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Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

kenklippenstein.com

151–160 of 176 posts

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once stumbled upon the idea of calculating the signal to noise ration of "news". Say you consume 30 pieces of "news" a day, you are roughly at 10k "news" pieces a year. How many of those influence a decision you make. Like which job to take, whom to propose to, where to move. The author, Hans Rosling by the way, showed with this little thought experiment, how little signal for our personal lives and our important d…

The big one is voting, of course. It's not like following international politics will impact what firmness mattress I will buy.

I can easily read up, research the actual behavior of any candidate, their program (aka promises they won't keep) and what the party line is (as program - see before) and in the last few years, when actually putting in their votes on any issue.

I tend to prefer "just in time" and "up to date" research to "just in case" spamming my brain with noise.

But I also know how easy it is for me to fall down the rabbit hole of being back in the dopamine inducing social or news streams. I actively had to purge social apps from my phone(s) and on my private phone setup a launcher, that only shows a few selected apps as text names. No icons, no nothing - especially no badges and notifications for missed mails/messages.

This is currently the only way for me to battle these (at least to me) massively addictive systems.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It sure would be a shame to miss that photo! ... And so I did" Sometimes it's just for you. While walking with a friend last night I passed a home I've probably passed a hundred million times. Though this time, I noticed something, the second floor had a Christmas tree peaking out of a window. At that moment I realized that someone in the folds of Queens NYC took their time to put up this tree leaving the curtains…

> Will I ever share it? No. There's no reason to. You just did.

No, they didn't. They talked about their process and their mindset. They didn't share the photo.

Your response feels spiteful and needlessly mean. When someone is talking to you, listen to their words - such as their words talking about creating art even without an audience - before jumping immediately to attacks.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main political threat to this world is not from Fascism. Not even close.

The two of you are most likely not talking about the same thing. People like the person you are responding to have managed to make the term fascist not mean anything anymore.

I'm well aware that the term is overused, and that the term "Fascist" is some form of bogeyman. We are facing ever increasing restrictions on our lives, and we are seeing that from mainstream governments and big tech etc. There is a rise in the far right for sure, but we are being moved towards a global polity not an ultranationalist one.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#154
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Privilege" has sort of morphed in an mostly-untouchable insult and I don't think it means very much of anything any longer and should not be used. What it means in practice: - You can't have an opinion because you're in the wrong group. - Your opinion is wrong because you're in the wrong group. - Your opinion is hypocritical (and therefore wrong) because of the group you're in. It's a big step back with regard to ar…

I've not noticed that change in my own conversations, where privilege maintains its pretty clear definition. Maybe you need to find better conversation partners? Or perhaps you're misunderstanding the criticisms that people have of what you're saying?

I like both the options you've proposed for me: either I only speak with awful people, or else I'm always wrong. I'm sure it's one of those two options.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once stumbled upon the idea of calculating the signal to noise ration of "news". Say you consume 30 pieces of "news" a day, you are roughly at 10k "news" pieces a year. How many of those influence a decision you make. Like which job to take, whom to propose to, where to move. The author, Hans Rosling by the way, showed with this little thought experiment, how little signal for our personal lives and our important d…

The big one is voting, of course. It's not like following international politics will impact what firmness mattress I will buy.

It's highly unlikely following the news will make you better informed of politics. Pretty much everyone votes on vibes.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#156
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is very easy to filter out while browsing the internet. Not when you are speaking with actual persons. Believe or not, there are still people who watch television and believe in old media. Television teaches them that the proper response to someone disagreeing is to get angry and shout when the opposing party tries to explain their point of view. Something that is useless or even technically impossible in…

> Believe or not, there are still people who watch television and believe in old media. Enlighten me, where do you go for proper investigative journalism that is not considered old media?

YouTube? Lots of people doing legit investigative journalism on there it's pretty impressive.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are construction workers and truck drivers all poor today? They could have flip phones by choice rather than necessity.

Some are, for sure construction workers. Truck drivers, it depends. Some of the "Swift" type drivers and local/regional class-B guys might be.

Interesting. I live in a pretty rural part of the US, most of the people I know around here in construction have been doing well the last few years. That could always change, housing sure seems like a bubble today, but so far they've mostly been finding as much work as they can handle.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#158

Goes to a foreign country, still whitters on about "Republicans and Democrats" as if they were the only show in town. Oh dear...

I noticed that too, I had to re-read it a few times to make sure I was understanding it properly, it seemed so out of place. Then I read the rest of the article and realized this guy has zero perspective on anything.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#159
post #112

Escaping the internet on a luxury trip doesn’t disprove political conflict… it just shows how privilege can opt out of reality and sell the experience as clickbaity insight.

Yes, exactly. Op escaped because he can allow himself to. He is wealthy and well educated also - knows what a disconnect means and is able to pay for a pricey trip to end of the world why his affairs cater to themselves. It’s perhaps less than 0.001% of the population that can allow themselves to do it.

Why does it take a trip to the Galapagos to disconnect though? We could just as easily block access to all our socials (including HN) for a week and probably still do fine at our jobs.

Re: Why I Disappeared – My week with minimal internet in a remote island chain

#160
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Believe or not, there are still people who watch television and believe in old media. Enlighten me, where do you go for proper investigative journalism that is not considered old media?

YouTube? Lots of people doing legit investigative journalism on there it's pretty impressive.

I guess I would always wonder who's paying them. YouTube doesn't pay them a salary so is it the ads or is this one side of the story paying for exposure
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