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I'm an addict

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311–320 of 602 posts

Re: I'm an addict

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my mid-30's. I quit reading Reddit because in pretty much all the subreddits I was in I started to feel old. People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience I have now. I don't have this experience on HN really. I suspect I'm closer to the average age here. There is the occasional poor opinion but it usually gets downvoted pretty hard. Even people that I disagree with I learn a lot fr…

No matter what the subreddit is, it’s full of radically far left political comments. They get upvoted and any attempt to provide reason gets downvoted. Not sure how it became this way but perhaps it’s as simple as what you say: > People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience They’re kids. Or perhaps it’s more sinister and coordinated. Either way, the political component of Reddit has made…

I mean Reddit is an echo chamber in the worst possible way and it doesn't help that the admins don't understand the concept of a containment board and think if you delete the board the users and their opinions will evaporate into nothing, so you just get the same extreme groups being corralled into smaller and smaller concentrations with other extreme groups.

Re: I'm an addict

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I recommend religion and religious teachings which address this and many other daily worldly issues perfectly. This advice simply doesn't work if the recipient is an atheist. To me, Religious texts are made up fiction that hold no more meaning in my world view than Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. If you read enough fiction on a shared topic, you'll be able to pull the same number of 'enlightening' quotes from thos…

In context, your reply sounds like a negative take, but I find it rather positive. I've always found good fiction enlightening. There is no need to be so serious about it. My biggest criticism of religion is the very boundary drawn between fiction and scripture: that adherents to a religion must treat fiction as if it is reality. All too often, that means obsessing over obedience to a structure of rules/dogma, instea…

> My biggest criticism of religion is the very boundary drawn between fiction and scripture: that adherents to a religion must treat fiction as if it is reality.

Agreed. This is the part that really gets under my skin… its been my understanding for most of my life that the bible specifically is full of allegory, not history. Yet, so many many of the “believers” I encounter don’t know what “allegory” means. The bible is their literal truth!

Tbh, knowing this isn’t helpful. It somehow makes me more paralyzed in dealing with literal believers. It always feels like they know they’re full of shit, but won’t admit it. There’s a disingenuousness to it that very deeply bothers me.

Re: I'm an addict

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter what the subreddit is, it’s full of radically far left political comments. They get upvoted and any attempt to provide reason gets downvoted. Not sure how it became this way but perhaps it’s as simple as what you say: > People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience They’re kids. Or perhaps it’s more sinister and coordinated. Either way, the political component of Reddit has made…

As a non-unitedstatian, the entirety of reddit seems super right wing to me. You deserve free universal medical care.

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Re: I'm an addict

#314
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of feels like some kind of idle loop where my mind has some spare cycles and it defaults to hacker news and similar stuff, then it goes down the rabbit hole once started. Just making it a little harder to view the sites seems to help me a lot. I add 127.0.0.1 to my /etc/hosts file during work hours. I find myself looking at a broken page a couple times a day without even realizing how I got there, but it allo…

Is there a good MacOS¹/Unix-y way to automate this? (I’m guessing a crontab that swaps two versions of /etc/hosts is my best option but maybe there’s something more elegant?) ⸻ 1. I’m aware of ScreenTime, but it’s too easily overridden.

I use HeyFocus: https://heyfocus.com/

I bought it when it was a 1 time $20 purchase. You can define what times you want to block (Monday - Friday from 9am-5pm, for example). You can also lock preferences for when the Focus is active so you can’t change it. There’s also options for adding breaks.

It’s worked well for me. I know a little about myself and I need something like this to force me from being distracted. Whenever I find a new site, I add it to the list of blocked sites.

You can also block apps, or whitelist sites so everything except a few sites is blocked.

Re: I'm an addict

#315

I dont like the idea of replacing the time spend compulsively procrastinating with "learning a new language, getting a pet, going to the gym" is the right way. I see the root cause (for me atleast (used to read HN and blogs for 4 hours everyday)) is that i cant stand being with myself. During the last two months ive been trying to not panic when i'm idle. And not take out my phone or read the nearest material i can l…

Once you realize that idle brain time is when actual creative problem solving occurs without you conscious of it then its easier to let go. I definitely feel fine just staring out of a train window rather than my phone knowing this.

Re: I'm an addict

#316
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In broad strokes, yep.

I'm an atheist, yet I don't think science can answer why we exist and what is the meaning of life. I think those questions are syntactically valid but semantically invalid. We kind of (in the 'broad strokes' you say) think ( ) we know how we got here, how life got started, etc. But why? How do you know that? It's an honest question because, again, I don't think that question makes sense so I'd love to know your take…

The meaning of life is to reproduce, which implies to survive until that age at least. Without this, there would be no continuous life and the "meaning" question cannot even be asked, as it's a question asked by living things. Or only one living thing that we know of.

The why question has no answer nor will it ever have an answer. Life doesn't need justification or orchestration. It's a freak accident of molecules. It could have never happened and it can end by means of a disaster and the universe will happily continue without it.

As to what a human can/should to with their life other than not dying and trying to reproduce, that's an entirely cultural question. Cultural is a fancy word for: we made it up.

Re: I'm an addict

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel seen. My mechanism for remaining focused and getting through work has been to consume harder illicit substances, mostly cocaine. It's effective but definitely not sustainable long time and I'm not too sure where from here.

Desoxyn 5mg is highly reviewed by people who have it prescribed for ADHD.

Good luck getting prescribed that by any GP.

I am as above board as I can be when it comes to my medicine (never take more than 1 a day, never ask for more, etc) but the song and dance for getting refills, let alone a new or changed prescription, makes me feel like a criminal hunting for his next fix.

I can't imagine what it must be like for people who legitimately need opiates.

Re: I'm an addict

#318

Sounds like OP isn't necessarily an addict: they have ADHD. Half the article was them complaining about poor working memory, and the rest about getting stimulation/dopamine from unhealthy sources. Everyone has "a little ADHD". We all occasionally , forget things, hyperfocus on things we are excited about, etc. ADHD is the disorder of having those struggles so often it's debilitating. It stems from having an underdeve…

> Sounds like OP isn't necessarily an addict: they have ADHD

Two sides of the same coin imho. Both mechanisms are dopamine-driven.

Re: I'm an addict

#320

My desire to read the comments sections on reddit and increasingly on here completely baffle me. If I was sat in a room and the people in there were saying things as stupid as I see on reddit I would leave that room and wonder how the hell I ended up in it. What possible reason do I have to be wasting time reading the barely formed thoughts of what must be predominantly teenagers. Yet ... I find myself back there.

I'm in my mid-30's. I quit reading Reddit because in pretty much all the subreddits I was in I started to feel old. People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience I have now. I don't have this experience on HN really. I suspect I'm closer to the average age here. There is the occasional poor opinion but it usually gets downvoted pretty hard. Even people that I disagree with I learn a lot fr…

It has been a similar experience for me but with Slashdot.
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