I don't know what the "right" thing to post on social media is. I don't want to brag, nor complain, nor talk about how average my day is. I usually just end up posting cool articles and never anything personal. I thought about automatically posting the #1 HN article to my timeline every day, for the likes.
Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
81–90 of 94 posts
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN certainly isn't a utopia, and a lot of the problems mentioned are just inherent to online forums. The only real addictive bit is the points system on HN. I'd be fine with that just going away. It wouldn't be the first time I've refreshed posts I've made repeatedly to see the tally go up.
> HN certainly isn't a utopia, and a lot of the problems mentioned are just inherent to online forums. The old style of forums didn't have the same kind of compulsive pressure, since you could always respond the next day/week/month and the topic would bump back up to the top of the post. If you don't respond on HN or Reddit quick enough, no one is going to see your comment. I frequent some sites that has the older sy…
Do you think it would help to have a comment reply notification built into HN? Most of the time if I decide not to add a follow-up comment it's because the user I'm replying to has no way of being notified that I did. Or do you think it would just exacerbate the urgency issues?
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> HN certainly isn't a utopia, and a lot of the problems mentioned are just inherent to online forums. The old style of forums didn't have the same kind of compulsive pressure, since you could always respond the next day/week/month and the topic would bump back up to the top of the post. If you don't respond on HN or Reddit quick enough, no one is going to see your comment. I frequent some sites that has the older sy…
Do you think it would help to have a comment reply notification built into HN? Most of the time if I decide not to add a follow-up comment it's because the user I'm replying to has no way of being notified that I did. Or do you think it would just exacerbate the urgency issues?
Something other than the awful threading would be nice. It's nearly impossible to keep up with anything but recent conversations.
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#84Didn't add much to the discussion, unfortunately. The post is just material copied from Hooked (which is a creepy book worth reading!), plus observations that have already been made (social media causes us to compare ourselves to everyone else's highlight reel), followed by a bunch of generic, currently popular fads/lifestyle advice (keto diet, exercise, meditate, stoicism). A far simpler solution is available to all…
>A far simpler solution is available to all of us: stop using Instagram. Easier said than done, no? That's basically saying "opt out of modern society," which I personally agree with, but it's not a reasonable solution. These companies that spend b/millions on psychological research to condition consumers is not going away anytime soon.
Pretty sure you'll still have access to the rest of modern society if quit a social media site. It's not like your phone will become disabled, or the lights will go out.
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh woah, definitely not sanitized of politics. Probably because I follow some politicians, I get recommendations for these crazy, aggressive political meme pages. I see some very very hot button stuff on my feed. Count yourself lucky that Instagram looks politically sanitized!
Why would you follow politicians on Instagram in the first place?
Crazy thought... Maybe they enjoy the politicians Instagram feed
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN certainly isn't a utopia, and a lot of the problems mentioned are just inherent to online forums. The only real addictive bit is the points system on HN. I'd be fine with that just going away. It wouldn't be the first time I've refreshed posts I've made repeatedly to see the tally go up.
> HN certainly isn't a utopia, and a lot of the problems mentioned are just inherent to online forums. The old style of forums didn't have the same kind of compulsive pressure, since you could always respond the next day/week/month and the topic would bump back up to the top of the post. If you don't respond on HN or Reddit quick enough, no one is going to see your comment. I frequent some sites that has the older sy…
Yes, HN and Reddit are very-high-traffic forums, so it is mostly read-once--write-once--do-not-come-back. Not only the comment go by hundreds on each thread, but the threads themselves have a life expectancy of 24 hours only, 48 hours max, before they are buried and reject to the infamous page 2 where no one goes. So there's generally no point in coming back.
The fact that the 'shape' of the threads changes all the time does not help either (the way the messages are ordered, depending on the upvotes, the freshness, and whichever mysterious other criteria may be involved).
Conversations at a depth higher than 5 or 6 levels is also difficult to follow, so I think not many people read them, let alone take part in them (on Reddit, such deep threads even suffer a penalty twice, and the second one, which requires opening a new tab or window if you don't want to have to reload the whole page once you come back, is probably fatal to almost all of the readers).
(I won't tell how much I miss Usenet and newsreaders once more, I promise :-D )
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#87The overall way the author frames the discussion is putting the cart before the horse and ultimately Procrustean. The author's argument is a bit like a person with his head in a bucket of water claiming that human beings are "outdated" because we have this "primitive" need to breathe that's preventing us from being able to deal with having our heads stuck in buckets full of water. Maybe we shouldn't be sticking our h…
I don't get your point. The author just used some funny metaphore to explain how our brain works. And yes, our brain still works with ancestral habits, this is not a big news after all.
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh woah, definitely not sanitized of politics. Probably because I follow some politicians, I get recommendations for these crazy, aggressive political meme pages. I see some very very hot button stuff on my feed. Count yourself lucky that Instagram looks politically sanitized!
Why would you follow politicians on Instagram in the first place?
Outrage Addiction?
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think comparing a discussion on HN to liking photos, and notifications on Instagram. Is a bit far fetched. You can easily argue about the addictiveness of an online forum, and social interaction. We are social creatures after all. But social media sites like IG, Facebook, Twitter, specifically target those weaknesses in our brain.
I've completely quit facebook and noticed that I just replaced its usage entirely by reddit. With facebook I usually just saw what my friends were up to; with reddit, I just see a bunch of strangers and recurring figures, and threads where everyone is an keyboard comedian. I think my reddit usage is extremely unhealthy because I just browse the same things over and over again in my free time. But most of the time I f…
Reddit is horrible, I gave up on that a while ago for the exact reasons you stated. It's a massive time sink, with zero benefit. Fast food of online forums.
Re: Why our outdated brains are making us unhappy
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> HN certainly isn't a utopia, and a lot of the problems mentioned are just inherent to online forums. The old style of forums didn't have the same kind of compulsive pressure, since you could always respond the next day/week/month and the topic would bump back up to the top of the post. If you don't respond on HN or Reddit quick enough, no one is going to see your comment. I frequent some sites that has the older sy…
Do you think it would help to have a comment reply notification built into HN? Most of the time if I decide not to add a follow-up comment it's because the user I'm replying to has no way of being notified that I did. Or do you think it would just exacerbate the urgency issues?
That might be somewhat useful, but the thing is after a few hours your conversation with the other person is going to be no better than a private message (since no one else is going to see the topic). Web forums bump the topic back to the top, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the "news" angle. It might be interesting separating the two - have the submissions act like they do know, but have the comments for the submissions be in individual threads in a separate discussion forum.