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I've been thinking about this a lot more recently, especially because I've been trying to quit social media. One of the more insidious parts of spending all day

I've been thinking about this a lot more recently, especially because I've been trying to quit social media. One of the more insidious parts of spending all day scrolling, tweeting, and swiping, is that you become what you pay attention to. I think it was Frederick Douglas, the 19th century abolitionist, who said: "A man is worked on by what he works on." We don't live in a vacuum, conjuring thoughts on our own. The things we do have a huge impact on the things we think, whether we realize that or not. I'm also reminded of the biblical passage: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds." I'm not particularly religious but that line has always stuck with me. I think that might be less, "If I ask for a car I'll get a car", and more "If I tune my senses towards whatever it is I want (a promotion, a new job, to be a better parent), then subconsciously my brain might start working to better see those opportunities where they exist." I've seen firsthand in my career that people who were open to opportunities advanced much farther than I did because I closed myself to all of them, waving them away, acting cynical about the whole endeavor. I wish I hadn't done that. I just wasn't seeing what my coworkers were seeing. I'll stop myself before I keep rambling.

swiley 7y ago
I don’t think that’s accidental; Most of the tweeting and swiping apps are funded by selling mass manipulation as a service.
hankstenberg 7y ago
Oh yes, I highly recommend this talk given by a physicist exploring what spirituality does to the brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeNmydIk8Yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeNmydIk8Yo
agumonkey 7y ago
My life context made me sensitive to the negative side of digital devices and internet. Whenever there's a power cut in the neighborhood, and there's no connectivity whatsoever I feel my brain expand. I feel times dilates, I feel motivation coming back, small ideas and curiosity. Today's web is a weird pivot on intellectual energy. We used to have long and deep, it's been replaced by short and thin. They factor to a somehow similar amount of stimuli but in reality the latter is shallow and wearing off your, now deprived from depth, mind.
- BigHatLogan 7y ago
  Well said, especially: "...is shallow and wearing off your, now deprived from depth, mind." Modern social media seems to me a lot like fast food. You feel good while eating it; it fires off a lot of pleasure-seeking receptors in your mind and body; and it's addicting. But then, like with fast food, you feel the crash. The problem with the internet is that the crash is mental, not obviously physical, like gaining weight would be. In the past two months I'm realizing that the constant, jittery nature of social media is genuinely affecting other aspects of my life. I used to love hanging out with my friends and family, watching movies, playing video games, and reading books. Lately I've been finding that I want to do none of that--all I want to do is lie down and scroll through YouTube. The irony, of course, is that while I'm doing that, I wish I was doing something else. It's a weird cycle I've found myself in that I'm trying desperately to break now. I want to consciously pay attention to other things, specifically my friends and family, my work, and "meaningful" leisure e.g. good films, not instagram pictures.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    this is my sentiment too I find it quite sad that internet "promise" became a shallow stream of ads disguised as content
    - BoiledCabbage 7y ago
      It didn't "become" that. The internet was hyper-tuned to exact that exact addicting behavior. It was by design optimized for exactly that because that was the way to get the most eye balls on ads, and the most data to scrape and leverage for ads. This wasn't some passive process. The fact that nobody ever solved micropayments made the internet what it is today. It's really that simple. You can have any system this sized without funding, and people wont pay for subscriptions for text content, so it's either frictionless micropayments or datamining and ads. And we all know how that ended. I would pay $40 a month for my entire internet to be ad free and non data-mined. Facebook makes what 50c a month of people? Maybe $1? All this BS we have to deal with for a dollar a month??
eebynight 7y ago
You just summarized the positive/effective aspects of what the “Law of Attraction” group teaches. Most people think they are crazy for wishing and imagining things to happen but what you described is exactly what underlies all their teachings. You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it, simple as that. I really think this can open up another discussion about your thoughts and how you see yourself. This is another powerful tool to enable change.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  >You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it, simple as that. // That does sound simple; and wrong. Have you really never found something you weren't looking for, my wife for one.
  - eebynight 7y ago
    You’re right, there’s always an exception. I just don’t see myself stumbling into a successful, fulfilling and rewarding career without atleast making some sort of effort here...
- nestorherre 7y ago
  Thought exactly the same, too lazy to write it though. After some time of thinking about a proper logical argument of why and how the secret works, it's just because your mind is focused mostly on that thing that you're wishing for, and you start picking up cues all around from the real world.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  Viktor Frankl (wrote a book about finding meaning in concentration camps from his personal experience) described the wish as the father and the fear as the mother of an event. I think it's possible to have very disordered wishes or to wish for the wrong reasons. Wishing for something you don't really aim or desire to achieve as a shared behaviour in a book club, is probably a waste of time. Wishing for the right reasons is probably a valuable part of human nature. The disregard for wishing likely needs to be brought into order.
- 7y ago
dmux 7y ago
>We don't live in a vacuum, conjuring thoughts on our own. The things we do have a huge impact on the things we think, whether we realize that or not. Do you give any credence to the claim that playing violent video games makes people violent?
- BigHatLogan 7y ago
  I don't think they make you more violent, but I do think they condition you to expect a certain reward for a certain input. In that sense what they're priming your brain for is an exploitable addiction cycle. I used to play online first person shooting games all the time, but lately I've noticed that I'm playing them just for the sake of playing them. I'm no longer deriving any enjoyment from the activity; in a sense I feel like a conditioned rat inside a maze. The final sensation isn't one of fulfillment but rather one of helpless attachment. Contrast that with another game I played recently, God of War. That game ended after about 30-40 hours. I completed the story, and I never returned to it. When I think back on it, I have a lot of satisfaction attached to it. It was a wonderfully told story that eventually ended, whereas Call of Duty is designed to be an infinite time sink, both for your attention and for your wallet. The difference, for me, is playing basketball with your friends versus going to a slot machine.
- hrktb 7y ago
  There’s another way to see it: violently playing games fosters violent behavior. How you play and what you think while playing games matters more than the exact content of the game. It’s easily seen in how the same games can be played in completely different ways depending on the people: the last Zelda is inherently a fighting game for instance, but you’ll have people focusing on the world and the story, other people just enjoying beating strong ennemies, and others cooking and looking for hiding spirits for half of the game.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  >Do you give any credence to the claim that playing violent video games makes people violent? That does not necessarily follow from what OP said. It is entirely possible (and very plausible) that video games do have an impact on the way we think, whether we realize it or not, but they do not make us violent (or at least, it does not make people who aren't predisposed to aggression violent). The claim that there is some effect does not mean that it is a specific effect (making players violent). You need to do more research to show a specific claim. Other possible observed effects of playing violent video games can include a particular attitude towards gaming and technology, expecting certain events in a game, expecting certain content in a game, or reduced empathy for characters in a game. Whether that affects the real world equivalents isn't obvious.
treyfitty 7y ago
> I've seen firsthand in my career that people who were open to opportunities advanced much farther than I did because I closed myself to all of them, waving them away, acting cynical about the whole endeavor. > I wish I hadn't done that. I just wasn't seeing what my coworkers were seeing. That’s the best way I’ve heard my feelings toward the same topic. I’m kinda envious of those who are able to not get cynical about it, because it’s definitely what is holding me back
__s 7y ago
Yes. I've always had trouble with goal setting mentalities, preferring opportunism. Maybe I'm a lucky bastard in the survivorship bias game, or maybe I'm just keeping my eyes open. It's always a bit of both. Setting goals feels too much like tunnel vision. Take what you can get
iapsngh 7y ago
If you are trying to quit social media, you have to find something more interesting and engaging to do so that social media becomes the gorilla that you fail to pay attention to.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- BigHatLogan 7y ago
  Thanks for the advice. I think you're right. I've been trying to "white-knuckle" it for the longest time, and it just hasn't been working. I find myself staring at the wall or the train, spiraling into a cycle of intense boredom. Well, I might as well check Instagram, is what I tell myself, but that isn't good for me, because I end up falling into a different sort of vicious spiral.
friendlybus 7y ago
>ve seen firsthand in my career that people who were open to opportunities advanced much farther than I did because I closed myself to all of them, waving them away, acting cynical about the whole endeavor. I wish I hadn't done that. I just wasn't seeing what my coworkers were seeing. I needed to read that. Thank you. The internet is becoming more obviously homogeneous and obviously a hive mind. It's been trending that way for years, but it's going to lead to They Live being remade or a war of independence or both.
- kqr 7y ago
  > The internet is becoming more obviously homogeneous and obviously a hive mind. Not at all the case. What has happened is that more people have gotten online, and we've realised how convenient it is to only spend time with the group of people that are exactly like us, so we're not actively looking for the out-of-tribe experiences that came to us naturally before. But they're still there.
  - friendlybus 7y ago
    You can see the same cultural themes and content propagating across all the internet in a repetitive and boring fashion. The youtube ceo in an interview has mentioned that media needs to converge. It already is doing so.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Hmm. You're reminding me of the quote that a person becomes the average of the five people closest to them. Well, if two of those people are Facebook and Instagram... yikes. (BTW, I think the point of the bible verse you quoted is prayer, not just having your eyes open.)
- BigHatLogan 7y ago
  That's a brilliant way of thinking about it. I'd say I honestly spend 80% of my free time (defined as time not spent working or sleeping) scrolling the internet mindlessly and passively. In that case, 4 of my 5 friends are the internet. I definitely have to change this ratio.
ubermon 7y ago
I think your interpretation for bible passage is exactly correct, and why it stood the test of time. It is even more relevant in modern days as our ability to make artificial world is so powerful that we can make our wildest dream and worst nightmare to come true at the same time, in virtual reality or even in reality.
- BigHatLogan 7y ago
  I agree with you. I think a lot of the recent desire, especially in Silicon Valley / San Francisco, surrounding zen buddhism, meditation, yoga, and other "ancient" traditions and practices stems from a feeling that your mind is being invaded by some aspects of modernity. We're not quite sure what to do, but maybe some of these older texts had some answers? Nothing absolute, but maybe something that can help you contend with this current onslaught / ambush in every corner and crevice of your mind. I'm feeling more and more everyday that I want to do nothing but retreat to older books, older music, and some older traditions.
BigHatLogan 7y ago
I wish I could edit my comment, but it looks like HN takes away the ability after some time. What I wanted to do was to recommend everybody read two books: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" (cheesy title, I know) and "The World Beyond Your Head." Both books are my Matthew Crawford, a "knowledge worker" turned mechanic / author in Virginia. He writes wonderfully about this whole idea of what to attend to, what to pay attention to, and how those two things end up influencing your own thoughts and feelings. He's far more articulate and in-depth about this "phenomenon"--how social media is, in a way, dethroning your usual mental faculties.
- reificator 7y ago
  > "Shop Class as Soulcraft" (cheesy title, I know) and "The World Beyond Your Head." Both very appropriate books for Big Hat Logan to suggest, though isn't the point of the hat to drown out the world beyond your head? > I wish I could edit my comment, but it looks like HN takes away the ability after some time. Yep, it's around an hour or two, and getting replies factors into that as well.
  - BigHatLogan 7y ago
    Haha that’s right. But unlike Logan, we should make an effort to connect to the world, lest we lose ourself in his thoughts and obsession like he did! Thanks for the comment. It genuinely made me smile. Always good to run into another Souls fan. I can’t quite explain why, but that franchise means a lot to me.
Icedcool 7y ago
I love that quote.
anonytrary 7y ago
Ask ten times and you'll receive one time. Ask zero times and you'll receive zero times. 1 * 0 < ε * N.
lowdose 7y ago
Believing is seeing instead of seeing is believing.
_bzilla_ 7y ago
I believe this is basically how "The Secret" works. It's about gaining a laser focus on some objective, and following through.
snowball3_ 7y ago
Good points and they remind me of 'Affirmations' by Scott Adams - discussed a lot on his book "How to Fail at Almost Everything and still win big "https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1491518855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp...

swiley 7y ago

I don’t think that’s accidental; Most of the tweeting and swiping apps are funded by selling mass manipulation as a service.

hankstenberg 7y ago

Oh yes, I highly recommend this talk given by a physicist exploring what spirituality does to the brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeNmydIk8Yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeNmydIk8Yo

agumonkey 7y ago

My life context made me sensitive to the negative side of digital devices and internet. Whenever there's a power cut in the neighborhood, and there's no connectivity whatsoever I feel my brain expand. I feel times dilates, I feel motivation coming back, small ideas and curiosity. Today's web is a weird pivot on intellectual energy. We used to have long and deep, it's been replaced by short and thin. They factor to a somehow similar amount of stimuli but in reality the latter is shallow and wearing off your, now deprived from depth, mind.

BigHatLogan 7y ago
Well said, especially: "...is shallow and wearing off your, now deprived from depth, mind." Modern social media seems to me a lot like fast food. You feel good while eating it; it fires off a lot of pleasure-seeking receptors in your mind and body; and it's addicting. But then, like with fast food, you feel the crash. The problem with the internet is that the crash is mental, not obviously physical, like gaining weight would be. In the past two months I'm realizing that the constant, jittery nature of social media is genuinely affecting other aspects of my life. I used to love hanging out with my friends and family, watching movies, playing video games, and reading books. Lately I've been finding that I want to do none of that--all I want to do is lie down and scroll through YouTube. The irony, of course, is that while I'm doing that, I wish I was doing something else. It's a weird cycle I've found myself in that I'm trying desperately to break now. I want to consciously pay attention to other things, specifically my friends and family, my work, and "meaningful" leisure e.g. good films, not instagram pictures.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  this is my sentiment too I find it quite sad that internet "promise" became a shallow stream of ads disguised as content
  - BoiledCabbage 7y ago
    It didn't "become" that. The internet was hyper-tuned to exact that exact addicting behavior. It was by design optimized for exactly that because that was the way to get the most eye balls on ads, and the most data to scrape and leverage for ads. This wasn't some passive process. The fact that nobody ever solved micropayments made the internet what it is today. It's really that simple. You can have any system this sized without funding, and people wont pay for subscriptions for text content, so it's either frictionless micropayments or datamining and ads. And we all know how that ended. I would pay $40 a month for my entire internet to be ad free and non data-mined. Facebook makes what 50c a month of people? Maybe $1? All this BS we have to deal with for a dollar a month??

eebynight 7y ago

You just summarized the positive/effective aspects of what the “Law of Attraction” group teaches. Most people think they are crazy for wishing and imagining things to happen but what you described is exactly what underlies all their teachings. You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it, simple as that. I really think this can open up another discussion about your thoughts and how you see yourself. This is another powerful tool to enable change.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
>You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it, simple as that. // That does sound simple; and wrong. Have you really never found something you weren't looking for, my wife for one.
- eebynight 7y ago
  You’re right, there’s always an exception. I just don’t see myself stumbling into a successful, fulfilling and rewarding career without atleast making some sort of effort here...
nestorherre 7y ago
Thought exactly the same, too lazy to write it though. After some time of thinking about a proper logical argument of why and how the secret works, it's just because your mind is focused mostly on that thing that you're wishing for, and you start picking up cues all around from the real world.
friendlybus 7y ago
Viktor Frankl (wrote a book about finding meaning in concentration camps from his personal experience) described the wish as the father and the fear as the mother of an event. I think it's possible to have very disordered wishes or to wish for the wrong reasons. Wishing for something you don't really aim or desire to achieve as a shared behaviour in a book club, is probably a waste of time. Wishing for the right reasons is probably a valuable part of human nature. The disregard for wishing likely needs to be brought into order.
7y ago

dmux 7y ago

>We don't live in a vacuum, conjuring thoughts on our own. The things we do have a huge impact on the things we think, whether we realize that or not. Do you give any credence to the claim that playing violent video games makes people violent?

BigHatLogan 7y ago
I don't think they make you more violent, but I do think they condition you to expect a certain reward for a certain input. In that sense what they're priming your brain for is an exploitable addiction cycle. I used to play online first person shooting games all the time, but lately I've noticed that I'm playing them just for the sake of playing them. I'm no longer deriving any enjoyment from the activity; in a sense I feel like a conditioned rat inside a maze. The final sensation isn't one of fulfillment but rather one of helpless attachment. Contrast that with another game I played recently, God of War. That game ended after about 30-40 hours. I completed the story, and I never returned to it. When I think back on it, I have a lot of satisfaction attached to it. It was a wonderfully told story that eventually ended, whereas Call of Duty is designed to be an infinite time sink, both for your attention and for your wallet. The difference, for me, is playing basketball with your friends versus going to a slot machine.
hrktb 7y ago
There’s another way to see it: violently playing games fosters violent behavior. How you play and what you think while playing games matters more than the exact content of the game. It’s easily seen in how the same games can be played in completely different ways depending on the people: the last Zelda is inherently a fighting game for instance, but you’ll have people focusing on the world and the story, other people just enjoying beating strong ennemies, and others cooking and looking for hiding spirits for half of the game.
claudiawerner 7y ago
>Do you give any credence to the claim that playing violent video games makes people violent? That does not necessarily follow from what OP said. It is entirely possible (and very plausible) that video games do have an impact on the way we think, whether we realize it or not, but they do not make us violent (or at least, it does not make people who aren't predisposed to aggression violent). The claim that there is some effect does not mean that it is a specific effect (making players violent). You need to do more research to show a specific claim. Other possible observed effects of playing violent video games can include a particular attitude towards gaming and technology, expecting certain events in a game, expecting certain content in a game, or reduced empathy for characters in a game. Whether that affects the real world equivalents isn't obvious.

treyfitty 7y ago

> I've seen firsthand in my career that people who were open to opportunities advanced much farther than I did because I closed myself to all of them, waving them away, acting cynical about the whole endeavor. > I wish I hadn't done that. I just wasn't seeing what my coworkers were seeing. That’s the best way I’ve heard my feelings toward the same topic. I’m kinda envious of those who are able to not get cynical about it, because it’s definitely what is holding me back

__s 7y ago

Yes. I've always had trouble with goal setting mentalities, preferring opportunism. Maybe I'm a lucky bastard in the survivorship bias game, or maybe I'm just keeping my eyes open. It's always a bit of both. Setting goals feels too much like tunnel vision. Take what you can get

iapsngh 7y ago

If you are trying to quit social media, you have to find something more interesting and engaging to do so that social media becomes the gorilla that you fail to pay attention to.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
BigHatLogan 7y ago
Thanks for the advice. I think you're right. I've been trying to "white-knuckle" it for the longest time, and it just hasn't been working. I find myself staring at the wall or the train, spiraling into a cycle of intense boredom. Well, I might as well check Instagram, is what I tell myself, but that isn't good for me, because I end up falling into a different sort of vicious spiral.

friendlybus 7y ago

>ve seen firsthand in my career that people who were open to opportunities advanced much farther than I did because I closed myself to all of them, waving them away, acting cynical about the whole endeavor. I wish I hadn't done that. I just wasn't seeing what my coworkers were seeing. I needed to read that. Thank you. The internet is becoming more obviously homogeneous and obviously a hive mind. It's been trending that way for years, but it's going to lead to They Live being remade or a war of independence or both.

kqr 7y ago
> The internet is becoming more obviously homogeneous and obviously a hive mind. Not at all the case. What has happened is that more people have gotten online, and we've realised how convenient it is to only spend time with the group of people that are exactly like us, so we're not actively looking for the out-of-tribe experiences that came to us naturally before. But they're still there.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  You can see the same cultural themes and content propagating across all the internet in a repetitive and boring fashion. The youtube ceo in an interview has mentioned that media needs to converge. It already is doing so.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Hmm. You're reminding me of the quote that a person becomes the average of the five people closest to them. Well, if two of those people are Facebook and Instagram... yikes. (BTW, I think the point of the bible verse you quoted is prayer, not just having your eyes open.)

BigHatLogan 7y ago
That's a brilliant way of thinking about it. I'd say I honestly spend 80% of my free time (defined as time not spent working or sleeping) scrolling the internet mindlessly and passively. In that case, 4 of my 5 friends are the internet. I definitely have to change this ratio.

ubermon 7y ago

I think your interpretation for bible passage is exactly correct, and why it stood the test of time. It is even more relevant in modern days as our ability to make artificial world is so powerful that we can make our wildest dream and worst nightmare to come true at the same time, in virtual reality or even in reality.

BigHatLogan 7y ago
I agree with you. I think a lot of the recent desire, especially in Silicon Valley / San Francisco, surrounding zen buddhism, meditation, yoga, and other "ancient" traditions and practices stems from a feeling that your mind is being invaded by some aspects of modernity. We're not quite sure what to do, but maybe some of these older texts had some answers? Nothing absolute, but maybe something that can help you contend with this current onslaught / ambush in every corner and crevice of your mind. I'm feeling more and more everyday that I want to do nothing but retreat to older books, older music, and some older traditions.

BigHatLogan 7y ago

I wish I could edit my comment, but it looks like HN takes away the ability after some time. What I wanted to do was to recommend everybody read two books: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" (cheesy title, I know) and "The World Beyond Your Head." Both books are my Matthew Crawford, a "knowledge worker" turned mechanic / author in Virginia. He writes wonderfully about this whole idea of what to attend to, what to pay attention to, and how those two things end up influencing your own thoughts and feelings. He's far more articulate and in-depth about this "phenomenon"--how social media is, in a way, dethroning your usual mental faculties.

reificator 7y ago
> "Shop Class as Soulcraft" (cheesy title, I know) and "The World Beyond Your Head." Both very appropriate books for Big Hat Logan to suggest, though isn't the point of the hat to drown out the world beyond your head? > I wish I could edit my comment, but it looks like HN takes away the ability after some time. Yep, it's around an hour or two, and getting replies factors into that as well.
- BigHatLogan 7y ago
  Haha that’s right. But unlike Logan, we should make an effort to connect to the world, lest we lose ourself in his thoughts and obsession like he did! Thanks for the comment. It genuinely made me smile. Always good to run into another Souls fan. I can’t quite explain why, but that franchise means a lot to me.

Icedcool 7y ago

I love that quote.

anonytrary 7y ago

Ask ten times and you'll receive one time. Ask zero times and you'll receive zero times. 1 * 0 < ε * N.

lowdose 7y ago

Believing is seeing instead of seeing is believing.

_bzilla_ 7y ago

I believe this is basically how "The Secret" works. It's about gaining a laser focus on some objective, and following through.

snowball3_ 7y ago

Good points and they remind me of 'Affirmations' by Scott Adams - discussed a lot on his book "How to Fail at Almost Everything and still win big "https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1491518855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp...