I feel like the biggest evidence for the "moral panic" side of the debate is that the article never actually gets around to making the argument that attention spans were longer in the past. "We can see the effects all around us. A small study of college students found they now only focus on any one task for 65 seconds." - how can we evaluate this without knowing how long they focused 25 or 50 years ago?
We need to reclaim our attention
251–260 of 458 posts
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They have been designed to be so thrilling that normal life cannot compete. Maybe today's normal life, at least for us in the developed world. But I'd wager that spear hunting a wild animal in the woods with your fellow tribe-mates is far more thrilling and rewarding than any video game. That could be the issue, our brains don't differ from our ancestors who did things like those, regular life today lacks life-thre…
I’ve never gone spear hunting but I did play paintball once. It was thrilling, and when I woke up the next day I was more sore that I’d ever been in my life (including playing varsity sports). I realized that’s because it was the closest I’d ever come to ‘running for my life’. FPS mimic the pleasure of this experience, but without the physical engagement. It’s like the refined carbs version of hunting.
Really wish CQB paintball was more popular in the US. I’d love to play the equivalent of SWAT or Rainbow Six with paintball, but most of it these days seems to be “spray thousands of balls at large inflatable barriers on a tennis court hoping to mark a bit of your opponent’s elbow”. The CTF events seem fun, but I want something more like a Battlefield round if it’s going to be like that.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly without comic books, comic book movies wouldn’t have eaten Hollywood
I don't necessarily mean a problem as a matter of taste, more a destruction of shared cultural values, in particular those that are good for "society" like a belief in the value of work, family unit, deeper concerns than material wealth (e.g. god/spirituality) etc at least in the west / America.
I will never understand how people can suggest a specific musical genre or a medium is responsible for ruining society or "destroying values like the value of work" with a straight face. When I ask for empirical proof of such things, there never is any, just anecdotal statements.
As if country music never touched upon these sorts of topics. Or books. Or ...
Moral panics come from old people who don't like anything that's different from their youth. "Kids these days!" And in America, especially so if that thing happens to be dominated by black people.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't know about "low brow culture" but comic books and rap have some fantastic material in them. Consider works like Promethea from Alan Moore or In Her Magic Box by Atmosphere.
Or in pop culture, all the Marvel movies.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that the maintenance of the common physical environment we live in should be regulated, but that's not what we're talking about here is it? We're talking about regulating interaction between people, which is inherently paternalistic.
- We already regulate interaction between people (e.g. you can't throw a rock at someone when you disagree with them). Even if it's paternalistic, surely you're not proposing we should do away with those regulations. - The internet is a common shared environment, so its maintenance should be regulated like other environments to manage externalities. These points seem consistent with your philosophy and also permit re…
If it wasn't clear, I'm suggesting regulating nonviolent interaction is paternalistic, as is weaseling around it by expanding the definition of violence.
I agree we shouldn't let people physically destroy internet infrastructure. I don't think this is controversial. I don't think we should regulate how people peacefully interact.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#256Consider what this does to opinion and independent thinking. Most attention grabbing platforms are designed to use a variety of reward mechanisns to reinforce the politics of the platform. Some easily botted platforms (like reddit) will constantly bombard people with anti-civilizational content promoting "anti-work" or very toxic identity politics that further isolates the users, and, in turn, strengthens their addic…
Absolutely agree. I see anecdotal evidence of this everywhere. Its most noticicble with people who spend a lot of time "online" browsing placing like twitter, reddit, and tiktok (or even older folks who watch too much "mainstream" cable tv news). They tend to hold derivative and thoughtless "stock" worldviews that are clearly directly borrowed from the feed they subscribe to and not a result of deciding for themselve…
The anti-work content on reddit should be analyzed by the feds a bit. It is promoting illegal sabotage of workplaces much of the time.
It is also very similar to an organic movement from China that got banned and censored just before it suddenly became a top three thread on reddit every day for all of this year.
I suspect movements and divisions that are studied and analyzed in (adversarial nation) are then exported, translated, and weaponized by their information warriors.
What I have noticed about anti-work is that the insane opinions are amplified and encouraged. They promote and advocate for digital sabotage of your own work places.
This all has numerous effects down stream that would slightly benefit an adversary.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#257I've been doing 100% full stack while bootstrapping my current project for the past year and a half. So basically doing absolutely everything alone. It's really exhausting and progress is extremely slow. It's not a matter of skill or knowledge as I've been doing design, front end, and general programming for 20 years. At first I thought it was because I was on my own, so the workload was tripled, but then realized a…
This is very familiar to me, I've been trying to use some strategies to limit cognitive load to mixed success.
The most effective thing has just been taking better notes. If i know i take good notes, and i write something down and know i will go back and read it, my brain knows it's "allowed" to forget about it, and that greatly lessons the load. Sounds obvious and simple but sometimes it's not obvious that spending time to write down a mix of both really basic and really complicated stuff can make it so much easier to get stuff done.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#258Consider what this does to opinion and independent thinking. Most attention grabbing platforms are designed to use a variety of reward mechanisns to reinforce the politics of the platform. Some easily botted platforms (like reddit) will constantly bombard people with anti-civilizational content promoting "anti-work" or very toxic identity politics that further isolates the users, and, in turn, strengthens their addic…
Absolutely agree. I see anecdotal evidence of this everywhere. Its most noticicble with people who spend a lot of time "online" browsing placing like twitter, reddit, and tiktok (or even older folks who watch too much "mainstream" cable tv news). They tend to hold derivative and thoughtless "stock" worldviews that are clearly directly borrowed from the feed they subscribe to and not a result of deciding for themselve…
Further, I would add, it seems pretty scarey that many of the platform leaderships trend toward thinking toxicity in the leftwing direction is somehow not bad or censorable due to some absurd logical fallacy of victimhood hierarchies and such that allow leftist groups to claim their toxicity isnt toxic because they are "victims".
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Respectfully, these examples- radio and TV aren't even in the same league as the manipulation and engagement that comes from the algorithmic feedback loop that backs these services. The comparison is dangerously dismissive.
All this talk about "algorithmic feedback loops" is overselling the quality of said algos (eg. I get more interesting suggestions when I open YT incognito then I do when I'm signed in, I have to scroll through a bunch of stuff I have 0 interest on FB when I open it, etc.) and their importance. It's completely missing the actual attention grabbing factor here - there's a huge amount of content for consumption on deman…
Have you tried TikTok? In my experience their algorithm is phenomenal, strikinga good balance between delivering extremely relevant content and trying new content you might like
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
Do you have any links to share that would corroborate your suggestion that social media is as addictive or hard to quit as heroin or tobacco? That’s quite a statement.
I find these two examples particularly interesting because the regulations have done absolutely nothing. Heroin has never been more popular or more regulated. Tobacco is lightly regulated and the declines in usage are almost completely attributed to campaigns against smoking, not the regulations themselves.