Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes • Hacker News Board

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#131

Post by staktrace » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 10:28 PM UTC

msluyter wrote: post #21

I was just thinking about the fact that much of my work requires me to pause for a short time -- while building my project, or running a query, or launching the huge honkin' java webapp and waiting for 10 billion classes to initialize -- but the pause is too short to make a useful context switch, and too long to simply wait through without getting bored. So typically, I often check e-mail, HN, or whatever, but then e…

Why is making your bed on that list? Is there an advantage to doing that that I'm unaware of?

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#132

Post by nostromo » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 10:41 PM UTC

kirse wrote: post #124

nostromo wrote: post #102

Did anyone else catch Sam Harris' response to Edge's 2011 question, "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?"? I found it quite interesting. http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_12.html#harriss "I invite you to pay attention to anything — the sight of this text, the sensation of breathing, the feeling of your body resting against your chair — for a mere sixty seconds without getting distracted b…

I haven't logged in to comment for 37 days and this little essay is such utter garbage. The fact that it takes him just 7 paragraphs to completely dismiss all potential religious truth as "clearly false" should set off anyone's dogma-alert flag. Being focused in the present is awesome, but the fact that we have the ability to pay attention on things other than reality is not a problem, but in fact essential to the he…

Let's be careful not to start an atheist / non-atheist flame war (boring...) but to say Harris just took 7 paragraphs to dismiss religion isn't fair. He's written several best-selling books on the subject and has partaken in several debates with religious leaders. For him to answer this Edge question with a rehash of his arguments on atheism would have been redundant and boring. I'm sure he expected most of the readers on Edge to understand his point of view on the subject and to kick off from there.

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#133

Post by BrainScraps » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 10:54 PM UTC

coderholic wrote: post #32

NathanKP wrote: post #26

Out of determination I succeeded, even though by my calculations doing nothing for two minutes cost me $1.60 that I could have made writing code. Of course, I stopped the clock anyway when I clicked on the HN popup notification. Edit: Just looked at the code. The programmer missed a great chance to gather some data. I would have tracked the fail events using Google Analytics so I could see how many fails on average p…

Great idea, thanks. I'll add it. At the moment we're looking at the average time on site stats.

This achievement doesn't up my gamerscore!??!

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#134

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 11:05 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #132

kirse wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't logged in to comment for 37 days and this little essay is such utter garbage. The fact that it takes him just 7 paragraphs to completely dismiss all potential religious truth as "clearly false" should set off anyone's dogma-alert flag. Being focused in the present is awesome, but the fact that we have the ability to pay attention on things other than reality is not a problem, but in fact essential to the he…

Let's be careful not to start an atheist / non-atheist flame war (boring...) but to say Harris just took 7 paragraphs to dismiss religion isn't fair. He's written several best-selling books on the subject and has partaken in several debates with religious leaders. For him to answer this Edge question with a rehash of his arguments on atheism would have been redundant and boring. I'm sure he expected most of the reade…

[deleted]

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#135

Post by rbreve » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 11:24 PM UTC

I was paranoid that a photo of a zombie with a loud scream would appear suddently

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#136

Post by jrockway » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 11:28 PM UTC

Depends on the context. When I am sitting in front of a computer with lots of stuff to read or do, I'm not going to stare at waves for two minutes. If I'm on the bus, though, then I can easily do it.

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#137

Post by tlrobinson » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 11:33 PM UTC

Timothee wrote: post #73

msluyter wrote: post #21

I was just thinking about the fact that much of my work requires me to pause for a short time -- while building my project, or running a query, or launching the huge honkin' java webapp and waiting for 10 billion classes to initialize -- but the pause is too short to make a useful context switch, and too long to simply wait through without getting bored. So typically, I often check e-mail, HN, or whatever, but then e…

I could see that as a good page to redirect to in your hosts file for distracting sites like HN, reddit et al.

Or add:

    open "http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/"

(or your OS's equivalent) to the beginning of any compilation that takes a significant amount of time.

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#138

Post by fleitz » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 11:36 PM UTC

kirse wrote: post #124

nostromo wrote: post #102

Did anyone else catch Sam Harris' response to Edge's 2011 question, "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?"? I found it quite interesting. http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_12.html#harriss "I invite you to pay attention to anything — the sight of this text, the sensation of breathing, the feeling of your body resting against your chair — for a mere sixty seconds without getting distracted b…

I haven't logged in to comment for 37 days and this little essay is such utter garbage. The fact that it takes him just 7 paragraphs to completely dismiss all potential religious truth as "clearly false" should set off anyone's dogma-alert flag. Being focused in the present is awesome, but the fact that we have the ability to pay attention on things other than reality is not a problem, but in fact essential to the he…

I don't want to get into a flamewar, but potential 'religious truth' generally lacks falsifiability. Certainly there could definitely be true things that the religious say but it doesn't really promote a method of thinking that leads us to knowing things that aren't false about the world.

In the method of 'religious truths' everyone is right and everyone is wrong, there is no way to sort out the true from the false.

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#139

Post by baddox » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 11:54 PM UTC

In my current situation (alone with no one to physically force me), it's impossible for me to "relax" for 2 minutes, because I am actively willing myself to not do so.

Re: Impossible for the HN crowd: Do nothing for 2 minutes

#140

Post by ThomPete » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 11:57 PM UTC

kirse wrote: post #124

nostromo wrote: post #102

Did anyone else catch Sam Harris' response to Edge's 2011 question, "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?"? I found it quite interesting. http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_12.html#harriss "I invite you to pay attention to anything — the sight of this text, the sensation of breathing, the feeling of your body resting against your chair — for a mere sixty seconds without getting distracted b…

I haven't logged in to comment for 37 days and this little essay is such utter garbage. The fact that it takes him just 7 paragraphs to completely dismiss all potential religious truth as "clearly false" should set off anyone's dogma-alert flag. Being focused in the present is awesome, but the fact that we have the ability to pay attention on things other than reality is not a problem, but in fact essential to the he…

As far as I remember Sam Harris does know quite a lot about Neuroscience in fact he is a PhD in that very area.

With regards to potential religious truths then the problem of course is that you can't verify religious claims thus the very idea of talking about truth in this context seems rather misguided.