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Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

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Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#321

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

lr4444lr wrote: post #235
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…

Can you get absorbed in a movie or binge watch a TV show? If so, I suspect your attention ability is still intact. You just need to re-practice consciously directing it again. I still struggle with it too, but was able to "get lost" in a book again. It was key though to move my phone way out of the room, and was hard to get started.

I can't stand most modern media, the only way it's tolerable is by watching at 2x speed.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#322

Post by baby »

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.

Same for coffee. It’s now a socially accepted drug and I’m wondering if there’ll be a future where it’s badly seen to work without drinking coffee (“how can you even be productive?”)

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#323

Post by nefitty »

mountainb wrote: post #149

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 bough…

I am able to achieve this by supplementing with the amino acid precursor N-acetyl cysteine. I've done the container goal with paper clips, have used pomodoros, full-time accounting, to-do lists, commitment devices, aversion stimulus, and on and on. I don't use any hacks or techniques any more.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#324

Post by ThinkBeat »

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…

Whilst I agree with your sentiment, I do think that including The Financial Times (ft.com) with Reddit, FB, and Insta.

FT is one of the few newspapers that I feel still doing serious journalism that I can sit down with, read and feel better informed at the end of it.

A good newspaper and I do prefer paper if at all possible, is a stimulating source of reading. Most newspaper has given 90% of their space to gossip, sports, "lifestyle" WTF does that even mean? I still have not figured that out, lifestyle of the rich and famous, random paid for content.

I have for a long time wanted a service that curates today's real news and presents it in an easy-to-read format. I would prefer an epub, could take a pdf.

Nothing that exists today that I as a regular person could afford.

I do think it would be fun to see what the presidential write-up is every day.

Hmm maybe I can find it declassified from years in the past??

(I have no love for USA Today so I dont try to argue that one. )

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#325

Post by Mezzie »

fouric wrote: post #297
Mezzie wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. As somebody who's always had a strong interest in archiving, information organizing, and information persistence, this is certainly... an era. It's so hard to stop, and it's a lot harder when my personal life is so intertwined with the things I'm professionally/intellectually interested in. For example, I'm fascinated by how people on TikTok conceive of the algorithm and the mutual push-pull of category definit…

> How the hell do I explore that without spending 2 hours derailed by fun history facts? Answer: I do not. Actually, the answer is "train your brain". Nobody's forcing you to get distracted and start clicking/tapping on other things - you're taking the actions yourself. Now, of course, TikTok is designed to pull you in as much as possible, but ultimately it's still completely manageable. The maximum addictiveness of…

I was being facetious, but yes, this is the actual answer.

Meditation helps me a lot, but the key to cutting out addictive habits for me has always been replacing them with something else, and nothing so far has quite scratched my intellectual itch like studying people online except grad school, and that doesn't count because that's part of what I was studying anyway. Usually, people are encouraged to do other things, but I think for those of us who are genuinely fascinated by the Web, it can be difficult. Imagine if you were genuinely really interested in the medical effects of hard drugs but the only way to study them was to do them.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#326

Post by hardwaregeek »

zozbot234 wrote: post #318
hardwaregeek wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a huge fan of the "make it about race/gender/politics" rhetoric, and frankly this demonstrates the issues I mentioned in the post. The entire framing of "making XYZ about race/gender/politics" implies that XYZ was not about race/gender/politics and that the addition was simply unnecessary. However these issue of race/gender/politics permeate our society and do have an effect on a lot of issues. If I'm being h…

I'm not sure where parent argued that we should not be concerned about police brutality, hate crimes, or the ongoing fraying of the social fabric which gets commonly internalized as a sense that "society is not validating my existence". Framing those issues are purely matters of race/gender/factional politics is just as harmful.

I'm also not sure where I argued that we should frame it as purely matters of race/gender/politics. Certainly there are other aspects and other lenses. But these are intersectional issues and race/gender/politics happen to be crucial lenses.

I don't mean btw to straw man the comment by mentioning hate crimes/police brutality/etc. First of all, race shows up in much more mundane stuff like awkward conversations about where you're really from, or people making implicit assumptions about my parental background based on my being in tech. It's my bad for not mentioning those as well.

However it's also that these dramatic things, as thankfully rare as they are, have a pervasive effect on one's life. I've never gotten hate crimed, nor do I know anyone who has (knock on wood). But I have thought about whether to buy my parents pepper spray. I have wondered each time a mentally ill person steps on the subway and looks in my direction if I'm about to get hate crimed. My Asian friends and I joke about it because it's something we think about in our day to day life. I can't speak for white people but I don't think most white people have that concern. And if this isn't part of your daily fabric, your daily existence, you might not understand that nobody is "bringing race" into stuff as much as they are sharing their racialized daily existence.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#328

Post by hardwaregeek »

verse wrote: post #314
hardwaregeek wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay I do like HN—I'm here for a reason after all—but it is flawed like any other curation. For one, I find that it veers extremely literal and nerdy. For some topics such as programming and math, this is wonderful, as programming and math are both topics where literalism and nerdiness are required. But in some cases this blend is not great. I wouldn't put HN as a great place to get your knowledge of more social, cul…

Do you have any examples of places someone could go to find more "social, cultural content"? I don't think my info diet is very balanced. I'd love to be introduced to other places where people talk about different things

I struggle with this too. Books and newspapers are a good resource of course. It's also quite good to read some academic humanities and social science writing. HN and other fora make a big point of free speech, open minded discussion, but I find that there aren't always articles from intellectuals in the academic sphere on HN. Of course these sources have biases of their own, but isn't the point of open minded free speech to read those with whom you disagree?

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#329

Post by easymodex »

fouric wrote: post #305
najqh wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, doesn't work for me. I know the games I like; they are all old and I know I love them. I don't follow the news on new games at all. I simply can't concentrate on the games I like for more than 15 minutes. I get distracted, I alt-tab out all the time, and eventually I close them. It's the same with movies or books. It takes a superhuman effort for me to sit still and watch a movie. If anybody has any recommendati…

Two suggestions: (1) Try learning a highly complex game like Dota 2. You can't alt-tab (well, you can, but you'll likely die fairly quickly), and the sheer number of things going on at once will require your full attention... but there are still many small things that you can succeed at that will keep it fun while you're learning. (2) Consider doing some "concentration training" where you engage in a non-media activi…

> Dota 2

Don't do that, highly addictive.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#330

Post by bobiny »

estaseuropano wrote: post #106
bobiny wrote: post #100

I read less books than when I was school age. I have a couple that are sitting in Books app that I read a few pages at a time. I think the “problem” is twofold: 1) phones are too much 2) too many books 1: using a book used to be easier than computer. You had to turn it on, wait, sit in a chair. With book it’s just grab and start reading in any position. People were/are reading standing up in Moscow metro. Computer wa…

I find your point 2 very odd on both counts. First, I would find it pretty surreal to walk out of a movie theater because of 1-2 minutes of exposition. You literally spend more time walking from the booth to your seat or watch advertisements before the movie starts then the few noments of on boarding for those that don't know the universe. Second, there are literally millions of books published each year. Yes many ar…

I thought Hellboy was a bad movie, because it’s more tell than show. I think voiceover is appropriate in special cases like Dexter’s inner monologue, because it shows separation of his public and private persona. I wouldn’t mind exposition scene at some point if it fits in the story, like for example someone telling a bedtime tale.
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