The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
keaganstokoe.com
The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#2Starts off promising but spends a lot of space going nowhere. Lots of inline links that go to other articles on the same blog. Reads like a self-help or pop-business book and content marketing had a baby and it was raised by a TED talk.
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#3The buffet line analogy doesn’t really work. Since you can’t go backwards or look too far ahead, you take the items at the beginning that are above your satisfaction threshold, not knowing whether there will be items further along that satisfy you.
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#4If anything, I think the current state of the internet shows that fear is still the mind-killer.
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#5I really like the quote cited in the comments: “Be a seeker, not a believer.”
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#6The buffet line analogy doesn’t really work. Since you can’t go backwards or look too far ahead, you take the items at the beginning that are above your satisfaction threshold, not knowing whether there will be items further along that satisfy you.
Yep, any other conclusion from the mentioned study would be suspect unless the asymmetric cost of going backwards was somehow controlled for.
Otherwise this is 100% explainable as a hoarding instinct because there is uncertainty about what else is available. Depending on a given person’s risk aversion, it’s entirely rational to take this view of the opportunity cost of passing on early choices you can’t revisit later.
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#7The buffet line analogy doesn’t really work. Since you can’t go backwards or look too far ahead, you take the items at the beginning that are above your satisfaction threshold, not knowing whether there will be items further along that satisfy you.
With a buffet (and when browsing the Internet), you can absolutely go backwards. Just get back in line. Yet we act as if there is a shortage of $resource.
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#8The buffet line analogy doesn’t really work. Since you can’t go backwards or look too far ahead, you take the items at the beginning that are above your satisfaction threshold, not knowing whether there will be items further along that satisfy you.
With a buffet (and when browsing the Internet), you can absolutely go backwards. Just get back in line. Yet we act as if there is a shortage of $resource.
> Just get back in line.
Which might take a long time, and by the time you're back at $item, it may be out.
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#9So obviously this can tie into current social media and the spread of mal-information such as antivax, COVID mask protests, and memes that people let alter their impression of people.
The traditional way to mitigate misinformation's harm was education and a respect for the educated.
I think three things have happened that have prevented this from working:
- We decided decades ago that people needed college degrees to enter much of the workforce. This has reduced education to an employment gateway in the minds of the majority of non-independently wealthy society. It may not have done so if people actually needed the degrees for their jobs and alternate career-starting things like apprenticeships were more available/known.
- Education for all is seen as a method of making society for equal and therefore the solution of a number of social ills. It really is, but has to be done properly otherwise it doesn't work. Children who do not keep up tend to be socially promoted. Children who are outcasts for various reasons, including parental problems at home, drop out or degrade the experience for others in the school. This either causes or is because many of the non-independently wealthy masses see public school as a public babysitter, and they more or less have to see things this way if they are living paycheck to paycheck, because they can't afford to have someone stay home for their children.
- The Internet has accelerated and likely caused fragmentation and in some cases destruction of mass media, and has made mass media have to sell out and become sensationalized to survive. Thus there is less and less of a common media between people, and therefore less of an opportunity to provide any substrate of a common culture. Social media bubbles exacerbate this.
Re: The Modern-Day Mind-Killer
#10The buffet line analogy doesn’t really work. Since you can’t go backwards or look too far ahead, you take the items at the beginning that are above your satisfaction threshold, not knowing whether there will be items further along that satisfy you.
With a buffet (and when browsing the Internet), you can absolutely go backwards. Just get back in line. Yet we act as if there is a shortage of $resource.
Going back has an extra cost -- time to stand in a line again.
So unless one enjoys standing in lines, there is absolutely an extra cost.