I once read the suggestion (I can't remember where, but it was on the internet somewhere, so if this is you then speak up) that the real reason that we haven't been contacted by space probes from any other civilization is that all civilizations eventually invent a MMORPG that is so enthralling they lose interest in boring things like interstellar travel.
The Acceleration of Addictiveness
101–110 of 289 posts
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#102Maybe PG and I would agree on this, because I do think things are becoming more "addictive", but I don't believe he's addressed the root cause of the problem. I think with new technological advances, etc, things are becoming better at being "false substitutes" -- i.e. masquerading themselves as the authentic ways in which we should best satisfy the natural human desires and instincts we all have within us. Addiction…
Even if we accept your frame, it's not a simple thing. Consider these "false" substitutes: Large quantities of mass-produced food instead of meager quantities of undependable crops that you spend 90% of your working life growing; Facebook instead of being lonely and isolated in your suburban home, miles from any of your friends; HD porn instead of unhealthy sexual relationships; Online dating instead of avoiding soci…
But some of the things you mention only look bad when compared to even crappier alternatives.
> Large quantities of mass-produced food instead of meager quantities of undependable crops that you spend 90% of your working life growing;
Around the baby boomer generation until people 20 or so years younger there was a sweet spot where mass-produced food was available but more expensive than more traditionally-prepared and traditionally-grown food. Also, people spent a lot more time cooking (and less time watching cooking tv shows), which helped create a relationship with food that wouldn't stand today's fast food habits. At least here in Brazil.
> Facebook instead of being lonely and isolated in your suburban home, miles from any of your friends;
The solution to this existed before the suburbs (which are a post-ww2 phenomenon), and is called living in small cramped places in cities close to where you work and to most people you will meet. Some people still live like this, and enjoy it. Suburbs are soul crushing, but they are by no means necessary.
> HD porn instead of unhealthy sexual relationships;
Well, not every sexual relationship is unhealthy, and if you ignore the healthy ones this is vacuously good. The truth is, developing healthy sexual habits is a difficult part of growing up, and keeping people in fantasy land is not a solution to this anymore than giving everyone a government allowance is a solution to the problem that it's hard to find fulfilling jobs.
The other points are less glaringly false, but have small subtleties that can be teased out.
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have this theory that marijuana (lets be consistent and say alcohol too) cause cocaine use. You take the fact that cocaine users have almost invariably first used such substances as evidence supporting your theory, without recognising that this pattern is what we would expect to observe in any event. The idea of a cocaine user who has never touched alcohol is a bizarre one. (By the way, why the focus on marijuana…
You start with an illegal substance. You are already breaking the law so what is the big deal with using an even stronger substance. That seems to be the rationale used by a lot of people. I guess I should have made that clear in my original example. Believe it or not your moral values start to decrease once you start breaking them. I'll take it to another extreme: Once a criminal has become used to breaking the law,…
You've now completely changed your argument. Originally it was "mild drugs lead to strong drugs". I noted that alcohol is a mild drug. Now your argument is "mild crime leads to strong crime". If I can summon a good argument against that, will you just come up with a third argument for what you're already committed to believing?
Mild crime does not lead to strong crime. Like many people, in my teenage days I downloaded some music illegally. Most of us didn't become burglars. But I guarantee you almost all burglars (of the correct age group and technical skills) have downloaded music illegally.
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#104Let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Why is this "new" addiction wrong ? What does it mean to say it is bad ? pg is taking great pains to distance himself from real addiction, like crystal meth. Yet he never explicitly explains anywhere why the new "addiction" is actually bad , other than trying to loosely associate it with alcohol. I don't think that the "addictiveness" of a thing alone is enough to call it ba…
The two points I can address: * Is It *dangerous*? At the extreme, yes: hikikomori - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/magazine/15japanese.html?p... * Can the claims of loss of productivity be scientifically substantiated? To what extent? If an employee spends 8 hours browsing Reddit, instead of doing work that needed to be done, the loss of productivity is quantifiable. So how about 5 minutes? 20 minutes? 40? An hou…
>At the extreme, yes
Let me rephrase the question a bit, because at extremes everything is dangerous. Is it any more or less dangerous, on average, than other things in society considered to be bad? Are there more or less hikikomoris than DWIs? Are there more or less WoW addicts than rich old men with boats or other (presumably harmless) unproductive activities?
> If an employee spends 8 hours browsing Reddit, instead of doing work that needed to be done, the loss of productivity is quantifiable
Are you sure? Did they really lose 8 hours worth of work? How is "time spent" any better a metric for productivity than counting lines of code?
I find, for me personally, that when I am burnt out I won't produce in any amount of time until I recharge, and when I'm fully charged I'm not interested in browsing Reddit. This is a personal anecdote, and not data; but can we get some data--any data--correlating productivity and browsing Reddit, positively or negatively? I suspect the relationship is a lot more complex than "X hours lost."
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#105Thanks for this excellent essay. In my case, it describes a painfully current issue. I am looking for strategies on how to deal with this addiction. How to start? Where to get help? Where to find the force to escape? How to convince myself that I want to change and WHY?
I answered here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549691 and here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549734
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#106Maybe PG and I would agree on this, because I do think things are becoming more "addictive", but I don't believe he's addressed the root cause of the problem. I think with new technological advances, etc, things are becoming better at being "false substitutes" -- i.e. masquerading themselves as the authentic ways in which we should best satisfy the natural human desires and instincts we all have within us. Addiction…
[deleted]
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if we accept your frame, it's not a simple thing. Consider these "false" substitutes: Large quantities of mass-produced food instead of meager quantities of undependable crops that you spend 90% of your working life growing; Facebook instead of being lonely and isolated in your suburban home, miles from any of your friends; HD porn instead of unhealthy sexual relationships; Online dating instead of avoiding soci…
But some of the things you mention only look bad when compared to even crappier alternatives. > Large quantities of mass-produced food instead of meager quantities of undependable crops that you spend 90% of your working life growing; Around the baby boomer generation until people 20 or so years younger there was a sweet spot where mass-produced food was available but more expensive than more traditionally-prepared a…
"But some of the things you mention only look bad when compared to even crappier alternatives."
I think that was the whole point... mechanicalfish's list contains false dichotomies, in order to illustrate that the same is true of the original list.
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#108Being 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…
You have a problem with logical reasoning.
First, there are at least two possible explanations for the the even you witnessed - one that marijuana was a gateway drug for your friend, and the other is that your friend was simply fucked up to start with and found his solace in drugs. You have dismissed one of the options and then concluded the truthfulness of the other (which is a serious defect of cognition).
Your second problem is that you are treating an anecdote as data. It ain't.
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#109To PG:
If you were doing a startup right now, would you get an iphone?
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#110I remember, many years ago (mid-to-late 90s), being afraid that I had grown addicted to computer games. Between Command & Conquer (over peer-to-peer dial-up!), Quake Team Fortress, Civilization II, and a few others, I was playing 30-40 hours of PC games per week. I eventually grew out of the habit, and now don't find PC or console games appealing anymore. The fact that I naturally gave it up without any intervention…
You have a point, but I don't think it's that simple. With things like hard liquor, heroin, cocaine, and other generally accepted to be addictive things, a lot more people go through "phases" of the stuff than actually waste their entire lives on it. We've all seen slightly depressed people binging self-destructively on alcohol, and some of my more outgoing friends have done the same with cocaine when they were younger, and today live perfectly normal, healthy lives.
Being "just a phase" for a lot of people (myself included) doesn't make it less likely for it to be an addictive thing, makes it more (how many healthy normal non-addictive activities are considered "phases" by some people but end up eating out entire lives?).