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Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

quintusertorius.com

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Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#91

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

RootReducer wrote: post #8

This is ridiculously preachy. I do think the overall thesis is correct, in that boredom can be a powerful force for creativity and inspiration, but paragraphs like this make the article completely off-putting: "If you want to let music inspire you and enjoy its real beauty, I have few very simple rules: Classical Music and no “skipping”. Then I will trust my appetite." I do like sitting down and actually focusing on…

> There is an amazing variety of wonderful modern music in a multitude of genres.

Watching Rick Beato on YouTube dissect the latest top 10 is exceptionally enlightening. There are some exceptions, but there's quite a lot of interesting things going on, musically, in pretty much every song.

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#92

Post by ibrahimsow1 »

smoldesu wrote: post #46

> How to avoid digital autism and let your mind rest and recover This line couldn't have been written by someone who's opinion I respect or care about. Basically stopped right there.

Same. That being said I googled the term and it's not as derogatory as I thought[0], still not good though.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5849631/

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#93

Post by dang »

blacktriangle wrote: post #16
awillen wrote: post #14

There's just so much of this that is the author insisting that his preferences are right and anyone else is wrong. "Modern music is like junk food." There's amazing modern music, and total crap. Labeling the millions of hours of modern music as all bad is at best lazy, and at worst has undertones of racism (the only good music is that produced by dead white guys). "Let me tell you: regulating your emotions with an ex…

You do realize that lots of popular old music was written by all races? Stop trying to see racism everywhere where where there is none, it'll do wonders for your blood pressure.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, and especially not on generic ideological flamewar tangents: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....

I know the GP contained a provocation, but that's no reason to single it out, pour fuel on it, and light it on fire. When you do that, you seriously damage this place.

The intended spirit of HN is curiosity (specifically intellectual curiosity), and that implies a completely different way of behaving: overlooking provocations and focusing on something else that's interesting. Please do that instead.

Flamewars, especially on classic flamewar topics, have nothing interesting in them because they're so tediously repetitive, and of course inevitably turn nasty as well (perhaps as a way of making them less boring [1]). So they do multiple kinds of damage here. That's not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#94

Post by Apocryphon »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #83
awillen wrote: post #14

There's just so much of this that is the author insisting that his preferences are right and anyone else is wrong. "Modern music is like junk food." There's amazing modern music, and total crap. Labeling the millions of hours of modern music as all bad is at best lazy, and at worst has undertones of racism (the only good music is that produced by dead white guys). "Let me tell you: regulating your emotions with an ex…

Middle-brow dismissal. It is often mentioned in the guidelines here that we should respond to the best interpretation of a post, rather than the worst. I understand it is not post of the year, but a bit of reading between the lines needs to be done. What is this person trying to tell us? Rather than rushing to find flaws (and perceived flaws) as quickly as possible.

The best interpretation of this post is in its warnings against digital submersion, but when it veers into cultural critique it itself is being very middlebrow and dismissive ("just listen to classical music! Modern music sucks!")

There is a good post in here about how externalizing negative emotion to the internet is indeed addictive behavior, an emotional crutch. Unfortunately this one ain't it. Not to mention it's hardly breaking new ground with this thesis- pre-cancellation Louis C.K. arrived at the same conclusion much more concisely nearly a decade ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#95

Post by rchaud »

pnathan wrote: post #11

I think Deep Work is a much better discussion of this problem; without the shame/disgust/morality play that's being enacted here.

Deep Work's first maybe 3 chapters are all you need. Cal Newport is a master of writing some good blog posts on a topic, and then with padding them with 250 pages of boring drivel, and selling it as a book.

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#96

Post by dang »

Bancakes wrote: post #79
smoldesu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I said it was, unless I'm missing something here?

I'm responding to the allegation that white people are disproportionately prevalent and influential. We're not.

You posted religious flamewar in one thread and racial flamewar in a second thread, all on the same day. That's not at all what this site is for and we ban accounts that abuse it like this. We have to, because otherwise flamewars will burn it to a crisp, and scorched earth is not interesting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. That means no more flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments. You've posted a few substantive ones, but many more unsubstantive ones. If you'd please stick to the former and drop the latter, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#97

Post by smoldesu »

ibrahimsow1 wrote: post #92
smoldesu wrote: post #46

> How to avoid digital autism and let your mind rest and recover This line couldn't have been written by someone who's opinion I respect or care about. Basically stopped right there.

Same. That being said I googled the term and it's not as derogatory as I thought[0], still not good though. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5849631/

I'm more against how oxymoronic it sounds. Many of the smartest programmers who I've worked with are on the autism spectrum, so I don't really see what the writer is lobbying against. Conflating a biological disability like autism with the choice of being lethargic or easily-impressed is just terrible writing, on an objective level. Their simile basically entirely operates on your willingness to give into bias.

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#98

Post by blacktriangle »

dang wrote: post #93
blacktriangle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that lots of popular old music was written by all races? Stop trying to see racism everywhere where where there is none, it'll do wonders for your blood pressure.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, and especially not on generic ideological flamewar tangents: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... . I know the GP contained a provocation, but that's no reason to single it out, pour fuel on it, and light it on fire. When you do that, you seriously damage this place. The intended spirit of HN is curiosity (specifically intellectual curiosi…

I agree with everything you said, but on the flip side, I do not see provocations like the GP getting flagged, which causes the exact same decay of the community that you are trying to avoid. So in the absence of moderation on those pushing his angle, I'm not sure what we the users are left to do other than push back?

EDIT: Actually, I think this is where HN's lack of a universal downvote button is a weakness. Had that been an option, I'd have simply downvoted his provocation and moved on.

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#99

Post by wobbly_bush »

RootReducer wrote: post #8

This is ridiculously preachy. I do think the overall thesis is correct, in that boredom can be a powerful force for creativity and inspiration, but paragraphs like this make the article completely off-putting: "If you want to let music inspire you and enjoy its real beauty, I have few very simple rules: Classical Music and no “skipping”. Then I will trust my appetite." I do like sitting down and actually focusing on…

I also wonder if the author can listen to any other classical music except Western classical the same way without any "break-in period" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_classical_and_art_musi....

Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

#100

Post by the_only_law »

mahathu wrote: post #58

>Spotify and its fellows allow us to constantly switching [sic] track [sic], always trying to hit the next “high”. Have you ever noticed that after while no music satisfies you? No? The author sounds like such a condescending, self-congratulatory and ill-informed asshole. I don't understand how this is upvoted here at all.

If I get bored of music, I just find some new stuff. Sometimes it takes a while, but yeah no, no idea what this guy is talking about.
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