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

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

#161

Post by lm28469 »

jpttsn wrote: post #132
lm28469 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any source for "That is one of the reasons why people who work in the food industry all smoke so much." ? As far as I can tell most low wage / manual labor jobs are plagued with cigarette smoking because it allows more breaks / and it's a way to kill time. Here in germany a lot of 30s people picked up smoking during their mandatory military service (cigarettes were free to avoid creation of black markets,…

You’re saying it’s not even one of the reasons ?

I don't know, I have a hard time thinking someone would go: "I better start smoking these cancer inducing sticks, I've read studies proving they reduce appetite".

I doubt people go out of there way to start new addictions voluntarily, but maybe I'm too hopeful.

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

#162

Post by yesenadam »

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.

Is that actually true? Somehow I doubt it, but I'm open to reading research (or whatever) on the question. (I'm taking you literally because you specifically wrote "literally", but maybe you didn't mean it...literally)

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

#163

Post by yesenadam »

goostavos wrote: post #77
HiroshiSan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I completely agree with your sentiment, Cal explicitly defines the meaning of Deep Work, and I think it's an important thing society should think about as technology progresses. It helps to have the terminology to describe the state of our lives. From page 3 of the book, Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limi…

I read 75% of it, does that make me qualified to trash on it? I thought it was complete garbage. Not the idea, mind you, the _book_. It's a blog post's worth of information that's comically stretched out in an early college I'm-trying-to-meet-a-word count way. The book is almost entirely pointless fluff.

>The book is almost entirely pointless fluff.

I thought it was a great read, fascinating, I learned a lot, it made me think, and I've been recommending it to selected people who I think would benefit as a must read etc. So I'm just wrong? You didn't learn anything, great, doesn't mean it's "complete garbage".

I don't understand this need (that I frequently see expressed on HN) to have the most packed into the absolute least number of lines. Do people hate reading or something? Sure, you could leave out the stories, the anecdotes about various places and styles of work..but what would be the point?! Indeed, leave out almost everything and almost nothing would be left. That is not surprising. That La Rochefoucauld or Mandeville can be summed up in a phrase doesn't make them less worth reading.

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

#164

Post by [deleted] »

kashyapc wrote: post #119
spectrum1234 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good book but also could be summed up in a few pages.

Afraid, I completely disagree. How could you meaningfully "sum up" someone's lifetime's worth of work into a couple of pages and explain the related complexity? (Not talking about academic abstract-style summaries.) Prof. C is cited many thousands of times (did a quick look up on Google Scholar) in well-being and motivation studies. On the other hand, for Newport this is a "side hustle", because his primary work is s…

[deleted]

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

#165

Post by Apocryphon »

yesenadam wrote: post #163
goostavos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read 75% of it, does that make me qualified to trash on it? I thought it was complete garbage. Not the idea, mind you, the _book_. It's a blog post's worth of information that's comically stretched out in an early college I'm-trying-to-meet-a-word count way. The book is almost entirely pointless fluff.

>The book is almost entirely pointless fluff. I thought it was a great read, fascinating, I learned a lot, it made me think, and I've been recommending it to selected people who I think would benefit as a must read etc. So I'm just wrong? You didn't learn anything, great, doesn't mean it's "complete garbage". I don't understand this need (that I frequently see expressed on HN) to have the most packed into the absolut…

It’s garbage not for the ideas, but for all of the filler. There is no need for Newport to pad out a simple thesis and tips with anecdotes on modern day blacksmiths and tangents on how to memorize decks of cards. Maybe calling it garbage is harsh, but the book is definitely overrated and should be called out as such amidst all of the breathless hype for it on HN.

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

#166

Post by com2kid »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #154
com2kid wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody generally wants a few core services from their smartphone: send and receive brief messages, directions, ride hailing, listen to a podcast or some streaming service, mobile payments, take photos (perhaps most importantly). Complete access to a large % of Western civilization's collective knowledge is also kind of nice. Mostly used for restaurant open hours and random Wikipedia articles. But still. Knowing…

Why only Western Civilization? Why not the collected knowledge of all of humanity?

Wikipedia has a Western bias.

Linguistic barriers prevent lots of information from East Asia from being accessible to westeners.

Large portions of the world don't yet have super organized repositories of knowledge.

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

#167

Post by mailjenil »

andy_adams wrote: post #88
keiferski wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sometimes a fundamental idea is simple, but it takes repeated hammering into your mind before you adopt it. 95% of a book might seem like fluff, but when you read the 1 example, the 1 anecdote, or the 1 "way of saying it" that resonates with you - that's often when the idea sticks and becomes a more permanent part of your life. Expanding an idea into book form helps more people discover that "aha" moment than a singl…

This is the reason I prefer books instead of blog posts.

With blog posts, you can surely cover the breath of multiple topics but its totally worth to go repeat an fundamentally important idea with multiple scenarios.

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

#168

Post by [deleted] »

Apocryphon wrote: post #165
yesenadam wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The book is almost entirely pointless fluff. I thought it was a great read, fascinating, I learned a lot, it made me think, and I've been recommending it to selected people who I think would benefit as a must read etc. So I'm just wrong? You didn't learn anything, great, doesn't mean it's "complete garbage". I don't understand this need (that I frequently see expressed on HN) to have the most packed into the absolut…

It’s garbage not for the ideas, but for all of the filler. There is no need for Newport to pad out a simple thesis and tips with anecdotes on modern day blacksmiths and tangents on how to memorize decks of cards. Maybe calling it garbage is harsh, but the book is definitely overrated and should be called out as such amidst all of the breathless hype for it on HN.

[deleted]
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