Internet addiction and the habit of book reading • Hacker News Board

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#141

Post by marto1 » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 10:57 AM UTC

senortumnus wrote: post #22

HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in al…

> Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web.

Yes, but incentives are not there. Where incentives are is throwing flack at anything and anyone that is popular(including HN) since they also get clicks by association. So it simply does not matter how far and wide you shout stuff like that will always get created and will on occasion rise to the top.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#142

Post by Nasrudith » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:00 AM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #17

An aside, I find it a bit interesting that at some point we stopped talking about internet and game addiction. It used to be a hot topic, but I guess now that we are all completely addicted after decade of intense behavioral experimentation, none of us are interested in reading about it anymore.

It is because people lacked interest in it and ran out of things to say. The conversation was more or less saturated such that it occurs only mostly organically like an author's book coming out or an actual story related to the far dysfunctional outliers who let their kid starve to play more Everquest. Except with smartphones you can always half-ass most functions.

The media itself has an attention span of a small child in its pursuit of ratings so they move onto the next emotional source.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#143

Post by marto1 » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:03 AM UTC

anoncow wrote: post #57

wincy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

Somethings that helped me - 1. Delete frequently visited websites in chrome on Desktop and mobile and populate it with websites that you want to visit more frequently. 2. Create a new profile on YT and subscribe to channels you like that add value. 3. Keep a separate work phone. 4. Keep your personal phone away for certain times of the day 5. Read a book that you have been waiting to read on a dedicated Kindle or in…

I also agree #1 is big, BUT a lot of sites are platforms now so ideally you'd have something that just throws out the particular parts of the platform that train you for dullness, etc. My method is rss/atom feeds whenever possible, basically use alternative channels to get to the same information.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#144

Post by Nasrudith » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:05 AM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #50

chadlavi wrote: post #10

Internet is the new boogeyman. TV used to be it. Radio was it one time. Hell, _novels_ were treated this way. The one thing they all have in common is being new behavior patterns that people can worry and kvetch about.

Most moral panics are in-retrospect entertainment. But some are on the money.

Not really. Moral panics are like their names suggests panic, on baseless fear. Even if it is a problem to be concerned about like kidnapping they will focus on the wrong aspect that incites the most fear instead of what is actually germane. See "stranger danger" and fears of pedophiles looking for some lurking creeper when they should be looking at their divorced ex or a trusted part of their kid's life.

It is a common problem, they always look for some sort of cartoonish villain to blame things on.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#145

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:06 AM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #115

wincy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

I kinda feel like we were trained to be maximally receptive in an era when information was just recently proven to be the most valuable thing, but also was still kinda rare. And then they just fucking dropped the information hose into our livingrooms and... now I'm blinded.

It might be interesting to see how humans solve this. Maybe it will prople some denser / easier way to explain things. Or maybe we'll just stop the flood and go back to calm learning with the good old material.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#146

Post by Paul_S » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:12 AM UTC

While the article veers a bit all over the place at its core it's about a topic I have given a lot of thought to - relationship between information form and content and our expectations.

I still read books but I'm very against fetishising them. I don't understand the emotional connection with paper, typewriters and the general attitude that medium destroys the content. What I think happens a lot is the old correlation vs causation mistake.

Let me illustrate with an anecdote. When I was beginning woodworking I discovered a lot of educational youtube channels which I thought were great. At the same time I bought a lot of books. A couple of years later I realised that those youtube channels were mostly worthless but I still use those books to this day. The paradox is that it should be obvious that video is a much better medium to teach you woodworking. Unfortunately, due to factors outside of those dictated by form, it so happens that books are better, even though they are limited by their form.

Sometimes I think it's self reinforcing by people producing to the expectations of the platform - so the real limitation is not the form but the customer's expectation.

People quickly create mental shortcuts and hence the cargo cult of paper. I reject it. I often find that after reading a history book I learn and am entertained more by reading a few wikipedia articles on the subject. Paper is no guarantee of quality, and modern form is not the limit (modern form has in fact fewer limits than paper).

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#147

Post by dTal » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:14 AM UTC

0x008 wrote: post #119

wincy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

You might be interested in the book „dopamine nation“

Can it be condensed into a HN comment I won't get bored of halfway through?

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#148

Post by ekianjo » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:14 AM UTC

> In short, voracious readers ultimately become critical thinkers.

No relationship whatsoever. You develop critical thinking when you are in touch with reality, or when you do stuff, more than spending your time in books.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#149

Post by mountainb » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:15 AM UTC

The way to cure this is to develop a habit that severely limits undirected online browsing and socializing. Part of it is just an education of your own aesthetic sentiments. I read James Clear's "Atomic Habits" (not that this is a special book, I was just on another kick in which I really needed to improve my productivity and picked up a suggestion to use a physical counter of some kind to make a habit stick.

I bought a bunch of marbles, and for every bloc of time that I avoid undirected browsing or social media use, I move a marble from one container to the other. My goal every day is to get through an arbitrary number of marbles (160 right now), after which I can do whatever. If I slip up and open a social media page, HN, or start browsing newspapers, I dump all the marbles out of the container, which generally makes it impossible to meet the day's goal unless the slipup is very early in the day.

This has been nothing short of amazing for my life. One issue that I had is I had a physical twitch that would start developing after a couple minutes doing one thing, like a work project, at which I would feel the urge to check the news or social media. This twinge would show up and I would type into a browser window to relieve the sensation. Instead I more or less replaced that twinge with moving the marble from one container to the other. It's made it a lot easier to focus. Over time, I stopped caring as much about the news and became more easily satisfied by very briefly reading summaries every few days.

I think a lot of web addiction is less driven by thoughts or brain issues and more by physical habits akin to nail-biting or cuticle-picking. Most of the attempts that I've made to stop addictive behavior have not worked: they were based on schedules, timers, articulated goals, and other things like that rather than recognizing the physical trigger for the habit, the result of that trigger, and just redirecting the stimulus with another physical action rather than trying to suppress it.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#150

Post by Nasrudith » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 11:15 AM UTC

rlt wrote: post #107

Millennials and especially Gen Z are thought to have higher rates of depression and anxiety than previous generations. I would be very surprised if social media weren’t a factor. Despite making a career in tech I believe some of what we’re doing is very harmful to culture, mental and physical health, the environment, and democracy. At some point I would like to focus on mitigating these problems.

I disagree with tbe self-flagellation Zeitgeist. If we didn't have social media we would still have problems with all of those things. It isn't the well of all sorrows that the Zeitgeist is set on scapegoating it as.

It just displaced several of the other ills for more or less no difference. Remember obsessive tabloid celebrity culture and reality TV being big things? Things like news media unironically going "we interupt this story from Iraq for news about Britney Spears being released from jail?".(Ah yes, the same media claiming them going out of business would be terrible for democracy.) The Paris Hilton obsession?

Innane instagrammers and the pyramid scheme of posers selling guides to being posers are the same societal sickness more or less, manifesting its symptoms differently with the era. There will always be some innanity that is with us long before. From their obsessive focus from the dress at the court to the beads in Ugg's hair and bones spiked through his club!