21 ms·

The Acceleration of Addictiveness

• gojomo 16y ago
  Perhaps the only thing saving us from enslavement to superstimulus is the hedonic treadmill. And vice-versa.
• queensnake 16y ago
  Of course, the Amish are way ahead of everyone there. Choosing for slowness, and especially, thinking about what they're willing to take on or not, and where and how (eg computer at the office but not at home). It probably helps to have a community around you, both to support the 'privations' and, to lessen the need for addictants.
  • username3 16y ago
    Amish Hackers: How the Amish actually use and build their own tech (kk.org) 86 points by whatusername 196 days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1046378 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1046378
• tmsh 16y ago
  The link to the Paleolithic diet made me think that one strategy against increasing addition is to normalize for evolutionary time. Still requires a lot of learned, subjective insight. But basically, anything that has proved itself via evolution is more sturdy and is worth congregating around (these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.). Bravo on another great essay though. This made me smile: You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
  • jimbokun 16y ago
    "(these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.)" This is really much of the appeal of Christianity, and other forms of culture that have survived some test of time. I say this in response to pg's foot note: "Unless we mass produce social customs. I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US is partly a reaction to drugs." Not just drugs, but all the different things pg cites as addictive. Plugging in to older value systems is one way of putting a brake on those impulses. This, of course, is true of many other religious and cultural systems that have stood the test of time, not just Christianity. I am also struck by how successful families and subcultures often have strong mechanisms in place to stigmatize these addictive impulses. Modelling self control and discipline has a lot to do with how success and prosperity is transferred across generations. By itself, accumulated cash will dissipate very quickly if the necessary character traits are not transferred along with it.
    • sesqu 16y ago
      Possibly related: Apparently, India is somewhat perplexed by a resurgence of spirituality among the highly educated. No real effect in rural areas, but the heavy earners are becoming uncharacteristically religious.
    • sprout 16y ago
      Modern evangelical Christianity is very much a mass-market phenomenon. It doesn't exist without Glenn Beck and his ilk, who are very much artifacts of the Internet echo chamber (though they perhaps owe more to Fox News, cable news being a bit of a prototype for the Internet's monotonous assault on reason.) It's very fashionable in the hacker community to treat Christianity as an anti-science establishment, but that's really a brash generalization that isn't even supported by facts. You'll even find a lot of evangelical Christians who are stauch proponents of the theory of evolution. It's a rather tired meme that Evangelicals are engaging in an all-out assault on the scientific establishment, when that simply isn't true. There is a large, vocal evangelical contingent that espouses creationism, but 'evangelicals' are a much more complex and noisy bunch than one might expect. To put it simply: I've been to quite a few churches that were direct examples of the overload culture that PG is writing about. Some of them were evangelical, most of them had congregations whose political beliefs are in no way uniform. And again, evangelical is in no way a synonym for right-wing. PG is overreaching here. But, it was a footnote, so I've already gone on more than is justified.
      • drewr 16y ago
        I really wish I didn't down-vote this. I got derailed by what I thought was going to be a short-sighted rant about Christians and Glenn Beck. In short, however, I think you're right on the money. Many Christians I know refer to modern evangelical Christianity as "evangelicalism." It connotes a social construction that has its roots in church life, but its purpose is a far cry from a biblical understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. IMO, this accounts for the rise of Beck, Limbaugh, and other talking heads. They preach a message that isn't watered down. They sound impassioned and convictional, unlike the guy standing in front of them on Sunday morning.
    • 16y ago
  • xiaoma 16y ago
    The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further. Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements. One reason wheat was adopted so widely so early is that it didn't need to change much to be domesticated (see Guns Germs and Steel). Strawberries on the other hand, weren't domesticated until medieval times, and the same is true of many nuts, most notably almonds. Cattle has also undergone a far larger genetic transformation than many of our primary grain crops. Most damning to the idea of a paleo diet is that we have, too. Human evolution has clearly accelerated with population growth. According to some anthropologists, modern humans differ more from those 5,000 years ago than those humans differed from Neanderthal. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1043228620071210 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1043228620071210 In short, the paleo diet rests on flawed assumptions about evolution, the history of agriculture and ignores the main body of nutritional research and is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations. Edit: It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan doesn't have anywhere near the ecological footprint of a bicycle-riding "paleo" dieter.
    • warpwoof 16y ago
      I'd like to respond and not leave your assertions unchallenged, but I think your post is a bit too charged and absolutistic to engage with..pretty clear there is little room for debate. I'll just say that since switching to a diet that contains whole foods consisting of meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, I've never felt better or been in better shape. I've seen the same results in many friends. If I have a big meal of grains I'll feel sick and almost hungover as a result. Your mileage may vary, but have you tried it and seen what happens to your body? I've experimented with many types of diets, including strict veganism for about 3 months. So far a "paleo" diet has worked the best, for me.
      • xiaoma 16y ago
        I've never really tried to "diet", but I have experimented for sports. 15 years ago, when I was a competitive runner. At my healthiest point, I was eating about 70% of my calories from carbohydrates, had a resting pulse of 48 and could run a 10k in under 35 minutes. I did try experimenting with more meat and fewer complex carbohydrates. The result was, my performance suffered greatly and my sweat started to stink. I've also tried being entirely vegan, which also lead to worse results. Once I went back to eating mostly grains, vegetables and fruit with a modest amount of animal products, I started feeling and doing better. Every single good runner, swimmer or cyclist I've known has eaten a relatively similar diet. The only exception I can think of is some of the most extreme ultra guys, who seem to need the absolute most calorie dense junk food they can find. Since then I've become more sedentary, but have still maintained lower cholesterol and blood pressure than the majority of people in their 20's. I started eating richer foods several years ago in Taiwan and put on some weight, but found it disappears quickly after returning to a more normal (Chinese) rice and vegetable based diet.
• bokonist 16y ago
  I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour. That's been the case for the majority of human history. It's mostly the case now. Most non-religious, progressive thinking people, don't actually think through most issues for themselves. They believe in institutions - academia, NPR, etc. Most people believe what they do about nutrition for instance, not from reading studies themselves, but through accredited officials (PHD's) as interpreted by the NYTimes.
  • NickPollard 16y ago
    I'm not sure whether you're particularly referring to media bias and dumbed-down science journalism, which is certainly an issue, but the general practice of 'trusting an expert' seems sound to me - the effort required to become an expert yourself in every field that affects you would be incredible, whilst trusting someone else who has that expert knowledge to translate into layman's terms for you is more efficient. This is essentially just society optimizing itself through specification - just have 1 person become the nutrition expert and do all the tests and experimentation, and then they can share that knowledge with the rest. Whilst the nutritionist is busy, that leaves others free to invent fusion power and quantum computing.
    • bokonist 16y ago
      I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying it's the case now.
    • mmaro 16y ago
      Nearly all institutions are run primarily for their own benefit. We often forget this when we receive their products/information/services. Sometimes, we're lucky enough to receive correct information or things that don't harm us. Trusting an expert is a good idea as you say, but trusting an expert whose opinion has been normalized by an institution is quite dangerous. It's less dangerous if you fully understand the motives of the institution, but with today's treacherous institutions, even most people in the institution are unaware of the motives and their consequences.
    • 16y ago
• nickpp 16y ago
  Didn't quite get the Paleo diet reference: are you viewing it as a new (and thus suspicious) fad or as an old, safe and proven way of eating?
  • kilian 16y ago
    This confused me as well, seeing how it's both at the same time. :) With regards to the diet itself though: works for me, so I'm happy with it.
    • nickpp 16y ago
      I happen to follow a rather different, mostly vegan, diet: Fuhrman. It also works very well for me. But I would like to educate myself about paleo, especially since it provides some compelling arguments while sounding yummy.
      • kilian 16y ago
        I started eating primal/paleo/low carb (I prefer the latter) after reading 'good calories, bad calories' by Gary Taubes. I've been linking people to these notes for a while now: http://higher-thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-bad-calories/ http://higher-thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-ba... you miss some nuances, explainations and a boatload of references from the book, but it's a nice intro. As far as being vegan goes, check out 'the vegetarian myth' by Leirre Keith, I've been reading parts of it and it's both entertaining and it really gets under your skin.
  • peregrine 16y ago
    Agreed. I've been trying to go towards a more whole food approach to eating and avoiding processed foods. But what is PG's opinion here?
  • hristov 16y ago
    IMO, it is obvious that he views it as new and suspicious.
  • tremendo 16y ago
• thingsilearned 16y ago
  I noticed the internet becoming especially addicting to me with the addition of HULU to the internet. Before HULU it was very easy to keep myself from wasting the US average of 4.5hrs of TV watching a day. I just gave away my TV. During that period I had a lot more time to work, enjoy books, friends, the outdoors or other more enjoyable but less addicting activities. Now however TV is a part of the internet and I have difficulty blocking it. I've tried editing hosts files, rescuetime, and even made my own app (8aweek YC W08). But I'm on a losing battle with this addiction so far.
• nickpp 16y ago
  Thanks for this excellent essay. In my case, it describes a painfully current issue. I am looking for strategies on how to deal with this addiction. How to start? Where to get help? Where to find the force to escape? How to convince myself that I want to change and WHY?
  • DenisM 16y ago
    I answered here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549691 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549691 and here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549734 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549734
• Alex3917 16y ago
  "heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors." Heroin and crack aren't more concentrated, they just get absorbed faster into the brain. For whatever reason the faster a substance gets absorbed the more likely you are to get addicted to it. For any given drug smoking it is the most likely to lead to addiction, followed by injection, snorting, sublingual, and eating in that order. Obviously this doesn't change your point at all, but I only mention it because it stands to reason that the addictiveness of other things works the same way. (For example, you might be able to keep HN equally useful but make it less addictive if there were a way to slow down the rate of gratification.)
  • hugh3 16y ago
    While we're nitpicking, I'm not convinced that hard alcohol is actually more addictive than beer or wine.
• johnfn 16y ago
  Just like PG's last article, there is an inherent irony in finding this on Hacker News. PG is right though, the internet is addictive. The question of what to do about it is still left open, though. For now, I'm going to disconnect for a few hours. Hopefully when I get back on I'll have something productive to show for it.
  • philwelch 16y ago
    If you don't spread the word about internet addiction on Hacker News, how are the internet addicts going to find it?
    • sp332 16y ago
      It's a bit like putting cancer warnings on cigarette packs. Sure it educates the target demographic, but it's not going to solve their problem.
  • akkartik 16y ago
    For the HN audience there's a starker message: You can be either addicted or a purveyor of addictions, Eloi or Morlock. Choose.
• sharpn 16y ago
  I agree with the main thrust of this essay, but there are nuances & counter-examples that make me more optimistic: For example, a nuance: More people are giving up television, magazines & newspapers than ever before - perhaps we (as humans) have a finite need of/tolerance for distractions, and are satisfying this need/reaching this tolerance more efficiently via the internet now? A counter-example (on the increase in 'hardness' of society's addictions): The Finns (and others) originally did not have practical access to alcohol, so they took locally available hallucinogens (and saw santa!). Then vodka, and later beer became affordable, so they now largely drink these instead - ie. the move is not inevitably one-way (see also various temperance movements). Also Hogarth chronicled Britain's descent into gin excess, but although this seemed overwhelming and permanent at the time, it was relatively brief. In short: humans have always adapted better than predicted to change - so far.
  • jimbokun 16y ago
    "More people are giving up television, magazines & newspapers than ever before" In many of the discussions about people giving up "TV," it turned out that many just turned off their cable and consumed video through Hulu, Netflix and other online sources. So, put another way, do you think even people who have given up TV, etc. have, on average, actually reduced their total amount of time consuming content of one form or another, when Facebook and everything else on the Internet is included?
    • wmf 16y ago
      On one hand, TiVo, Hulu, and Netflix have replaced casual channel-surfing (which can consume unlimited time) with purposeful TV watching where you only watch the shows that you want to watch. OTOH, the amount of TV available these days is enormous (cable now has four-digit channel numbers) and there are recommendation engines that can always find more for you to watch.
    • sharpn 16y ago
      In answer to your question, possibly not, but it boils down to a shift from passively absorbing a primetime broadcast & actively consuming either: i) The same thing, but at a time of your own choosing, or: ii) Only niche programmes of interest to you. Or some combination of the two. Either way, mediocre programmes are less likely to occupy your time.
• ziadbc 16y ago
  The easiest thing I've found to get over the internet addiction is to have a critical amount of shit that is more mentally engaging around. I have a bunch of MIT lectures on my iPhone, and I have several highly interesting books around. I know those are usually more valuable to me than the blog du jour, so if I feel that I've spent too much time on reddit or whatever I just pick up the book, or go back to watching an algorithms course for awhile. Eventually the mind gets quieter and its easier to focus more on the task at hand. Also, use the internet for actions, rather than consumption. If you haven't produced at least one blog post or comment for every ten you've read, go comment somewhere or write a blog post. Produce based on what you consume, otherwise you're just piling up mental debt.
• rtrunck 16y ago
  If one has to abstain from society's norms to live appropriately, then I imagine it'll be increasingly difficult to make a living for one that abstains, at least in any area based on technological change. E.g., Paul would have a harder time conducting an effective business (or even perhaps being as well informed as an investor) involved with iPhone Apps. Not to say one must make a living on the technological fringes (that become the societal norms), however, such a course is limiting for the abstainer, for better or worse.
• Harj 16y ago
  You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. i've been surprised by just how true this statement is. i resolved to make some lifestyle changes this year to be healthier (without being overly zealous) and it's been amazing how reactions have made me feel like i'm behaving strangely. especially regarding alcohol at social events.
  • fmora 16y ago
    They probably think you are weird because consciously or sub-consciously you are acting smug.
    • natrius 16y ago
      Why do you think that explanation is particularly probable out of all of the other possibilities? It seems more likely that society would consider actions strange if the actions have justifications that most people don't understand or agree with, and they don't succeed in masking their judgement.
      • fmora 16y ago
        I think this because there are plenty of vegetarians and non-smokers, and non-drinkers around that people overall don't really find it weird. I myself do eat meat and drink alcohol but it is so little overall in a year that you could almost count me as a vegetarian and as a non-alcohol drinker. I do not smoke at all. Also, I've noticed that people that claim to be vegetarians do it in such a way that they come off smug.
        • dejb 16y ago
          > I've noticed that people that claim to be vegetarians do it in such a way that they come off smug. Unfortunately the act of unapologetically refusing to participate in something that most other people do is often considered smug. This is rather similar to the way atheists are considered smug by many religious people where as agnostics are not.
• dman 16y ago
  Ive been thinking about the addictiveness of information a fair bunch lately. I would be interested in hearing from people about the following few questions a) Is this just a geek thing ? Many applications we work on utilise existing data, our tools are changing constantly, there are sage geeks sharing their hard earned wisdom. To keep up with all the above we consume a lot of information on a daily basis. A conversation with my dentist and a few doctor friends were mostly replied with - "How do you get time to read on the internet on a daily basis?". My dentist also pointed out that in his field developments are few and far between so once hes out of the office at 5, its no books or reading for him. b) I would also be interested in hearing from some people who were born post 1995, or from a time when internet connectivity was already pervasive. Do they look at the internet with the same eyes of enchanted addictiveness or do they take it for granted ?
• fmora 16y ago
  Being addicted to cigarrettes is one thing. They are bad but not as bad as drugs like Marijuana (Maybe, don't know, I don't smoke). It seems that for a lot of people that do Marijuana it eventually becomes too mild for them. Also, once they are using drugs, using more potent ones doesn't seem like a big deal. This is only an anecdote: I had a friend who started using Marijuana. He said he only used it once in a while and it was no big deal. That it wasn't that bad really because he didn't use any of the more potent stuff like cocaine as other guys did. In his mind I supposed he was convincing himself that the really bad guys are using cocaine. According to him using Marijuana is no big deal. Two years latter I had a conversation with him and he tells me he was arrested for using cocaine while driving. He tells me it is no big deal because he only uses it every once in a while and that he is not like other guys that use more potent drugs. No big deal really. It seems to me that starting with a mild drug can lead to using more dangerous drugs. And yet every once in a while I read somebody saying that you should use Marijuana or that Marijuana is no big deal. No point really, just ranting a little. I guess I would like to tell you Marijuana users that if you like it don't try to convince the rest of us into thinking it is no big deal. Go ahead and use your crap if you want but don't advertise it to the rest of us as if it is no big deal.
  • gort 16y ago
    Wouldn't it be peculiar if the sort of person who was going to use cocaine didn't first try marijuana, or, for that matter, alcohol or cigarettes? Who jumps in at the deep end?
    • fmora 16y ago
      So basically you are saying that people that will do cocaine will simply do cocaine regardless? Those people are pre-destine do do it so who cares?
      • gort 16y ago
        You have this theory that marijuana (lets be consistent and say alcohol too) cause cocaine use. You take the fact that cocaine users have almost invariably first used such substances as evidence supporting your theory, without recognising that this pattern is what we would expect to observe in any event. The idea of a cocaine user who has never touched alcohol is a bizarre one. (By the way, why the focus on marijuana? Can you formulate a version of your argument that doesn't apply just as well to alcohol? I'll grant you that cigarettes have only a mild effect, but the effects of alcohol and cannabis are broadly similar; if anything, alcohol has a stronger effect.)
• blackguardx 16y ago
  The iphone is definitely a hip flask for internet addicts.
  • philwelch 16y ago
    I don't know about that. It's more frustrating to use long-term than a full fledged browser, so while it gets the job done for utilitarian fact-finding while on the go, it can't feed an unfocused addiction. At least not in my case.
  • moultano 16y ago
    My nexus used to be one. Then I installed aldiko and started reading books all the time instead. I'm much happier now.
• mlinsey 16y ago
  The answer is clearly to rely less on social antibodies to specific addictions and more on recognizing and fighting the general pattern of addictiveness, an effort that this essay itself is a part of. The more we learn about the generic properties of addiction, the more we can not only recognize addictive and harmful things earlier, but also deliberately make worthwhile tasks addictive as well, such as exercise as an obvious example.
• adamc 16y ago
  I think PG makes a good point, but I hesitate to call some of these things addictions, because many typical people get over them. I watched a lot of TV when I was a little kid, but practically none once I was past twelve. I watched my daughter do the same switch, but even more rapidly. I found MMOGs incredibly attractive when they first came out, but much, much less attractive by a few years later (as measured by no subscriptions). A lot of things people call addictive are qualitatively different from an addition to opiates, say. Still, he's definitely right that the world is getting more addictive.
• michael_nielsen 16y ago
  The "Slow movement" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Movement ) is an interesting example of an attempt to create a mass movement that addresses some of these issues, while not completely cutting off modern conveniences. (I'm linking it not because I agree, but because it's an interesting example of an attempt to collectively change people's response to modern technology. Examples like the Amish are in a similar vein, but much more extreme.)
• sendos 16y ago
  One problem that people who work with computers for a living have versus people who don't, is that, if you are an internet addict and you are, e.g. a nurse, you can always just avoid computers altogether for, say a week or a month, if your addiction gets out of hand. But for people who work with a computer for their day job, avoiding the cause of the addiction is much tougher. It's like if a TV critic had a TV addiction. He/She couldn't just stop watching TV altogether to defeat the addiction. Sometimes I think the only solution for extreme cases is to take a sabbatical from work and become something like a waiter for a few months. No computers needed and lots of human interaction.
  • wmf 16y ago
    A while back PG said that he has a separate work computer that's not connected to the Internet. RMS goes even farther, only interacting with the Net via email.
    • srw 16y ago
      You can browse the internet via email too! :-)
• andreyf 16y ago
  Sounds familiar: Anathem is set on and around the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the events in the novel, society was on the verge of collapse. Intellectuals entered concents, much like monastic communities but without the religious elements. Here, the avout—a term for intellectuals living under vows and separated from saecular society [...]—retain only limited access to tools and technology and are watched over by officials answering to the outside world (known as the Sæcular Power). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem
  • thisrod 16y ago
    That's different. In Anathem, the world suffered one Manhatten project too many. Governments isolated the geeks and confiscated their toys as a survival measure.
• Tycho 16y ago
  Internet addiction seems to be the elephant in the room of modern culture. Whole families are addicted, but it's not talked about. Not to mention the more, shall we say, illicit side of the 'net. That said, TV and newspapers are arguably just as bad (or worse) and they've been around for ages. So that's... reassuring. However I think the iPad an iPhone are good in the sense that they remove the social isolation involved with logging onto the net.
  • patrickk 16y ago
    "That said, TV and newspapers are arguably just as bad (or worse)....." How are newspapers as bad or worse than internet addiction? You don't have most of the members of a family going off to read newspapers in different parts of the house.
    • Tycho 16y ago
      Newspapers are like the internet in that every single day people waste an hour or more of their life reading them. They also clutter your living room and raise your carbon footprint. And also... reading the Daily Mail or The Guardian everyday can't be good for you! Realistically they're not as bad as TV or the net though.
• johnrob 16y ago
  It might be too broad to refer to the internet as a single entity. Those of us with internet addiction are actually addicted to specific things online - the internet is just the medium. In the case of hacker news, what we're addicted to is startup news and gossip. It's ironic that this very morning I was thinking about how to produce some sort of audio version of HN for my daily commute.
  • cabalamat 16y ago
    > In the case of hacker news, what we're addicted to is startup news and gossip. Not me. I'm more interested in programming technology and understanding how trends in technology shape society -- and reading PG's essay has helped me do this.
• philwelch 16y ago
  I actually want to get an iPad just to quarantine my internet addiction. If I treat my computer purely as a workspace I'll get more done while at my computer; if I've got an iPad for other things, I won't go through Hacker News withdrawals. This was inspired by something PG said in another essay--that he deals with internet addiction by using separate computers for work and internet. The iPad is just a purpose built machine for that, in my view.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • jakep36 16y ago
    I agree. If I can get all RSS, twitter, video, etc. on the iPad and off the computer it will start to feel more like a TV or entertainment device. This way I will feel like I'm wasting time vs. working.
  • pg 16y ago
    It didn't work though. I always ended up slipping into using the Internet on my work computer. Even after I bought a new computer, nicer than my work computer, for using the Internet. So now I've gone back to one computer, which I basically treat as radioactive and have exiled to a corner of the room. I should add a warning notice to that essay. Edit: Added one.
• gigafemtonano 16y ago
  I'm making an attempt at trying to establish myself online to catch the attention of VCs and angels now that I've moved to the bay area, but the result has been a constant urge to monitor everything. Buried within PG's essay is a hint that maybe he thinks it's not worth it in retrospect - zen painter or junkie hacker it seems.
• geebee 16y ago
  While everyone talks about the wired generation, I think that the ability to focus on one thing for an extended period of time may become the killer mental app of the future. The long hikes that PG mentioned are a good idea. I've started to do things that exercise my ability to focus. Reading challenging novels and writing are good drills. I've also started trying to recognize when I try to do two things at once and look for opportunities to focus on only one thing. This can be trivial. I'll fold laundry while watching a tennis match, but I avoid browsing the web. I've noticed that if I do this while watching sports, I quickly lose track of what's going on in the game. Lastly, I'm more certain than ever that you really need to be engaged (maybe even passionate) with your work to stand a chance against distraction. About 6 months ago, I was really enjoying my programming project, and focus came easily. It took no motivation to get started. I did check HN, but I wasn't killing time on it.
• maukdaddy 16y ago
  Agree completely about long hikes. Sadly I was posting pictures from a hike in the Tetons this summer. Not sure what that has to say about Internet addiction.
• cageface 16y ago
  It's hard to escape the irony of the situation of the typical programmer. Programming requires extended periods of focus and deep concentration but the very medium in which most of us work is a firestorm of distractions. How can you be an effective mobile app developer if you don't immerse yourself in the experience of mobile media? We're like the crack dealer that has to constantly sample his wares. Like PG and others in this thread I've tried to combat these distractions by limiting email and internet time, leaving the mobile phone off, and deliberately spending free time doing things like reading books and going on long hikes out in the woods. It's hard not to feel a bit at odds with my profession though.
  • robryan 16y ago
    True, to be most efficient at web development I need an internet connection. To check docs and Google solutions so I don't have to reinvent the wheel, as well as communicate quickly with others working on the same projects plus monitoring and testing quickly in production. Removing the internet connection may improve efficiencies in some areas but I'll be a whole lot more efficient if I can have the connection and manage to not be distracted.
  • DenisM 16y ago
    Concentrate of fostering positive outcomes instead of fighting the negative ones. What do you want to accomplish? Say, you want to write a new mobile app. Your desire itself will consist of rational analysis and emotional drive, the former being required to make it a sound business and the latter required to plow through to the finish line. Before you start, ask yourself - how much will this project take? one month? Let's make it three months - a good estimate for overruns. Do you have enough drive to plow through it without distraction? If the answer is a resounding, enthusiastic form-the-top-of-your-lungs yes, go right ahead - you will not be distracted because the shining beacon of the goal will pull you in the right direction. If the answer came up short of "super yes", you need to plan a set of activities that will replenish your enthusiasm. Early user feedback works best for me (and if you can't get it your business itself is iffy). Peer encouragement is second best, if you can get it(that's a good reason to apply to YC). Quality business metrics themselves are motivating in an addictive way, just make sure to get addicted to the right metrics. Lastly, try something that your family and non-techie friend can relate to. If you keep telling everyone in your social circle what you do and they keep staring blank in return it will get to you one day, underminign your motivation. Plan ahead and don't let that happen. And finally, remember back to what motivated you in the past and do more of that. When you sit right now in front of the computer reading this post you might not remember much right away, but as you spend more time thinking about "what really gets me going" in the coming days, things will start coming to the surface. Write them down as they do.
• drewcrawford 16y ago
  Let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Why is this "new" addiction wrong? What does it mean to say it is bad? pg is taking great pains to distance himself from real addiction, like crystal meth. Yet he never explicitly explains anywhere why the new "addiction" is actually bad, other than trying to loosely associate it with alcohol. I don't think that the "addictiveness" of a thing alone is enough to call it bad. I'm way more addicted to air than a meth addict is addicted to his fix, and I don't consider air addiction a disability. Now perhaps he's right and it really is bad--but I think this is a fundamental assumption that needs to be discussed and argued, not swallowed whole. * Is it morally bad? * Is it dangerous? * Can the claims of loss of productivity be scientifically substantiated? To what extent? * To what extent is the comparison to alcohol valid? Is it mood-altering? Does it significantly affect decisionmaking? I think these are important questions that we have somehow skipped in this discussion. My personal take is that we simply have a lot more free time now than we did 50 or 100 years ago, where we needed to spend more time feeding and clothing ourselves, and so Farmville arises to fill the empty space. Could this be redirected into something productive? Maybe? But people also burn out and have inefficiencies, so I'm not sure you could extract much more productivity unless we returned to hand-to-mouth.
  • dman 16y ago
    I disagree with the fact that people currently have more free time as compared to 50-100 years ago.
    • drewcrawford 16y ago
      According to http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.work.hours.us http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.work.hours.us there is a clear trend in a shortening workweek each decade across industries.
      • dman 16y ago
        I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing the data out.
    • 16y ago
• hristov 16y ago
  It is somehow comforting to know that PG is struggling with the same addiction I am.
• amalcon 16y ago
  "Liking something too much" is perhaps too weak a definition for addiction. You're addicted to something if you don't genuinely need it, but it's uncomfortable to seriously contemplate giving it up. I like watching television too much, in the sense that I would prefer to like it less, but I haven't watched any in months, and this does not seem problematic. I have to agree with the main thesis, though: however you define it, things are getting more addictive. That seems like an almost necessary consequence of capitalism. If your product or service is addictive, you can cause much more discomfort to your customers without losing them. Almost every way of improving the bottom line without improving the product involves causing discomfort to your customers (the only exception being "get more customers"), and any of those things can be done at the same time as improving the product. Just look at credit cards: everybody hates them, their policies are extremely abusive, but people are addicted to the convenience they provide. It's not worth giving up capitalism for (it's still the worst economic system except all the others, with posthumous apologies to Churchill). I think there's perhaps a business model in managing the increasing addictiveness of the world around us. I'm not sure where, but it's such a potential value that there must be one.
• kirse 16y ago
  Maybe PG and I would agree on this, because I do think things are becoming more "addictive", but I don't believe he's addressed the root cause of the problem. I think with new technological advances, etc, things are becoming better at being "false substitutes" -- i.e. masquerading themselves as the authentic ways in which we should best satisfy the natural human desires and instincts we all have within us. Addiction comes into play when we are consistently using a false substitute instead of the real thing, so addiction is really much farther down the road - at that point your brain has been fully deceived to indulge in these false substitutes... Examples: 1. Processed "Fat Free" garbage food and fad diets instead of healthy eating and normal exercise. 2. Facebook instead of "Face-to-face" social networking 3. HD porn instead of healthy sexual relationships 4. Online dating instead of learning human interaction 5. Books like "The Game" or PUA. Rather than addressing your inner confidence issues, you read this, learn the rules, and treat women like they're another sport 5. Passively watching TV and sucking up the Internet for mental "stimulation", rather than reading books, creating, and building things. 6. Constantly seeking your 15 minutes of fame and attention (which is FAR easier to get these days) rather than real love and affection 7. The list goes on... I know for a fact this list will be controversial, but I think people will agree with me that these are, in fact, substitutes for the best way to satisfy the many human desires we have. Obviously if you're not addicted, then good for you. It's harsh though. Suck it up and desire to do better. I'm certainly guilty of some of them myself.
  • mechanical_fish 16y ago
    Even if we accept your frame, it's not a simple thing. Consider these "false" substitutes: Large quantities of mass-produced food instead of meager quantities of undependable crops that you spend 90% of your working life growing; Facebook instead of being lonely and isolated in your suburban home, miles from any of your friends; HD porn instead of unhealthy sexual relationships; Online dating instead of avoiding social situations because you never meet anyone you actually want to talk to, and when you do they're always seeing someone else; Chess and WoW instead of mortal combat and intertribal warfare; Football fandom instead of burning the fields of rival clans and kidnapping their women and children. Inventiveness taketh away, but it also giveth.
• abstractbill 16y ago
  Technological progress means making things do more of what we want. There are two reasonably distinct categories of things I want. I don't have good names for them, so I'll just label them A and B: A is things like: Artificial organs, cheap clean energy, cheap clean and fast transportation, robot house-cleaners, faster-and-faster computers. B covers things like: When I was quitting smoking, I wanted more alcohol and coffee. When I was doing a boring job, I wanted to browse the internet more. When I was exhausted from a long commute I wanted more and more TV in the evenings. Category B is full of things I want, but which I don't want to want. What I really want is all the stuff in category A. I only ever "wanted" each thing in category B as a short-term quick fix to some other underlying problem in my life. Capitalism is great as far as it goes, but I don't believe it is able to distinguish between these two senses of want. Perhaps it needs an upgrade?
  • guelo 16y ago
    Artificial organs, cheap clean energy, cheap clean and fast transportation, robot house-cleaners, faster-and-faster computers. Rich people problems
    • gwern 16y ago
      What's your point? I could characterize nutritionally-void foodstuffs like coffee or tea, or expensive entertainment like TV or the Internet, as 'rich people stuff' too. If you're in the West, you're 'rich people'.
• warwick 16y ago
  It's interesting that the article talks about avoiding addictions, rather than making beneficial things more addictive. If we're in some sort of addictions arms race, we need to strive for balance, not isolation.
• DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Paul I've never been much on flattering you for your essays. You're a great writer, but sadly none of them did much for me -- and you've got a willing audience, so it didn't seem necessary. This time, however, you wrote a good essay. Broadly-scoped, yet with enough cogent sparkles to make it a worthwhile read. Glad to see you continuing to engage on this. My hope is that we're going to develop new social norms for what is "normal" -- best operating range. This time in our evolution might be like when heroin first was introduced. For a time, normal as in "regular people" were people who used drugs. Normal as in best operating range were people who abstained. They were probably pretty boring people, actually. Here's hoping the boring people save the day. Heard a new phrase last week, "digital drugs". I like it. Seems to fit. Also, for more reading, here's a shameless plug for "Technology is Heroin" which I wrote a year and a half ago on the same topic http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology_is_h.php http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology_is... You said at the time you wanted to address this issue, and I'm glad it's still on your radar.
• revorad 16y ago
  We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to. Does that make it harder or easier to keep one's identity small? - http://paulgraham.com/identity.html http://paulgraham.com/identity.html
• mark_l_watson 16y ago
  That is a great writeup. Hits home also: my wife and I had decided a while ago to not have liquor in the house - just wine. I also hike a lot (live in the mountains of Central Arizona (Sedona)) and my wife and I additionally try to walk every day on easy trails. Getting away from computers for long break is good in so many ways I'll not try to enumerate them.
• dunstad 16y ago
  It appears to me that you publish your essays in bursts. Coincidence, or the result of something else, such as working on multiple essays in parallel?
• mechanical_fish 16y ago
  This is a nitpick and an aside, but this sentence: When cigarettes first appeared, they spread the way an infectious disease spreads through a previously isolated population. ...is not literally true. Cigarettes are hundreds of years old. They were apparently being manufactured in Europe in the 1830s. Of course, this doesn't affect PG's point in the slightest; he's remarking on how the smoking boom stopped, not how it started. I wonder why cigarettes went through such a huge boom in the mid-20th century. Perhaps it's simply a matter of better manufacturing techniques leading to a decline in costs.
  • jleader 16y ago
    Better (more efficient/effective) manufacturing techniques? Or more efficient/effective marketing techniques? (I had a little trouble there with the adjective "better" applied to Madison Avenue's promotion of cigarettes).
    • DenisM 16y ago
      I vaguely remember that potassium nitrate speeds up the absorption, giving cigarettes more of a "kick", thus making them more addictive. When I used to smoke (5 years since I kicked the habit, yay!) chemical-free tobacco felt less addictive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate
• Tichy 16y ago
  Great essay, but the responses here make me want to say: let's not forget that some of these bad addictive things also have their good sides. A lot of the articles on HN are inspiring. Sometimes it is good to switch off and relax with a movie or a computer game. And so on...
• DenisM 16y ago
  It will actually become a reasonable strategy (or a more reasonable strategy) to suspect everything new. No. The reasonable strategy is, and has always been, defining the positive outcomes you want to reach rather than negative ones you want to avoid. The opposite of "drunk" is not "he avoids drinking", it's "he lives a fulfilled life without allowing alcohol to consume his existence". The opposite of internet addict is not someone who abstains from internet, it is someone who lives a balanced life with work and play in equal measures, and play being divided amongst all the nature requires from us - exercise, family, friends, sex, artistic self-expression, fooling around with no purpose etc. The same is true for any other addiction.
  • abstractbill 16y ago
    The same is true for any other addiction. The internet, for me, has been different to any other addiction because it has changed so much as I've been using it (and very gradually, so I didn't notice for a long time).
    • DenisM 16y ago
      but now you know, right?
  • hugh3 16y ago
    Sure, but neither alcohol nor the internet is all that addictive. Most people are quite capable of controlling their usage of both, so it's not risky to try for the first time. Heroin, on the other hand, is apparently so ridiculously addictive that just trying it once is a bad idea. Or maybe you can try it a few times before it gets hard to quit -- I don't know, and I don't particularly want to find out. It's a sensible strategy to stay away from all hard drugs as a result. Maybe Farmville or World of Warcraft version 15.0 circa 2018 will be more like heroin than like alcohol.
    • DenisM 16y ago
      You can always ween yourself off heroin by checking into rehab - you just need to have the will to do that one step. And I suggest that the will comes from knowing what you seek in life, rather than knowing what you wish to avoid. EDIT: I see what you mean now, you were focusing on "same is true for any other addiction". I was mostly talking about "digital drugs" like facebook and the like that pg is worried about, rather than about chemical drugs like heroin. I guess I don't really care that much about heroin and the like, and don't want to argue about it as it gets away from the main topic.
• maximumwage 16y ago
  Why not just give in to information addiction? Unlike many other addictions, there's the possibility that the knowledge gained from it could lead to beneficial outcomes. As the book "Ambient Findability" says: what we find changes who we become.
• zyfo 16y ago
  For technological addiction, here's the system the Amish people use to adopt to something unknown: ... he goes to his bishop with this proposal: "I like to try this out." Bishop says to Ivan, "Okay Ivan, do whatever you want with this. But you have to be ready to give it up, if we decide it is not helping you or hurting others." So Ivan acquires the tech and ramps it up, while his neighbors, family, and bishops watch intently. They weigh the benefits and drawbacks. What is it doing to the community? ... [1] Inertia and a cost/benefit calculation, two things that are often absent in the normal Addictive iGadget buying process. [1] http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/amish_hackers_a.php http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/amish_hackers...
• portman 16y ago
  I remember, many years ago (mid-to-late 90s), being afraid that I had grown addicted to computer games. Between Command & Conquer (over peer-to-peer dial-up!), Quake Team Fortress, Civilization II, and a few others, I was playing 30-40 hours of PC games per week. I eventually grew out of the habit, and now don't find PC or console games appealing anymore. The fact that I naturally gave it up without any intervention means it wasn't an addiction. Most other computer enthusiasts that I know or work with have a similar story of "growing out of" their addiction to computer games. I imagine many on HN have similar stories to tell. I think the examples in PG's essay are "phases", not addictions. And I predict that most of the people PG knows who self-identify as Internet addicts will eventually out-grow their compulsion.
  • alextp 16y ago
    You have a point, but I don't think it's that simple. With things like hard liquor, heroin, cocaine, and other generally accepted to be addictive things, a lot more people go through "phases" of the stuff than actually waste their entire lives on it. We've all seen slightly depressed people binging self-destructively on alcohol, and some of my more outgoing friends have done the same with cocaine when they were younger, and today live perfectly normal, healthy lives. Being "just a phase" for a lot of people (myself included) doesn't make it less likely for it to be an addictive thing, makes it more (how many healthy normal non-addictive activities are considered "phases" by some people but end up eating out entire lives?).
    • memetichazard 16y ago
      Dieting - becoming vegetarian, vegan, etc. Job aspirations - granted, this is usually children and teenagers. Religious or Political ideologies. For instance, as a highschooler I was convinced that Socialism was the best system - so long as you could do it Right. I have since become more cynical.
      • alextp 16y ago
        It is arguable that some people develop addictive relationships with their religious and/or political views, seeking reinforcement like an addict seeks a drug. But, yeah, the other examples qualify as phases without being as toxic as drugs.
• whyenot 16y ago
  Very insightful. I'll look for you on the trail :)
• kylemathews 16y ago
  The OP seems related to Clay Shirky's argument about "cognitive surpluses" See http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Surplus-Creativity-Generosity-Connected/dp/1594202532 http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Surplus-Creativity-Generosit... His argument is roughly that strongly addictive behaviors arise to soak up spare time created by technological advances, e.g. gin halls in the 17th century england as a response to the industrial revolution and TV/Radio/Etc in response to the dramatic drop in hours worked per week in the 20th century. Hopefully our society will create new ways to use time in productive ways (a challenge especially appropriate to those of us on HN) pulling many, otherwise unsuspecting, away from worthless addictive pursuits.
• hugh3 16y ago
  I once read the suggestion (I can't remember where, but it was on the internet somewhere, so if this is you then speak up) that the real reason that we haven't been contacted by space probes from any other civilization is that all civilizations eventually invent a MMORPG that is so enthralling they lose interest in boring things like interstellar travel.
• Cantdog 16y ago
  To PG: If you were doing a startup right now, would you get an iphone?
• fragmede 16y ago
  People can already be defined by what they say no (or yes) to. Amish? No Technology. Republicans? No to government assistance. Democrats? No to big business. On a more personal level, do you drink? do you do drugs? And so on.
• jseliger 16y ago
  This: "I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour. Or worse still, has one booked for them by the government. Sounds very similar to much of Neal Stephenson's work, especially Anathem, where the Avout plot their own way and everyone else is merely addicted to the world. Snow Crash also has aspects of what the world is starting to look like, and I wonder if Stephenson is particularly well-placed to look at some of these trends because he's got a lot of the hacker ethos and yet makes his living by writing very long, very detailed books that demand attention if they're going to be read and digested.
  • neilk 16y ago
    Not everyone else -- there are artists, the religious, the geographically isolated, the military, martial arts devotees, and those who are just too down and out to participate. Come to think of it, Anathem includes almost all of them in the story and leaves the normals out of the picture entirely.
• patio11 16y ago
  I worry about the acceleration of addiction in particular subgroups of the population. WoW (or Farmville), for example, is not crystal meth... but that flippant observation is a response to a core truth that some people just have a lot of trouble saying no. Maybe they're poorly educated, maybe they're genetically predisposed to addiction, maybe they're clinically depressed, for whatever the reason they've got a weakened psychic immune system. It gets dramatically easier (A/B testing! end to end analytics! using their own friends' pictures as your call to action!) and stupendously more profitable (virtual goods!) over time to pay extraordinarily savvy engineers and marketers to design the Skinner's Box From Hell and extract money from them. And what do you do if you're a startup founder at the next Zynga and discover, running the numbers one day, that 80% of your revenue comes from 2% of the population who cannot attend the user meetups because they can't bear to be separated from your service for that long?
  • DenisM 16y ago
    And what do you do if you're a startup founder at the next Zynga and discover... It depends on what your goals were. :) If you were in it for the money you plow right ahead. If you waned to make the world a better place (and get paid for that) you dump it on your investors and move on to the next thing. Another option is to see if you can put what you learned about compulsive behaviors to better uses - I think the world would be better off if people were compulsive about maintaining good finances, hygiene, business schedule etc. Better yet, compulsively making sure they did the best they could for their family.
    • cabalamat 16y ago
      > I think the world would be better off if people were compulsive about maintaining good finances, hygiene, business schedule etc. Better yet, compulsively making sure they did the best they could for their family. I imagine they would, but that sounds like a hard problem to me. I suspect it's AI-complete; the only way to do it would be for post-singularity AI to control the destiny of the human species. I've never seen the attraction of grind-y games like WoW or Farmville. (Caveat: I've never played farmville; I have played WoW and found it pointless). Perhaps games could be created that taught people useful skills, e.g. something like Guitar Hero that teaches you to play an instrument.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• dmoney 16y ago
  Internet use seems to be my "ground state", what I fall into when I'm done with the stuff I have to do. But recently I've realized that, even though it's addictive, I don't really find it all that relaxing. So I've been trying to reclaim my old ground state of reading books. The internet for me is like the concentrated form of reading a book: you don't have to stay with any one topic longer than it holds your interest. You can move from interesting factoid to personal anecdote to hilarious cat macro without "wasting" any time on background or depth. I think the counter-addiction technology will have to be psychological. Perhaps research could determine if certain practices make people more resistant to addictive things, and it could become customary to have such a practice. Meditation, self-hypnosis, ritual, counseling, introspection. Maybe just doing things that are hard. I suppose there is a danger that any of those could become addictive. Maybe the best you can hope for is to have a choice of what you're addicted to.
  • hugh3 16y ago
    Y'know, yesterday I declared it "internet-free Sunday" and just turned my internet connection off. I was amazed by how many hours there were in the day. I did some exercise, read some books, went shopping, read some more books, fixed some things around the house I'd been meaning to fix, did some writing, and watched a movie I'd been meaning to watch. I was sad when it came around to Monday and I had to sit in front of a computer again. Internet usage is a crappy ground state. You can easily do six things at once, all borderline-interesting, none useful. I think I'll make internet-free Sunday a weekly event.
• th5 16y ago
  another golden essay. i love the concise writing style.
• mkramlich 16y ago
  I'm glad I got a new fix of PG essays. I was starting to experience withdrawal symptoms. ;)
• jmatt 16y ago
  There is a broader underlying cause for these addictions. We can't adapt our culture fast enough to address technological change. What applies to these new addictions equally applies to our laws and other social customs. And through other parts of science. Cloning, Stem cells, privacy laws, DRM etc. In the broader context these are all unsettled ideas for our civilization. Example of settled areas from an ethics standpoint - slaves, civil rights, women's right, property ownership, etc. I remember a philosophy professor discussing this a decade ago. And as time has gone by what she said has made more and more sense. Maybe because technology continues to accelerate while relatively speaking our social customs stay (nearly) the same. EDIT: added to it. Clarified.
• joshcrews 16y ago
  Letting others be the canaries in the coalmine is a great strategy. This is what the Amish have been doing. 150 years ago, they were not that different from the surrounding culture. They became distinct as the pace of innovation took off. As new innovations come, they allow a whole generation to consume it on the outside, then consider adopting it only after it's been out for decades. They seem kinda weird to us, but its a very wise strategy. Just because its shiny doesn't mean its helpful for human living.
• sliverstorm 16y ago
  It's funny; I have always had what I considered an addictive personality. Yet, neither cigarettes nor hard liquor have managed to snare me, and I gave both quite a fair shot. Nor has WoW wrapped me in it's tendrils. The ironic thing is I definitely have fixations and addictions, but they are to stupid things you never would have thought you could be addicted to.
• smakz 16y ago
  Very interesting essay. Internet addiction is in my opinion spreading like wildfire, spreading well beyond procrastination as Paul Graham said and actually impacting workspace and home environments extremely negatively - the analogy to alcohol is spot on. You aren't procrastinating, you are the equivalent of drunk. Introspectively, the problem with my addiction lies in the acceleration of production as well as distribution. There are more movies being produced, more novels being written, and more content in general to consume. Technology has been making producing these mediums easier and easier. Musicians used to have to write down lyrics and notes on paper - now there are programs which can practically generate a whole song for them. News can be written by your friends who just got the latest scoop at a major conference. Producing content has never been easier. At the same time on the distribution side, the internet has made all this content available at your finger tips instantly. As bandwidth increased, it became almost too easy to spend 10 minutes watching news or entertaining on YouTube or a myriad of other free media streaming sites. These processes will only get more efficient and more effective. As a corollary, the media which seems highly targeted and interesting to you will become increasingly prevalent. There are no easy answers, and I for one am taking the issue relatively seriously. Getting away for extended periods of time without internet is vital - which is also why I don't own a smart phone.
• natfriedman 16y ago
  This is what happens when our technology outpaces our culture and becomes a danger to us. I'm reminded of the atomic bomb: we had the technology to destroy ourselves before (we feared) we had the emotional and cultural institutions to show restraint. In this case, what's become dangerous is the technology of satisfying human desire. We see this in pretty much every designed human experience, to varying degrees. Yes, it's in World of Warcraft and Twitter on your iPhone and crystal meth. But it's also in game mechanics in your hybrid car's display, airline loyalty programs, and summer camp rituals that keep campers coming back every year. All the things in your life that know how to push the happy button. Very thought-provoking essay.
• Mod_daniel 16y ago
  I wish I were kidding when I say that I had sworn off HN for a few weeks to make sure i sufficiently devoted myself to a project. I lasted 2 days and the first thing I see back is this essay at the top of the front page.
• srw 16y ago
  Corollary? managing focus, addiction and being an out of the box thinker is a big asset in the current world.
• statictype 16y ago
  You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. This is a great line. Never seen it articulated quite as well.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• astrofinch 16y ago
  "You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly." Based on available statistics, middle schoolers and high schoolers spend 4-5 hours a day watching TV. But in middle school and high school, I heard my classmates discussing television fairly infrequently, presumably because TV is not a very cool subject to discuss. So the guy who didn't watch any TV (me) didn't seem weird--for that reason, at least.
• tezza 16y ago
  As a possible weakening of the addiction classification, I'd hazard that what may seem as Addiction is actually just Fashion. Both Addiction and Fashion can be harmful... anorexia(addiction) and size-zero(fashion), but they are different. Fashions may be all consuming for a long period, but then they change, often swiftly and brutally. A shift in customs (large,lengthy) is not required for a shift in Fashion. Fashion and addiction can co-exist, and I'll offer an anecdote. The Dance Music scene in 1999. . Here there was some people with a bona-fide addiction to dance party drugs (real addicts) co-existing with those who indulged in light drug taking in the fashion for dance parties. Dance parties grew to quite an peak and the associated drug intake too. But when the dance music scene burnt out in favour of rock... the fashion drug element receded with it.
• HNer 16y ago
  Mobile phones have always scared me, these are no doubt addictive and possibly very bad for ones health. In the sense that one is putting a transmitter which is outputting up to half a watt right up to your head. As a electrical engineer this was instinctively insane to me. We have long since forgotten the alarm bells which some sounded about this process, I only hope that we don't see a major backlash, like we did with asbestos etc etc.
• cousin_it 16y ago
  Alcohol is a dangerous drug, but I'd rather live in a world with wine than one without. I don't believe PG has properly thought this statement through. It's extremely, unbelievably selfish. I like wine myself, but alcohol brings so much misery to the world! If I were offered a reliable method to make our Earth a world without alcohol (say, by tweaking the machinery of the human brain ever-so-subtly so that alcohol no longer works), but it entailed killing a random person in the street, I'd do it without a second thought.
  • Loy 16y ago
    You'd kill a random person in the street for a world without alcohol, and you think PG statement is "extremely, unbelievably selfish". Why the idea of sacrifying yourself instead didn't come first ?
    • cousin_it 16y ago
      Yep, I'd sacrifice myself if that was what was asked instead. The reason I mentioned "killing a random person on the street" is that it's more informative - it sets a higher bar for the required world improvement. My morals say that killing someone else without reason is strictly worse than killing myself, so there exist possible world improvements for which I'd agree to kill myself, but refuse to kill a random person.
      • alexro 16y ago
        Your decision is not fully weighted as you don't know if in the world without wine people won't invent another much more dangerous thing that will ruin the lives of even more people and which will be even more harder to consume casually.
  • arethuza 16y ago
    Who are you to decide what others cannot do? If I want to drink wine occasionally (which I do) or take drugs (which I don't) and I don't cause any harm to others, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to.
• shadowsun7 16y ago
  I believe pg's contention of why more things become addictive is too simplistic. Sure, we make more of what we want, but not everything we want is addictive, and not everything we want has the capacity for becoming addictive. While reading the article, I couldn't help but think back to a David Foster Wallace essay (I think it was E Unibus Pluram, on the nature of television) that proposed the following definition of addictiveness: Something is addictive in the worst way if it proposes itself as a solution to the problems that the addiction itself creates. For example: - I enjoy practicing Judo, but Judo isn't addictive. It isn't because it isn't a solution to the problems associated with it (i.e.: I don't play more Judo to elevate injuries). Whereas if I drink and feel guilty for drinking, I can drink more to elevate the guilt, which just leads me to feeling more guilty, and so then I drink some more, etc et all. (Or if I feel guilty because I'm on the Internet so much, I can go find a game or surf Facebook or do fake work to elevate the guilt - so I can 'worry about it later', and this leads me down a vicious cycle of procrastination.) The point I'm making here is that not everything we want will turn out addictive - that is, not everything can propose itself as a solution to the problems it creates. Those traits are limited to only a few kinds of things. And so it would perhaps be better to say that addiction is accelerating because accelerating technology allows us to create more things, and some of these things are bound to have those addictive traits.
• orionlogic 16y ago
  Most of the time we don't see surfing as pure procrastination that's why after spending too many hours we don't feel guilty. We are expecting the indirect returns of reading this or that, in the back of our minds. Actually, iPhone is really useful location & time specific information gathering device. If you dont put your tweet,rss or any push notification apps (facebook included), than it realy enhance the way of life. I found it several times useful when i am looking for a book at bookstore and get very quick facts about the book. The real dangerous device is iPad. From the day i have, i could not put it away. Its really content consuming device. My nights in my bed are no longer have the serenity of reading books but frenzy of consuming content channels. Sometimes Gladwell's words keep coming to me: clearing big spaces of time. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6058607n http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6058607n
• cabalamat 16y ago
  > I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US is partly a reaction to drugs. I think it's wider than that: religious fundamentalism is a response to the future shock Alvin Toffler wrote about. Christian (and Muslim) fundamentalists find the world a scary place and want to retreat into a mythical past that has more certainty in it.
• nevinera 16y ago
  Using the word 'addiction' to refer to things that are not physically addictive is one of my pet peeves. He addresses this point somewhat and I realize that it is a very common colloquial use, but it shouldn't be. It strongly conflates the two problems when in reality they are orthogonal concepts that interact.
• grandalf 16y ago
  I get more dopamine from HN than from any other substance yet discovered.
• vegashacker 16y ago
  PG, would you say your long hikes are something like extended versions of the shower thinking of "The Top Idea in Your Mind", or are they more directed thinking--as in, "I want to think hard about this particular problem, so I'll go on a hike to accomplish that."
• domador 16y ago
  I'm glad Paul Graham doesn't write new essays very often. Constantly checking his website for new ones is a bad enough addiction as it is. Reading and discussing a new one every day would keep me from getting much work done. So far, though, it's been a very helpful "addiction". Keep the essays coming (but not too quickly)!
• astartup1 16y ago
  Life is Addiction. It is because same instinct that keeps us alive works when we get addicted. Addiction is fun some time but painful at times. Just like life. We are rarely happy still everyone wants to live. Then everyone is in same boat, we all are addicted.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• discreteevent 16y ago
  Coincidentally I just came back from camping. No tv, no phone etc. No matter what else I have tried it just won't give me the perspective I have now. I'm outside looking in - Freedom but also total control actually.
• wazoox 16y ago
  The delay to switch from "everybody's smoking" and "only losers smoke" seems much shorter to me. Simply see any 80's movie (Terminator, for instance): everybody's smoking (cops, thieves, etc). 15 years later smoking in San Francisco was enough to get angry looks.