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The Acceleration of Addictiveness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#131

Post by amalcon »

drewcrawford wrote: post #48

Let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Why is this "new" addiction wrong ? What does it mean to say it is bad ? pg is taking great pains to distance himself from real addiction, like crystal meth. Yet he never explicitly explains anywhere why the new "addiction" is actually bad , other than trying to loosely associate it with alcohol. I don't think that the "addictiveness" of a thing alone is enough to call it ba…

Very interesting perspective.

I would take the moral relativist approach to arguing that these things are bad. Suppose a hypothetical person who spends time on (e.g.) Facebook when there's something else they themselves would prefer to do with that time. Would the addiction be bad for this person?

If so, we only need to point to the existence of a statistically significant number of such people to substantiate the argument that their Facebook addiction is a "bad" thing. Unless we have reason to believe that Facebook addiction in general (not Facebook itself, just addiction to it) has benefits, we can transfer this to Facebook addiction in general.

Here's one person so identified: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/23/ep.facebook.addict/inde...

To my knowledge, nobody's done a study of this, but I find it more plausible than not that there exist many people who spend time on Facebook that they would prefer to use doing other things.

I've picked on Facebook quite a bit here. This is not in any way meant to be a dig against the service or company; Facebook is just a convenient example.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#132

Post by pyre »

jimbokun wrote: post #20
sharpn wrote: post #12

I agree with the main thrust of this essay, but there are nuances & counter-examples that make me more optimistic: For example, a nuance: More people are giving up television, magazines & newspapers than ever before - perhaps we (as humans) have a finite need of/tolerance for distractions, and are satisfying this need/reaching this tolerance more efficiently via the internet now? A counter-example (on the increase in…

"More people are giving up television, magazines & newspapers than ever before" In many of the discussions about people giving up "TV," it turned out that many just turned off their cable and consumed video through Hulu, Netflix and other online sources. So, put another way, do you think even people who have given up TV, etc. have, on average, actually reduced their total amount of time consuming content of one form…

I think that people tend to watch more TV with less enjoyment when it's just a cable stream into your house. I think that people don't end up tending to things like channel-surfing. It's hard to plop down on the couch and watch whatever happens to be the 'best thing on' when the video is on-demand and you have a choice in the matter. This is the same reason that so many people felt liberated by things like TiVo. It allowed them to just tell TiVo what they liked to watch, and they didn't have to worry about gathering around the TV set at a time specified by a channel's scheduling selections.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#133

Post by sp332 »

philwelch wrote: post #25
johnfn wrote: post #11

Just like PG's last article, there is an inherent irony in finding this on Hacker News. PG is right though, the internet is addictive. The question of what to do about it is still left open, though. For now, I'm going to disconnect for a few hours. Hopefully when I get back on I'll have something productive to show for it.

If you don't spread the word about internet addiction on Hacker News, how are the internet addicts going to find it?

It's a bit like putting cancer warnings on cigarette packs. Sure it educates the target demographic, but it's not going to solve their problem.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#134

Post by alextp »

jacobolus wrote: post #127
alextp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But some of the things you mention only look bad when compared to even crappier alternatives. > Large quantities of mass-produced food instead of meager quantities of undependable crops that you spend 90% of your working life growing; Around the baby boomer generation until people 20 or so years younger there was a sweet spot where mass-produced food was available but more expensive than more traditionally-prepared a…

Which people in Brazil are we talking about, that had such better diets 50-60 years ago? In 1950, the life expectancy from birth in Brazil was 50 years (a big improvement from before 1930 when life expectancy was about 33 years; by 1975 the life expectancy was about 60 years, and today it's about 73 years). Part of this was high infant mortality and poor access to healthcare, but another big part of it was that Brazi…

I mean my parents, my girlfriend's parents, my friends' parents, and almost every middle-class to upper-class person my age's parents as well. Not our grandparents, mind you.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#135

Post by dmoney »

Internet use seems to be my "ground state", what I fall into when I'm done with the stuff I have to do. But recently I've realized that, even though it's addictive, I don't really find it all that relaxing. So I've been trying to reclaim my old ground state of reading books. The internet for me is like the concentrated form of reading a book: you don't have to stay with any one topic longer than it holds your interest. You can move from interesting factoid to personal anecdote to hilarious cat macro without "wasting" any time on background or depth.

I think the counter-addiction technology will have to be psychological. Perhaps research could determine if certain practices make people more resistant to addictive things, and it could become customary to have such a practice. Meditation, self-hypnosis, ritual, counseling, introspection. Maybe just doing things that are hard. I suppose there is a danger that any of those could become addictive. Maybe the best you can hope for is to have a choice of what you're addicted to.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#136

Post by greendestiny »

robryan wrote: post #82
Harj wrote: post #18

You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. i've been surprised by just how true this statement is. i resolved to make some lifestyle changes this year to be healthier (without being overly zealous) and it's been amazing how reactions have made me feel like i'm behaving strangely. especially regarding alcohol at social events.

This depends, if you flat refuse all alcohol I can see how this would come across strange at social events. People that are drinking want everyone else in their presence to be loosened up a little as well. I would imagine the reaction would be different between I don't drink and I'm only having a couple. What is more interesting would be if your not drinking but are still relaxed and are lively with other people pres…

I think you're onto to something there. People probably have good reasons to try and avoid mismatches in levels of drinking at an event. Drinking breaks down social barriers but in doing so it makes people vulnerable. Maybe if you can sufficiently signal your commitment to the social situation without drinking you'd do better - ie make a bit of a fool of yourself to show your uninhibited state. As an experiment perhaps next party the grandparent commenter goes to he can wear a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt or something.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#137

Post by msg »

mattchew wrote: post #123
drewcrawford wrote: post #48

Let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Why is this "new" addiction wrong ? What does it mean to say it is bad ? pg is taking great pains to distance himself from real addiction, like crystal meth. Yet he never explicitly explains anywhere why the new "addiction" is actually bad , other than trying to loosely associate it with alcohol. I don't think that the "addictiveness" of a thing alone is enough to call it ba…

> What does it mean to say it is bad? How about this: if in advance of the behavior, you intend to partake moderately, and in the event you consistently overindulge, and after the fact you regret your excess, then something about this behavior is bad. I'm leaving aside some of the other points you bring up, but if you've got a habit that consistently leads to dissatisfaction and regret, I think it's fair to call it a…

You're assuming that dissatisfaction and regret mean the activity was bad. What if you overindulge in learning and regret knowing all kinds of details about Lisp? Some outside observers don't consider your time wasted, quite the contrary. But by your measurement, regretting knowing Lisp would mean that knowing Lisp is bad.

My point is that you can always pick opposing activities that people will feel are time wasted or well-spent. But why? Because you have some implicit notion of ultimate value that helps you weigh time spent on one or the other.

In the absence of such a theory of good and evil you might as well criticize pg for becoming addicted to hiking or addicted to insightful thinking. Cool for him, but he's wasting his life if he doesn't have all the achievements in Team Fortress 2.

There is no way to create this kind of theory out of the subject's reflection on their own activities. After all, the subject might be wrong!

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#138

Post by DenisM »

fmora wrote: post #118
DenisM wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a problem with logical reasoning. First, there are at least two possible explanations for the the even you witnessed - one that marijuana was a gateway drug for your friend, and the other is that your friend was simply fucked up to start with and found his solace in drugs. You have dismissed one of the options and then concluded the truthfulness of the other (which is a serious defect of cognition). Your sec…

That is why I called it an anecdote to begin with. It is a serious defect in cognition that you did not realize that this is why I spelled it out as such. I knew him during high school. From what I know about him I think he just gave in to peer pressure as many do.

Keep being defensive and you will receive no more advice - accurate or not.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#139

Post by DenisM »

hugh3 wrote: post #112
DenisM wrote: post #74

It will actually become a reasonable strategy (or a more reasonable strategy) to suspect everything new. No. The reasonable strategy is, and has always been, defining the positive outcomes you want to reach rather than negative ones you want to avoid. The opposite of "drunk" is not "he avoids drinking", it's "he lives a fulfilled life without allowing alcohol to consume his existence". The opposite of internet addict…

Sure, but neither alcohol nor the internet is all that addictive. Most people are quite capable of controlling their usage of both, so it's not risky to try for the first time. Heroin, on the other hand, is apparently so ridiculously addictive that just trying it once is a bad idea. Or maybe you can try it a few times before it gets hard to quit -- I don't know, and I don't particularly want to find out. It's a sensi…

You can always ween yourself off heroin by checking into rehab - you just need to have the will to do that one step. And I suggest that the will comes from knowing what you seek in life, rather than knowing what you wish to avoid.

EDIT: I see what you mean now, you were focusing on "same is true for any other addiction". I was mostly talking about "digital drugs" like facebook and the like that pg is worried about, rather than about chemical drugs like heroin. I guess I don't really care that much about heroin and the like, and don't want to argue about it as it gets away from the main topic.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#140

Post by alextp »

pyre wrote: post #132
jimbokun wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"More people are giving up television, magazines & newspapers than ever before" In many of the discussions about people giving up "TV," it turned out that many just turned off their cable and consumed video through Hulu, Netflix and other online sources. So, put another way, do you think even people who have given up TV, etc. have, on average, actually reduced their total amount of time consuming content of one form…

I think that people tend to watch more TV with less enjoyment when it's just a cable stream into your house. I think that people don't end up tending to things like channel-surfing. It's hard to plop down on the couch and watch whatever happens to be the 'best thing on' when the video is on-demand and you have a choice in the matter. This is the same reason that so many people felt liberated by things like TiVo. It a…

Just another day it dawned on me that an important part of the overwhelming success of television (specially cable television) is that it's another unpredictable-rewards skinner box. There are the good shows you know and expect (and their fixed schedule induces lots of tradeoffs, like "why get up now if X is in half an hour") and the possibility of finding something nice zapping is akin to a slot machine.

Video on demand makes it easier to watch a specific content, but harder to just zone out in front of the tv, which is the most addictive and destructive activity.

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