tl;dr
What I would have written
71–77 of 77 posts
Re: What I would have written
#72I see a solution to the problem. Delete your twitter account, now. It's hard to sustain willpower indefinitely but easy to use it in a burst long enough to delete an account.
Twitter has a 30 day waiting period on account deletion to subvert this. What you need to do is set your password to something really obvious and disable two-factor.
Or randomise your password so you can't get into it.
Re: What I would have written
#73"And yet I see no solution to this problem." Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he alludes to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such; forcing moderation on himself, or even complete detachment (the cold turkey approach). Of course, being involved in technology means Dustin is essentially an alcoholic working at a brewery, so disengagement may be especially difficult. But to…
Dealing with addictions has little to do with leaving them, and everything to do with finding something better. Many addicts are addicts cause they are lacking something in life.
There was a time I played video games 12 or more hours a day for months. Now, I spend the same time reading papers and programming and helping people learn programming and hanging out with friends and so on. Trying to stop never worked; filling my life with something more meaningful made it easy.
Re: What I would have written
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
On external validation, I wondered about whether a social network or community with a karma system could fake that validation for each user to motivate content creation or positive sentiment? e.g., if I actually got 5 upvotes on a HN comment, but HN showed it to me as 54, and then 78 and then 104 on subsequent comments, would I be more likely to contribute more? As a new user, would I be drawn in deeper? It wouldn't…
The upvote count for OTHER people's comments in now hidden. you still always see them on your own comments. So it still does have public validation mechanism. I think you can't see it on other people's comments because this forces you to up vote something only if YOU like it and not based on what other users think. Eg on FB, a lot of people "like" stuff just because it already has a lot of likes (the need to conform)
Yes, aware of all this. But how would that stop HN from misreporting to me the upvote count on my posts? The true value wouldn't necessarily be shown anywhere.
Re: What I would have written
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since when are TVs "a default"? I don't think I've watched TV in a big while, I don't even remember TVs being generally on around me.
Well, they appear to be. I don't have a TV myself, but in many homes when there's a TV, it seems to be on all the time. Sometimes people mute it to eat lunch or dinner, without even turning it off...
Hm, I see. That's not the case where I come from, so I'm wondering if it's a US thing.
Re: What I would have written
#76> And yet I see no solution to this problem. How hard can it be not to tweet?? I came here just to say this, and saw that many others had just said the same thing, and yet I felt the urge to say it again, myself! O, irony! Seriously though, Twitter isn't like TV or smoking. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substance there is; TV isn't really addictive, in a medical/chemical sense, but it's so easy -- you sit on…
I'd argue that if one has an active social circle on Twitter, the social aspect of it might be addictive.
Re: What I would have written
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I know many people that use Facebook (including myself). It's a website that almost freaking everybody is on; it's used for sharing stuff from daily lives, instant messaging, organizing social events. I have no idea what Twitter is for.
As a counter point, everyone I know is on Twitter and uses it actively, but very few are on Facebook. In fact, we sat around a table earlier this year and were chatting about a piece of news that mentioned some exclusive content via Facebook, and realised that none of us had access. And that was fine by us, we don't really get what Facebook is for, and we just went back to talking and continued some of the conversati…
All right.
We probably meet completely different people.