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Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

kenklippenstein.com

81–90 of 176 posts

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#81
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you killfile HN users?

I use personal software: https://overmod.org/ If I'm being entirely honest I made it in a very 'scratch-my-own-itch' way so you're better off just writing it yourself. Example idiosyncratic choices I went with: all lists are public, allow subscribing to other people's lists, no login required for lists, only Google Chrome support. I doubt anyone else shares those preferences.

I like your killfile lists

> Roshan's Socialism Slop

I omce made a podcast screener for my kids, and that was a category I screened for there as well.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he is trying to say is that if we all sit down with each other and stop requiring that people agree with our worldview before engaging in good faith, we would find that we actually get along peacefully. He is saying that it isn't as bad as he thought it was before he experienced a situation where that happened.

See them discuss about how much someone of them gets paid or taxed, if he has medical help if needed or if he can afford to live where he's living now.

This person lives and breathes politics, he is a political blogger. Just interacting with people outside of politics was new for him.

He isn't saying 'ignore politics', and he isn't saying 'we can all agree on everything'. What he is saying is 'making your life about political issues distorts your perspective to where you think that everyone hates one another to point of declaring a civil war' and is advocating sitting down and just socializing with people without the baggage.

As the kids say 'its not that deep'.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#83

Escaping the internet on a luxury trip doesn’t disprove political conflict… it just shows how privilege can opt out of reality and sell the experience as clickbaity insight.

It's important to have principles and to speak up for them around others, and to get your information from sources of truth. But it is not important for most people to be plugged into a news mainline every day to read about the latest absurdity of our flailing country. Until or unless there is mass unrest and sustained protests or a general strike, the only thing we can do is vote and boycott, and if you live in a sw…

Finishing my PhD I kinda did this same disconnect. Only really getting news by word of mouth or maybe weekly checking Reuters front page. Effectively quit Twitter and BlueSky. It's about a year since I started and I don't regret it for a second. I rarely feel like I've missed something important. Honestly, if it it's important then people will be talking about it.

I'm on HN more now and honestly a bit disappointed with myself for that but even here is less baity than social media and news. It's easier to select topics as well. I just feel myself get angry when I get on those platforms and it reminds me to get off.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#85
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he is trying to say is that if we all sit down with each other and stop requiring that people agree with our worldview before engaging in good faith, we would find that we actually get along peacefully. He is saying that it isn't as bad as he thought it was before he experienced a situation where that happened.

But this is an environment where people aren’t talking about real and very important issues. We obviously get along as a society when we are just doing day to day things. You don’t have to be on vacation to witness that. But when it comes to discussing whether my trans friends have basic human rights, or whether we should treat foreigners like criminals with no due process by default, whether we should build coal pow…

If you want to get people on your side, the best way to do that is not to argue with them, but to be friendly with them. This doesn't mean rolling over and letting them say untrue things or not advocating for causes that are important to you, but it means respecting that other people have different views and putting aside disagreements to socialize with them. There is a reason why armies disallow 'fraternizing with the enemy'.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#86
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that exactly what privilege is though? A measure of a person's ability to be part of that self-selected pool, and to shield yourself from issues that affect other people?

Googling it, looks like the trip costs around $6.5k for 2 people for a week. Expensive, but not out of reach for most Americans. I mean we're on HN... if anything we're more likely to be in a wealthy bubble here. On average. There's plenty outside Silicon Valley but this place is a bubble too.

I would suggest most Americans and most people on HN have a tremendous amount of privilege, do they not?

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#87
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in democracies. The price of entry is a citizenry informed enough to choose how they want many issues of state handled. The alternative is worse, and the result of an uninformed citizenry can be disasterous and a regression towards non-democracy.

The price of entry is actually just being born in the country (or at least that's all that's required in most democracies). You personally might have the expectation that when you vote, you should be informed about what you're voting on/for - but that is entirely optional. edit: I'd love to hear about some of your proposed solutions to solving this problem ;)

Increase education funding, mandate a couple of levels of free choice liberal arts/philosophy type courses to ensure people have to expand their thinking a little, focus on critical thinking and media analysis skills in primary and secondary education - not as the main focus but certainly as important, civic building classes.

News media gets harsh anti-monopoly rules: no more billionaires owning every station in every jurisdiction, in fact no more conglomerates whatsoever. More independent funding for local news: I'm content for a bunch of these to go bankrupt on a regular basis but we'll sponsor more people putting out independent journalism.

At an international scale spin off an entity like the Federal Reserve which would be the Federal International Reporting Bureau with some iron clad rules about funding changes and the sole mission to baseline the availability of boots-on-the-ground international journalism, with a mission charter the citizenry must have accurate reporting to understand how they will choose leaders to guide international politics. This one would be tricky to get right, I suspect you'd probably end up tying resource allocation to government funding alotments and the like via some automatic mechanisms.

The first and last are probably pie in the sky: really let's start by shredding a couple of media empires into 50 different fiefdoms and let them battle it out for views, but there'll be no more mergers or cross-media ownership that's for sure.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#89

Escaping the internet on a luxury trip doesn’t disprove political conflict… it just shows how privilege can opt out of reality and sell the experience as clickbaity insight.

can a poor person not disconnect in the same way? I think plenty already do without meaning too, lots of tech-illiterate truck drivers and construction workers with flip phones.

Technically you don't even need a flip phone to disconnect from the media and the news. Plenty of people have smartphone but choose not to care about what happens in the world, at least what we have no say in it.

Although if I was American, I think I'd be pretty interested (worried) in what my country is becoming under Trump presidency.

But then, until the elections there is not much one can do.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#90

I had a similar experience many decades ago, taking a long overland trip and being out of touch of news for almost half a year. Coming back, I realized that the world had gone on perfectly well without me following all the daily drama. Most news seemed so irrelevant for a while after that trip. Of course I fell back in to following the news, and the rest of the internet. Thank you for reminding me that it is not so i…

I did this except it was more like a month. When I got back I realised how much happier I was to be off of X and oblivious to the news. There is virtually zero utility to being "informed" of most things, and plenty of downsides.

uninstalling twitter on my phone was one of the best decisions I made
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