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PG: Disconnecting Distraction

paulgraham.com

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Re: PG: Disconnecting Distraction

#151

Post by Mike66 »

oh man, I stood up at 6 early this morning (CET), turned on my pc to do a really really urgent math assignment, and my python scripts, which I tuned down today to report me only the most urgent things (in the category or a new 11th september or better: of a new 3rd world war) start howling, produce a window before my eyes, obscure the view to the math assignment, report me in blood red capitals: "NEW ARTICLE BY PAUL GRAHAM! NEW ARTICLE BY PAUL GRAHAM! YESS YESS YESS!!!!" (all the other python bots, except that one peridically checking PG's hp stayed calm) I decided this reigns among the 3 incidents with enough balls to distract me today. I don't know the exact frequency of PG's essay-releases, but this can't be a coincidence. It was preprogrammed by a higher being, (something like the most general meta-meta-macro) it was a test of willpower whether I really really wanna finish my math studies or not, and I failed. I read this essay tho i had 0 time on my hands. This math assignment might have posed the turning point in my life, and I neglected it in order to read Pauls writing where he explains I shouldn't read things online. Because its so distracting! (Thats interesting: A distracting essay about how to not get distracted.) Fortunately it was short. THANK GOD! So I might survive this somehow.

SUMMARY of THOUGHT: PG's has created with his essays one of the deadliest addictions online, worse than TV, games, etc taken together. I hope he feels a bit guilty about it (and about my math assignments too)

MiKe

Re: PG: Disconnecting Distraction

#155

Post by randallsquared »

linhares wrote: post #123
ChaitanyaSai wrote: post #34

This is a bit tangential: Every start-up that YC funds is potentially worth an essay. Isn't that why they are funded? They solve a problem that nags many. So I am not surprised to see Rescue Time linked in there (The title itself is a sure bet that it would). However, given the wide reach of pg's articles (beyond news.YC), should the link merit a disclosure? There's a fuzzy notion of when that needs to be done and I…

You are right on spot. PG really should update with full disclosure. I didn't click on the link, and it crossed my mind that it could be that Dilbertesque piece of software, but PG's credibility with me made me discredit the thought. This is an obviously blatant conflict of interest... isn't it supposed to be just an "essay"?

Where's the "conflict"?

Re: PG: Disconnecting Distraction

#156

Post by astine »

connellybarnes wrote: post #147
rms wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a solid step up from WoW.

My ex-wife left me for her WoW guild leader. It's a rather addictive game, but I wouldn't exactly categorize it as social, because the 'social' atmosphere evaporates as soon as you quit the game. Social as long as you keep playing, perhaps, like drug addicts' societies, or IRC. As for avoiding distractions, I agree with Paul that the Internet is like crack, it's really bad. Like Paul, I never watched TV. (As an aside…

"My ex-wife left me for her WoW guild leader."

Ewww.

Re: PG: Disconnecting Distraction

#157

Post by astine »

Tichy wrote: post #144
nostrademons wrote: post #27

I've found that it never works long-term. Your habits just adjust to the new situation. Every year ('cept the last couple, when I've been working) I go on vacation for 2-3 weeks to my parents' summer cottage, where there is no Internet access, no cell reception, not even a touch-tone phone. I find that I'm super productive for about the first 3 days, and then I end up playing a lot of Hearts. Without the different en…

Any recommendations for good HP fan fiction?

Where does one find Hewlett-Packard fanfiction?

:)

Re: PG: Disconnecting Distraction

#158

Post by febeling »

About 4 years ago I finally (it seems) stopped smoking, and my wife (then girlfriend) as well. Before that I was a smoker for about 12 years or so. In the last 6-7 years before realy quitting I was more or less constantly in the process of quitting. When successful for one years or one and a half, then I would lapse back into the bad habit. And always for almost honorable reasons. Paul's description is quite correct here. Who wanted to blame you for a single cigarette on your graduation party, and the like.

It became a bit disheartening, because once you had proven that you would relapse after apparently successfully stopping for so long, you don't believe into yourself any longer. If 18 months was not safe, would it be fair to feel safe after 24 months the next time? Or after 30 months? And in general it was really this continuous argument with yourself all the time. Just one tonight? -- But then I found a trick that worked. My girlfriend (who smoked as well) and me would set up a monetary fine. That simple. And effective. We agreed that whoever smokes a cigarette had to pay 500 euros (which was a lot for us then), no offsetting against each other!

Reflecting on this, it is curious that one should be more successful with a bit of cash, when years of your life and your health are at stake. And I was perfectly aware of the health risk back then, of course. I assume that one involuntarily calculates the net present value of your health in the future. I think your really have to beat the economics of quitting, otherwise you out-cheat yourself without end. Take an amount that hurts you. I am a idealistic person, and working with cheap money tricks was not much after my taste. We were making us the equivalent of a donkey tricked around by a carrot. But it work for us and was even quite painless. So I recommend this to other smokers.

Re: PG: Disconnecting Distraction

#159

Post by sceptic_008 »

Paul Graham, a Luddite Technologist

..oho-ho... Paul Graham (a creator of some scheme macro kludgy prototype that finally does what other people's micro-lisps and micro-schemes have done for _years_ if not decades) and his hot-air brigade declared the Internet Ultimate Evil.

The Internet is an amplifier of thinking. If in the past ages one would be limited by his access to books, had to physically travel to get access or wait for weeks, what is left to a human brain now is analyzing, discerning, hypothesizing, searching for evidence to confirm - because the Internet is an almost immediate reference with access to almost everything.

Note how different it is from the rammin into a passive victim faster and faster-montaged propaganda, to block any vestige of thought from this victim's head - what is television, of course.

With the Internet I have to get to the materials ACTIVELY. Although I switch off flash and javascript during normal work and browsing, of course.

A "computer specialist" that pushes us luddite idea of the Internet as the ultimate drug and evil! It's like a luddite who happens to be a technologist, only a bit more unnatural. A man with access to the best instrument in aid of thinking incapable to see what he touches.

Only in Paul Graham's blog, only in Paul Graham's..

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