HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I completely agree. As Chamath Palihapitiya (ex-Facebook) eloquently puts it, our technology culture is 'ripping apart the social fabric of how society works' [0]. We're social creatures who thrive on human interaction and sharing genuine moments - social media gives us the exact opposite [1].

The really insidious thing is that many of the big players and driving forces behind these trends saw it coming, knew that what they were building may have far-reaching negative consequences, and then chose to do it anyway for the sake of money. What a time to be alive, right?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78oMjNCAayQ

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4853817/

⬐ MaxBarraclough

Not trying to sound smart here, but if that's your position, why did you go with Some people's brain chemistry...?

⬐ Liquix

I believe that a small percentage of the population is born neurochemically imbalanced (classic clinical depression), but also that the recent rise in anxiety and depression rates is mainly caused by societal and technological factors.

Palihapitiya is a great speaker and very brave for owning up to what many try to downplay their involvement in. Here's a link to the video this article pulls from, it's succinct and really hits home:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78oMjNCAayQ [4:05]

⬐ equalarrow

Brave, huh? I guess I will give him some credit for owning up to this, sure. But his only repercussion from helping create this is 'guilt'. And from the looks of his wealth and new ventures, I don't think he wastes any time with his guilt.

Meanwhile, the world burns..

⬐ psyc

We don’t know anything about his inner life, and the hell of real guilt cannot be overstated.

⬐ md224

Just want to make a couple points:

- I think everyone understands this, but it bears repeating: dopamine isn't the problem here, as it will be involved in any rewarding behavior. The real claim being made is that we have created technologies that give us too much and/or the wrong kind of pleasure.

- We should consider that "junk food" pleasure (the internet, TV, drugs, actual junk food, etc.) can be useful as a coping mechanism for individuals facing trauma, stress, depression, or other psychological issues. We should consider the possibility that healthier coping mechanisms might be insufficient or unavailable in certain situations. It might actually be a good thing that we've come up with a portable technology (the smartphone) that can be used on the go for short bursts of dopamine. In terms of addictions, you could do worse.

All that being said, I agree that people can develop unhealthy relationships with technology, and we should be working (as always) in the direction of harm reduction.

⬐ ben_jones

The problem is when necessary human coping mechanisms combine with capitalism.

That's when you get children's advertising for junkfood. Facebook pushing controversial shock stories to stir up users. And the War on Drugs leading to environments like the Opioid crisis.

I wonder if this is even avoidable - exercise for example is a huge industry and whether you're paying for a gym membership, exercise classes, or a new bike, you're paying...

⬐ dgudkov

Every new massively successful technology requires a new kind of social education. When cars became popular people had to be educated to respect pedestrian signals and not jaywalk. With the mass adoption of credit cards and ATMs people had to be educated to keep their PINs secret and not write them right on credit cards.

Social networks require new social education that should start with realizing their potentials downsides which I believe is still the most difficult part.

⬐ eyeareque

He stated what I have felt for years, in words much better than I could.

If you struggle to disconnect from social media because you feel like you’ll miss out on friends, remember this: If social media is the only thing connecting you to a friend, they aren’t that good of a friend anyway. Your true friends will not disappear if you delete Facebook.

⬐ hateduser2

Your potential true friends will. Also, it’s not just about your true friends anyways, is it? There’s more to why we like social media than just that (although granted you qualified your statement). Anyways I don’t want to make it harder for you to quit but I don’t think misleading yourself (intentionally or not) and others is the right way to do it.

⬐ ryandrake

That’s the usual objection whenever I advocate getting off of Facebook: “But I will lose contact with all my friends!” So, how did you contact them before Facebook?

The fear is unjustified. Your actual friends will keep in contact, just like they did before Facebook. I left FB 5+ years ago and by some great miracle I still have a robust social life, and as a bonus am not wasting hours a day scrolling through useless information about the lives of remote acquaintances.

⬐ anigbrowl

If social media is the only thing connecting you to a friend, they aren’t that good of a friend anyway.

Sure, I have friends like that. I also have friendships that began on social media and endured for years, including both people I've never met in real life due to geographic separation/difficulty of travel and people that I have met and got on with equally well in person. Perhaps you haven't experienced that yet, but I've been hearing this clicheed dismissal of virtual relationships for ~25 years now and it's getting pretty old.

⬐ watwut

Even people without true friends need acquitances and social contact. The consequence for many is not knowing about social activities at all and thus not being able to participate at all because they tend to get organized over facebook. Moreover, there is such a thing as being special snowflake that refuses to use same practical tool as everyone and demand that others do out of way especially for him.

Lastly, not everyone has super rich social life that would make it easy to make and keep friends. Many people work a lot of hours in companies that change every 2 year, limiting opportunities for friends time. Others have children they already feel they spend too little time with. The loose connection when you react to each others posts is much better then comelet cut off.

⬐ notacoward

What's true for you is not necessarily true for others. Are you still in touch with the people you knew in kindergarten? How many years ago was that? Consider that some people might have two or three times that many adult years of changing cities, changing jobs, changing life circumstances, each change resulting in more people with whom staying in touch is not automatic as it is with current classmates or coworkers. Some of them might have less free time because of family and other obligations. Some of them might have disabilities. Some might be more introverted than you are, which does not mean that they need human contact less but that it might take more effort to sustain it. Many people who are not exactly the same as you might find great value in having a lightweight way to maintain those tenuous contacts. Deriding them as not "true friends" or assuming that only "true friends" matter is very egocentric and privileged.

⬐ sarreph

This was posted over a month ago [0] — and has been discussed in numerous ways since then.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMotykw0SIk

EDIT — Thanks to cpv (below), this is the discussion I should've linked to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15900551

⬐ andy_ppp

I hadn’t seen this yet, I think we can all agree using machine learning to brainwash people is bad and probably more effective that you might think given Cambridge Analytica’s and Russia’s recent successes.

⬐ waytogo

This is not entirely true. Your link leads to a 56 minutes video while my linked video is just 4 minutes and providing the relevant discussion point.

Moreover, I couldn't find any larger discussion: I searched HN with the link you gave and found only two postings, one with 1 point and another one with 7 points and only 2 comments.

⬐ cpv

Probably this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15900551

⬐ waytogo

Thanks and this link makes much more sense (but the video is again 56 minutes but there is a marker).

⬐ pwaai

This is what a lot of us have figured out and stopped using facebook. I briefly checked in last year and was overwhelmed by the number of engagements, marriages, newborns, relationships. The eerie thing is everybody's life looked very similar from one another, happy, smiling instagramed filters where they momentarily pose for selfies.

Then it hit me. I know what makes me disappointed about society today. It's that we consider the image of success more important than reality. For example, the mainstream collectively considers steve jobs as the ideal entrepreneur, when when we knew he made billions off the backs of children and women in horrible working conditions in an authoritarian government. How about Bill Cosby, Mel Gibson, Lance Armstrong, Trump, Weinstein? How great did you think those people were before revealing themselves to be a complete hoax? Especially when society has been reduced to spamming a running commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I'm not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books make us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards.

⬐ whamlastxmas

Trump is a hoax? People overwhelmingly enjoy working for him and he's made tremendous progress on his campaign promises.

⬐ anigbrowl

Wait, you mean people 'keep up with the Joneses' online as well as in real life? Social media ia new venue for an old behavior. People who are shallow online are shallow in real life, it's just more 3d. Likewise, people who are thoughtful and interesting online tend to be similarly so in person.

I also have a jaundiced view of society, but it's naive to think it was great and than got completely wrecked by social media (or TV, or jazz music, or dancing, or...). Going down that path will just lead to being a bitter reactionary. Instead, examine your prior premise of what you thought society was or should be, and consider whether that was a historical actuality or a frustrated desire. A good deal depends on whether you conceive of people to 'naturally' be good or bad and whether/how they are shaped by society or vice versa, so your consideration should include some philosophical reading since this is a fundamental question philosophers struggle with.

Read some history too. If you're American, I suggest 'American Nations' by Colin Woodard, which offers a sweeping overview of the competing forces that have shaped US society and makes for an interesting contrast to the increasingly dysfunctional idealogical monomyth.

⬐ marricks

He provides good examples and reasoning for his fears, but still it'd be great to have a larger book/discourse on this.

One of Facebook's defenses of this is that they hire psychologists etc, but it's to better train this system.

More people coming out against this sort of thing after they've had first hand experience is good!

⬐ hkmurakami

For those winding who the exec is, it's Chamath, who iirc was FB's first heat of growth.

⬐ monksy

I think this was evident on porn's impact on relationships, and you're just seeing it hit mainstream via facebook (wider audience).

⬐ snvzz

This reminded me of Reciprocality/The Programmers' Stone, which I hadn't heardf about in a while.

https://www.datapacrat.com/Opinion/Reciprocality/

⬐ Noos

Amazing how Facebook is the new Dungeons and Dragons, corrupting people's minds through (now scientific) invisible demons.

⬐ paulcole

Talk is cheap after you got rich off of it.

⬐ baq

Yes it is, it's still better to listen than not.

⬐ jabgrabdthrow

Can you explain your point more clearly? Are you saying that he’s not credible because he got rich off of it?

⬐ rublev

He's just another rich asshole working a new angle now that he made his billion. At no point in time during his time at FB did he have a conscience? He could have done more earlier.

Just seems like he's working a new angle now to grow his billion into two.

⬐ cortesoft

So we should ignore what he says about Facebook?

⬐ rublev

No but you should take it with a grain of salt when he talks about "getting a seat at the table" and the ideas he has.

⬐ Tannic

Exactly, leveraging his ability to damage fb into more money is certainly more consistent with his past activities than the idea that he now has an angelic conscience and cares about the world’s minds.

⬐ dang

Comments like this—bilious and informationless—are destructive. You can't post like this here, not necessarily because you owe better to people you hate, but because you owe better to this community if you want to keep participating in it.

Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post any more of these.

⬐ abraae

Perhaps that he could have done more, earlier, but choose the money instead.

⬐ cortesoft

So we should ignore what he is saying now? I am just unsure what we are supposed to do with that information.

⬐ mitchty

Perhaps, but its easy to be outraged at people in both hindsight and outside of the situation they're in.

We should be encouraging this kind of discussion, not trying to shame or judge past actions incessantly.

⬐ callesgg

I have been saying that for a while now.

Social media is great for the individual but horrible for society.

⬐ touristtam

It's just a tool, thought. It doesn't preclude the capacity for any individual to have a critical thinking about news and events.

⬐ oblio

We do regulate many tools because not all members of society can be trusted to operate them properly (the young, elderly, those temporarily vulnerable due to mental issues, etc.).

⬐ callesgg

It does not preclude it but it certainly does not make it easier.

I think you suffer from the delusion that the human mind is rational and logical. It can be, under certain limited conditions. But under most circumstances it is a complete mess.

⬐ touristtam

> I think you suffer from the delusion that the human mind is rational and logical.

I don't suffer from it, not more or less than the countless text of law that base their logic on citizens from being trustful agent in the society, but thank you for your concern.

⬐ baq

Brexit and Trump are two examples of a nation state actor using the... tool... for their purposes and succeeding. It's like vaccination: if you don't use it, you're still feeling the effects of others using it even if you're living far away and never knew them.

⬐ gaius

Great for the individual in the very short term but any longer than that, the society in which the individual exists is degraded enough to impact them too.

⬐ thinkcomp

https://twitter.com/AaronGreenspan/status/945716138939269120

⬐ peg_leg

Seems like an old man is having trouble with change. I'm sure that similar things have been said about cars, telephones, televisions, and computers in general.

⬐ nugi

And they were not wholly incorrect when said then. The social change made by each of your examples is huge.

⬐ luckydata

An old man that is having trouble with the changes HE helped create. That's an important detail.

⬐ stryk

And they weren't necessarily wrong IMHO, with the exception of maybe the original landline telephone (I would give this an asterisk though, and confine it to the first ~20 years of landline telephony; ie, farmers running homebrew line using barbed wire fencing in the depression-era dust bowl to keep current on grain prices, etc.). Cars are great for transportation and have enabled humankind to travel further and more often then ever before, but they are also 2000+ lb. death traps and combined with alcohol they are an absolute threat to everyone's safety. Television is pretty much ALL evil these days (everyone's trying to sell you SOMETHING or worse yet manipulate your natural thought process -- but it's all about money of course), so that's out. Computers are probably a double-edged sword. Incredibly powerful and have given humanity new capabilities, but we've probably become too reliant on them. They are too ingrained into daily society now. On a somewhat narrower scope: social media is absolutely 100% all evil, designed intentionally with the explicit intention of manipulating their own users.

⬐ ashark

> Cars are great for transportation and have enabled humankind to travel further and more often then ever before, but they are also 2000+ lb. death traps and combined with alcohol they are an absolute threat to everyone's safety.

The time savings provided by cars, once you factor in time spent to pay for them, pump gas, perform (or wait on) maintenance, plus actual travel time, is dubious for anyone earning average income. I've run the numbers, and even for me earning way over, it's practically a wash versus a bicycle.

Then consider its effects also on distances between things and how many people are now dependent on cars (=less free), and it's not hard to see widespread ownership of automobiles as overall a very negative force in society.

⬐ gaius

The time savings provided by cars, once you factor in time spent to pay for them, pump gas, perform (or wait on) maintenance, plus actual travel time, is dubious

I call shenanigans on this. How much time do you spend pumping gas? I doubt I spend more than 5 minutes a week, maybe even every two weeks.

As for travel time, just other day I was thinking, my 30-minute journey would be a day's walk probably, starting and finishing in darkness. And carrying all my stuff on my back I would have been exhausted at the end, if I'd gone cross-country instead of on metalled roads, instead of arriving in no time feeling fresh as a daisy. If the weather was bad perhaps I couldn't have made the journey at all, on foot.

And as for maintenance, well, I have a Toyota, so that doesn't take much of my time either!

⬐ ashark

Cost of gas. Cost of maintenance. Cost of insurance. Cost of replacement car from time to time. Cost of parking, both at home (garage is part of the cost of your house, if you own/mortgage) and at work. Direct time lost to gas pumping, maintenance, replacing a tire, detours taken to reach gas or maintenance places, whatever. Time of actual commute. Find typical values for normal working people for these, find typical commute distances and times, find average hourly wage. Figure out how much of an average person's working day is spent paying for car-related expenses, how much non-driving time goes toward one's car averaged per day, and add those to actual commute time. Compare with time to travel average commute distance by bicycle.

That's without considering the effects of omnipresent automobiles on city layouts and how they force everything to spread out (enormous parking lots much larger than the destination they're for, incredibly wide roads, massive "green spaces" to provide buffers between ugly, noisy, smelly, dangerous highways and areas for humans, big front yards for similar reasons, and so on)

[EDIT] to save you some time, the average spent on car-related stuff in the US per year is about $9,000. Average hourly wage, 26.55 or so. Call it 50 working weeks a year, 5 days a week. Looking at about 1.35 hrs per day paying for car crap, on average. Plus actual commute time and other time lost to cars for various reasons. And I doubt they included cost of garage on house or whatever in those numbers.

⬐ gaius

Compare with time to travel average commute distance by bicycle.

But that's not a fair comparison, because bicycle commuters have completely externalized the cost of the infrastructure they rely on. You have to compare commuting by car against commuting by bike with no roads. That's why I compared it to travelling on foot across country in my comment.

⬐ gaius

[EDIT] to save you some time, the average spent on car-related stuff in the US per year is about $9,000. Average hourly wage, 26.55 or so. Call it 50 working weeks a year, 5 days a week. Looking at about 1.35 hrs per day paying for car crap

That "car crap" is also the ability to head into the mountains or to the coast or the lake at the weekend... while cyclists, so smug during the week, are left begging for a lift. Like children being taken to after-school activities.

⬐ eropple

I wouldn't by any stretch call social media "all evil". It has its problems, a lot of them. But, for me personally, it's just an extension of the rest of the internet, where I encounter people and ideas that I wouldn't otherwise stumble into. I grew up in a fairly poor, extremely white setting and social media (and its precursors, IRC and the like) was, no joke, pretty much the first exposure I had to people who were not white Americans. Meeting those people, having to get along with them, was a pretty big formative thing that wouldn't have happened without these tools. Or, in the reverse, watching the GamerGate thing happen clued me in early that the trolls and harassers that now do the alt-right thing had a certain kind of power that needed to (and, it turns out, wasn't) defended against, that they were not just "internet whiners" but were creating their own extremist political factions whether they knew they were (I think they did) or not. And, today, through idly browsing Twitter when I have a little downtime, I often see drift through my timeline the kinds of thought-provoking links and threads that make me aware of valuable and viewpoint-broadening ideas I wouldn't see otherwise.

I wouldn't say a word in defense of television, though. Being at my parents' for Christmas has made me uncomfortably aware of just how loud and penetrating those commercials-every-six-minutes are. And it's very, very one-way.

⬐ stryk

I too grew up during the dawn of the Internet and "information age" in general. It was a wonderful time to be living, and an even better time to be a teenager -- we had such a leg up on the previous generation because we KNEW the 'net was going to be huge, and most of them thought of it as just another passing fad. I have fond memories of even pre-Internet, dialing into local BBS' on 28.8 baud modems -- which of course led to discovering "phreaking" to get free long-distance calls to dial into the non-local BBS' (hey, I was a teenager remember). Such great memories. IRC was, and still is, incredible. But I can't bring myself to lump the current day 'social media' (ie; Twitter, Facebook, etc.) into the same category as IRC. Yes technically I guess it's in the same vein, but there are no "likes"/hearts/thumbs-up-or-down on IRC -- it's just a vast open public forum for almost instantaneous text-based chat, for better or worse (better, IMO). That whole likes vs. dislikes thing which is far too central and too much of a core part of current social media platforms. It's way, way, way too easy to use as a tool for manipulation -- and if anyone thinks they are NOT doing this, they are sorely mistaken. There's a case to be made that advertising is really the central issue with Twitter/FB/etc. They have to keep people's eyes glued to the platform in order to show them more ads in order to make more money. That business model isn't going to end well for anyone except the advertisers.

⬐ gaius

But I can't bring myself to lump the current day 'social media' (ie; Twitter, Facebook, etc.) into the same category as IRC.

There was no magician behind the curtain of IRC statistically evaluating every line of text before deciding whether or not showing it to you would or would not make you spend more time on IRC, and interjecting an ad every few lines. And you saw it in order too, there was no monkeying with that...

⬐ stryk

Absolutely great point.

⬐ eropple

Twitter shows me every tweet from everyone I follow. Yet it is "social media".

Facebook is a tire fire, sure, but there are distinctions worth making.

⬐ dang

Snarky dismissals are not welcome here, so please don't post any more of them. Ditto for personal attacks.

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

Edit: it looks like you've been posting a lot of unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We eventually ban such accounts. If you have a substantive point to make, please make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

⬐ ihaveahadron

We've witnessed technology breakthrough in relative lightning quick speed. It's going out of the lab. Hey excited.

⬐ misterHN

The problem isn't dopamine, it is adrenaline.

The problem is that jews are a threat, people know it, and they want the jews put down.

People do not want jews in their society, they do not want Facebook in their society. They want the Facebook protectors put down and they want the jews put down.

I'm sick of complaining about the jews. I want them put down.

⬐ lerie82

Oh get over yourself, this video is disgustingly egotistical. "ripping apart the social fabric", I absolutely doubt that. This is getting way out of hand. Social media isn't ripping any core values apart, and nothing he has said in this video proves it.

⬐ superbrama

Just curious if you’ve any anecdotes about behavior of nouveau generation. While not a parent myself I’ve heard many times from parent and youth peers that the new generations are entirely lacking IRL social skills, instead deferring their social lives entirely to their digital presence. As a result, basic conversational skills development is limited.

⬐ meddlepal

Maybe it's just another case of the new generation just isn't like the old generation. Jazz music, rock music, drugs, cars, fast women, violent video games, porn... You name it and every generation has something the previous generation thinks is destroying society.

Social media is the new rock n roll.

⬐ davidcbc

I'm shocked that older generations are complaining about younger generations! Shocked!

⬐ lerie82

I work with many people who are still in high school or right out of high school and none of them seem to be lacking social skills.

⬐ dang

> Oh get over yourself, this video is disgustingly egotistical

Please don't post rage rants to HN. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

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

⬐ tanilama

He has no proof of that

⬐ rwnspace

Tristram Harris [1][2] is worth listening to on these points, I'm sure many on HN are already aware.

Without rambling too much, I'm one of those over-sensitive, slightly aspie types that reads SSC and gets carried away with over-analysing the zeitgeist. Uncharitably, you might say 'smart but weak-minded'. The longer I spend in front of social media, the more and more in tatters I feel. I spent a week entirely disconnected from the 'net a month ago and I can't stress how restorative it was for me. Though, alarmingly, I was back in full swing soon after I returned.

For those of you who have problems with self-control and sustaining your attention, and think it has something to do with your browsing habits, I highly recommend you - I urge you - to disconnect in a significant way. Of course it's up to you what that means.

In September I gave up smoking, and the physical and psychological changes I underwent were pretty surprising. I felt more present and in-the-moment (and other barely-describable-but-definitely-nice feelings) than I had done in years. Despite smoking 25 a day, I have found quitting Reddit much, much harder; despite being convinced it's as bad for my mental health as smoking was for my physical.

I think there's something to be said about identifying addiction patterns in your life and exorcising them. The small amounts of progress I've made recently have certainly felt as though they've increased my net level of agency and free will. I wish that flowery metaphors about demons were more readily acceptable, because software is a lot like wizardy - and it really does feel like dark sorcery has been cast to possess the West.

[1] http://www.tristanharris.com/essays/ [2] https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-is-technology-do...

⬐ isodude

I can relate with the fact that taking a longer break from connectivity is very healthy. I found that as I sat on a bus my first instinct was to call a friend. That is not a problem per se, but this I did for every ride. With enough friends I was be able to keep that up all the time. The same pattern was present in everything I did, sitting home alone was not an option.

In the end I lost my phone and felt that I shouldn't get a new one, at the same time my computer was at a friends place. All of a sudden my appartment was without mobile and computer connectivity (not a even a clock!). All of a sudden I could here myself again and I felt stronger and more filled with energy than in a long time.

Later on I have seen talks on precisely the same thing where they talk about how we end up skipping those small breaks we need to take during the day.

It was just a couple of days ago I heard about people who build dark rooms in their home where they can retract and replenish. Munks being the extremes.

I think it's great to find the things you can't handle, IRC, Reddit or Facebook, it's all the same if it steals those small breaks from your schedule. A compact schedule without those will eventually make you break.

Oddly enough I find that Hacker News is totally fine since it's easy to surf in on the most upvoted , read through the headlines, read comments for the interesting parts and be done with it. In the end that's basically the only site I read now a day since my life is busy enough with family and work.

I too have problems with controlling how much I do stuff, obviously. But taking note that it is actually an issue and doing it in controlled doses are really empowering. Choose platforms wisely :) Meditation helps.

Also, quitting IRC was about the hardest thing I've done (but I got my life back), but taking away part by part, channel by channel, i.e. stop gaming since that was why I used chats, made it so much easier to just walk away. Did the same with facebook recently and it was awesome.

⬐ 300bps

Despite smoking 25 a day, I have found quitting Reddit much, much harder

I started using BBS systems in 1985 and reddit in 2006. Left reddit several times, deleting my account(s) each time. Finally left it for good about a year and a half ago and am so glad it's gone. I've replaced it with some similar things like HN but reddit is such a particularly addictive and destructive site it's worth singling out for avoidance.

⬐ _xgw

You mention that you replaced Reddit with some similar things like HN. If you don't mind me asking, what are they? I've failed to find content with the quality of discussion that can be found here.

⬐ agumonkey

I recently put some money on bitcoin, I don't think there's much difference to the neverending stream web of today and gambling money. It's true you're rushing for something exciting. A new info, a new tweet, new joke, it's zapping web scale. I gradually tried to disconnect but I think I should just go full stop for a week.

⬐ sibeliuss

I would always worry that if I permanently deleted (not deactivated -- deleted) my Facebook account something would be lost, but this just wasn't the case in practice. Once it was gone it felt like nothing was ever there to begin with, and I feel _so much better_. I highly recommend that others take a leap of faith and do the same.

⬐ taway20171214

the same goes for real life stuff that you don't use on a daily or weekly basis. just get rid of it if you haven't used it in a year.

⬐ koenigdavidmj

Can you expand the SSC initialism? Google and Wikipedia don't seem to be very helpful.

⬐ ASipos

Slate Star Codex, probably

⬐ Danihan

My issue with replacing something like reddit is... what exactly to replace it with?

Reddit is entertaining and free. Every time I quit, I end up still seeking out entertainment, but it's no longer free. Movies, gambling, restaurants, bars. TV is free but even less entertaining, imo. Books feel like mental masturbation and very few change my worldviews at this point.

My overall conclusion has been that reddit is not that bad of a habit, comparatively.

⬐ mustacheemperor

> Books feel like mental masturbation and very few change my worldviews at this point.

This reads like a line out of the fire chief's speech to Montague. There are certainly books out there that can change your worldview and I'd say Reddit is much closer to "mental masturbation," being a literal dopamine release skinner box for your brain to digest meaningless but satisfying information and socialization tidbits.

⬐ majormajor

I'm generally not too negative on social media or online interaction - though a balance of personal contemplation time feels healthy in general to have - but I'm curious about what you mean about books.

Well-researched non-fiction seems far less masturbatory than reading random folks opining on a topic online, and fiction is a completely different category than most online discussion - it's not everybody's cup of tea, but if you're into movies, it's not very different from that.

⬐ jwatte

The whole problem of the main thread is that people seek entertainment (dopamine.) This is mindless and not constructive. If the alternative was watching TV, yeah, Reddit isn't that bad. But if the alternative is exercise, or serving homeless, or inventing a new way of cleaning air, or having deep conversations with your family, or creating art, then that Reddit habit deprived your life of meaning and impact.

⬐ Danihan

I mean, I already work 10-12 hours per day and have a gym routine.

My life has plenty of meaning (as far as I'm concerned) but yeah, I see your point. Reddit replaces other entertainment for me, it wouldn't be productive time anyway, which I've learned from experimenting.

⬐ folksinger

What your life is missing is meaning. Meaning is action. If a word means anything at all it is because it is in reference to some kind of actual experience.

Blogs, books, and media of all kind are basically meaningless. Vanity of vanities and all that jazz.

You need to experience life. You need to find meaning through action. You need to become a poet by becoming the poem.

Help your neighbor with his hobbies. Cook dinner for your family. Sing a song for a friend. Do something, anything, for someone else.

Realize the inaction and the meaningless nature of sitting in one place and searching for answers on screen or in print.

If you must read, read all text as a poem, or at least read poetry itself!

The darkness that you see is just a fiction. How could it be anything else? The magic spells are just words on a page. Belief is what makes them seem real.

Go outside. Go for a walk. There is no darkness. It is boring and peaceful and that should put your mind to rest.

⬐ winter_blue

Wow, that was really spot on, and good to read.

Thank you for writing that.

⬐ rwnspace

Thank you.

⬐ anigbrowl

Consuming media without further participation in life may be meaningless, but to assert that they're inherently meaningless is nonsense. Many people are perfectly capable to grasping ideas in the abstract and then implementing them in reality.

⬐ rwnspace

You could argue that symbols are all 'inherently meaningless' without breathing some life in them from your own needs and experiences. 'Fingerspitzengefuhl' [1] is one of my favourite words in German and I think gaining that kind of understanding is impossible if one spends all their time in letters and doing nothing of the stuff that necessitates writing them. I took the author to mean that endlessly reading without doing any living is somewhat of a dead existence. As the person they're replying to, that's what I got from it anyways.

I tend to intellectualise this way of looking at depression (and how to get out of it - how to just get out the damn house!) as related to the Symbol Grounding Problem [2], in a semi-serious, semi-metaphorical way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengef%C3%BChl [2] http://www.socphilinfo.org/node/100

⬐ folksinger

Thank you for such a charitable interpretation. This is basically what I was trying to get across.

Depression is a son of a bitch that I have also known at times and it really is as hard and as easy as just doing anything at all.

⬐ Mouse47

Can you elaborate on how you felt after you took your week off? In particular I'm interested in differences in sleep requirements & quality, difficulty handling eye contact (the 'slightly aspie' stuff), and general cognition. "In tatters": can I get a description of that also?

Only reason I ask is because I've had a similar experience...twice. Once when moving into an apartment (no power, close proximity to roommates) and again when on a trip (golfing all day, close proximity again). My "symptoms" include pretty serious social anxiety and an inability to think during conversations, inability to focus on non-interesting work, and just a general feeling of being dumber.

⬐ avtar

> My "symptoms" include pretty serious social anxiety and an inability to think during conversations, inability to focus on non-interesting work, and just a general feeling of being dumber.

That hit really close to home. I've attributed my symptoms to lack of exercise and perhaps not reading enough long-form but this all conjecture at this point.

⬐ tetraca

> My "symptoms" include pretty serious social anxiety and an inability to think during conversations, inability to focus on non-interesting work, and just a general feeling of being dumber.

Well, I guess I'm not alone. I feel like I've struggled with that for many years.

⬐ md224

Sounds kind of like ADD (or ADHD-PI, as it's now called)... do you find that coffee helps at all?

⬐ Mouse47

FWIW - I drink nearly an entire pot of coffee every day. No creamer or sugar or anything, just black. It's indispensable IMO.

⬐ rwnspace

I felt more socially confident (perhaps not confident exactly, though that was an aspect -- more strident). My sleep was at healthy times, for slightly longer, but the difference between being 'asleep' and 'awake' was, well, night and day. Rather than the slow, drawn-out waking, for which there's a gateway to very negative appraisal of the world. When I came back, I binged, heavily.

'In tatters', hmm... My self-regulation is poor but I'm desperately trying to claw upwards, so I have erected a lot of barriers between me and my lovely but drug-addicted friends, which gives me a lot of free time. I spend a lot of time purposefully and sanely researching things I want to learn, where I should learn them from, then feeling pooped out and gawping in front of YouTube or Reddit, then blaming myself for wasting time etc etc. It's hard to summarise, to be honest. Feeling 'locked-up' and 'scattered', maybe? I'm often exhausted by reading Reddit, it really feels like work. Honestly, I feel like I spend most days working intensely and not sleeping enough to manage it. Despite spending most of my time gaining weight on a desk chair, and not actually working.

I'm very gullible. I tend to remember a lot of what I read, and I'm naturally full of doubt, and over-analytical. So reading a thousand conflicting opinions on subjects makes me... A little loopy and conflicted. Like I'm always in last place, trying to catch up with the 'right' opinion on everything. There was a Reddit thread for the OP's link just today, where someone mentioned arguing with their girlfriend like an anonymous Redditor - I also definitely empathise with that one.

I have problems with eye contact, for sure, I tend to 'fall into' it if I look too long, as it seems to me to be a remarkably intense thing to hold eye contact for longer than an instant.

I was diagnosed with ADHD-PI in September, and haven't gotten on medication for it just yet (I've been disorganised...). I think reddit-like media is particularly bad for people like us. They say ADHD is more of a working memory disorder than anything, and I think we need our cache clearing regularly, let's say. A Reddit addiction tops it up at every opportunity.