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Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

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Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#151

Post by carlmr »

Foivos wrote: post #120
climb_stealth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max. Oh wow, interesting that you mention it because I experience the same. Can and do spend hours a day looking at random stuff on various forums / youtube / hn. But once I'm out traveling the need disappears and it just doesn't se…

Same here. My theory is that when travelling you are not bored, thus you have nothing to "escape" from. The only problem with my theory is that this effect (ie. not wasting time) lasts a couple of days after returning from a trip. This should not happen because you are in the same context as when you were liberally wasting time. I also move countries a lot. The first 1-2 months at a new country I am wasting time sign…

>The only problem with my theory is that this effect (ie. not wasting time) lasts a couple of days after returning from a trip. This should not happen because you are in the same context as when you were liberally wasting time.

When you return back home, home is somewhat a different experience from the day to day drudgery. I think it's just that our brains hate boring routines and modern capitalism has made your life extremely Specialized and routine.

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#152

Post by el_nahual »

uyt wrote: post #99
psychstudio wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classical "variable reward". Manifests in all areas of life.

I wonder if there's an evolutionary reason for that preference or if this is just an edge case in our rewards system that never mattered until it became heavily exploited by other humans in the modern world.

Thought experiment:

Imagine that a flaw is exposed in a cheap slot machine that slightly shifts the odds in the player's favor. Because of the low bet value in the slot machine, the rewards ends up being something like $10/hour.

Case A: The bug neutralizes the slot odds and adds a constant $0.005 usd that accumulates every pull. Times 30 pulls per minute times 60 pulls per hour = 9 bucks an hour.

Case B: The reward neutralizes the odds but adds a random $600 drop with 1/126,000 probability (ie, once a week).

The expected value of both games is the same, but I feel like people would get addicted to the second while the first would feel like a job.

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#153

Post by joelbluminator »

slothtrop wrote: post #141
joelbluminator wrote: post #51

I think from an evolutionary perspective most of us aren't wired for long focused mental work, especially not after studying/working the whole day already (that's why most side projects fail). It had very little evolutionary gain throughout history. I think life was mostly about surviving physically and then socializing and chatting/games in rest time. I'd note that even when we lived in caves we had to do mental wor…

Long focused work was probably normalized since at least the advent of warfare and civilization. Maybe not across the board.

That's a very short duration evolutionarily speaking. We're talking maybe 10K years...we exist as humans how long - a million years?

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#154

Post by Apocryphon »

stavros wrote: post #149
enumjorge wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think your experience contradicts what the parent comment said. If you won literally every DotA match you played and were very sure you’d win future ones, my guess is you’d probably grow tired of the game pretty quickly. It was the real possibility of losing that made winning rewarding.

But I was very specifically playing to get another "almost loss", not another "almost win" like the parent is saying.

Maybe that’s the difference between games of skill and games of chance.

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#155

Post by stavros »

Apocryphon wrote: post #154
stavros wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I was very specifically playing to get another "almost loss", not another "almost win" like the parent is saying.

Maybe that’s the difference between games of skill and games of chance.

Could be, yeah, that's a good observation.

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#156

Post by Apocryphon »

ssully wrote: post #140
soneca wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think HN is very different from Reddit, in the sense that I don’t think is addictive at all (for me). HN doesn’t have infinite scroll, doesn’t have infinite pages with different posts. And that’s what I think would make something addictive. You keep finding new content, without leaving the site , as long as you want, until you get some reward. On HN I have to reload the page to see something new. And I would have t…

Ehh, HN is just like any social media site in that the pleasure of using it is similar to that of IRL social interactions both good and bad. To be incredibly reductive, it's that you have a chance of having a really engaging conversation, or hearing some really awful takes (can you believe what he said earlier?!). HN isn't as bad as reddit for the reasons you stated, but it is addictive for the same core reason.

Yeah, from a UX perspective, HN is the same as Reddit, simply un-optimized.

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#157

Post by soneca »

hammock wrote: post #146
soneca wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think HN is very different from Reddit, in the sense that I don’t think is addictive at all (for me). HN doesn’t have infinite scroll, doesn’t have infinite pages with different posts. And that’s what I think would make something addictive. You keep finding new content, without leaving the site , as long as you want, until you get some reward. On HN I have to reload the page to see something new. And I would have t…

>all I have to do is come back every hour You don't see coming back to HN every hour as a problem?

You missed the point. Try to keep up with everything on Reddit or Facebook or Instagram or Twitter if you follow enough people. You can’t. It is impossible. It is designed to be impossible in order to be addictive.

HN it is not only possible, as you can wait a whole hour without any relevant update in posts. In the other sites soft reload of the feed after 1 second will change the posts.

But answering your question, I don’t see coming back every hour as a problem. Precisely because it is enough interval time to not incentivize an addictive behavior so you don’t feel the need to come back every hour. It is much easier to ditch any addiction you might have on HN because you are forced to take a break since you know there won’t be any new thing to give you a reward. On Instagram you can consume it 24/7.

Imagine if slot machines had to make you wait 5 minutes between plays. They would be exponentially less addictive

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#158

Post by soneca »

Apocryphon wrote: post #156
ssully wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, HN is just like any social media site in that the pleasure of using it is similar to that of IRL social interactions both good and bad. To be incredibly reductive, it's that you have a chance of having a really engaging conversation, or hearing some really awful takes (can you believe what he said earlier?!). HN isn't as bad as reddit for the reasons you stated, but it is addictive for the same core reason.

Yeah, from a UX perspective, HN is the same as Reddit, simply un-optimized.

That’s the point, it is un-optimized to the point where it’s addictiveness is an order of magnitude lower.

Optimization is what generates addictive behavior in social media. Optimize to feed you with infinite new posts with minimal fraction. HN simply doesn’t feed you with infinite posts in a day and adds friction to find new posts (UX focus on a front page with 30 posts and pagination).

Also, moderation plays a role. Social media addiction thrives in controversial topics while HN bans flame wars. The heated the discussion the heavier the moderation.

HN is not in the same league of Reddit, IG and others regarding addictiveness.

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#159

Post by Some20s »

boppo1 wrote: post #43
Barrin92 wrote: post #7

If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyable about so called low quality or idle activities and that they're normal part of a healthy life. I think it's deeply ironic that people will judge videogames on that basis but then to proceed to gamify and min-max their entire life because of this rat race men…

I spend on average[1] 4+ hours a day here, reddit or 4chan. I wish I had spent the time on other pursuits that I have consistently found more enjoyable and rewarding. 4chan in particular usually leaves me feeling some subtle mixture of mentally nauseous and despondent, although I laugh a lot and find interesting things I don't elsewhere. My over-browsing habit is absolutely an unhealthy and compulsive behavior. I'm 3…

Anecdotal experience, but I am 5 years younger than you and recently bought myself a Titan Pocket, a small phone with a square screen and a keyboard, so that my phone would no longer be as exciting to use. So it's a very unusual device and whenever somebody I know sees it they ask me why I bought it. When I explain my reasoning most of the people my age seemed to understand my reasoning and also said that that they spend too much time on their phones. Out of the people few years older most of them did not express having that much of a problem with their internet habits.

I definitely think that unhealthy usage of internet is a problem of which the extend in society is not yet fully understood. Especially due the problems that come along with it such as depression and sleep problems. (Atleast in my experience.)

And I also agree on the traveling part, my usage was even more extreme with >8 hours almost every day since the age of 17/18, but whenever I travelled I did not have any desire to spend that much time on the internet. Probably due to the "quality" of feelings that one has when travelling and the ability to spend lots of time with a friend or loved one. (When not travelling alone)

Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

#160

Post by Apocryphon »

soneca wrote: post #158
Apocryphon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, from a UX perspective, HN is the same as Reddit, simply un-optimized.

That’s the point, it is un-optimized to the point where it’s addictiveness is an order of magnitude lower. Optimization is what generates addictive behavior in social media. Optimize to feed you with infinite new posts with minimal fraction. HN simply doesn’t feed you with infinite posts in a day and adds friction to find new posts (UX focus on a front page with 30 posts and pagination). Also, moderation plays a role…

I disagree. The subreddit system breaks up content on that site into classifications. Yes, major subreddits have an unending stream of content just like the site as a whole does. But if one is interested in only niche subjects, the flow is rather low. HN, being unorganized with no sort of category or tag system, forces one to reckon with the stream in realtime.

There's often good nuggets that are buried under new, that don't make it to the front page. Sometimes one only serendipitously finds that content when being dumped into new after posting one's own submission. So if one really wants to search for content on HN, they'd be continuously refreshing new.

There are also plenty of heated discussions on HN. Just because they are using highfalutin pseudo-intellectual speak instead of common vulgarities doesn't mean there aren't as controversial topics here. And these days, HN is scarcely less politicized than Reddit, or any other place in the world online or offline is. Moderation can only go so far, and there are many threads that fall through the cracks.

The comment system of HN, without notifications, also invites one to continuously refresh threads. I personally use Dan Grossman's HN Replies service, but those who don't and wish to see replies on their content would have to no choice but to refresh their comment history.

HN can be just as bad as Reddit, but in different ways.

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