We need to reclaim our attention • Hacker News Board

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#321

Post by krono » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:44 PM UTC

drawkbox wrote: post #238

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100%. Consuming media is an escape from reality, an escape from right now.

Exactly, social media is not reality. Repeat after me: Social media is not reality. In a way, social media is the new tabloid mixed with popularity contests and politics. Very easy to consume, mostly bullshit, mostly doomscrolling eventually, mostly divisive and tribal in the cult-like movements. It is somewhat scary when people believe the "movements" on social media, they are mostly being engineered. People's first…

An individual's reality is whatever their brain decides to make of it in the moment. Whatever it is matters not, they're now living it, and only they can change it.

Fighting this "metaverse" from down here is pointless. Showing people close to you how to recognise the manipulation and teaching them how to harden themselves against it is far more effective and worthwhile, I believe.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#322

Post by scythe » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:45 PM UTC

tux3 wrote: post #313

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. When I hear the argument "People always say this, they said this before with TV and videogames", it just makes me think that people are discounting some of the huge negative impacts these technologies have had (or at least contributed to). Just look at the overall physical fitness of, say, an average 18 year old in 1950 vs today in the US. By loads of measures (obesity, muscle strength, cardiovascular…

Developped countries share the same technologies, but this obesity and diabetes problem you're talking about seems largely rooted in North America. You're a little quick to correlate screens and health metrics. I don't think that explanation holds up at all if you consider data in other countries.

Physical strength has declined according to simple metrics (grip strength) in Northern Europe:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235282731...

In Japan the same trend appears but it's delayed by two decades:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1728869X1...

Obesity and diabetes have also trended upwards outside North America but this has been mitigated by better regulation of the food industry.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#323

Post by thegrimmest » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:49 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #320

thegrimmest wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a moral axiom: > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

And how are children, as men, not also created equal, yet still subject to paternalism?

I think children are excluded from the definition of "men".

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#324

Post by Apocryphon » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:50 PM UTC

thegrimmest wrote: post #323

Apocryphon wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how are children, as men, not also created equal, yet still subject to paternalism?

I think children are excluded from the definition of "men".

Surely not by the above moral axiom.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#325

Post by jrochkind1 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #42

> 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…

> Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply.

Except some of the past moral panics were about reading books, they worried that kids were reading the wrong books, voraciously!

Reading popular fiction didn't used to be considered something that took discipline, it used to be considered escapist entertainment, people did it because it was entertaining.

Millions read books and newspapers (not sure if that's what you meant by 'papers'), only a couple decades ago. On the subway in NYC for instance, you would be surrounded by people reading both paperbacks and newspapers. Not very long-ago, in the adulthood of people currently middle-aged! It's not true at all that this was a rare thing undertaken only by people applying discipline.

It might be no big deal that this attention has shifted to social media, just another shift in the particular mediums used for cultural production and consumption. Without even getting into that debate -- just the fact that you believe that reading things on paper is something that takes discipline that few have ever developed -- is astonishing to me. It has definitely not always been that way. It was not that way literally only 20 years ago, not very long ago at all -- it is remarkable that things have shifted so quickly you now believe reading books has always been a thing only for those with discipline, to be done distastefully like eating your veggies.

(It could just be a shift in mediums, but the essay tries to illustrate the deleterious effects on our lives of the new mediums, which I recognize from personal experience and observation, myself).

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#326

Post by nomadiccoder » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

philipswood wrote: post #168

zentropia wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have an epidemic of chess?

In the late 18-hundreds Chess was considered a bit of an undesirable epidenic. Check out this gizmodo article: https://gizmodo.com/chess-was-once-deemed-a-menace-to-societ...

This is a fascinating argument. I like the perspective of a game like poker having greater similarity to true war than traditional war games like chess or go due to ever-increasing information. This adds another dimension to the game.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#327

Post by freedom2099 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

pietrovismara wrote: post #126

trwhite wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games are immensely addictive. The burst of adrenaline some of the recent online FPS' give me doesn't compare to any other feeling or experience I've had as a human being. They didn't just happen to be this way. They have been designed to be so thrilling that normal life cannot compete.

Isn't for a game to be thrilling usually the ultimate goal? I'm not concerned about games being fun to play, that's what they are for. I'm more concerned about the dopamine exploiting patterns implemented in modern games, especially those targeted at younger gamers.

I think it depends on the person. I am an avid gamer (have all consoles and a high end Pc) but despise all multiplayer games! I love RPG and strategy games… the less frenetic the gameplay the better! For me it’s all about the story, the immersion in a new world and the mental challenge! I don’t understand how people can waste time shooting around at random people!

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#328

Post by Barrin92 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 7:59 PM UTC

hackingthelema wrote: post #67

I often wonder what the world would be like if the Buddhist sciences of the mind (e.g. mindfulness) were taught at all levels of society, as a priority, and TFA mentions it near the end, to say it's not enough: > Meditation is a useful tool – but we actually need to stop the people who are pouring itching powder on us. We need to band together to take on the forces stealing our attention and take it back. I'd argue t…

I'm sure every blue collar worker and mother of two has the time and temperament to sign up to the Bene Gesserit school

It's amazing how far the ideology of the unfettered market economy has seeped into our lives to the point that the idea that we should retrain the entire human species to fend off media manipulation seems somehow more practical than simply putting an end to the unethical business practices of an industry.

Imagine if a local company was pouring waste into the river and someone argued the solution was to offer anti-poison resilience training rather than stopping the problem at the source.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#329

Post by freedom2099 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #145

slibhb wrote: post #42

> 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…

> One reason so many people think they have ADHD is because they make that mistake. Speaking of which: has anyone had the experience where they sought to be evaluated for ADHD and the professional they went to said "nope, this doesn't look like ADHD"? I'm wondering if there are criteria people use to exclude ADHD as a diagnosis, or if the assumption is that if people are seeking diagnosis/treatment that they're exper…

Never… I have always been capable of extreme focus! Even now at work I regularly zone out for hours on a daily basis ignoring my phone and the company chat (people learned that of I don’t answer is because I am focusing and filtering out all distractions so just wait for me to answer when I can). Even most of my ho bows are about continuous focus on one single activity they leads me to ignore all the distractions!

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#330

Post by jrochkind1 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 8:05 PM UTC

batch12 wrote: post #48

jacquesm wrote: post #8

There is a veritable war going on for your attention, and the battlefields are your eyeballs, your ears and ultimately your brain. Psychologists have been enlisted, as they are in every war to try to win it for 'their side', be it one of the big silos or some dying TV or newspaper era behemoth, there is no reasonable way in which you can withstand that kind of frontal onslaught. The only way to really deal with this…

Yes. People talk about addiction to social media or other attention-farming software, but not many people really take it seriously. People think they are unicorns and while some can get addicted or manipulated-- they think "not me. I am too savvy." As long this issue just keeps getting shrugged off as a new version of tv-is-bad hysteria 'media' companies will keep making their dollars and enslaving the minds of the t…

Succesfuly quitting smoking cigarettes two years ago gave me some additional insight into what "addiction" meant for me, what my relationship with cigarettes/nicotine was like for me. Which led to me for the first time fully recognizing my social media use as addictive, not just as a metaphor.