Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

Anyone else notice that it kinda looks like you are staring over the ocean at a nuclear blast?

Love the site though. It really is relaxing and a neat simple idea. Hard to sit through after a 16oz red bull, but i did it!

I haven't logged in to comment for 37 days and this little essay is such utter garbage. The fact that it takes him just 7 paragraphs to completely dismiss all potential religious truth as "clearly false" should set off anyone's dogma-alert flag.

Being focused in the present is awesome, but the fact that we have the ability to pay attention on things other than reality is not a problem, but in fact essential to the health of the mind (our "spirit" if you will). Imagine if all your circumstances sucked and all your mind could focus on was reality...

Secondly, this essay sounds like he's much more inner-focused, as I know that I rarely have these "flow of thought" and self-conscious moments that he calls being "submerged again by the flow of thought"... If you asked me at any moment what I was thinking, I would tell you "nothing"... Obviously I'm thinking something behind the scenes, but my focus is just not on my thoughts when I'm doing. So my own personal thought-life does not confirm this silliness.

Then again, I'm very extroverted and rarely focused on my own thoughts -- maybe it's my "clearly false" Christian religion, or the fact that I've been a runner for 20+ years which is essentially meditating on present experience (pain), but I just have a strong natural tendency to focus on the present experience rather than my own thoughts.

Even if you're looking at this under the domain of science, I would still argue that the ability of humans to cope with present circumstances is directly correlated to their capability to focus upon that which is not the present. (i.e. thinking joyful thoughts, etc.).

That little essay is pitiful, talk to "robg" here on YC if you want to hear from a Neuroscientist who has a better respect for this domain of mind and spirit. The way this guy just starts with a bunch of assumptions and blasts away at all potential truth in less than 1,000 words gives me no respect for his method of thinking.

It wasn't impossible but it was indeed difficult.

I'm not sure if I succeeded or not.

I closed my eyes and focused intently on the sound of the waves. I imagined myself on a beach, waves rolling in and out. I wondered what kind of material the beach was constructed from. Sand and a few larger rocks, it sounded like. There's a distinctive wash, but it seems just as clear there's a break in the rhythm of the crashing wave.

I then started to wonder just what shapes of wave was giving rise to the really bad compression artifacting in the wave sound on that page. Some of the sounds are remarkably clear for all the artifacts in other portions.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get anywhere with that lien of thought before my CFO interrupted me. At which point I saw the site had determined that I 'succeeded'.

I'm not entirely convinced I failed though. Sure, I thought about sand, rocks and compression -- but I was concentrating on the sounds of the waves that whole time.

What meaning could there be in "do nothing but listen to this" if truly listening to the sounds and internalizing them and analyzing them was ruled out as being "something"?

If staring like a zombie with your mind empty was the goal, surely there wouldn't be an audio track and full-window image on that page.