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'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

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Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#201

Post by thealienthing »

lostmsu wrote: post #96
zozin wrote: post #59

I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…

The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…

This is very true to me. That’s why I believe it’s important to know when to skim or even call it quits on an article; particularly when the information on the event is limited and every platform seems to cover it with the same details and slightly different fashion. That way you don’t waste time.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#202

Post by mr_spothawk »

labelbias wrote: post #194
lostmsu wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…

Lindy effect, stuff worth reading is stuff that has been filtered by time. Reading old books is worth it. New ones are hard to filter and many will turn out to be completely unnecessary. Leaves you on the sides of contemporary culture but at least you're reading efficiently.

I thought we were supposed to decolonize our libraries?

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#203

Post by bkandel »

lostmsu wrote: post #96
zozin wrote: post #59

I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…

The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…

I'm struggling to understand your comment about books. There are many thousands of very high-quality books written about lots of different subjects. Is it possible your book recommendations are all too similar, like only reading novels written in the past ten years or something?

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#204

Post by ssully »

prawn wrote: post #111
dvtrn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

?? What? Blood Meridian has dark moments in the narrative sure, but it’s a beautifully written book and very easy spaghetti western adventure to get lost in before bed. It’s not like you’re dozing off reading The Necronomicon, c’mon.

It's my favourite book but it's hardly easy-reading for many people. It's grim and would challenge a few people I bet. I could read writing like that about the desert forever, but not everyone is so inclined. I think everyone should read it, but I can also appreciate an "easy there, Satan"-type joke about it!

Yeah, I've read most of Cormac McCarthy's books, but I've never gotten past the first 50 pages of Blood Meridian. Even compared to Child of God, it just hit me in the wrong ways whenever I read it. Still hoping to get to it someday though!

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#205

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

sawaruna wrote: post #55

Maybe people should utilize social media for things they enjoy instead of solely sources of news. Of course people you follow will end up posting news anyway but it won’t be solely stream of ‘doom and gloom’.

I had to uninstall twitter as it was just too frustrating and utterly useless for conversation, but that's how I make Reddit work for me - I joined a bunch of subreddits I was interested in and dropped the rest. If I want to, I can browse /r/popular or /r/all, but otherwise I'm just looking at what I want.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#206

Post by ben_w »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #202
labelbias wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lindy effect, stuff worth reading is stuff that has been filtered by time. Reading old books is worth it. New ones are hard to filter and many will turn out to be completely unnecessary. Leaves you on the sides of contemporary culture but at least you're reading efficiently.

I thought we were supposed to decolonize our libraries?

These can both be true.

As a simultaneous question and example, Kipling is often given as an example of a British Empire writer with condescending attitudes to the very people he wrote about.

The names of Indian authors never reached me because my parents thought the Empire was unadulterated good, and they thought that because my grandparents were born near the peak of the Empire — one of my grandmothers was, for a period in her infancy, living in a military base in the British Raj.

They whose names I do not know could very plausibly be Kipling’s equal or better. I know from various examples that various cliques will have hidden the names of good authors from me.

That leads me to the question: can anyone here recommend a good Indian author from the same era as Kipling? (Yes I know Kipling was born in India).

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#208

Post by bhupy »

dragonwriter wrote: post #100
rayiner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had told me 25 years ago that in my home country (Bangladesh) people were going to be demanding removal of a statue of lady justice from in front of the Supreme Court, and that the court would oblige, and that veiling women would go from being nearly non-existent to commonplace, and that secular journalists would be getting murdered, I wouldn’t have believed you. But Islamists got control of education, and all…

> Thousands of school districts are integrating material into their curriculum that claims slavery was capitalist. Chattel slavery of the type practiced in the early US and elsewhere was part of the dominant Western system of the mid-19th century for which critics coined the term “capitalism”; what else would it be but capitalist?

A massive and obvious flaw in the "capitalism is slavery" argument is the fact that American agriculture became MORE profitable after slavery was abolished.

After the Civil War ended, as soon as the labor costs had to be factored in, it became increasingly clear that cotton is a dumb crop to plant at the scale it was being planted. Planters moved to other crops that could be profitable. Slavery essentially held capitalism (the efficient allocation of capital) back. This is why the Great Plains are the most productive agricultural land today, not the South. Syria or Libya, with actual, present day slaves are noticeably unable to produce much agriculture

The abolition of slavery exposed the essential government subsidization of a misallocation of capital, which is inherently un-capitalistic.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#209

Post by mtberatwork »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #15
countername wrote: post #4

Yeah reading hacker news since 4 hours and didn't even planned to open it. Now the world is more dangerous and don't know if people are commenting or GPT-3 bots. Any solutions to find sleep?

Put down your phone - stop staring at it at the gym, in line, on the toilet, at any time there's a lull in the activity - try just observing things around you. Read novels, especially before bed. Stop feeling like you have to be an informed and empowered member of society at all times on all issues. Develop hobbies that aren't related to tech - especially ones that force you to get outside and don't require high tech…

> Stop feeling like you have to be an informed and empowered member of society at all times on all issues.

I think this is an underrated comment. Nothing wrong with staying informed to an extent but when it becomes all consuming (esp through social media and 24/7 news), it is essentially taking on the world day in, day out. That's a large burden to absorb for any individual and the loss of control one feels breeds anxiety.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#210

Post by jahaja »

rayiner wrote: post #185
dragonwriter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thousands of school districts are integrating material into their curriculum that claims slavery was capitalist. Chattel slavery of the type practiced in the early US and elsewhere was part of the dominant Western system of the mid-19th century for which critics coined the term “capitalism”; what else would it be but capitalist?

The term “capitalist” was not coined by critics of capitalism. For example, David Ricardo used the term decades before Marx. Criticizing capitalism by linking it to slavery was pioneered by Marx, and accepting that point of view is Marxist rhetoric. It is, of course, logically invalid to claim that because slavery was practiced in countries that happened to be capitalist, that slavery is capitalist. By that logic, sl…

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