91–100 of 168 posts
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Yeah. People have been saying it for a long time about tv. At least as long as I can remember. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/12/02/heads-up-... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-tv-rot-your-...
People used to say the same thing about reading if you go back far enough.
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> There is no such thing as a "healthy" use of cigarettes. I don’t think that’s really true. The health effects of a cigarette a week would be indistinguishable from background noise. The fundamental problem with cigarettes is that they are addictive, and convenient (at one time very convenient), and so it’s easy to smoke more and more. That’s actually very similar to smartphones: their use is addictive, and convenie…
> I don’t think that’s really true. The health effects of a cigarette a week would be indistinguishable from background noise. Is this true? Can you provide a source? Brb running to the corner store...
But keep in mind cigarette studies use the metric "pack-years" where 1 pack-year means smoking 20 cigarettes a day, for a year. "Heavy" smokers are generally considered as 2+ pack-year smokers. And it's not like _every_ heavy smoker gets lung cancer. In fact "only" 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancer, 5% of "former smokers", and 0.5% of non-smokers get lung cancer. And 40 cigarettes a day is a LOT!
So you can do an extrapolation with the numbers above to estimate a conclusion. I'd be hard-pressed to believe that 1 cigarette per WEEK is even as harmful as living in a big city like NYC or SF.
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Three sentences: https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/business/d... I think the author himself has a one page blog post summarizing it as well. I agree with him about the smartphone cancer that has crept into all our lives though I imagine there will be much worse distractions in the near future like deep learning phones that can tell us everything going on in a room the moment we enter it (since everybo…
> I think the author himself has a one page blog post summarizing it as well. Link please.
http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/11/21/knowledge-workers-are-...
Something very useful but with negative externalities we did not predict.
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I read 75% of it, does that make me qualified to trash on it? I thought it was complete garbage. Not the idea, mind you, the _book_. It's a blog post's worth of information that's comically stretched out in an early college I'm-trying-to-meet-a-word count way. The book is almost entirely pointless fluff.
When I was in some philosophy classes in college I developed my "theory of bullshit". Basically, when I'm reading your work explaining your theory, if I go through two full pages without encountering a new idea, your work is bullshit. This doesn't apply to providing EXAMPLES of your theory, and a theory is often many new ideas so that explaining it will take many pages, but if I read 2 pages of explanation and don't…
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> I don’t think that’s really true. The health effects of a cigarette a week would be indistinguishable from background noise. Is this true? Can you provide a source? Brb running to the corner store...
I think you'll find a hard time finding any source which will claim cigarette smoking under some threshold is not bad for you. But keep in mind cigarette studies use the metric "pack-years" where 1 pack-year means smoking 20 cigarettes a day, for a year. "Heavy" smokers are generally considered as 2+ pack-year smokers. And it's not like _every_ heavy smoker gets lung cancer. In fact "only" 25% of heavy smokers get lu…
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Though I completely agree with your sentiment, Cal explicitly defines the meaning of Deep Work, and I think it's an important thing society should think about as technology progresses. It helps to have the terminology to describe the state of our lives. From page 3 of the book, Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limi…
I read 75% of it, does that make me qualified to trash on it? I thought it was complete garbage. Not the idea, mind you, the _book_. It's a blog post's worth of information that's comically stretched out in an early college I'm-trying-to-meet-a-word count way. The book is almost entirely pointless fluff.
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afaik nicotine is the addictive substance in cigarettes but it's not the most dangerous. + Inhaling any burned matter / fumes will have an impact the lungs. "Cigarette smoke contains over 7,000 chemical compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, cyanide, lead, nicotine, carbon monoxide, acrolein, and other poisonous substances. Over 70 of these are carcinogenic." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette
Yes that is absolutely true, nicotine is not meaningfully toxic on its own as far as I'm aware. That said, it doesn't mean it's not dangerous. For instance, Opiates were once thought of as a "perfect anesthetic" because they achieve the desired effect with little to no toxicity, but we've all seen how that played out over the last few decades.
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Though I completely agree with your sentiment, Cal explicitly defines the meaning of Deep Work, and I think it's an important thing society should think about as technology progresses. It helps to have the terminology to describe the state of our lives. From page 3 of the book, Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limi…
I read 75% of it, does that make me qualified to trash on it? I thought it was complete garbage. Not the idea, mind you, the _book_. It's a blog post's worth of information that's comically stretched out in an early college I'm-trying-to-meet-a-word count way. The book is almost entirely pointless fluff.
Cigarettes are a flawed analogy. There is no such thing as a "healthy" use of cigarettes. But I would argue that smart phones can be used in a healthy way. And I would also argue that the phone itself is not the problem. The problem is the reliance on the endorphin hit that comes from a new IM, like, post, etc. Some app makers have optimized their platform for engagement and have consequently made this highly addicti…