121–130 of 278 posts
I did this last year and it was amazing. I got so much done. I became way more fluent in git, started using syncthing to back stuff up, and began printing things I wanted to read.
Are you still doing it, or?
It's a non-committal way of writing that I've been seeing lately. As if you need to pre-empt and soften the possible "no" answer to your yes or no question.
Some people are alcoholics. They can't exist near an open can of beer without their life going to shambles. But most people aren't and don't have the urge to binge drink. I'm not sure how this is any different. The author of this article is an Internetaholic, therefore I should cut my tether to the Internet? And what of my LTE connection?
I think this blog post is entirely too idealistic about the benefits of turning off the Internet, but I don't think comparing excessive Internet use and Alcoholism is appropriate. Having personally been on the fringe of "high functioning" alcoholism on a few occasions, I don't think the comparison works. Alcoholism is inherently negative. Drinking alcohol in moderation may not be extremely harmful, but is still not n…
If there is a distinction between those things and internet use, you haven't made it clear.
Some people are alcoholics. They can't exist near an open can of beer without their life going to shambles. But most people aren't and don't have the urge to binge drink. I'm not sure how this is any different. The author of this article is an Internetaholic, therefore I should cut my tether to the Internet? And what of my LTE connection?
An alcohol manufacturer rarely has an army of designers, data scientists and engineers working non-stop to make their product more addictive and measuring their success on engagement growth.
However because addiction is a known factor in their industry, I think they are kept somewhat in check, if only for legal reasons. I don't think Internet companies have any such qualms, so I would agree that they basically are trying to 'weaponize' this addiction.
Some people are alcoholics. They can't exist near an open can of beer without their life going to shambles. But most people aren't and don't have the urge to binge drink. I'm not sure how this is any different. The author of this article is an Internetaholic, therefore I should cut my tether to the Internet? And what of my LTE connection?
I see it a lot particularly with regard to facebook. People take "I have a problem" and turn it in to "this thing is a problem".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Facebook is a problem. Social media has its place somewhere in society but Facebook in particular is definitely a problem, for a multitude of reasons.
Care to list some?
1) Facebook is part of an initiative to lay down internet infrastructure in Africa, with the catch being that access to Facebook, Google, et al. is heavily subsidized. They are attempting to trap an entire continent on their platform, with subsidized tax money, knowingly simultaneously creating the most advanced social monitoring tool ever to exist. The CIA already has "social unrest" prediction mechanisms and, regardless of what some people involved think they're doing it for, this tool will be used to enslave the continent, continue preventing its people from achieving economic parity with the West, and provide better data for three-letter agencies to use in their sociopolitical and economic targeting (targeted propaganda, red herring social issues, media blackouts, even full-scale political coups)
I have not read this article but I was in a hurry to find a source to give you. I'm hoping the Guardian doesn't let me down here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-free-...
2) They have better data than anyone else with respect to gauging addicting user behavior, and instead of taking the Nintendo approach ("Why don't you take a break and play outside?") they actively exploit these behavioral patterns to increase user engagement. 1/4 of the world's population exists on an insulating platform that does not have their interests in mind. They are unwittingly paving Facebook a permanent highway over our social systems. This creates negatively-reinforcing social vacuums and a massive chilling and normalization effect. But even worse than this normalization is the ideological reinforcement and mass hyper-emotional response that tends to result from an network of humans all checking their emotional response against others in a social vacuum. To make things even worse, Facebook capitalizes here as well and exploits users' emotional response mechanisms.
Here's a paper from a few years ago exploring this concept. I wanted to find a more recent article that was quite good but I couldn't locate it with a quick search:
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full
The article I wanted to find mentioned one of the ways Facebook would exploit peoples' emotions to provoke their addictive behavior:
Facebook knows John spends about 10 minutes going through his feed at a time. During work hours, this number is 3 minutes. Right when Facebook thinks John might be about to put his phone away, they will suddenly show him a post from a friend he likes. He might stick around a little longer and comment. He scrolls a little more just because he is used to the behavior, and when Facebook thinks he is about to leave again they show him a post from someone he doesn't like. Bonus points if Facebook has determined the post is positive in nature. This triggers a negative emotional response in John and he scrolls a while longer, looking for a post that will give him another dopamine rush and return his "happiness" to him.
It's disgusting. It's predatory. It's abusive. It's no different than the CIA knowingly spreading crack and fentanyl to control the population and create pockets of crime that call for increased enforcement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this blog post is entirely too idealistic about the benefits of turning off the Internet, but I don't think comparing excessive Internet use and Alcoholism is appropriate. Having personally been on the fringe of "high functioning" alcoholism on a few occasions, I don't think the comparison works. Alcoholism is inherently negative. Drinking alcohol in moderation may not be extremely harmful, but is still not n…
I have to disagree that internet addiction is not something without highly negative social connotations. There is a significant number of people who fall into poor social circumstances via too much exposure to internet. There are a lot of internet communities out there that amplify deviant and antisocial behavior in people who spend way too much time on the internet. I agree that it's a different beast than a substan…
And I've had friends that I've just lost to online games for a long spell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see it a lot particularly with regard to facebook. People take "I have a problem" and turn it in to "this thing is a problem".
One big difference is that alcohol was not engineered to be addictive. Whereas at Facebook and many other companies there are a lot of smart people continuously trying to improve metrics like DAU, UAM, response frequency, etc. And they do it with no apparent regard for the impact on users' lives. Heck, many game companies proudly advertise how they are the most addictive thing you can get right now.
But there only so much parents can do AND there is this thing called 'sense of belonging' that influence kids to be as much as their peers
I wish there were better ways to regulate your own access. It's easy enough to make good decisions about where you spend your time when you're in a good frame of mind, but it's almost impossible to do that every minute of every day. It's a bit like eating I think. It's not too hard to buy healthy food when you're at the grocery store, but it's hard to say no to a plate of cookies every time you walk past when they're…
I tried living totally without internet access, and while I felt a lot better overall, I eventually had to give in. Nowadays phone books aren't usually delivered to homes anymore, so if you want to get in touch with a store or find a doctor's office, you need internet to search for it. Since I wasn't driving at the time, I couldn't just head out to an internet cafe when it was something important. For similar reasons…
Interesting how I never considered this option. It never even hit my horizon. I'm actually in the process of increasing speed since faster speed equals faster access and better productivity. Right? After reading this article, I suspect I'm wrong. Thinking about how easy it is to get distracted when I'm online 100% of the time, no access is probably a good choice. It's going to hurt but this is something I'm going to…
YouTube will load faster, yes.
May I suggest that the problem is one of quality much more so than of quantity, and that a solution that takes a more fine-grained approach than just shutting off your ISP altogether can give you the best of both worlds? "How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist" https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-technology-hijacks-peop... Once you see how subtly dark patterns borrowed fro…