I’m reminded of the moral panic my parents generation had around televisions. And their parents generation had over serialized plays on the radio. And several generations removed, the panic over the printing press .
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The New Smoking (2021)
51–60 of 162 posts
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#52I mean he's right. At some point if we're just robots playing candy crush or watching tiktok after tiktok - what's the real downside of just matrixing our society. I mean yes there are people that still skateboard or ski or hike, but if the population that finds meaning in activities disappears in the next 100 years, there's no reason to have physical anything. Might as well call it or fight back.
Not disagreeing with you, but what determines that skiing or hiking is more 'valuable' or more worthy of spending time on than candy crush or tiktok?
It pains me seeing how nature is being treated when large amounts of lowest common denominator visit the woods. Lots of noise, junk food wrappers, bottles, beer cans. In that sense, it's more "valuable" having these types away from nature
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> should be regulated in some way, at least up until a certain age. Its called proper parenting. As a father of little 2 miracles, I can clearly see how easily they get addicted to basically everything-screen, and many more things like junk food. And its 1-way road. The hard part is going into full relentless battle with your own children who will use various psychological tricks, just like adult addicts, to get thei…
Totally agree. I cannot imagine how difficult it is for modern parents to manage this issue. By "regulated" I did mean 90% parenting, but it's also a larger, systemic societal issue that needs to be at least considered, quickly, before the current generation(s) who realize it no longer have influence and the issue solidifies as normal in our culture. On the other hand, it's probably just the, albeit sad, natural orde…
Maybe the trick is to clearly label these addictions across whole society as harmful, the lower the age the more intense/deep/long lasting harm and act accordingly. When we managed it rather quickly globally on proper narcotics this should be achievable.
I've met parents who were saying 'we have digital kids' when their kids were acting like heroin addicts on withdrawal just to play on phone another 30 mins, and they were saying this as something normal. I get it why, admitting you are raising hard addicts and it was you who failed to prevent that must be outright unacceptable for many. People have this innermost desire to feel good about their actions and decisions and this would be properly undefendable if hard truths were told.
But it comes back to parents too - spending more time with kids instead of chasing career and money kids have 0 interest in (which is smart!), more meaningfully, be an example in ie activities, sports and hobbies. In an age when obesity jumps through the roof, people are seriously messed up after 2 years of covid lockdowns and all news are about doom and gloom. Tough.
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question and not snarky (despite appearances): How come you comment on HN? It looks like it falls in addictive experiences, albeit maybe necessary to keep on top of IT news. If the theory of “quitting” was right, we wouldn’t see anyone commenting about quitting while still online. I’m asking because I wonder how to keep on top of things / what part should news-reading take in my less-dopamine life.
> How come you comment on HN? Just for the record, karma is a useless metric to me. It gives visibility into how one of my submissions performs, but that's it. I don't chase karma. > It looks like it falls in addictive experiences Addiction is when a thing controls you, and you don't control it. I am in charge of my experience here on HN, and as I said, I don't chase upvotes & karma.
Equivalent to what a Youtube or Instagram user would say. So, if I understand, you see any other app as bad, but you don’t see HN as bad because you are in charge of your own experience?
I personally think I don’t want to masquerade my participation as something else than an excitement to be part of an interesting online community, an interest in being up to date with trends, but nonetheless, an addiction, since it takes time and doesn’t create that much value in my life, and if I had to quit it, I would be doomed by being unoccupied.
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#55I mean he's right. At some point if we're just robots playing candy crush or watching tiktok after tiktok - what's the real downside of just matrixing our society. I mean yes there are people that still skateboard or ski or hike, but if the population that finds meaning in activities disappears in the next 100 years, there's no reason to have physical anything. Might as well call it or fight back.
I think this is a somewhat self-manifested societal dichotomy requiring debate. One route leads to, as you say, a "matrix" society, which may or may not be a good thing. But we as humans need to make the decision if it's correct, because ultimately the humans profiting from the setup will end up irrelevant, and I don't think that's understood (ironic).
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#56I’m reminded of the moral panic my parents generation had around televisions. And their parents generation had over serialized plays on the radio. And several generations removed, the panic over the printing press .
Was there actually a moral panic about TV in general? There was one about TV violence specifically. The general concerns about TV like reduced physical activity are still a concern and aren’t imaginary.
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#57Not to be pedantic, but smoking is actually the new smoking. Its just now being normalized through weed (which is rationalized as healthy or cool) and vaping (which is seen as less harmful than smoking cigarettes). The sheer number of smoke shops has exploded.
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heck, even pornhub shows you different content in different countries... at least a friend told me so. I guess CCP involvment is guaranteed in some form, but I would expect rather light touch and strong monitoring. To spot dissent early and weed it out in the roots. And to have something for blackmails on everybody in future.
> Heck, even pornhub shows you different content in different countries... at least a friend told me so. This is true, and even more fine grained. All content driven industries optimize their delivery to target audiences.
OC here - the point is that there is a difference between a for-profit content push and a totalitarian government content push.
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#59I’m reminded of the moral panic my parents generation had around televisions. And their parents generation had over serialized plays on the radio. And several generations removed, the panic over the printing press .
Early usage of TVs consisted in living the tv set turned on constantly, which in the hindsight was insane. With time, we learned to « master » the technology that was put in our hands. Much along the lines of what this article points out.
There are still people who do leave the television on constantly.
Far worse, there are many, many, many public spaces --- waiting rooms, bars, restaurants, cafes --- in which televisions are ominipresent and, again, always on.
This has become far worse, rather than better, with thinner and cheaper displays.
Re: The New Smoking (2021)
#60Something that’s helped in a “high leverage” way is interrupting the impulse to open an app that takes me into glazed eyes territory, or “licking the phone” as I describe it to my kids. :) None of the kids actually want to waste time on social media… but we all still struggle with it. I ran across an (iOS) app that they've come to accept and even appreciate. Rather than blocking apps completely, it adds a pause of ma…
I think this could be a really helpful tool. Whenever I find myself having a compulsion (check my phone, order fast food, skip the gym) I try my best to make myself wait 10-15 minutes (depending on the circumstances) and most of the time I’m no longer interested because I’m thinking more clearly. Very much applies to shopping as well. Do I really need a new laptop? Let’s see how I feel next week, there’s always another sale.