Doomscrolling ourselves to death • Hacker News Board

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#141

Post by Insanity » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

FoundAnotherOne wrote: post #108

Escapado wrote: post #69

On a personal level I have become more anxious and it has become more difficult to deal with my tendency to procrastinate the more screen time I have and the more I am exposed to social media. I have in essence deleted the vast majority of my social media accounts years ago, but stayed a passive and rather anonymous consumer on Reddit, X and YouTube. A few weeks ago I blocked them too. I would say in totality I read…

> I quit all social media! > No for real! Even YouTube! And yet here you are

Might be nit-picking but forum != social media (to me).

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#142

Post by sunrunner » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #114

> YouTube, which for any adult briefly glancing at the screen seems to feature an array of thumbnailed gawping imbeciles I've basically given up on humanity. YouTube is a cesspit of stupidity - a race to the bottom and right through the other side of how utterly devoid of dignity human beings can be. I feel a physical rage at the mere sight of all the thumbnails of people pulling the stupidest face they can to try to…

Unfortunately YouTube captures the full set of extremes and everything in between, so I don't think it's fair to label the entire thing a cesspit of stupidity.

For every MrBeast there's a 3Blue1Brown. For every recycled clip from a well-known TV series uploaded purely to drive ad revenue for a bot-controlled channel there's a fine art restoration video showing a very niche process with a real, skilled human behind it.

And so on.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#143

Post by intended » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #53

mplanchard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI seems to be a good tool for people who are already good at learning and critical thinking to use to accelerate their learning. Research on broader populations so far is not so hopeful, with most people using it to avoid learning. This is unsurprising to me, since people are often quite resistant to learning. As to your point, literacy rates have been declining since the 80s. 40, going on 50 years is plenty of time…

> This is unsurprising to me, since people are often quite resistant to learning. This is an attitude I had when I was 19 and had spent a bunch of time and money going to school. I had a life event that made me leave school and take on a huge debt that had to be paid. Most people learn - they just learn in context of their necessity and their own passions. For other things, they lean on the community around them (doc…

> - the knights are just now starting to realize that proficiency with a sword and 70kg of armor are no match for a peasant with a pistol

This isn’t a metaphor/analogy that works. There is a parallel in the introduction of a tool that has more “firepower” but that isn’t the crux of the issue when it comes to intelligence.

You can give fable to someone who has never written code before and someone who has experience writing SW. Your outcomes are very different.

The crux of the matter is that you need to know what “good” looks like to use automation or augmentation tools well. This is why it’s a greater boost to people with experience.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#144

Post by medellin » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

Interesting article right up until they introduce the right vs left debate. The left doesn’t want to appear “elite” because they are so smart and intelligent they don’t want to offend. Give me a break jagoff.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#145

Post by stevenwoo » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

warmwaffles wrote: post #133

Sharlin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction doesn’t age in the same way.

My biggest problem with fiction books is that it is hard to build suspense when I can clearly see I have another 100 pages to go or if I know that it's a series. After I realized that in my late teens fiction was very difficult to keep at consistently.

Some books I read to step foot into the life and head of some other person, to know what it is to be another gender or age or in a different culture and time period. We can only experience a small slice of what it is to be human in one lifetime. I guess one might get some of this from documentary work or autobiography.

And sometimes it’s just affirming to read an author describe a character thinking the same thoughts one has or the same situation one finds oneself in.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#146

Post by jscipione » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#147

Post by intended » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

rpdillon wrote: post #57

intended wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is slightly dismissive, since we see degradation of literacy within the past 20 years. https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-repo... We also know from colleges and schools that students coming in are having difficulty doing the reading needed for classes, even in literature classes. AI is making this worse, since it’s unleashed an epidemic of cheating and the tool itself is inimical to learning.…

> AI is making this worse, since it’s unleashed an epidemic of cheating and the tool itself is inimical to learning. (Learning is friction. The tool to remove friction also removes learning) I disagree with this take so strongly. Yes, in practice people are lazy and they're just going to ask for the answer. But the potential for AIs to give targeted answers to specific questions about academic topics is so far ahead…

> I disagree with this take so strongly

You are free to disagree, and you are free to have an opinion. I would prefer your position to be the one that dominates, however the data on the ground doesn’t support the position.

If I can make a guess, the issue is that you are looking at the potential for individual learning improvement but I am referring to what is currently happening at scale.

If you remember school, most students didn’t want to be there. Homework exercises are something you would rather avoid.

America and the west, as class mobility became increasingly dependent on education, repeated the patterns in China and India. People went to college not because they wanted to study the subject, but because it got you a decent income when you got out.

In all these situations, you have people who aren’t there for the journey, but there for the outcome. (For that matter, even people who want to study, will take the easy way out.)

Having seen people use AI to study, it can be useful, especially if the underlying text books and notes are bad. However there are already many YouTube videos made by experts covering those topics, so the uplift here isn’t magical.

> I really disagree with you that the technology itself is inimical to learning.

This is a matter of belief, and in a vacuum it’s something most people would agree with. The issue is what the outcomes actually are.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#148

Post by samizdis » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:40 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #124

puppymaster wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if i hear 'aura farming' or 'xxx-maxing' one more time I might punch someone.

I'm sorry to break it to you but this isn't social media, it's you getting old. Most language is invented by children and most of what they invent dies pretty quickly. You transition from not noticing it's new because you weren't alive before to keeping up to falling behind to getting annoyed. rizz no cap sus swag YOLO such wow pwned that's what she said fo shizzle crunk bling talk to the hand as if homeskillet not!…

And thank you for the "gag me with a spoon" reference. Frank (and Moon) Zappa really hit the nail on the head in Valley Girl (1982). Terrific parody of teen culture/language.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#149

Post by watwut » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:46 PM UTC

aerhardt wrote: post #72

watwut wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viral article from atlantic proves exactly nothing. And claim that students cant read is, frankly, idiotic.

Is this your idea of an intelligent contribution to the conversation? There is plenty of evidence in the article from real professors at real universities (ex: Princeton), saying that they’ve had to dramatically cut reading workloads from humanities courses. I’ve heard similar things from European universities. Other hard evidence is in plummeting reading comprehension scores in many countries that participate in PIS…

Above all, NONE of that excuses the claim that "that kids at elite universities simply can't read anymore". That one is simply, factually not true. There is such a thing as not being able to read. Students at elite universities, who btw are not kids, dont fit there.

Second, yes, and mostly because I did actually read those stats and details of how they are made. All the nuance from the actual scientific article gets exaggerated into completely different claims just to create outrage and perpetuate it again and again. Usually by people who do not know what PISA or reading grades measure.

Reading comprehension as measured by PISA have zero to do with long form reading of books including classics. It is not trained by reading those nor measure reading those. The short for articles full of graphs, scientific claims and such the Atlantic complains about is how you train people for PISA. I am not criticizing PISA here btw. It is ok to measure that.

> In the States, there is plenty of other stats that point that students are below their expected reading grade - the worse in generations.

Interestingly, those who made this claim usually do not know how reading grades are measured or even how high they go. "The worse in generations" claim is especially dubious and tend to based on comparison between "guess performance of imaginary past elite student in undefined historical period" with low performing student today. Low performing students 3-4 generations ago disappear, because we imagine them to not exist.

There is outrage every time a school replaces one book by another. Or when a course that has no reason to assign full Odyssey assigns range of materials with one chapter from it. There is outrage when student names a contemporary book as the favorite one instead of a classic.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#150

Post by teiferer » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

Scrolling through the comments here, let's be honest about having actually read the entire article. Have you? Be honest.

At first I had not, only the first 3-4 paragraphs. And it just read like another one of those articles where somebody is sad about their own and their kids' habits. I then found that most comments here are about that too.

But I realized that not actually reading a lengthy article like this one is part of the problem, so I went back.

I have read it fully now and noticed two things. First, it's a very lengthy way to say few things. The author could surely have made the point much more crisp. But second, it's not just about the personal situation and some abstract form of person in society. It's also about those "in charge". And that's frightening.