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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

#351

Post by mountainb »

tbonesteaks wrote: post #245
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…

Thank you writing this. This was such a succinct explanation. Really helpful!

You're welcome. I just wanted to share what worked for me.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#352

Post by seaman1921 »

pm90 wrote: post #267
seaman1921 wrote: post #185

Very productive discussion here with lots of tips shared here. I am grateful that HN is one of the places which still feel worth the time spent. I would like to share my own thoughts as well.. Personally, my weakness is video-games and I have lost the ability to stop playing once I start. Gaming sessions usually last for hours and hours until I feel satisfied (Doesn't matter whether I am winning or losing). I tried s…

I doubt what I say might be helpful here, but in the spirit of sharing… I grew up severely addicted to video games. My parents didn’t buy me a PC until I was in college, and so I would befriend anyone in school who had a PC and was willing to let me play/ take turns in playing. It was pretty insane now that I think back… I didn’t even mind watching others play, I just loved video games so fucking much. In college, th…

Thanks for sharing, and congrats, you have made really good progress! Having a healthy relationship with video-games, while not prioritising it over everything else in life (except on some occasions ;)) seems like a really good end state. As for myself, I will only start playing again when I get a trusty accountability partner who would make sure that my relationship with gaming stays healthy :)

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#353

Post by seaman1921 »

pm90 wrote: post #269
BrianOnHN wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't scrutinized video games enough after the "video games cause violence" myth was debunked. Hands down the biggest addiction among my friends in their late 20s and early 30s. The problem is that none of them see it that way. They take breaks from "known" addictions (alcohol, cannabis) repeatedly, only to still fail to reach their goals, without ever acknowledging the gaming issue.

What kind of goals is it preventing them from reaching?

basically when you get addicted to video-games, you prioritise it over everything else in your life - eg. you start skipping meetings, both at work and hanging out with friends, skip spending time with your loved ones and even skip taking care of your own health (gym/sports/..)

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#354

Post by totalrobe »

christophilus wrote: post #197
viceroyalbean wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started reading Brandon Sanderson with this mindset and I'm loving it. Before I would only really read nonfiction but I would easily get distracted and didn't read much in practice. Now I'm reading like 100 pages a day and hopefully it improves my concentration. Even if it doesn't I'm really enjoying the books

Which books? I’ve only read his Wheel of Time books (the last 3 of the series). They were great, but I never picked up any of his other works.

Stormlight Archives are his latest and greatest. I'd recommend those if you were a wheel of time fan, or you could start with Mistborn. They're set in the same universe but it's not really necessary to have that background.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#355

Post by birtoise »

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…

LOL HN is just as bad. The difference is that here people pretend they are educated and use proper grammar.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#356

Post by birtoise »

tinyhouse wrote: post #73
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…

> tech workers and we have to face facts that tech workers are predominantly white and Asian and male In the US at least many tech companies have way more Indians that white. It's funny to me how Indians in the US are usually not in the white/asian conversation, and even often put in the "people of color" group. Just shows most people think race is about skin color.

Just wait til you find out which continent India is located.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#357

Post by criddell »

aw9f70gae wrote: post #242
toper-centage wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you place games in the "bad" side of things, this hich need to be reduced. I group gaming with reading because the kind of games I play require a level of focus and engagement, and my brain rather spend hours scroll HN and Reddit. It really is an uphill battle.

What kind of games? I’d like to stop playing addictive games and start playing games that are better for my mind.

Give crossword puzzles a look if you haven't in a long time. There are some very neat variations out there these days.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#358

Post by astrange »

tinyhouse wrote: post #85
hardwaregeek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view it as Indian ⊆ Asian ⊆ people of color. I agree that Indians are often neglected in the Asian discourse, although I think there's been more work to include non-East Asians in the conversation lately.

The term people of color is bad and shouldn't be used. We shouldn't classify people into group of colors. When people see an African American person they are likely to have different bias about the person than when they see an Indian person. The bias is not about the skin color, it's about the group the person belongs to. Another example, Indians and African American have completely different issues in the US. Indian…

"People of color" was invented as a way to help black people in the US by forming a coalition of them and every other minority/immigrant group. It's unclear if this worked, but it's probably effective at stopping the old system where immigrants (Italians, Irish) would "become white" by being even more anti-black than the WASP class they were trying to enter.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#359

Post by wccrawford »

criddell wrote: post #260
wccrawford wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also used to read a lot more books when I was younger, and for a while, I read only a couple a year as well. And then I started reading at bedtime. Sometimes that's 10-15 minutes, and sometimes it's an hour. However long it takes to get sleepy. Now I read about a dozen books a year, and if a book really grips me, I'll read it during the day at times, too.

I read at bedtime as well and I kind of wish I never started that. I've trained myself that reading means sleep. At any time of the day if I start reading something long, in ten minutes I'm starting to drift off. Any time I pick up my book to read, I have to step back a few pages and start there because I was in the process of falling asleep and don't really remember the last bit of what I read.

I was worried about that, but I find it doesn't happen to me unless I'm lying in bed, or I'm already tired. As long as I'm reasonably awake and sitting up, I can read for as long as I like.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#360

Post by marttt »

Claude_Shannon wrote: post #290
aw9f70gae wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of games? I’d like to stop playing addictive games and start playing games that are better for my mind.

Disco Elysium would be a good recommendation, I believe. It is almost all reading based, and the theme is philosophical/political.

The creators have revealed that the script of "Disco Elysium" consisted of roughly 980 000 words, and the 2020 rework "The Final Cut" was apparently even more massive, roughly 1.2 million words [1].

Its lead designer Robert Kurvitz is an Estonian novelist, and the development team largely consisted of members of a "small but loud" alternative cultural association. Another member of the team is Kaur Kender, cult writer and literary enfant terrible of late 1990s Estonia. I think his books are a required reading for Estonian high school students. It's a game made by poets, basically.

I'm not a gamer, but I think the game (entitled "No Truce with the Furies" during early stages of development) was largely based on a sci-fi and "proper literature" mashup novel by Kurvitz that imo gained a somewhat cult following in Estonia. The book pays remarkable attention to detail, and it took him about 5-6 years to write.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Elysium

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