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The body of the article is too verbose for my taste. However, I found the advice section at the end valuable and actionable; especially the following: > Conti

The body of the article is too verbose for my taste. However, I found the advice section at the end valuable and actionable; especially the following: > Continually check your thoughts, actions, purchases and posts. Do I actually like this? Do I actually believe this? What do I actually think? > Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s > Go outside, seriously go outside. Look around, it’s great out there. Also, of course, everything about reducing smartphone/screen exposure.

Merrill 6y ago
Remind yourself occasionally that none of what you see on a screen is real - it is only colored dots on a piece of glass.
- tuyiown 6y ago
  Photons are real whatever the light source. Reality is more something related to trust, if you want a hierarchy to reality, you can trust more your direct testimony of an event from your senses that someone's account, and it's much better when you shared reality with a third party. «Did you see that ?» Everything's real, the only point is whether it fits in your belief system or if you trust the information enough to adjust it.
  - Merrill 6y ago
    The photons from the screen are real. Everything else is conjecture. If I look back at photos I've taken, I can conjecture that they appear to be an accurate record of what I was seeing when I took them, and that no one has surreptitiously hacked my phone and altered them. If I look at a photo of a grandson posted by my daughter, I can reasonably conjecture that it is also a faithful facsimile of his appearance at that time and place. If I look at a video of a third person posted by my niece, there is zero assurance that it represents reality. So the default position has to be that the colored dots are for entertainment only, and not to be taken seriously, unless there is some valid reason to believe otherwise.
    - chrisdirkis 6y ago
      It's pretty easy to extend this further. The photons that bounce into your eyes when you look at a tree are real, but who's to say they got to your eyes by being emitted from a big ball of fusion, through the 8 minute trip to Earth, and off that tree into your eyes? If someone put a sufficiently detailed screen there, we wouldn't know. Similarly, how do you know you're not a brain in a jar? etc. GP's point, that there's a hierarchy to truth/reality, is probably more useful. All we have are observations, and we can use those observations to draw conclusions about the state of the world. We must always be aware that it's always a map, though -- we can never know the territory.
davedx 6y ago
> The body of the article is too verbose for my taste. Kind of one of the points the article's trying to make I think. Our attention spans are shot to hell. I just read it in about 10 minutes with a couple of interruptions from the kids. Too verbose?
- tuyiown 6y ago
  "too verbose" generally means that the writing style doesn't resonate with reader, making it tedious to read.
  - GuiA 6y ago
    What resonates with you as a reader is a pure function of what you’ve read in the past though. There’s an argument for trying to stick with movies/books/articles/etc you find difficult precisely to keep the mental torpor described at bay.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  My feeling was that the same thoughts could have been expressed in fewer words and that the article would have gained in clarity from that. > Our attention spans are shot to hell. I agree. My comment was mostly on the presentation, not on the substance of the article.
  - JackFr 6y ago
    Our attention spans are shot. The article is verbose. Two things can be true at once.
- raziel2p 6y ago
  While you make a fair point, there is another side to it: Whether or not I actually spend the amount of time reading a piece of text or give up halfway through, too much verbosity (whether that's due to repetition, unnecessary side notes, whatever) leads to me not respecting the message of the text as much as I would have if it was more succinctly written. There's also a big difference between me comitting a few hours to reading a book by my favorite author, or a set of articles from news outlets I respect, versus some anonymous blogger linked on Hacker News.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
malwarebytess 6y ago
That's because this blogger is clearly inspired by the dark enlightenment.[0] They promote and use obscurantism in writing. Partially out of elitism, but primarily to veil the fascist (and often racist) motivations underneath. A recent post is literally "the myth of progress" [1] which is the central tenet of the Dark Enlightenment. edit: How appropriate. The very first post quotes Deleuze who was perhaps not intentionally writing in this way, but is strongly associated with the tradition. Out of curiosity did some additional digging and found that indeed this blog is what I believe it to be: https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398 https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment [1] https://www.meta-nomad.net/the-myth-of-progress/ https://www.meta-nomad.net/the-myth-of-progress/
- dr-detroit 6y ago
  Yeah I picked up that the author was alt right when he started talking about "walks in the countryside" like you cant take a nice calm walk in any other setting. This comes to us from the Internet Research Agency's official handbook and style guide. I'm honestly surprised he didn't say to marry a blonde 18 year old and walk in a wheat field with her.
- bsanr2 6y ago
  >Read books published before 1900 This is going to bias a reader, who is ill-prepared to approach their reading on a socially-critical level, towards patterns of thought that are socially archaic. Cutting out pre-20th century work is going to cut out almost everything written by anyone who wasn't a well-off white man, unless one makes a purposeful effort to look into translations of Eastern works. There are plenty of books publisher in the last 100 years that are valuable. With this rule, you leave behind Sinclair's The Jungle, Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, and every Hugo Award winner. (Shadow rec: John Chu's short story "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere" @ https://www.tor.com/2013/02/20/the-water-that-falls-on-you-from-nowhere/ https://www.tor.com/2013/02/20/the-water-that-falls-on-you-f... ) I think there's some truth and some good advice in the essay, but I'm somewhat wary of how committed he (presumably, he) was to his argument despite having little to show in ways of citation and support. It reads to me less as an overview of empirically tested knowledge than a synthesis of other writings and conversations whose veracity I find indeterminate and whose origins I would be very interested in discovering.
deleted 6y ago
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Merrill 6y ago

Remind yourself occasionally that none of what you see on a screen is real - it is only colored dots on a piece of glass.

tuyiown 6y ago
Photons are real whatever the light source. Reality is more something related to trust, if you want a hierarchy to reality, you can trust more your direct testimony of an event from your senses that someone's account, and it's much better when you shared reality with a third party. «Did you see that ?» Everything's real, the only point is whether it fits in your belief system or if you trust the information enough to adjust it.
- Merrill 6y ago
  The photons from the screen are real. Everything else is conjecture. If I look back at photos I've taken, I can conjecture that they appear to be an accurate record of what I was seeing when I took them, and that no one has surreptitiously hacked my phone and altered them. If I look at a photo of a grandson posted by my daughter, I can reasonably conjecture that it is also a faithful facsimile of his appearance at that time and place. If I look at a video of a third person posted by my niece, there is zero assurance that it represents reality. So the default position has to be that the colored dots are for entertainment only, and not to be taken seriously, unless there is some valid reason to believe otherwise.
  - chrisdirkis 6y ago
    It's pretty easy to extend this further. The photons that bounce into your eyes when you look at a tree are real, but who's to say they got to your eyes by being emitted from a big ball of fusion, through the 8 minute trip to Earth, and off that tree into your eyes? If someone put a sufficiently detailed screen there, we wouldn't know. Similarly, how do you know you're not a brain in a jar? etc. GP's point, that there's a hierarchy to truth/reality, is probably more useful. All we have are observations, and we can use those observations to draw conclusions about the state of the world. We must always be aware that it's always a map, though -- we can never know the territory.

davedx 6y ago

> The body of the article is too verbose for my taste. Kind of one of the points the article's trying to make I think. Our attention spans are shot to hell. I just read it in about 10 minutes with a couple of interruptions from the kids. Too verbose?

tuyiown 6y ago
"too verbose" generally means that the writing style doesn't resonate with reader, making it tedious to read.
- GuiA 6y ago
  What resonates with you as a reader is a pure function of what you’ve read in the past though. There’s an argument for trying to stick with movies/books/articles/etc you find difficult precisely to keep the mental torpor described at bay.
leto_ii 6y ago
My feeling was that the same thoughts could have been expressed in fewer words and that the article would have gained in clarity from that. > Our attention spans are shot to hell. I agree. My comment was mostly on the presentation, not on the substance of the article.
- JackFr 6y ago
  Our attention spans are shot. The article is verbose. Two things can be true at once.
raziel2p 6y ago
While you make a fair point, there is another side to it: Whether or not I actually spend the amount of time reading a piece of text or give up halfway through, too much verbosity (whether that's due to repetition, unnecessary side notes, whatever) leads to me not respecting the message of the text as much as I would have if it was more succinctly written. There's also a big difference between me comitting a few hours to reading a book by my favorite author, or a set of articles from news outlets I respect, versus some anonymous blogger linked on Hacker News.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

malwarebytess 6y ago

That's because this blogger is clearly inspired by the dark enlightenment.[0] They promote and use obscurantism in writing. Partially out of elitism, but primarily to veil the fascist (and often racist) motivations underneath. A recent post is literally "the myth of progress" [1] which is the central tenet of the Dark Enlightenment. edit: How appropriate. The very first post quotes Deleuze who was perhaps not intentionally writing in this way, but is strongly associated with the tradition. Out of curiosity did some additional digging and found that indeed this blog is what I believe it to be: https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398 https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment [1] https://www.meta-nomad.net/the-myth-of-progress/ https://www.meta-nomad.net/the-myth-of-progress/

dr-detroit 6y ago
Yeah I picked up that the author was alt right when he started talking about "walks in the countryside" like you cant take a nice calm walk in any other setting. This comes to us from the Internet Research Agency's official handbook and style guide. I'm honestly surprised he didn't say to marry a blonde 18 year old and walk in a wheat field with her.
bsanr2 6y ago
>Read books published before 1900 This is going to bias a reader, who is ill-prepared to approach their reading on a socially-critical level, towards patterns of thought that are socially archaic. Cutting out pre-20th century work is going to cut out almost everything written by anyone who wasn't a well-off white man, unless one makes a purposeful effort to look into translations of Eastern works. There are plenty of books publisher in the last 100 years that are valuable. With this rule, you leave behind Sinclair's The Jungle, Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, and every Hugo Award winner. (Shadow rec: John Chu's short story "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere" @ https://www.tor.com/2013/02/20/the-water-that-falls-on-you-from-nowhere/ https://www.tor.com/2013/02/20/the-water-that-falls-on-you-f... ) I think there's some truth and some good advice in the essay, but I'm somewhat wary of how committed he (presumably, he) was to his argument despite having little to show in ways of citation and support. It reads to me less as an overview of empirically tested knowledge than a synthesis of other writings and conversations whose veracity I find indeterminate and whose origins I would be very interested in discovering.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]