I get more dopamine from HN than from any other substance yet discovered.
The Acceleration of Addictiveness
251–260 of 289 posts
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#252PG, would you say your long hikes are something like extended versions of the shower thinking of "The Top Idea in Your Mind", or are they more directed thinking--as in, "I want to think hard about this particular problem, so I'll go on a hike to accomplish that."
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#253Let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Why is this "new" addiction wrong ? What does it mean to say it is bad ? pg is taking great pains to distance himself from real addiction, like crystal meth. Yet he never explicitly explains anywhere why the new "addiction" is actually bad , other than trying to loosely associate it with alcohol. I don't think that the "addictiveness" of a thing alone is enough to call it ba…
I disagree with the fact that people currently have more free time as compared to 50-100 years ago.
Definition of "free time": "time available for hobbies and other activities that you enjoy"
drewcrawford's excellent stats are very clear on the point: "between 1880 and 1995 the amount of work per day fell nearly in half, allowing leisure time to more than triple."
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#254The link to the Paleolithic diet made me think that one strategy against increasing addition is to normalize for evolutionary time. Still requires a lot of learned, subjective insight. But basically, anything that has proved itself via evolution is more sturdy and is worth congregating around (these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.). Bravo on another great essay…
The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further. Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancesto…
Have you considered the possibility that the paleo diet may be one of those rare things that is horribly flawed in theory but works just fine in practice?
You're correct that there's no good nutritional reason to only eat "paleo" foods (though certainly, almost all the foods that you should definitely avoid, like chocolate, chips and cheesecake, are non-paleo). You're also correct that a modern "paleo" diet doesn't have all that much in common with a hunter-gatherer's diet anyway.
But as a useful heuristic for coming up with a healthy diet for weight loss in the modern world, it's not too bad. If you're trying to lose weight only three things really matter:
a) Are you maintaining a calorie deficit?
b) Are you getting enough nutrients?
c) Is the diet easy to stick to, or does it make you hungry/give you cravings?
The paleo diet seems to work fairly well by all of these metrics. It's really just a standard low-GI diet with a few other things unnecessarily banned (beans, dairy). The restrictive nature of the diet means you eat a diet rich in meats and vegetables, which are nutrient rich and fill you up with relatively few calories. The low-GI nature of the diet stabilizes your blood sugar and stops you getting the hunger pangs you'd get on a more carb-rich calorie-restictive diet. And it seems to be relatively easy to stick to with only a moderate amount of willpower -- I've been on it for nearly three weeks now and the idea of eating a brownie just gives me a headache.
I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone trying to maintain weight, since I think it would be difficult and expensive to consume enough calories for a healthy lifestyle without eating modest amounts of grains. And the prohibition on beans and dairy is probably unnecessary. But as a workable heuristic for weight loss, "eat paleo foods" isn't half bad.
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
"(these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.)" This is really much of the appeal of Christianity, and other forms of culture that have survived some test of time. I say this in response to pg's foot note: "Unless we mass produce social customs. I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US is partly a reaction to drugs." Not just drugs, but a…
Modern evangelical Christianity is very much a mass-market phenomenon. It doesn't exist without Glenn Beck and his ilk, who are very much artifacts of the Internet echo chamber (though they perhaps owe more to Fox News, cable news being a bit of a prototype for the Internet's monotonous assault on reason.) It's very fashionable in the hacker community to treat Christianity as an anti-science establishment, but that's…
I really wish I didn't down-vote this. I got derailed by what I thought was going to be a short-sighted rant about Christians and Glenn Beck. In short, however, I think you're right on the money.
Many Christians I know refer to modern evangelical Christianity as "evangelicalism." It connotes a social construction that has its roots in church life, but its purpose is a far cry from a biblical understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. IMO, this accounts for the rise of Beck, Limbaugh, and other talking heads. They preach a message that isn't watered down. They sound impassioned and convictional, unlike the guy standing in front of them on Sunday morning.
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#256I worry about the acceleration of addiction in particular subgroups of the population. WoW (or Farmville), for example, is not crystal meth... but that flippant observation is a response to a core truth that some people just have a lot of trouble saying no. Maybe they're poorly educated, maybe they're genetically predisposed to addiction, maybe they're clinically depressed, for whatever the reason they've got a weake…
And what to do if you are Google and your business model is predicated on people with poor impulse control?
Ad land's been a long time darkside after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
I guess we all have our shadow.
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
This phenomenon, also called "rational ignorance" by economists, is a problem for democracies. Not every person has the time to become an expert on everything, but they still vote on it.
I wonder how many people would be happy to "delegate their vote" if there was some officially supported way of doing it. This would be an interesting way of reimagining representative democracy in the digital age. Why should we bother limiting ourselves to a fixed number of representatives? Let everyone vote on everything _but_ let people choose to assign their vote to someone else. Rather than electing representativ…
I would like to be able to delegate my vote on particular subjects to particular people. That way I don't have to worry if an economist I respect has a restrictive idea of gay rights or something like that, I can just pick a trustworthy delegate for each topic. A computer can ask me to break conflicts where it appears that a particular law should go to two different delegates.
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#258I worry about the acceleration of addiction in particular subgroups of the population. WoW (or Farmville), for example, is not crystal meth... but that flippant observation is a response to a core truth that some people just have a lot of trouble saying no. Maybe they're poorly educated, maybe they're genetically predisposed to addiction, maybe they're clinically depressed, for whatever the reason they've got a weake…
In practice I would draw the line at things that are mostly consumed by addicts. So I'd have no problem being a vintner, but I wouldn't want to be a heroin manufacturer, even if it were legal. There are various edge cases you'd have to treat individually-- e.g. if the median user wasn't an addict but all your revenues came from the addicts. In that case, again, I probably wouldn't want to do it.
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Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#259I worry about the acceleration of addiction in particular subgroups of the population. WoW (or Farmville), for example, is not crystal meth... but that flippant observation is a response to a core truth that some people just have a lot of trouble saying no. Maybe they're poorly educated, maybe they're genetically predisposed to addiction, maybe they're clinically depressed, for whatever the reason they've got a weake…
As I remarked in my own essay on the subject (linked by billswift below, keyword "superstimuli"), I don't think the problem comes from the edge cases. I think the problem is that if you make a product 5% more addictive than the competition, you can steal 80% of their customers, and this creates an incentive to make things more and more addictive well past the point where it starts to hurt the median customer signific…
Link for those who don't want to scroll down:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_...
Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rock Band 3 Pro Mode will actually teach you to play instruments: From: http://www.rockband.com/zine/rock-band-3-announcements The Rock Band 3 Squier Stratocaster is a fully functional, full-sized, six-string electric guitar that also functions as a game controller that Fender and Harmonix have teamed up to develop.
Is it true? Can you actually learn to play guitar on this thing? I got to try it. Fondling strings should be an effective way to get away from it all.
That's the goal. FTA:
Ever had someone ask you why you play plastic guitar instead of learning a real instrument? Now you can tell them you ARE learning a real instrument. Rock Band 3 empowers players to develop actual musical skills through the fun of Rock Band Pro gameplay. Start at Easy and work your way up through Expert on three different Pro Modes, just like you did with the plastic guitars and plastic drums.
It applies to drums (adds additional cymbals), keyboard (though it's only two octaves), and guitar, which according to promotional videos, if you play through expert on Guitar, you're playing every real note on the guitar.