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The Acceleration of Addictiveness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#141

Post by xiaoma »

tmsh wrote: post #4

The link to the Paleolithic diet made me think that one strategy against increasing addition is to normalize for evolutionary time. Still requires a lot of learned, subjective insight. But basically, anything that has proved itself via evolution is more sturdy and is worth congregating around (these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.). Bravo on another great essay…

The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further.

Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements. One reason wheat was adopted so widely so early is that it didn't need to change much to be domesticated (see Guns Germs and Steel). Strawberries on the other hand, weren't domesticated until medieval times, and the same is true of many nuts, most notably almonds. Cattle has also undergone a far larger genetic transformation than many of our primary grain crops. Most damning to the idea of a paleo diet is that we have, too.

Human evolution has clearly accelerated with population growth. According to some anthropologists, modern humans differ more from those 5,000 years ago than those humans differed from Neanderthal.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1043228620071210

In short, the paleo diet rests on flawed assumptions about evolution, the history of agriculture and ignores the main body of nutritional research and is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations.

Edit: It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan doesn't have anywhere near the ecological footprint of a bicycle-riding "paleo" dieter.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#142

Post by SapphireSun »

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…

Actually, I'll call you on that. I think our collective addiction to air is HORRIBLE. Air oxidizes our tissues, causing aging, shortages prevent us from getting the most physical exertion, etc. If we didn't need air, we'd be much more capable. If someone could figure out a way to free us from this burden, we'd be better off running farther, staying young longer, and much much more.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#143

Post by Alex3917 »

andreyf wrote: post #126
fragmede wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 so…

I think the best way way to conceive of technological progress is in terms of node density, where each node is a person. That is why I define the following terms the way I do:

Web 1.0 lets individuals create and express ideas

Web 2.0 lets groups create and express ideas

Web 3.0 lets societies create and express ideas

Notice that what causes each qualitative shift are new inventions/innovations that allow for increasing densification of nodes. Notice also that it's a rather beautiful idea in the mathematical sense, because web 3.0 is different from web 2.0 in exactly the same way that web 2.0 is different than web 1.0.

That's why I hate this whole "web 3.0 is the semantic web" meme, because it's completely arbitrary and lacking in any parallelism.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#145

Post by pg »

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…

I defined bad as things you don't want to want. E.g. because while they give you initial pleasure, they might give you net less pleasure in the long run. Though that isn't the only reason you might not want to want something. For example, you might dislike the environmental cost, or the thing might conflict with some principle you held.

I don't think there's a sharp distinction between "real" addiction and other types. I think there's a smooth continuum. Even among things at the extreme, like addictive drugs, there's a continuum.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#146

Post by jacobolus »

alextp wrote: post #134
jacobolus wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Brazi…

I mean my parents, my girlfriend's parents, my friends' parents, and almost every middle-class to upper-class person my age's parents as well. Not our grandparents, mind you.

> almost every middle-class to upper-class person

Okay. That is only a fraction of the population of Brazil, which has long had one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#148

Post by rictic »

kirse wrote: post #55

Maybe 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…

There's a word for a substitute that's more compelling than what it copies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#149

Post by fmora »

DenisM wrote: post #138
fmora wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why I called it an anecdote to begin with. It is a serious defect in cognition that you did not realize that this is why I spelled it out as such. I knew him during high school. From what I know about him I think he just gave in to peer pressure as many do.

Keep being defensive and you will receive no more advice - accurate or not.

Excuse me but I didn't ask for advise. I though we were having a debate.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#150

Post by kirse »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #78
kirse wrote: post #55

Maybe 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…

I agree, I think my examples weren't as clear as they should be. I was running out the door trying to get my thoughts out...

My point still stands though, we're often addicted to or deceived by that which is an inferior and poorer substitute for the "real" thing. Sure, technology may improve our ability to better fulfill desires when it's the only option.

However, given the context (and this may just be me), usually I view addiction in a negative light, so my examples were used to demonstrate the negative effects of addiction to false substitutes.

Rarely do you hear the word addiction mentioned in a positive fashion about someone, such as "Oh, he's absolutely addicted to healthy eating!"

Even when we do joke that someone is "addicted" to something positive such as healthy eating, we're usually passively stating that we think they're doing something far in excess than what we believe is normal... so it's still ultimately a comment delivered with a negative subtext.

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