My daily morning exercise is running, 20 to 40 minutes, sometimes longer. No headphones, ear buds, etc. Just me, my mind and the rhythm of the run. To each his/her own, but I believe more people would benefit from disconnecting when they do such things.
All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
271–280 of 468 posts
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their whole model is built around getting people's attention by making them addicted to notifications. If you disable the notifications, that's good for you. But you're a small exceptional minority. HN afaik has no such feature at all.
How did you know that XorNot replied to your previous comment? Notifications, addictive design and gamification are really bad practices that we should try to avoid - but the underlying drug of social media is that someone noticed and reacted to your content, and HN provides that just like Facebook or Twitter.
Most people on here and Reddit are lurkers. They still keep coming back even though the see no tasty upvotes.
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#273the problem here isn’t being alone, per se. it’s being alone in a room
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
the day you can sit for hours without doing anything, you've attained the state of self-realization – self-love free from all conditions. The conditioned mind is no longer there, the thoughts no longer bombard you, the emotions no longer disturb you. You enjoy the deep peace, contentment and bliss of your infinite self. Then you can truly contemplate deeply on anything you feel important, then the deep mysteries of e…
Not if you are hungry. Deep mysteries are fine and all but doing so in -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach lays out the reality of existence with exacting clarity. We are merely animals. Nothing more. Nothing less.
> -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach
Sounds like a walk in the park for an ascetic. We forget how comfortable we’ve become, 250 years ago this would have been your average Tuesday.
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#275Why would you sit quietly alone in a room when you could be enjoying a sauna, soaking up the sun at the beach, or picnicking in a park? I don’t think the problem is sitting alone with one’s thoughts - but rather that an indoor room isn’t a particularly desirable environment. At least it isn’t as undesirable as an airplane seat though.
Before small screens and walkmans, millions of people flew every day in an airplane seat trapped with their own thoughts. For many, it was probably the only time they experienced this. I actually get comments from other passengers now how I can sit and look out the window for hours without music, movie or book. In their rooms, they have other venues and probably less fear of negative self-conscious thoughts (too fat,…
I don't understand. Most of the time you decide to go to sleep you are alone with your thoughts without any distractions. It might only be for a brief time, but it's still true, no?
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#276Do people here feel the same way? That is, do you feel that it is uncomfortable to not do anything? I, like most people I guess, am easily distracted with various things like reading HN or fiddling with whatever is on the table. When given the opportunity to sit down with nothing with my thoughts however, I always feel very enjoyable. It is definitely nothing I would think about as uncomfortable.
>That is, do you feel that it is uncomfortable to not do anything?
I do like not doing anything, particularly not having to do anything. Perhaps over a longer time period I would think differently, but so far I haven't felt it. However, not doing anything is a waste of time. It doesn't really give me anything and excessive wasting of time has negative consequences on life. If I were wealthy enough then I'd probably do it way more.
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
How helpful to have a person who knows nothing about my situation police my behaviors because of a vague congruence and an apparent desire to score internet points. No, for the purposes of what I'm doing, HN was not included in that. From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way. No personalized, UAM-optimized algorithmic feed, no infinite river of small content bites, no rich mechanisms…
"From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way." I mean, it's fine that you feel this way, and you are probably correct - it wasn't designed for it. But I suspect for a lot of us , me included, it serves that exact purpose. I post so that strangers on the internet read it and give me likes. I compulsively check my comments section on my account to see how many upvotes my comments have. E…
I gave you 1 internet point for this.
Feels familiar, but I'm still in control. Much like with alcohol.
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
How helpful to have a person who knows nothing about my situation police my behaviors because of a vague congruence and an apparent desire to score internet points. No, for the purposes of what I'm doing, HN was not included in that. From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way. No personalized, UAM-optimized algorithmic feed, no infinite river of small content bites, no rich mechanisms…
"From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way." I mean, it's fine that you feel this way, and you are probably correct - it wasn't designed for it. But I suspect for a lot of us , me included, it serves that exact purpose. I post so that strangers on the internet read it and give me likes. I compulsively check my comments section on my account to see how many upvotes my comments have. E…
>And clearly upvote/downvote system didn't happen by an accident, it's there for a reason.
This system has been corrupted on websites like reddit to become a "like" system, but outside of very divisive political topics it still works mostly as intended on HN: they moderate bad contributions, not stuff people disagree with.
You can actually observe this in this very thread so far: while people express opposite viewpoints at this moment none of the comment are in the negative. I'm sure that on Reddit the hivemind would've decided what the Right Opinion(tm) would be and people disagreeing would be sitting at -200 comment score.
Maybe the system could be pushed further and hide the scores even for your own comments though, removing all gamification. I don't know if it would improve things but I'd be curious to see how it would impact the quality of the discourse.
>otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
I mean even on forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/BBSs/imageboards without scoring system (or even publicly identifiable accounts) people would do the same thing, so I think that you overestimate the influence of the scoring system. I guess the closest equivalent on these other forums in general is getting "replies", i.e. engagement with your content, which I suppose is what we really crave in the end. We want people to listen to us.
Beyond that HN does have a few huge quality advantages over other social media. A big one is that the focus is still on textual content, not images and videos which means that you have to take some time to digest every story instead of mindlessly scrolling through the main page one gif at a time.
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not if you are hungry. Deep mysteries are fine and all but doing so in -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach lays out the reality of existence with exacting clarity. We are merely animals. Nothing more. Nothing less.
> -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach Sounds like a walk in the park for an ascetic. We forget how comfortable we’ve become, 250 years ago this would have been your average Tuesday.
Show us an ascetic who would find this a walk in the park.
Re: All problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone (2014)
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Muslim, I pray five times a day, and of late I have begun to perform it "better", as in unshackling myself from worldly thoughts and other mental distractions. I attach zero importance to them and I remind myself that this صلاة (prayer) that I am doing alone deserves any importance, to the exclusion of all others. Thoughts used to come to me to try and induce panic in me, but overtime they have become so feeble…
I don't think what Pascal is trying to get through is that we should numb ourself to inner thoughts. On the contrary, to acknowldege them and if anything, spend more time contemplating. That is when we can learn about ourself, others, and the universe, if I may say. Working from home this entire year, I have tried to practice taking at least 15 minutes everyday, couple of times a day, laying down and just listening t…
Sounds a lot like mindfulness mediation.