that do Marijuana it eventually becomes too mild for them. Also, once they are using drugs, using more potent ones doesn't seem like a big deal. This is only an anecdote: I had a friend who started using Marijuana. He said he only used it once in a while…

Wouldn't it be peculiar if the sort of person who was going to use cocaine didn't first try marijuana, or, for that matter, alcohol or cigarettes? Who jumps in at the deep end?

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#64

Post by mark_l_watson »

That is a great writeup. Hits home also: my wife and I had decided a while ago to not have liquor in the house - just wine. I also hike a lot (live in the mountains of Central Arizona (Sedona)) and my wife and I additionally try to walk every day on easy trails. Getting away from computers for long break is good in so many ways I'll not try to enumerate them.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#67

Post by mechanical_fish »

This is a nitpick and an aside, but this sentence:

When cigarettes first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population.

...is not literally true. Cigarettes are hundreds of years old. They were apparently being manufactured in Europe in the 1830s.

Of course, this doesn't affect PG's point in the slightest; he's remarking on how the smoking boom stopped, not how it started.

I wonder why cigarettes went through such a huge boom in the mid-20th century. Perhaps it's simply a matter of better manufacturing techniques leading to a decline in costs.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#68

Post by Tycho »

patrickk wrote: post #44
Tycho wrote: post #34

Internet addiction seems to be the elephant in the room of modern culture. Whole families are addicted, but it's not talked about. Not to mention the more, shall we say, illicit side of the 'net. That said, TV and newspapers are arguably just as bad (or worse) and they've been around for ages. So that's... reassuring. However I think the iPad an iPhone are good in the sense that they remove the social isolation invol…

"That said, TV and newspapers are arguably just as bad (or worse)....." How are newspapers as bad or worse than internet addiction? You don't have most of the members of a family going off to read newspapers in different parts of the house.

Newspapers are like the internet in that every single day people waste an hour or more of their life reading them. They also clutter your living room and raise your carbon footprint. And also... reading the Daily Mail or The Guardian everyday can't be good for you! Realistically they're not as bad as TV or the net though.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#69

Post by robryan »

bokonist wrote: post #5

I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour. That's been the case for the majority of human history. It's mostly the case now. Most non-religious, progressive thinking people, don't actually think through most issues for themselves. They believe in institutions - academia, NPR, etc. Most people believe what they d…

One of the issues with nutrition is that there is so much conflicting advice to wade through. Even if you do get down to the science it can still be unclear what you should follow.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#70

Post by jacoblyles »

NickPollard wrote: post #19
bokonist wrote: post #5

I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour. That's been the case for the majority of human history. It's mostly the case now. Most non-religious, progressive thinking people, don't actually think through most issues for themselves. They believe in institutions - academia, NPR, etc. Most people believe what they d…

I'm not sure whether you're particularly referring to media bias and dumbed-down science journalism, which is certainly an issue, but the general practice of 'trusting an expert' seems sound to me - the effort required to become an expert yourself in every field that affects you would be incredible, whilst trusting someone else who has that expert knowledge to translate into layman's terms for you is more efficient.…

This phenomenon, also called "rational ignorance" by economists, is a problem for democracies. Not every person has the time to become an expert on everything, but they still vote on it.
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