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We need to reclaim our attention

theguardian.com

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Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#261

Post by 37 »

spicyusername wrote: post #202
champagnois wrote: post #164

Consider what this does to opinion and independent thinking. Most attention grabbing platforms are designed to use a variety of reward mechanisns to reinforce the politics of the platform. Some easily botted platforms (like reddit) will constantly bombard people with anti-civilizational content promoting "anti-work" or very toxic identity politics that further isolates the users, and, in turn, strengthens their addic…

Absolutely agree. I see anecdotal evidence of this everywhere. Its most noticicble with people who spend a lot of time "online" browsing placing like twitter, reddit, and tiktok (or even older folks who watch too much "mainstream" cable tv news). They tend to hold derivative and thoughtless "stock" worldviews that are clearly directly borrowed from the feed they subscribe to and not a result of deciding for themselve…

>This is as much a "liberal" problem (e.g. Capitalism is bad) as it is a "conservative" one (e.g. Universal healthcare is communism).

Bingo.

>A particularly striking example for me recently was when I happened to compare the content on my TikTok feed to the content on my 60 year old parents. There were completely different sets of propaganda being peddled to both of us that were essentially incompatible with each other.

This is kinda scary and makes me glad I've never had a TikTok account. Also kinda makes me think that you and your parents shouldn't have one either. But hey, "to each their phone"...

>We are all drowning in so much propaganda on these platforms its almost impossible to separate fact from fiction or to find a perspective that has the proper level of nuance. Its no wonder everyone is so divided.

Isn't that the way ""they"" want it though? Divide and conquer? So busy fighting each other that we can't see the real enemy? Or is that just some crazy shit I picked up somewhere?

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#262

Post by cborch »

LightHugger wrote: post #257
pier25 wrote: post #250

I've been doing 100% full stack while bootstrapping my current project for the past year and a half. So basically doing absolutely everything alone. It's really exhausting and progress is extremely slow. It's not a matter of skill or knowledge as I've been doing design, front end, and general programming for 20 years. At first I thought it was because I was on my own, so the workload was tripled, but then realized a…

This is very familiar to me, I've been trying to use some strategies to limit cognitive load to mixed success. The most effective thing has just been taking better notes. If i know i take good notes, and i write something down and know i will go back and read it, my brain knows it's "allowed" to forget about it, and that greatly lessons the load. Sounds obvious and simple but sometimes it's not obvious that spending…

This is the key for me, but I've never heard anyone else talk about it. It feels like I need to get it out of my brain and somewhere else or my brain's 'ram' is full. I'm not sure if its mental of there is some physiological phenomenon going on there, but it really works for me.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#263

Post by Mezzie »

nabla9 wrote: post #192
slibhb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, it may turn negative at some point but we're not there yet. It's a moral panic. We're not talking about war or genocide, we're talking about the young people staring at their phones too much.

That's another type of fallacy. If there is no obviously horrific consequences, there is nothing. Either/Or Reasoning. My position is that we don't know yet. Some harms may be transitory and people adult. Making arguments for or against without good data and reasoning is not helping. Making your mind up prematurely makes it harder to change the opinion when the evidence comes in.

What drives me nuts personally is how nobody is asking the adults that ALREADY grew up online as kids what impact it has.

This is hardly the first time we've had a panic about kids on the internet; the first one I remember is the freak out that led to COPPA in the late 90s. At the time, perhaps people could be forgiven for not asking us since we were the first generation of kids who had unrestricted Internet access and we were still kids (nobody wants children's opinions), but now there are plenty of formerly Too Online Children that are adults.

If having unrestricted information/internet access at an early age does change your brain, why aren't we comparing people in their 30s who grew up online with people in their 30s who didn't? That would be super interesting, and there are many aspects of growing up online that definitely did change my experience. (E.G. being able to pretend to be an adult and be addressed as an equal based on my ideas online made it very hard to function in the real world where acting like an adult's equal was inappropriate, I had access to information that many adults did not and that caused problems, I had access to information that my local culture considered 'inappropriate' but was acceptable online [information about female puberty is one], etc.)

Lots of people deciding what our experiences did to us without asking us.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#264

Post by parkingrift »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #215
saiya-jin wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in same vein, you can tell addict to 'just drop that needle', yet few do. Or cigarettes. Addictive behavior is, well, addictive, and few in population have the mental will to shed it off themselves once they get hooked. Tobacco clearly kills you (and people around), ruins you and make you stink like pile of old crap. We still allow it, but regulate it heavily since bad effects are out there, everywhere. TBH I d…

HN and many tech-minded forums struggle the most with arguments that require empathy. For people who probably don’t consider themselves religious, their outlook is extremely Puritanical. “I see you explaining why x is difficult for most people, but I don’t struggle with it so the difficulty is invalid.”

It’s not an empathy gap. It’s collectivism vs individualism.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#265

Post by rorfm »

pier25 wrote: post #250

I've been doing 100% full stack while bootstrapping my current project for the past year and a half. So basically doing absolutely everything alone. It's really exhausting and progress is extremely slow. It's not a matter of skill or knowledge as I've been doing design, front end, and general programming for 20 years. At first I thought it was because I was on my own, so the workload was tripled, but then realized a…

I've gone through a similar process. For me what you described of splitting it into the tangible parts helped a lot - I'd spend a week just working on the back-end and then a week on the front-end and vice-versa. Was hard to context switch between the two (especially as my back-end is usually python and front-end is usually a flavor of JS).

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#266

Post by radicalbyte »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #50
dominotw wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 hr of intensive sport a day to 1 hr of sport a year did you make this tradeoff by choice( vs religious reasons ect) . I've never been that active but you sound like someone who enjoyed sports and being active.

As a parent with a 3 and 4 year old who was only a functional adult if I worked out intensely at least 4 days per week, and now is struggling desperately to get that back, its not by choice. Children are just really demanding. I think a big part of the problem is that humans were not meant to raise children in isolated family units. You were meant to have a small village where they could go bother different adults an…

This. I loved lifting and felt fantastic before our 3rd was born (just before Corona), the last time has felt like being in jail.

Luckily once the youngest kid starts school is gets 100x easier. Only two more years to go :)

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#267

Post by floren »

rightbyte wrote: post #90
bootlooped wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what kids raised on iPads with big childproof cases will be like when they grow up, or even just when they get into high school.

I had that discussion this week end. I wonder if it will be any different from our Game boys? Or is the problem that smaller children get their hands on them?

I grew up in the 90s. At least in my part of the US, Gameboys were pretty damn rare; I only knew a couple people who had them, and they didn't play them often, in part because AA batteries were rare and precious commodities for children.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#268

Post by 37 »

drawkbox wrote: post #245

Doomscrolling caused by "engagement" metrics. When engagement is all that matters, the most engagement comes when people are divisive, mad/angry or even pushed to extremes. That tabloid-esque reactionary content does engage people, but not in a good way. Information of all types give a dopamine hit though and it is sometimes hard to pull away. When you feel yourself getting bothered, angry and you have to prove someo…

>When you feel yourself getting bothered, angry and you have to prove someone wrong on the internet, step away. Or if you are wasting too much time on it. You are taking valuable time from your own projects and quality of life.

Everyone, please do this. Time is basically the only resource you can't get more of.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#269

Post by zcw100 »

nabla9 wrote: post #61
slibhb wrote: post #42

> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mista…

> but it's always the same story. This is the reverse slippery slope fallacy. There is no threshold, no effect size where this tuns net negative, etc. We took these 10 steps, were worried and nothing happened, we can do more steps.

Thank you. Some perspective is warranted. If society can cope with crack and meth without completely falling apart it can survive Facebook. What I do think is that this is covering up for more fundamental problems, like people being worked to death and have no time to form meaningful bonds with people in healthier ways than Facebook. It's like fast food for the soul. People are not eating Taco Bell rather filet minion because they like Taco Bell better. It's because they don't have any money and need something quick that they can eat in the car on their way to their second job. People are extremely isolated. Social media is the shit alternative to being completely alone.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#270

Post by thegrimmest »

Apocryphon wrote: post #184
thegrimmest wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the maintenance of the common physical environment we live in should be regulated, but that's not what we're talking about here is it? We're talking about regulating interaction between people, which is inherently paternalistic.

We’re talking about the concept of total economic freedom in general, which would inevitably lead to negative externalities of any kind, including to the physical environment, not merely interactions between people.

I'm not strictly in favour of total economic freedom and wasn't the one to bring it up. Namely I am in favour of regulating the physical commons - rights of way, air, water, etc. that we all must physically interact with. I'm against the paternalistic regulation of how free people should peacefully interact with each other, with the view to steer outcomes to some random idea of good.
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