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Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

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Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#161

Post by kennywinker »

ashirviskas wrote: post #142
joebob42 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The set of celiacs is much smaller than the set of people who think eating gluten free food is a good idea.

Afaik unhealthy diet increases gluten sensitivity. I have it and it sucks having your knees and elbows hurt for a week after eating a gluten rich pizza.

> Afaik unhealthy diet increases gluten sensitivity

I don't want to argue with your overall point at all, because I assume that whatever this sentence specifically means to you is true for you - but given that there is no actually objective definition of what a healthy diet is - it's hard to agree with the statement in general. I would feel like I was eating unhealthily if I had a can of coke every day, but that doesn't actually mean it's unhealthy. It probably depends on everything else I'm eating, how much I'm burning off, maybe even something as fine-grained as how fast I drink it. You would almost definitely feel unhealthy if you were eating bread every day, but as long as it was whole-wheat and had some good sandwich fixins in it, I'd feel pretty good about that.

Anyway, sorry if I'm being pedantic, but I feel like people toss around things like "healthy diet" as if we're all supposed to know and agree what that means.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#162

Post by StanislavPetrov »

nijave wrote: post #132
Telemakhos wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have to have a phone to pay for things like parking or for proof of vaccination status, then you have to carry a locator beacon that can be tracked, and your movements can be recorded. Who records them (Google, Apple, someone else) is irrelevant; the record can be requisitioned by your government or a Five Eyes partner at the touch of a few buttons. Your locator beacon comes with handy built-in cameras and mic…

You can carry a phone and leave it turned off most of the time. Unless you're paying only in cash, your electronic payments can be traced anyway

Turning off a spy-phone does nothing to prevent them from tracking you. You need to either take the battery out (impossible with most spy-phones) or use a faraday bag.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#163

Post by apson »

dnndev wrote: post #156
apson wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote the article. I am 19. Trust me I really love to do things like these which have chances to promote a good behavior. For the same reasons, I am off of Instagram for a year now (believe it or not, I think this would be really difficult for the current generation).

Sounds like we got the gender right but I am the older gentleman in this case. I completely agree with you about social media doing more harm than good. Keep up the good habits young man. That said I also believe having a phone with you at all times is a good thing for emergency use or crushing on the candies

Yes, that's true as well. Thank you, sir!

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#164

Post by throwawayboise »

sidpatil wrote: post #109
throwawayboise wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived to my mid-30s before I ever carried a mobile phone. In that time I do not recall ever needing to call 911 on a pay phone. How often has a mobile phone helped you in an emergency? For me, never. I think this is one of those easy-to-imagine-but-in-reality-rarely-happens justifications. The local university here has these emergency call-for-help stations all over campus. They have a blue light on top so they are…

> A couple of years ago there was a little feature story in the newspaper about how they had never--not once--been used in a real emergency. But the university did not want to take them down because they provided a feeling of security. How many real emergencies occurred near one of these boxes?

Probably none, if they were never used. Again supporting the idea that they are better at creating a feeling of security than actually making any difference.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#165

Post by 13of40 »

panaffa wrote: post #72

I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

I recall a time, many years ago, when you could be at a pub with a couple of friends and some really obscure question like whether it's a duck who has a corkscrew willie or a woodchuck, and nobody would know the answer and there was no way to find out, barring going down to the threadbare and underfunded local library to look it up in the encyclopedia, which itself was terse on facts and probably omitted ones like that for morality's sake. Now I could just whip out the black mirror and Google it.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#166

Post by shrimpx »

The key concern with my phone is losing my 2FA access. I have backup codes, but leaving my phone and my backup codes at home is not great, in case something happens to my home. In general I try to maintain a sense of redundancy wrt my data and access.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#167

Post by pizza »

manachar wrote: post #48
mostlysimilar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I had a feeling "without a terminal" was a typo and I wanted to look up the exact quote. I googled the sentence and expected the right quote to be at the top, but all Google gave me was results for helping people with terminal cancer cope with their coming death. It was only after I appended "Ian M Banks" that I got the result I was looking for. I'm honestly surprised Google failed that search so hard.

Google has become blinded by metrics focused on giving people what an algorithm things most people want. It's the digital equivalent of going to a restaurant and looking for vegetarian food only to be inundated with gluten-free and other health-fad foods. I suspect their algorithm is in a bit of a doom loop as it's being trained on people clicking worse and worse results of pages that seem clearly written to game the…

ironic. search engine optimization, rather than minimizing the entropy of search, maximized it..

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#168

Post by unethical_ban »

panaffa wrote: post #72

I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

It is indeed unhealthy, and if you haven't experienced not being away from technology for some defined period of time, you won't realize it.

Age: 33. I use the phone compulsively, like the person in the article. I reach for it instinctively when standing still in line, or waiting for anything, or while eating, etc. I have done this increasingly in the past three years.

Two weeks ago I went to play trivia at a bar, hosted by a friend. I left my phone at home intentionally. For the first few minutes it was odd, just sitting there with a beer waiting for the game to start. And in between, I would watch other people, or doodle on my answer sheet, or just think about life.

Today, I went and got breakfast and coffee and read a book for about an hour at the cafe. There was a place for people to put sticky notes about how they're feeling - it made me think about that, and make a submission. I read literature and history around migration and people. I listened to the espresso machine. I watched the homeless man sitting on the corner and thought about it.

There is so _much_ for the mind to do, so many thoughts and experiences to process in the downtime without a device. For me, that often requires not just turning a phone on silent, but leaving it in the car or at home entirely. And it is truly freeing.

If you aren't joking about your opinion, as someone who has lived in both columns, please do an experiment like the OP article. Leave the phone at home for an hour or two a day, for several days within a month. Maybe just a weekday evening after work, or for a walk/drive/brunch one weekend.

The billions of thoughts and pictures and memes, if you are not joking, is useless when you wake up after a decade of accomplishing nothing of value to your own development or happiness or meatspace[1] interaction with the world.

[1]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/meats...

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#169

Post by hooande »

lavoiems wrote: post #98
panaffa wrote: post #72

I'm part of the new generation and I think the opposite. I am obsessed with my phone and the Internet. And I don't think it's bad. It's extremely stimulating in a way real life is orders of magnitude worse at. Point of reference, born around 2000. There's no going back for me. I want my phone at all times to have access to billions of possible thoughts, pictures, memes. It's literally a god like power.

It is an interesting perspective. My personal opinion is that this constant stimulation is costing me focus when I need to do work and ultimately hurts my capacity to do things. While the internet and computing is a strong power, it does not yet replaces our cognitive capabilities to solve problem and interact with others. I hope it never will!

I don't blame my phone or the internet for this. Before smart phones the joke was that people would procrastinate by cleaning their room or organizing their desk. It's not about the technology. When it's time to focus, focus.

Re: Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

#170

Post by throwntoday »

dale_glass wrote: post #155

Personally I find modern technology to be very liberating. When I was a child, even going around my own city was a stressful thing. What if I get lost? What if I run out of money for the train? How do I know I got the bus in the right direction? (the darn things didn't announce stops at all). The first times I traveled involved printing a stack of papers including names, addresses, and maps. Getting to a hotel in a c…

Agreed. Years ago I decided to stop texting people as the primary form of contact and instead call them. Now everyone I know calls me cause they know I don't text. This cut down my phone usage by a lot.

I also don't pull it out to pass time, instead I just try to think about my schedule and sort out thoughts. I remember reading someones comment on HN where they said it's ok to be bored, that down time is the best for organizing things in your head, and I've stuck to that ever since.

And although I hardly use my phone I still feel some anxiety not having it when I leave the house.

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