"There is something in our soul that loathes true attention much more violently than flesh loathes fatigue. That something is much closer to evil than flesh is. That is why, every time we truly give our attention, we destroy some evil in ourselves. If one pays attention with this intention, fifteen minutes of attention is worth a lot of good works." (Simone Weil, Waiting for God)
We need to reclaim our attention
331–340 of 458 posts
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, when we are lucky to have a several days long Internet breakage at home (we don't use cellular Internet), all of a sudden things which had been 'not possible' or 'so hard' or 'so tiring' for months or years suddenly become possible or normal or even obvious. We even manage to do things together with family members. Imagine!
Is that really so? Because I do find myself at situations when I don't turn on internet and none of that happens. Books are as boring as with internet, I just don't like them anymore. I don't end up doing something all that great as a result.
TheN you are probably reading the wrong books!
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#333The problem isn't as much that social media is addictive. The issue is that people aren't happy with their other options of what to do. If you have a draining job and don't have energy to put into a hobby, or you don't have lots of friends to hang out with, you're much more likely to waste time on something addictive.
This 100%. Consuming media is an escape from reality, an escape from right now.
In this, similar to (other) things recognized as addictions.
Eg (just first thing I found googling for this commonly heard theory/model):
> A strong belief exists among addiction treatment specialists that the primary reason addicts remain addicted is less about pleasure-seeking and more about their need to escape and dissociate from the pain of his or her (often trauma-based) emotional isolation.
http://www.consultant360.com/articles/why-do-people-addictio...
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Everything the free market does is voluntary by definition. Every "intervention" is by definition not. In some ideal world, where both parties of an exchange hold equal bargaining power, the "free" market might be "voluntary". This is certainly not the current state of affairs, though. Being able to "choose" between a crappy option and a horrible option is anything but voluntary: "you can choose to work for me for…
Being able to choose between horrible options is exactly the definition of freedom. Believe it or not many people would choose free destitution over pampered slavery. It is exactly the ability to make this choice, at the most extreme level, that should be respected. To take an maximal example: you should be able to sell your kidneys to fuel your heroin habit, for no other reason than because no one can claim more own…
If the two horrible options were free from context, sure. But that's hardly (if ever) the case. It is very convenient to start from a place where A has power over B, then say "B is free to choose whatever crappy options A offers, because... freedom".
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#335Earlier 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…
Slight tangent re: fitness. Over Christmas my dad and some similarly aged people (70’s) were reminiscing about their childhood, and pointed to the lack of Doritos as memorable. Junk food was neither the product of decades of addictiveness-enhancing R&D not cheap. A poor person today by contrast has junk food as the cheapest option.
Cheapest by effort plus taste divided by cost maybe. It’s still much cheaper to buy a bag of rice and a bag of beans and some frozen veggies. You can eat sub $1 meals
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
How do I provide empirical proof? Survey data or something over a 30 year time span? Gallup has some interesting confidence in institutions data you can parse but doesn't really strengthen my point IRC in case you are interested.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.as...
I didn't get into porn even which I thought of after the fact, the lowest brow culture possible and it seems likely its pervasiveness and how future adolescents will learn about sex through consuming it will have profound impacts no?
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#337[deleted]
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I expound in a conversation with Apocryphon attached to that post
> 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. This is what conservatives have been crowing about since the 40/50's when black music started dominating the airwaves. It's a really old argument that is literally moral panic wi…
Thanks for adding a subtle accusation of racism or at least guilt by association to the discussion.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#339> 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…
This is basically echoing the "you just need to be more disciplined" argument from the article.
Re: We need to reclaim our attention
#340> 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…
> but it's always the same story. This is the reverse slippery slope fallacy. There is no threshold, no effect size where this tuns net negative, etc. We took these 10 steps, were worried and nothing happened, we can do more steps.
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