My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
1–10 of 85 posts
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#2Things that work for me: long walks, swimming, talking to myself, writing furiously, reading Sherlock Holmes, wandering around town. Note the internet does not feature in any of those.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#3OT, but the font used in the blog makes it very hard to read. Font face rendering seems to differ depending on OS and browser so I'm not sure if it's just my system (OSX / Chrome).
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#4> There are a bunch of people out there right now solving #firstworldproblems.
> A waste of talent!
No, it's not. You know what's a waste? The common "appeal to worse problems".
Just because you are not working on curing cancer or solving poverty in Africa, it doesn't mean that your work is trivial, useless, or a waste. People in the first world have problems. Solving them is anything but a waste.
Every time you bring civilization a little step further through technology, you inevitably end up helping those who work hard at what you consider worthy problems. I'm sure at some point someone considered the creation of the web as a self-serving project for academics in the first world. It turned out to be the biggest innovation of the century, greatly benefiting people everywhere.
Innovation can come from anywhere. As an example, memcached came from LiveJournal. It's important not to fall into the trap of considering #firstworldproblems as not worthy of consideration or a waste.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#5Mmmh, would have been good if he would be stricter. I'm not sure why someone can't stay away from Facebook & Co. for 30 days.
However, in general I agree with his perception that the daily flow of news doesn't help us in focusing on the important problems of life.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#6> There are a bunch of people out there right now solving #firstworldproblems. > A waste of talent! No, it's not. You know what's a waste? The common "appeal to worse problems". Just because you are not working on curing cancer or solving poverty in Africa, it doesn't mean that your work is trivial, useless, or a waste. People in the first world have problems. Solving them is anything but a waste. Every time you brin…
Mmmh, he probably refers to things like developing Farmville. It is unclear why this solves any problems and not just wastes the time of users. But to be fair, if people wouldn't play Farmville doesn't mean they wouldn't find another way to waste their time :-)
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#7I've been thinking about this lately, too. A long time ago, I spent almost no time on the internet, because there wasn't really much of an internet to speak of. Instead, I wrote code. Lots, and lots, and lots of code. Some of it in assembly; some of it, even, in hex, with tons of printed pages of processor instructions in front of me.
Feats like that required a level of concentration that I find almost impossible to achieve today. I've developed a tic: write a line of code, check a news site; write another line of code, check email; write another line of code, check a social site.
I can't even call it procrastination anymore. It's something far more insidious. I'm fighting it, but the fight itself requires a nearly exhausting amount of effort.
It's got all the hallmarks of an addiction -- a psychological one, rather than a chemical one, maybe. The trouble is, with many addictive substances, completely avoiding them is a reasonable solution. With the internet, looking up a function reference or even testing and uploading a piece of code can lead too easily to diversions; it's difficult to separate necessary things from distractions and impractical to avoid it altogether.
I hate it. I've tried many of the tricks that people suggest, but the simple fact is, a significant part of my personality would rather mindlessly browse the internet instead of focusing intently for a long enough period of time to do something productive.
> This leads me to believe that the ideas we have reflect the kind of world we live in.
I think this is insightful. I somehow never managed to lose track of my childhood dreams, but instead I'm constantly preventing myself from accomplishing them.
Good luck on your internet diet. If you manage to stick with it for a full month, you're a better person than I am.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#8> There are a bunch of people out there right now solving #firstworldproblems. > A waste of talent! No, it's not. You know what's a waste? The common "appeal to worse problems". Just because you are not working on curing cancer or solving poverty in Africa, it doesn't mean that your work is trivial, useless, or a waste. People in the first world have problems. Solving them is anything but a waste. Every time you brin…
Mmmh, he probably refers to things like developing Farmville. It is unclear why this solves any problems and not just wastes the time of users. But to be fair, if people wouldn't play Farmville doesn't mean they wouldn't find another way to waste their time :-)
That strikes me as one of those perfectly logical justifications for contributing to a problem: "Well, if we didn't produce cigarettes, someone else would anyway." It's also a red herring; it doesn't matter if someone else would or not, all that matters is whether or not we did the deed.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#9I've been thinking about this lately, too. A long time ago, I spent almost no time on the internet, because there wasn't really much of an internet to speak of. Instead, I wrote code. Lots, and lots, and lots of code. Some of it in assembly; some of it, even, in hex, with tons of printed pages of processor instructions in front of me. Feats like that required a level of concentration that I find almost impossible to…
You might want to look into Pomodoro. It helped me get rid of the tic you describe.
The diet is to try getting rid of something deeper :)
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#10> There are a bunch of people out there right now solving #firstworldproblems. > A waste of talent! No, it's not. You know what's a waste? The common "appeal to worse problems". Just because you are not working on curing cancer or solving poverty in Africa, it doesn't mean that your work is trivial, useless, or a waste. People in the first world have problems. Solving them is anything but a waste. Every time you brin…
I didn't necessarily mean you should go cure cancer, or end world poverty. There are many of first world problems that are perfectly awesome to try solving (for example, how do we convince people to use nuclear, how do we make nuclear safer? how do we make it easier for people to actually recycle? how can we help people get proper rest instead of brainrot?)
You should really look at the #firstworldproblems hashtag on twitter to get a sense of colloquial usage :)