Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Great Attention Heist

lareviewofbooks.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 89 posts

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#21

Post by carlmr »

jclardy wrote: post #18
ovi256 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the opposite. The poor are incentivized to use free (but containing ads) products. The rich can pay their way out of those attention seeking ads.

I would agree with this, but it isn't even just straight ads. Think about something like Netflix - the $10 a month subscription is nothing to the rich person, so if they don't use it or use it for one or two shows they don't care. To the poor person they need to use it to justify the expenditure. So essentially they are incentivized to consume more, in a very indirect way.

> Think about something like Netflix - the $10 a month subscription is nothing to the rich person

I don't see myself as rich, more like middle class, and $10 is nothing I worry about too much.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#22

Post by JetSpiegel »

carlmr wrote: post #21
jclardy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with this, but it isn't even just straight ads. Think about something like Netflix - the $10 a month subscription is nothing to the rich person, so if they don't use it or use it for one or two shows they don't care. To the poor person they need to use it to justify the expenditure. So essentially they are incentivized to consume more, in a very indirect way.

> Think about something like Netflix - the $10 a month subscription is nothing to the rich person I don't see myself as rich, more like middle class, and $10 is nothing I worry about too much.

Not $10 as a lump sum, but a subscription?

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#23

Post by noxToken »

carlmr wrote: post #21
jclardy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with this, but it isn't even just straight ads. Think about something like Netflix - the $10 a month subscription is nothing to the rich person, so if they don't use it or use it for one or two shows they don't care. To the poor person they need to use it to justify the expenditure. So essentially they are incentivized to consume more, in a very indirect way.

> Think about something like Netflix - the $10 a month subscription is nothing to the rich person I don't see myself as rich, more like middle class, and $10 is nothing I worry about too much.

I thought that comment was strange as well. For $10/month, Netflix provides a bevy of entertainment. It's probably one of the cheapest forms of entertainment - even more so among paid forms of entertainment.

If you're hurting for cash, try to get an amplified indoor antenna and Netflix. You'll make a one-time purchase of $20-$40 for an antenna[0], (likely) receive a decent channel selection[1], and $10/month for on demand streaming.

[0]: This is the antenna that I have in my home, and I want to kick myself for not getting an antenna sooner: https://www.amazon.com/1byone-Amplified-Detachable-Performan...

[1]: Confirm available OTA channeles here: http://www.tvfool.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view...

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#25

Post by colmvp »

harryf wrote: post #3

Strikes me that the ability to focus and direct ones own attention will (or already has) become a new form of class divide; those who can concentrate and those who can't. And it will likely have much different boundaries than earlier class divisions like wealth - in fact the wealthy are more likely to struggle given greater access to a wide range of digital products.

It reminds me of Cal Newport's book Deep Work, where he argues those who can deliberately focus in the 21st century and actively deny themselves from being distracted (scheduled e-mail reading, banning Slack, only reading news certain times of the day) and go deep in subject matters will have massive advantages in the knowledge economy. The open office trend certainly hasn't helped. One of my friends who is a ML coder says he'll get 4x done in a single day at home compared to going to work where he gets bombarded by conversations.

After reading many books related to apps and attention (e.g. Hooked!, Irresistible), I elected to give up using Facebook, Instagram, and put heavy restrictions on my habit of going to Reddit/NYTimes/News Websites.

And I'll print things from the web so that I can concentrate on it without distraction in a quiet room with no digital distractions.

When I was younger, I probably called Knuth a luddite for abstaining from e-mail all the way back in the 90s. But wow, my opinion has done a full 180 over the 2010s.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#26

Post by colmvp »

baxtr wrote: post #16

Oh dear HackerNews, how dearly I love thou, but how many hours of me life has ye taken already? I’d rather not know

The difference that I justify for using HN over a lot of other aggregators in the quality of the content tends to be much higher. I still have a large backlog of repos and writeups that I'd like to study, all found from submissions on HN.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#27

Post by im3w1l »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #22
carlmr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think about something like Netflix - the $10 a month subscription is nothing to the rich person I don't see myself as rich, more like middle class, and $10 is nothing I worry about too much.

Not $10 as a lump sum, but a subscription?

Get netflix. Binge watch for a month. Cancel. Repeat when you feel like and can afford.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#28

Post by cdubzzz »

colmvp wrote: post #25
harryf wrote: post #3

Strikes me that the ability to focus and direct ones own attention will (or already has) become a new form of class divide; those who can concentrate and those who can't. And it will likely have much different boundaries than earlier class divisions like wealth - in fact the wealthy are more likely to struggle given greater access to a wide range of digital products.

It reminds me of Cal Newport's book Deep Work, where he argues those who can deliberately focus in the 21st century and actively deny themselves from being distracted (scheduled e-mail reading, banning Slack, only reading news certain times of the day) and go deep in subject matters will have massive advantages in the knowledge economy. The open office trend certainly hasn't helped. One of my friends who is a ML code…

Another thing I did recently - shut off all alerts on my phone other than text messages and Telegram (both of which are pretty rare in my case). Before doing that I would get alerts from my personal email, a family email and multiple work emails. Now I get hardly any alerts and already feel much more productive throughout the work day because these things aren't catching my eye/ear so often. It's really interesting.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#30

Post by christophilus »

harryf wrote: post #3

Strikes me that the ability to focus and direct ones own attention will (or already has) become a new form of class divide; those who can concentrate and those who can't. And it will likely have much different boundaries than earlier class divisions like wealth - in fact the wealthy are more likely to struggle given greater access to a wide range of digital products.

A counterpoint is Warren Buffett. His office doesn't have a phone or computer or anything that might interrupt him. He tells his secretary to hold everything while he goes inside, kicks back, and reads volume after volume of market data. To me, focus is more accessible to the wealthy. If I could afford it, I'd pay someone to handle Slack/phone/email for me so I could do what I most enjoy, which is get into a flow with the knowledge that I won't be interrupted.

It's true that the wealthy need discipline in order to achieve focus, but the poor need discipline and an environment that is conducive to focus. The latter is getting rarer and rarer. The very poor often live in crowded, noisy, and even unsafe areas.

Post reply on HN