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The Acceleration of Addictiveness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#121

Post by fragmede »

drewcrawford wrote: post #104
fragmede wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, instea…

> 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?

Coding is a poor example because there is no generally accepted metric for productivity. (Figure out good way of measuring programmer productivity and you'd have a mint.) However, some jobs do have a valid metric. Data entry: 300 forms take an average of X hours to do. After X hours reading Reddit and not entering forms, 0 forms have been entered. Simplistically, X hours have been 'lost'.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#123

Post by mattchew »

drewcrawford wrote: post #48

Let 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…

> What does it mean to say it is bad?

How about this: if in advance of the behavior, you intend to partake moderately, and in the event you consistently overindulge, and after the fact you regret your excess, then something about this behavior is bad.

I'm leaving aside some of the other points you bring up, but if you've got a habit that consistently leads to dissatisfaction and regret, I think it's fair to call it a problem for that reason alone.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#124

Post by pyre »

fmora wrote: post #85
dejb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've noticed that people that claim to be vegetarians do it in such a way that they come off smug. Unfortunately the act of unapologetically refusing to participate in something that most other people do is often considered smug. This is rather similar to the way atheists are considered smug by many religious people where as agnostics are not.

I don't think religious people consider atheists smug. If nothing else they think they are going to hell. The thing is that many people come out and say "I'm a vegetarian" as if it were the second coming of Jesus. Honestly who gives a crap whether you are a vegetarian or not. No need to announce it to the world.

Do they just walk up and introduce themselves like: "Hi, I'm Bob. Oh, and I'm a vegetarian." ? Or is it more like: "No thanks, I don't eat meat. I'm a vegetarian."

The second version doesn't really come off as smug, unless you're just someone that is easily offended. Interpreting that as anything more than an explanation of why the person doesn't want to accept your offer of meat (or something with meat) is spending too much time reading into it.

Some people get offended at conversations like this:

  smoker: You got a smoke?
  non-smoker: Sorry, I don't smoke.
Whether or not the smoker thinks that the non-smoker is being smug has more to do with the baggage that the smoker brings to the table (e.g. perceiving all non-smokers as looking down at him/her for being a smoker).

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#125

Post by neilk »

jseliger wrote: post #117

This: "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. Or worse still, has one booked for them by the government. Sounds very similar to much of Neal Stephenson's work, especially Anathem , where the Avout plot their own way and everyone else is merely addicted to the world. Snow Crash also has aspects of what the wo…

Not everyone else -- there are artists, the religious, the geographically isolated, the military, martial arts devotees, and those who are just too down and out to participate. Come to think of it, Anathem includes almost all of them in the story and leaves the normals out of the picture entirely.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#126

Post by andreyf »

fragmede wrote: post #121
drewcrawford wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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, instea…

> 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? Coding is a poor example because there is no generally accepted metric for productivity. (Figure out good way of measuring programmer productivity and you'd have a mint.) However, some jobs do have a valid metric. Data entry: 300 forms take an average of X hours to do. Afte…

Data entry: 300 forms take an average of X hours to do. After X hours reading Reddit and not entering forms, 0 forms have been entered. Simplistically, X hours have been 'lost'.

X hours of data entry have been lost. X hours of participating in the Reddit hivemind have been gained :) Steve Yegge once hypothesized that Reddit-like websites are the first incarnation of a new breed of superorganisms, which evolve into something called Rivers: https://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddv7939q_20gw8h9pcx

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#127

Post by jacobolus »

alextp wrote: post #102
mechanical_fish wrote: post #78

Earlier 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…

Which people in Brazil are we talking about, that had such better diets 50-60 years ago? In 1950, the life expectancy from birth in Brazil was 50 years (a big improvement from before 1930 when life expectancy was about 33 years; by 1975 the life expectancy was about 60 years, and today it's about 73 years). Part of this was high infant mortality and poor access to healthcare, but another big part of it was that Brazil, like most of the world, mostly consisted of chronically undernourished people.

(These data are eyeballed from http://www.gapminder.org/world/)

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#128

Post by sp332 »

drewcrawford wrote: post #48

Let 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…

These are things that, as pg put it, I don't want to want. I don't care what changed on HN in the last 15 seconds, so why do my fingers type this reflexively when I've opened my browser to do something else? I was just here, I've already read the stuff I'm interested in. I don't want to be here.

Yeah, I know about noprocrast. It doesn't stop my fingers from typing h-a-down-enter .

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#129

Post by neilk »

DenisM wrote: post #74

It will actually become a reasonable strategy (or a more reasonable strategy) to suspect everything new. No. The reasonable strategy is, and has always been, defining the positive outcomes you want to reach rather than negative ones you want to avoid. The opposite of "drunk" is not "he avoids drinking", it's "he lives a fulfilled life without allowing alcohol to consume his existence". The opposite of internet addict…

Agreed. This old article from Wired (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/1.6_amish.html) describes how the Amish aren't just rejectionists. Unlike the rest of us, they have a tradition of thinking deeply about technology before adopting it into our lifestyle.

Especially in the hacker set and in certain aspects of urban professional culture, the idea is that you let technology inform you of how you should be living your life. This is madness.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#130

Post by username3 »

queensnake wrote: post #3

Of course, the Amish are way ahead of everyone there. Choosing for slowness, and especially, thinking about what they're willing to take on or not, and where and how (eg computer at the office but not at home). It probably helps to have a community around you, both to support the 'privations' and, to lessen the need for addictants.

Amish Hackers: How the Amish actually use and build their own tech (kk.org)

86 points by whatusername 196 days ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1046378

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