Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes • Hacker News Board

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#141

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

NovaS1X wrote: post #122

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not totally true. Cigarettes are a very effective appetite suppressant. That is one of the reasons why people who work in the food industry all smoke so much. Obesity has skyrocketed as cigarette and other tobacco use has declined. Obesity also increases the risk for most types of cancer, so it is just trading increased lung cancer risk for some people for increased risk of both heart disease and cancer. In general n…

If only there was a way to both not smoke and control your appetite, and maybe even eat less processed food while you're at it. Alas, I guess we'll just have to leave that hard problem to the scientists and philosophers.

I'm really unsure what you're implying. What's the appetite control method you have in mind?

I can tell you that in my experience most barely-processed foods don't do any better at filling me than most processed foods. And some of the worst candidates for appetite control are nuts. So I hope "less processed food" was supposed to be an effect, not the cause.

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#142

Post by oarabbus_ » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

Pharmakon wrote: post #96

oarabbus_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find a hard time finding any source which will claim cigarette smoking under some threshold is not bad for you. But keep in mind cigarette studies use the metric "pack-years" where 1 pack-year means smoking 20 cigarettes a day, for a year. "Heavy" smokers are generally considered as 2+ pack-year smokers. And it's not like _every_ heavy smoker gets lung cancer. In fact "only" 25% of heavy smokers get lu…

How many of the ones who don’t get lung cancer also don’t suffer from elevetates rates of bronchial infection, cardiovascular symptoms, COPD or emphysema? How many avoid cancers related to smoking other than lung cancer?

I'd wager that drinking soda daily is more harmful to your health than one single cigarette per week.

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#143

Post by oarabbus_ » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #128

oarabbus_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find a hard time finding any source which will claim cigarette smoking under some threshold is not bad for you. But keep in mind cigarette studies use the metric "pack-years" where 1 pack-year means smoking 20 cigarettes a day, for a year. "Heavy" smokers are generally considered as 2+ pack-year smokers. And it's not like _every_ heavy smoker gets lung cancer. In fact "only" 25% of heavy smokers get lu…

Lung cancer is the least of your problems if you're a smoker. Smoking greatly increases risks of literally every possible health condition. (This is why the first question you'll be asked by a doctor is if you smoke or not, no matter what your complaint is.)

>Smoking greatly increases risks of literally every possible health condition.

Actually, cigarette smoking can reduce the incidence of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, endometrial cancer, and Parkinson's, to name a few.

No, I'm not claiming cigarette smoking is good for you. I acknowledge it's very bad for you.

But if you point me towards two people, one who smokes "one cigarette a week" and does light exercise, and a second individual who is sedentary, and drinks alcohol and soda regularly, I'd wager most of my net worth that the 1-cigarette-per-week individual is far healthier. It's possible for something to be very bad for you AND also for the dangers to be overblown.

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#144

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

owens99 wrote: post #30

keiferski wrote: post #9

Not a great analogy. A better one would be the automobile, IMO. Incredibly freeing and powerful, but pushed by actors for ethically dubious reasons and capable of massive negative societal effects if left unchecked.

Yes, but automobiles aren’t addicting. I believe a better title would be about “today’s smart phone” assuming we will still have smart phones in the future but they won’t be designed to be addicting anymore.

People take the freedom of moving faster in a car, then get houses that are so much further away from everything that the time savings disappear and they are completely trapped using the car for everything. It's not addiction but it's close in a lot of ways.

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#145

Post by Pharmakon » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

oarabbus_ wrote: post #142

Pharmakon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of the ones who don’t get lung cancer also don’t suffer from elevetates rates of bronchial infection, cardiovascular symptoms, COPD or emphysema? How many avoid cancers related to smoking other than lung cancer?

I'd wager that drinking soda daily is more harmful to your health than one single cigarette per week.

The equivalent amount of soda per day that would equate to one cigarette per week? I’d take that bet.

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#146

Post by rthomas6 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

Void_ wrote: post #74

seandougall wrote: post #23

I was kind of with him right up until this: > But if you ask yourself who's the healthiest person you know, almost certainly they subscribe to some sort of named philosophy that helps them make consistent and value-driven decisions about what they eat and how they move. Maybe they're vegan or paleo. Maybe I’m an outlier, but that tends to be more true of the least healthy people I know. Named philosophies with strict…

Healthiest person I ever knew was my gradma. She sure as hell wasn't vegan or paleo. She was Catholic and she was practicing the virtue of temperance every day. We often adopt lifestyles, we do certain things, in order to become healthier, fitter, smarter, richer... She wasn't doing it because who she wanted become. She was doing it because of who she was.

Wouldn't that just mean her named philosophy was Catholicism?

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#147

Post by AareyBaba » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #34

chrisweekly wrote: post #3

Related tangent: Newport's book "Deep Work" is excellent. It makes a strong case that deep work is increasingly rare, valuable, and meaningful. But it goes way beyond the "what" and the "why", providing the "how", in the form of specific, pragmatic, actionable guidance for achieving just that. Anecdotally, it's been very helpful for me.

This book follows the recent trend of: find obvious slightly un-talked-about idea, create a fancy sounding term to describe it (preferably with as few words as possible - one is best, like Blink or Outliers .) These words should be vague and have hundreds of meanings - 'work', 'deep', or 'source', for example. Then, while you could summarize the idea in a single page, write 100+ pages framing the issue as a fundament…

One hack around is to search the author on Youtube. You will usually find a 5-10 min interview during the book tour where the author has to distill the book into quick soundbites. You can then decide if the book is worth reading. For more complex topics on physics, biology you'll often find an hour long talk which covers all the material in the book. At 1.5x speed on Youtube you can save a lot of time screening out BS.

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#148

Post by andrei_says_ » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #34

chrisweekly wrote: post #3

Related tangent: Newport's book "Deep Work" is excellent. It makes a strong case that deep work is increasingly rare, valuable, and meaningful. But it goes way beyond the "what" and the "why", providing the "how", in the form of specific, pragmatic, actionable guidance for achieving just that. Anecdotally, it's been very helpful for me.

This book follows the recent trend of: find obvious slightly un-talked-about idea, create a fancy sounding term to describe it (preferably with as few words as possible - one is best, like Blink or Outliers .) These words should be vague and have hundreds of meanings - 'work', 'deep', or 'source', for example. Then, while you could summarize the idea in a single page, write 100+ pages framing the issue as a fundament…

Which is why I have trouble reading pretty much any of the top business books.

Fluff, fluff and more fluff. Repetitive anecdotes, personal experiences etc etc. I just can’t pretend I’m interested.

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#149

Post by oarabbus_ » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 11:00 PM UTC

Pharmakon wrote: post #145

oarabbus_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager that drinking soda daily is more harmful to your health than one single cigarette per week.

The equivalent amount of soda per day that would equate to one cigarette per week? I’d take that bet.

No, one can of soda daily, vs one cigarette smoked per week.

Re: Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes

#150

Post by telotortium » Fri, Feb 01, 2019, 12:05 AM UTC

AceyMan wrote: post #107

emiliobumachar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automobiles are not addictive in the medical sense, but consider that, all else being equal, heavy car users will, much faster than others, lose the capacity to walk long distances.

This, so much. I take transit and cycle everywhere. Even with the bike and bus there's lots of walking to and from bus stops. When I am out with colleagues and we want to go somewhere even a half a mile away people are all "that's soooo far..." No wonder e-scooters are so popular. (And I suspect lots of their user base are smokers.)

I suspect (I'm a non-obese non-smoker) that far more obese non-smokers get winded by walking such a distance than non-obese smokers, at least until they're fairly old. Also, in walkable cities, I see quite a few smokers but much fewer obese people. If we're talking about hiking hills, it balances out a bit more, although I think the obese would still be at a disadvantage. Losing some of your lung capacity doesn't matter too much until you do intense exercise, but obese people always have to expend extra effort to carry their weight around.