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Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

nytimes.com

111–120 of 176 posts

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#111
post #45

All of these fads center around one fundamental trait: the sense of having control over your life. It doesn't matter whether they work; they sell you on the experience of "I'm successfully doing this hard thing to make myself better". And it just so happens that Silicon Valley is full of people who are addicted to the sensation of improvement. Eating disorders stem from the same psychological mechanism, just a differ…

I also wonder how much of it is people desperately trying to undo the damages of stress. What people might really need is shorter work weeks and more time off (including time away from social media and other non-work related stressors). But that's not something out culture really allows for or encourages. So we look to miracle cures so we can continue feeling productive.

I’d put it even further than “just” attempting to undo the damages of stress.

The local community, where you’d buy your meat from your local butcher that had been in your neighborhood for 15 years, vegetables from the farmers’ market where the produce is all from within a 50 miles radius, where you go to church/temple/etc with the same faces every week, where the teachers and doctors that took care of you now take care of your children, etc, is pretty much dead.

What has replaced it? Amazon Prime, precarious contractor jobs, cheap replaceable crap brought in by cargo ship, startups claiming that they are just like “a family”. Of course this leaves a gap in people’s need for a sense of place and community. Of course it’s the perfect opportunity for charlatans who know how to tap into exactly that.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#112
post #45

All of these fads center around one fundamental trait: the sense of having control over your life. It doesn't matter whether they work; they sell you on the experience of "I'm successfully doing this hard thing to make myself better". And it just so happens that Silicon Valley is full of people who are addicted to the sensation of improvement. Eating disorders stem from the same psychological mechanism, just a differ…

The desire for a sense of control is part of it.

I think, however, that it is fundamentally about a need to have rituals and routines in one's life.

For some people, this involves making coffee in the morning.

For others, it involves a jog around the block.

For a select few, it involves ice baths and near-infrared saunas and lemon water mixed with Himalayan salt.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#113

I'm firmly of the opinion that a lot of wellness fads spring up fields like tech because its a field where traditional religious views are rarer. People latch on to these new belief systems that are like religion in most ways beside name. They all have a set of rigid rules to follow and rituals to perform, and they all have some type of self-denial or sacrifice as one of their core values. Fasting, temperance, Whole3…

In my religious studies classes there was a point made about separating "high religion" and "low religion." High religion refers to the abstract, philosophical components of a religion: like the belief in a benevolent creator who became man. Low religion refers to the rituals and superstitions of the religion: like going to Church every Sunday, taking communion, etc. All religions consist of a both pieces, and it often makes sense to consider them separately. European pagan superstitions persisted for centuries after the population had converted to Christianity, for example. I think you could argue what you're describing are examples of the creation or transfer of low religion into atheism and agnosticism.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#114
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Jack do that you consider to be bullshit?

Read the article and ask yourself which one of the things described would seem out of place in one of those sad gossip magazines targeting low-income housewives. E.g. water mixed with Himalayan salt and lemon in the morning. And since I'm mentioning it, Himalayan salt is not better than normal salt. It could also contain more contaminants and it has no iodine (that could not be desirable in some countries).

yeah, but does it have magical trace minerals?

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#115
This is a cheap hit piece and part of the ongoing NYTs campaign against social media. I am saying this as someone who hates Twitter and thinks Dosey is either a mega-hypocrite or a victim of his own brainwashing. (Talking about his views on human communication here. I utterly don't care what kinds of saunas he uses.)

And "manfluencer"? Really, this is New York Times now? Rhetorical question. Of course it is.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#116
As someone working on making these health & wellness strategies and protocols more data-driven and evidence based through more structured experiments (see https://mementolabs.io), I'm very much pro on pushing for more people trying these "fringe" strategies in a more informed manner, so take my following thoughts with a grain of salt:

- Many of our current, preexisting beliefs about food and nutrition are proving to be extremely flawed and contrived, having essentially been pushed by big-food to drive more consumption of sugar and carbs in our meals as opposed to actually being research-based (just look at the USDA Food pyramid, that puts carbs, almost all simple, as a staple). The emerging research around restricted eating, fasting, and autophagy (research that won a Nobel Prize in 2016) is extremely promising albeit still developing.

- There's real value to proper self-experimentation for helping you discover and build better individual habits and determining what uniquely works for improving your health and wellness, as well as challenge your thinking on your existing beliefs, particularly around nutrition & dieting that tend to be ingrained in you during development. [See gwern's self experiments for some interesting ones](https://gwern.net).

- IMO, the core issue at the root of this rise of the "cult-like influencer" is a lack of accessible academic research (i.e the average person will opt to read blogs over a long, hugely technical research paper) which creates more and more noise and proliferation of misinformation and conflicting health advice.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#117
post #2

Shows that engineers in Silicon Valley aren't any more skeptical than Hollywood. We may consider ourselves smarter, but we're just as susceptible to bullshit as anyone.

I'd had an engineer recently fracture his foot running in a race. He took a day off, went to a doctor and was told he need to wear a boot, stay off his foot for a while, etc. He proceeds to come into the office, proudly informing everyone how he knows better than the doctor, and that he only needs to rub peppermint oil and wear a compression sock. All while hobbling around the office, clearly in pain. Everyone pleade…

In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#118
post #61
post #8

This is really a perfect title. As somebody who grew up in Michigan not far from Battle Creek, I've always been interested the history of wacky self-improvement regimes. (You may remember "The Road to Wellville" as one look at that. [1]) E.g., the inventor of Graham flour believed in all sorts of self-harshness: "Graham created a theology and diet aimed at keeping individuals, families, and society pure and healthy -…

Ah, Battle Creek! Also where the Kellogg brothers got up to their weirdness. John Harvey Kellogg was involved in the weird dietary movements of the era as well. Ran a sort of spa / psych hospital thing, recommended people eat super plain food and chew each bite 45 times, that sort of thing. Tried to make "pre-digested" food which led eventually to Corn Flakes. Lots of weird health anecdotes out of there. Anything fro…

chew each bite 45 times

Also known as Fletcherizing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Fletcher

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#119
post #69

As someone with a firmly blue-collar perspective on the world, these weird sacred cows of the city that people elevate to the status of guru are as mysterious for me as they are asinine. I read up on Gwyneth Paltrow after reading the article, and checked her website where I found idiotic products that made my heart stop with some of their claims. When my heart finally started again I cursed god for letting me live to…

Blue-collar and asinine in the same sentence. Well done, sir.

Re: Jack Dorsey Is Gwyneth Paltrow for Silicon Valley

#120
post #50
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the article and ask yourself which one of the things described would seem out of place in one of those sad gossip magazines targeting low-income housewives. E.g. water mixed with Himalayan salt and lemon in the morning. And since I'm mentioning it, Himalayan salt is not better than normal salt. It could also contain more contaminants and it has no iodine (that could not be desirable in some countries).

You can call it bullshit if you want, but when you drink that combination, you're gonna be in the bathroom almost immediately emptying out. I speak from personal experience...

I dunno about this. Many medical professionals encourage heart and high blood pressure patient to drastically limit salt intake because salt causes you to retain water.

What does this mixture of himalayan salt and lemon do that causes the diuretic effect?

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