The Shallows deals with topic.
I bought a second-hand copy of 'The Shallows' by Nicholas G. Carr a few years ago.
To be honest I bought it to read it and laugh at it, but he made his point very powerfully and convincingly.
We need to reclaim our attention
171–180 of 458 posts
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
One form this takes is that people with some regularity claim that 'all this advertising doesn't work on them' while having an iPhone, ridiculously over-priced in ear headphones, designer clothes with large logos on them and shoes with very visible branding. Advertising works, on everybody. The only way to get to a level playing field is to filter it out of your life as much as possible. The only thing I haven't foun…
Is there a way to _prove_ one is less influenced by advertising? I have an Iphone but several models old, and most of my clothes are Amazon Basics/brands with no logo. So yea, I echo the claim. But I’m probably wrong. Where’s my blindspot? Is there a way to test how affected I am by ads?
A good benchmark would be your tendency to make purchases based on emotions, and also your tendency to make impulse purchases.
I volunteered in several marketing positions for educational non-profit organizations and university clubs, and read books about marketing and advertising to try to improve at my job.
A great deal of advertising tactics rely on emotional appeal first (e.g. identifying a human need or fear–like the want to belong, the want to find a good romantic relationship, the want to save time or money, the want to look smart–then selling a product or service as a solution. Another common tactic is to reduce friction to make a purchase, to make impulse purchasing easier (e.g. one-click purchases, very visible purchase buttons). A third is to use other high-pressure or manipulative tactics (e.g. a countdown timer to get a discount, or offering free gifts or books to make a purchase).
You're likely to reduce the effectiveness of these advertising tactics on you by being aware of them (though there's a high chance they still have an effect). Besides knowledge from reading about advertising, good habits to reduce ad effectiveness include: delaying purchases, especially large ones, by writing them on a list and seeing if you still want them after a month; avoiding regular, small purchases of ~$20 because they add up; and holding yourself to a personal budget, where impulse spending comes at the cost of other life goals (e.g. setting up an emergency fund, saving to afford a vacation with a loved one, or pursuing educational training).
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#173> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mista…
I think many of your examples are of times we failed to counter problematic tendencies as a society, gave up, and then even worse (in this case, more addictive time consuming activities) things come along. It's basically the realization of a slippery slope, where failure to stop one problematic trend is used to justify an even worse trend.
Society can survive with bad tendencies. Think about 50 years ago when American restaurants were full of cigarette smoke, and rivers would get so polluted they'd catch on fire. People still survived, even thrived. If we had ignored those problems, probably someone today would be saying "Opiates? Global warming? Just more moral panics, the way a few decades ago everyone was worried about the environment and smoking."
The dangerous thing is that once these trends become part of your society, it's hard to imagine the world without them, and hard to see why people make such a fuss about them because they can become an immutable part of your reality. You become blind to them. I'm sure, given enough time, we'll become blind to new negative trends in society just as we've become blind to previous negative trends. But that's not a good thing.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ease of access of today's distractions leads me to disagree. It's so easy to take out your phone to check a social media app, or open a tab on your laptop to a social media website like Reddit, versus turning on a radio or getting up to turn on the TV. A comic book doesn't fit in your front pocket, but a phone does; there's just so much less friction for distraction today.
And still, very few people read social media till they sleep deprived themselves. Very few people end up yelling at everyone around when something does not work out in game. Both of these are fairly common for gamers, but computer games are always defended here. So yeah, it is pure moral panic, except about something average HN commenter does not think he do.
Computer games have had a counter-backlash for the past few decades against moral panics such as they cause violence. But with the advent of loot boxes and the like, the new angle of addiction and games might turn that tide. The old inapplicable moral panic has come and gone, and one based on more easily-quantifiable reality will give way to a more broadly acceptable moral panic.
As for your point on social media, the past year’s spate of articles on revenge sleep procrastination would seem to refute that suggestion.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#175This for me is key, these sorts of problems cannot just be solved on an individual level. They are systemic. "Individual abstinence is “not the solution, for the same reason that wearing a gas mask for two days a week outside isn’t the answer to pollution. It might, for a short period of time, keep certain effects at bay, but it’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t address the systemic issues.” He said that our attentio…
How are those two examples even remotely comparable? Uninstall social media from your phone, delete your social media accounts, put your phone in a box when you get home, etc, etc, etc. These “problems” are trivially easy for an individual to solve. They are so easy to solve that I disagree with the basic premise that we even have a problem. I think we could rewrite this article from the perspective of any generation…
Well, in same vein, you can tell addict to 'just drop that needle', yet few do. Or cigarettes. Addictive behavior is, well, addictive, and few in population have the mental will to shed it off themselves once they get hooked.
Tobacco clearly kills you (and people around), ruins you and make you stink like pile of old crap. We still allow it, but regulate it heavily since bad effects are out there, everywhere. TBH I don't mind some regulation on too-powerful social media, they've enjoyed their free pass for way too long and so far they definitely didn't make the world a better place, in contrary.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#176> … It’s when you are doing something meaningful to you, and you really get into it, and time falls away, and your ego seems to vanish, and you find yourself focusing deeply and effortlessly… Oh. Have I missed “the flow”. I have been trying to get back into the mode from a while, with lot of self doubt in mind, “ you are just lazy”, “you are too distracted by Twitter “, “were you like this all along”.. It hit me hard…
You may be working on something that isn't really one of your interests.
Can you get into it while playing a game?
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#177> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mista…
> Those anxieties were right and wrong.
This opinion is respectful of nuance. Multiple social changes are converging, it is not just one the scapegoat of screen proliferation among toddlers, it is a re-examination of existential pillars unlike anything I've seen in my 50+ years (e.g., what is work? what is authority? what is worthy of protecting? what should one believe? how does one believe?).
I wonder if the new Satanic Panic of ADHD/OCD/Screens/Internet is a reflection of how children (hell, and adults) are internalizing the shakiness of what we had been taking for granted for so long. This proposal fits the reams of anecdotal reports from parents and teachers about kids becoming more difficult than they were in the past decades (and it also fits the past decade of bizarre social and political shifts across the globe).
Ironically, we won't be around for the historical analysis of WTF is actually going on because it'll take generations to parse it, distill it, and make a narrative out of it. Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau all saw the French revolution coming. In hindsight that is survivor-bias because we don't read the works of people who were wrong about the political state of France in the 18th century! So we can't even look around today and say: who's right? It has to happen before we can judge it.
Of course, that's not to say we should throw moderation and discipline to the wind when it comes to child-rearing. Seems like the age-old cure of moderation is all we have: if you only do something occasionally, how can it cause long-term negative consequences (barring meth, of course)? Any better ideas?
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#178> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mista…
Another possibility: the moral panic about comic books / rap music / low brow culture was justified and its ubiquity has done active harm to our society.
How?
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#179 It's not my fault, if in God's plan
He made the devil so much stronger than a manRe: We need to reclaim our attention
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chess is very addictive, and certainly endless. Same with cardgames. I'm sure your government bureau would quite grow fast, coming up with ever more warning labels.
Do we have an epidemic of chess?
You're getting downvoted for a perfectly reasonable question.
No we don't - because chess is a super-minority niche interest. The danger of social media is that it's social mass media - designed to be as addictive as possible to as many people as possible in as many different ways as possible using as many different techniques as possible.
And that's before getting into the dangers of targeted micro-niche ads used for political ends and/or individual belief and behaviour modification.
Without regulation it's an absolutely toxic medium.