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Doomscrolling ourselves to death

edwest.co.uk

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Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#241

Post by spudlyo »

teiferer wrote: post #150

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 p…

I don't know if shorter would have been better. Would that have meant omitting the bit contrasting Harry Truman and Donald Trump? For me, that bit alone was worth reading to the end. I should probably pick up a biography of Truman, I bet I'd really enjoy it. I also believe there are hierarchies of cultural value, and if that makes me an elitist, so be it, I'm an elitist.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#242

Post by TexanFeller »

Barrin92 wrote: post #197
TexanFeller wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my problems with blocking things like YouTube is that there’s so much outstanding long form content that’s not always available elsewhere. I love watching semi popularized physics lectures like from Sean Carroll but I can’t help but click on the mindless content next to it after, or even during, my wholesome viewing.

the semi popularized physics lectures are also mindless content. It's infotainment, it might be worse than junk because it disguises itself as learning. People will consume thousands of hours of that stuff and not be able to solve one physics problem. Endless exercise and fitness science videos and still be out of shape. Watch language learning content and never speak another language. Endless programming tutorials w…

There are degrees of mindless! I know one can't substitute watching lectures for serious study, but it's a great substitute for the far more mindless and addictive content I would be tempted by otherwise. There are lots of interesting topics in the foundations of physics and areas of mathematics my undergrad didn't cover that came to my attention this way. I enjoy getting a sampler now while I don't have the time/energy after work to study them for real, and they will inform what I study when I get and/or make time for them in my life soon.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#243

Post by robomc »

lobofta wrote: post #172
teiferer wrote: post #150

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 p…

I did. The point can be made very quickly yes, but the background and context provided is what made this a good read to me. Sometimes we need to marinate in a topic for it to enter into deeper layers of the brain.

This is one of the things about the novels he describes too, and their impact on empathy. Like, you can explain to someone in 3-4 sentences that slavery is cruel but that's not the same as inhabiting a characters circumstances for 500 pages.

It's a natural instinct for engineers, to think you should always convey information in the most efficient way possible, but it's actually not how real understanding tends to occur in the real world. You need a lot of noisy carrier signal and time and context etc.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#244

Post by pessimizer »

talon8635 wrote: post #208
doginasuit wrote: post #55

I don't read less, but I do read fewer books. It is hard to find a book that is the best source for what I want know about, and that changes too frequently now to outlive the time it takes to read a book. This is what you'd expect in a world where the sheer volume of things that are important to know about has grown beyond a sustainable capacity. What has taken their place, for better or for worse, are various inform…

What is it you want to know?

Yes. That was the weird claim. I find hundreds of books about each thing I want to know about, and don't have the time in my life to read even a tiny fraction of them. What are these interests that fall entirely outside of the range of things that people have written about?

To be clear and honest: I don't think it's really true in the way it's meant.

I think people have gotten in this mode where they're only interested in the things that are being pushed in front of them by a feed, whether that's advertising or social media. It isn't that they lack books about things they are interested in, it's that they lack interests unless they think that following that interest could result in social capital. Seeing somebody getting those updoots on the feed creates the interest.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#245

Post by hexapus »

I switched to a Minimal Phone...it's terrible, and that's the point. The friction of everything being so clunky keeps me from picking it up and staring at it, it's unpleasant to look at and scroll through anything but text. It functions enough to let me acknlowedge a page, pay for parking, or disable the alarm system - but anything other than that is just not appealing.

I'm trying to read more, but it is definitely a struggle when I used to consume books voraciously. I'm definitely getting better though - for instance, I finished this article, at least. Beats scrolling thru /r/funny or something. I'm trying my best to reclaim my brain.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#246

Post by sporadicism »

coffeefirst wrote: post #11

I can tell, usually within a few minutes of meeting them, who’s really into social media. There’s a little bit of frenetic emotional dysregulation, and then they say the weirdest stuff to me. I don’t think you could have made a similar argument about heavy trash tv watchers. They may have had less to talk about, you may have found them less interesting, but it didn’t literally alter their personalities. We have a big…

> I can tell, usually within a few minutes of meeting them, who’s really into social media.

Same for me, except it's people who don't read books.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#247

Post by CrimsonRain »

floren wrote: post #100
CrimsonRain wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: books Most books are useless and boring. Some books have good concept but drags things needlessly. I still read a good amount everyday but not a 300 page book where the core content is 2 page. However, a great book is still interesting and being "completely engrossed" is still possible. It is the book content quality (compared to other things in society) that dropped.

It's always surprising how many HN readers seem to read only non-fiction, sometimes only self-help style books about business and startups. Some are even proud of that.

good non fictions books are rare. Why bother with that crap when there are manga and anime?

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#248

Post by acutesoftware »

genghisjahn wrote: post #233
Aurornis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Most of the people I’ve known who struggled with doomscrolling had established a similar set of social media sites at their worst point. I think we’ve seen so many articles about how social media is bad that reference mainstream sites like Facebook and Instag…

My opinion, anything driven by an algorithm is inherently bad. It’s hard giving up those sites, not because that’s where the people are but because we are all addicted to them. If you switch to mastodon or pixelfed, you’ll find good stuff there, but you won’t engage with it as much because it’s not algo driven, which to me is a win.

That is good, but it should be qualified a little.

If the algorithm simply says "sort by most recent", then it is pretty good.

It is the profit driven algorithms that are doing the damage.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#249

Post by krapp »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #247
floren wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always surprising how many HN readers seem to read only non-fiction, sometimes only self-help style books about business and startups. Some are even proud of that.

good non fictions books are rare. Why bother with that crap when there are manga and anime?

Good manga and anime are even more rare.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#250

Post by giarc »

talon8635 wrote: post #225
giarc wrote: post #82

Here's my n of 2 story, but my young kids read all the time and it's likely for two reasons. My wife and I read, and still read to them every night, and second, they both have Kobo Clara Colour e-readers. They love graphic novels and the colour screen keeps them engaged (we had black and white e-readers before and it just wasn't the same). We get 100% of our books from the public library and they probably read 5-20 g…

How old are they?

9 and 12. They've been reading like this since the day they could read. My wife wants to keep pushing my older daughter away from graphic novels (to regular novels) but to me, doesn't matter what they read, as long as they are reading.
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