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Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

theguardian.com

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Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#61

Post by sph »

WalterBright wrote: post #59
sph wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is easy if you trivialise it enough. This is why self-help books are America's #1 genre and literary export. Real life, on the other hand, is a tad more complicated. The rule of thumb is don't waste time with people that think they have all the answers. Either they're lying to you, hopelessly naive, or have no real life experience. > Drug addicted? Treatment is available > Criminal record? Start your own b…

I specifically wrote it wasn't easy.

The "it isn't easy" is the bloody important part that none of your slogans touch upon, so they're not even worth the memory they're stored in. There is no insight to be gained from any of them.

Or do you truly believe that people with hardship in their lives are so hopelessly stupid that they don't know they will have to put some effort, instead of sitting around crying over themselves? Come on now.

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#62

Post by WalterBright »

ajb wrote: post #54
WalterBright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In our modern society, everyone is a victim and it's always someone else's fault. My opinion that people in America do have choices and their lives are the sum of those choices inevitably elicits a lot of rather angry responses. All the people I've gotten to know over the years are all where they are as a result of their choices. The interesting thing about deciding to own your choices is it's empowering - you can ch…

Responsibility does not mutually exclude . I'm a bit disappointed in a compiler engineer not being alive to the logic of that. So many political arguments (in both directions) based on this bogus reasoning, that A can affect an outcome, so therefore B who exerts influence on it has no responsibility. Doesn't work that way.

Since you brought up compiler engineer :-), I'll share that at the outset 100% of my colleagues and friends all said I had zero chance of succeeding writing compilers. They literally laughed, and it was a running joke among among them. The only person who believed in me was my dad, and he had no idea what I was trying to do.

I chose the path. Everyone tried to kick me off that path. I could have easily stayed with my nice, safe, corporate job at Boeing. Lots and lots of people do.

Influence should not be conflated with force. If someone put a gun to my head, I'd probably do whatever they ask. In fact, I have. Twice. That's force. It's a heluva lot different from mere influence.

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#63

Post by jasona99 »

WalterBright wrote: post #48
Aurornis wrote: post #23

All of these supposed revelations that companies try to make products that people will use were supposed to empower people to break free from these addictions Yet anecdotally, these narrative seem to give people more excuses to engage further with their addictions of choice. I’ve heard so many variations of “It’s not my fault I use so much (Facebook|TikTok|Reddit), don’t you know they have people employed to make the…

In our modern society, everyone is a victim and it's always someone else's fault. My opinion that people in America do have choices and their lives are the sum of those choices inevitably elicits a lot of rather angry responses. All the people I've gotten to know over the years are all where they are as a result of their choices. The interesting thing about deciding to own your choices is it's empowering - you can ch…

I agree to some extent that people can control their situation with choices, but I would like to push back on a few of those examples as I think it's a little disingenuous to say everyone can simply make choices in our society and do better. For example, living in a bad location also often means one would have limited options for work, which limits their income and prevents them from being able to just move out of that situation. Limited free time from working multiple low-paying part- or even full-time jobs to support oneself or others can make paths to gaining more education, whether free or not, just not feasible. Good luck getting a somewhat reasonable SBA loan with a criminal record! I know you are giving very simple examples, but many of them fail to account for the situation one would be in to require improving the situation. In theory, yes, I agree, there are ways out of bad situations simply by taking the correct steps, but those paths out may just not be open for people in the very situations where they might most benefit.

I've seen many truly impoverished areas of the United States (large swathes of West Virginia primarily come to mind, no offense to the West Virginians on here) where these paths are not tenable. Many of these areas straight up don't have regular internet access. These whole regions are lacking in education and options for mobility are severely restricted. I simply do not believe it is because everyone in that area has decided they just don't want to do better for themselves, but that there are systemic problems preventing these people from being able to take these steps.

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#64

Post by generic92034 »

cptroot wrote: post #45
apsurd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with this article it seems. It's thought provoking. Worth the read. But the conclusion is rather underwhelming: it's an environment & societal problem. Also Big-Co is evil. That's not wrong per-say, but gee-whiz looks like we gotta add it to the growing list of how everything's terrible. The message is good just missed an opportunity to carry over the energy into action. I'll try: since we can't change society s…

One point that the article did land for me was the potential for individual change to be unhelpful. No-phone dinners only work if there isn't any sense of anxiety about not having your phone at dinner. That anxiety only goes away if you have an environment that allows you to unplug. Systemic changes like requiring workplaces to allow employees to have "off times" seem necessary to remove some of the baseline anxietie…

> That anxiety only goes away if you have an environment that allows you to unplug. Systemic changes like requiring workplaces to allow employees to have "off times" seem necessary to remove some of the baseline anxieties many of us have.

Are there really so many employers requiring employees to be permanently on-call? I would only consider working in such an environment if they would be paying enough to retire in a few years.

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#65

Post by WalterBright »

sph wrote: post #61
WalterBright wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically wrote it wasn't easy.

The "it isn't easy" is the bloody important part that none of your slogans touch upon, so they're not even worth the memory they're stored in. There is no insight to be gained from any of them. Or do you truly believe that people with hardship in their lives are so hopelessly stupid that they don't know they will have to put some effort, instead of sitting around crying over themselves? Come on now.

> that they don't know they will have to put some effort

I wrote that because the usual responses I get are that it isn't easy. Thought I'd deal with that up front.

My dad used to tell me I wasn't afraid of hard work. I could lie down right next to it and go to sleep.

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#66

Post by WalterBright »

jasona99 wrote: post #63
WalterBright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In our modern society, everyone is a victim and it's always someone else's fault. My opinion that people in America do have choices and their lives are the sum of those choices inevitably elicits a lot of rather angry responses. All the people I've gotten to know over the years are all where they are as a result of their choices. The interesting thing about deciding to own your choices is it's empowering - you can ch…

I agree to some extent that people can control their situation with choices, but I would like to push back on a few of those examples as I think it's a little disingenuous to say everyone can simply make choices in our society and do better. For example, living in a bad location also often means one would have limited options for work, which limits their income and prevents them from being able to just move out of th…

> move

Allow me to point out the millions of immigrants that walk across a continent to try and slip over the border into America. The ones that make it rarely have more than the clothes on their back.

Yet they moved away from a bad situation to a better one, and have made it to every corner of the country.

> but that there are systemic problems preventing these people from being able to take these steps.

Nobody there has their feet nailed to the ground.

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#67

Post by stevage »

A pity it didn't get specific at all about the mechanisms that steal focus.

And even though cold turkey detox is not a viable solution, there are things individuals can do that help. Like disabling notifications for absolutely everything except messages from a small number of people.

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#68

Post by stevage »

wand3r wrote: post #12

This article was a tough read because of the meandering prose and weird personalization narrative they shoe-horned in. > We could, for example, force social media companies to abandon their current business model Cool that the Guardian flew this person to like 3 different locations for the story. Great conclusion. We could also solve poverty by giving everyone high paying jobs... Tristan Harris is referenced in the a…

That's not a good analogy. We actually could do this, in the same way that society has banned various other categories of harmful products.

The business model of slave plantation is another one that society got rid of.

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#69

Post by NavinF »

stevage wrote: post #67

A pity it didn't get specific at all about the mechanisms that steal focus. And even though cold turkey detox is not a viable solution, there are things individuals can do that help. Like disabling notifications for absolutely everything except messages from a small number of people.

> disabling notifications for absolutely everything except messages from a small number of people

Doesn't everyone do this? Maybe that's why I find articles like this so confusing

Re: Attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen (2022)

#70

Post by ryandrake »

underlipton wrote: post #51

There seem to be a lot of comments cluck-clucking about personal responsibility, and government intervention is bad, and the way this is written is off-putting, and- And no acknowledgment about how many on here can't really give an unqualified opinion because of where their paychecks originate. I can, though, and here it is: We've done this before, with cigarette companies, treating them with kid gloves and trying to…

I think 100 years from now, we're going to look back at Social Media like we currently look back on child labor and cigarettes. "Why on earth didn't we regulate it earlier?" All the signs are there that this stuff is terrible, but we plug our ears and pretend people are rational and will do what's good for them, and insist on treating corporations with kid gloves because stock market must go up. HN has a thick, libertarian "everything government does is bad" streak running through it and we sit at a position of great privilege--the privilege of being well-off techies, having agency over our lives and the ability and choice to avoid things that are bad for us. So you're not going to get much sympathy from this crowd.
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