7 ms·

I know we love evidence, and rightly so. But I do think there is space here for intuition. Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one

by dmje 5y ago

I know we love evidence, and rightly so. But I do think there is space here for intuition. Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted? Is a sunset through a lens ever as satisfying or heart wrenching as a real one? I know for sure that I’m happier, my wife is happier, my two teen kids are happier when we’re in the real world more of the time.

hmwhy 5y ago
I see your point and I agree that there is often room for intuition for most real-world problems, but I'm not sure that you have a valid argument there: not everyone clicking does them mindlessly, and some people see a beautiful world through pixels. At the end of the day, I guess the two are not mutually exclusive in the current context.
ImaCake 5y ago
There is space for intuition, but the argument the author makes is that intuition is making a mistake here (as it often does). Namely that we think increased phone use is correlated with (or even causal for) negative mental health, but the data does not support this yet. The author thinks we don't have the data to support or debunk this because of poor measurements, and I agree with this. Maybe better, more nuanced measurement will prove a link. But it probably won't be as simple as more phone time == more mental health problems. My intuition is often wrong, but it is undoubtably useful for me as an individual. But the intuition of crowds is bad. It is no substitute for randomised controlled trials, mendelian randomisation, or even cohort and observational studies. For public health policy I prefer to use evidence over intuition.
- oxymoran 5y ago
  The intuition is not 100% accurate but it points you in the right direction for further inquiry. So in this case, maybe it’s not that the amount of screen time in general is causing the mental health issues but it’s constantly being tethered to social media on the phone.
  - civilized 5y ago
    Lots of social media isn't necessarily bad either. HN, a carefully-curated Twitter feed, or the right subreddit or web forum can be wonderfully mind-expanding. Without regrets, I have spent many hours reading and discussing things in these digital spaces. My intuition is that the connection between digital environment and mental health will prove similar to the connection between family environment or school environment and mental health: the quality of the environment is overwhelmingly what matters, not how much time is spent in different environments.
jraph 5y ago
Intuition is prone to all sort of biases. It is a powerful tool, but a dangerous one. Tread carefully. As time passes, I have less and less confidence in other's intuitions. Why should other people trust mine? I do spend a great part of my time on "devices" yet I am happy, see a lot of people, and I don't let devices interrupt me when I'm with people most of the time. I usually do not wander mindlessly on the web. The connection between time spent on devices and mental health is far from obvious, there's a lot more to this.
planet-and-halo 5y ago
I agree with everything you said, but device use ≠ mindless clicking, at least not necessarily. I actually think this highlights one of the main problems with this issue, which is that devices may encourage certain usage patterns and behavior that are harmful, but they may also promote some usage patterns that are healthful. We could probably learn a lot by examining in more detail how people are using devices and how those usage patterns correlate to outcomes.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  I just finished How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell, and this was one of the big take-aways I got from the book. She's not advocating total digital detox - she's actually fairly critical of the idea. Her argument that it isn't how much you use devices, it's simply how you use devices. That said she also pushes back against the idea of using things like notifications and gamification to try and mold our behavior. I'm kind of inclined to agree; my instinct is to say that this is a spot where the ends don't justify the means; encouraging addictive behavior patterns is still encouraging addictive behavior patterns.
  - rhizome 5y ago
    >encouraging addictive behavior patterns is still encouraging addictive behavior patterns. The companies using them know, and that's the goal. It's all intentional, and many companies have had many meetings over many years about it. For lack of a better term, they simply aren't good people safe for polite society, and their mission in life is to reduce the quality of your life. This they call "engagement." People buy houses with these techniques. They like it when your kids have to yell "Mom!" 10 times because you want to finish that one level. Their bonuses depend on it.
  - waterhouse 5y ago
    Just for the sake of argument, what would you think of using notifications and gamification to get people to, say, work their way through trigonometry problems or foreign-language practice?
redis_mlc 5y ago
There's plenty of evidence that US society in 2021 is causing girls and women to use head meds at an alarming rate. The last figure I saw is 25% of all women. If you watch social media videos of their behavior, you'll be shocked at their extreme need for attention and validation - it's like an endless "Girls Gone Wild" loop.
bodge5000 5y ago
I see your point and largely agree, but I think comparing sunsets and having a laugh with friends to endless drudging of clicking is a bit of an unfair comparison, as its taking the best of one side and the worst of the other. Perhaps a fairer comparison would be endless clicking versus standing in an endless queue at the supermarket. At least in my experiences, the highs in the "real world" are much higher, but the lows are much lower. That doesnt mean you don't have highs or lows digitally, but they're not as extreme. Both my happiest and most depressing memories are from the real world.
vsareto 5y ago
I think if we want to go down the intuition route, we should compare people who don't have a partner/kids and the kind of relationship (good or bad). Are you alone and happier on the device or the real world? Do you hate your partner and are happier on the device or the real world? Stuff like that. Devices can offer escapes and distractions from bad situations and that might actually help your mental health. However, if real life is good, escaping isn't what you want to do and probably isn't going to help your mental health.
IshKebab 5y ago
> Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted? Maybe not but is that really the alternative? If we're allowed to use intuition then my intuition is that people haven't replaced this wholesome cliche of friendship with mindless clicking; they have replaced mindless TV with mindless clicking.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
> Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted? Is a life engaging with rich virtual worlds ever going to be good as a real one, spent in the company of bitter old farts who just want to complain about things? > Is a sunset through a lens ever as satisfying or heart wrenching as a real one? Is a beautiful artist driven sunset scene more satisfying than your cloudy real life nothing over a boring looking town? It's all relative. There are definitely cases where a technological interaction is better than a natural one.
- melomal 5y ago
  > spent in the company of bitter old farts who just want to complain about things? I'm sorry but this entire thread is a collection of various complaints. In fact I would argue that HN is nothing but an endless feed of people complaining about things.
  - MaxikCZ 5y ago
    The point wasnt to complain about anyones life, it was to show how OP's idea of "real world is better than virtual one" might not be as ubiquitous as he believes. For some, virtual worlds might be better than real ones.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    HN being an endless feed of people complaining about things is no more meaningful about the entirety of the digital world than a bunch of grumpy old complainers are of all humanity.
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    You could say something similar about the news. Complaint can be extremely useful, if someone hears it and finds a solution. Of course complaint can also be a really dumb waste of time, or even harmful. But few things beat the utility of the right complaint to the right audience.
  - chaos_emergent 5y ago
tharne 5y ago
> I know we love evidence, and rightly so. But I do think there is space here for intuition. Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted? This 100%. Some things you just know are bad news. No one feels good after several hours of late night doom scrolling. You don't need mountains of research to understand that spending ours on your device instead of in the world is bad for your well being.
- jstanley 5y ago
  That's a complete non-sequitur. Just because you're using a computer doesn't mean you're "doom-scrolling".
  - civilized 5y ago
    The assumption that digital = doom-scrolling is illuminating. What we call "intuition" is often just a blinkered, haphazardly assembled pile of our recent experiences. This is precisely why data is considered real evidence in science and intuition isn't.
ramraj07 5y ago
Watching a sunset is a privilege. A kid in a dense urban setting isn’t going to see a sunset. A kid in a third world village wouldn’t think twice about it in between all their other worries. Technologies and screens democratize access to ideas and knowledge of what could be. There was a golden era when every businessman wasn’t trying to game this system and it was beautiful. We don’t live in that era so screens seem bad. But screens were life altering and eye opening to a middle class kid in India. Not everyone Can afford to camp or trek or take a break year and honestly I’ve met a metric ton of people who have done all of that and I don’t want to spend a minute of my life around them. I have a feeling your instinct might not be accurate here.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  Our of curiosity, why don't you want to spend time around people who have camped, trekked, or had time off? That seems like a large group of people to exclude from your social circle.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    Just to clarify a bit I wouldn’t consider a break year by itself as a deal breaker, and I love to travel myself. I just have strong opinions on people who do it frequently (twice a year?), vocally, try hard to sound “hardcore” (camping and trekking) and make it part of their identity. I didn’t start that way but just noticed patterns over a decade of meeting such folks. Some of the reasons include: 1. Many are often trying really hard to find meaning in travel, as if a forest or a mountain trek would suddenly change their outlook in life. Correlated, many of the most depressed folks and people who struggle to find their place in life I know almost all universally “like the outdoors” and would rate a trek in a beautiful path as their ideal past-time. 2. They look down at least subconsciously at the “urban” way of life as if they’ve somehow disconnected themselves from that hypocrisy. Like you realize you burned down a few trees personally (the equivalent) by flying to Hawaii right? The general wisdom seems to be that travel will open your mind to new perspectives and tolerance but I’ve not experienced that personally. The folks who travel seem to do it mostly for pleasure, and rarely Appear to have gained any real insight into any worldly process. In this connected age if you want to understand the ramifications of capital punishment in China you don’t need to travel there to know it. In fact you might get a more unbiased picture if you don’t. An analogy here would be like learning science by making a vinegar volcano or that “heavy pendulum to the face” trick - in principle it’s science I guess? And everyone’s happy to do it, but the kids don’t learn much at all, and clearly given the scientific acumen of the American public which grew up with this stuff they haven’t learned much about what science even stands for. Probably the same with travel.
darepublic 5y ago
nothing mindless about my clicking through the titles of HN frontpage!
meheleventyone 5y ago
My grandparents had the same intuition about books. "Oh why is he always reading all the time instead of going out in the fresh air?"
ren_engineer 5y ago
you also have to factor in how money can influence "science" cigarette and oil companies paid off researchers for decades to drown out negative research results. Facebook and other major tech companies have literally trillions of dollars incentivizing them to try and discredit all these research results
- Pokepokalypse 5y ago
  That's not science being influenced. That's our legal and court systems being influenced by junk science funded by shitty corporate actors. Actual science is what they're trying to drown-out. And yes, big-money can influence academic review and publishing, and it's a real problem. (actually a HUGE problem). But that's not what you're describing. There are good scientists doing real and valid work in both establishing the cancer-tobacco link, and climate research with regard to carbon from fossil/petroleum fuel burning. That's not being drowned out in academia. It's being drowned out in the profit-driven political and newsmedia spheres.
civilized 5y ago
This would make sense if there was some kind of causative link between the peak-ness of your experiences and your mental health, but I doubt that someone who only gets to see sunsets on their phone is doomed to worse mental health than someone who gets to see real ones.
delusional 5y ago
How are you going to research your intuition? What if mine differs from yours? In the absence of arguments we give in to arguments of emotion, which your are in this post. Absolutely drive your own life in accordance with your own intuition. Without accurate and compelling research it's all you have. If you're a scientist though, intuition is the starting point of new research.
Mikeb85 5y ago
I live in the mountains and you're absolutely correct that the digital world doesn't compare to the real world in many cases. That being said, I have disconnected from technology for up to a year at a time and overall it's not better. Technology introduces a lot of convenience and can reduce the time we spend on a lot of mundane chores, clearing up more time to spend in the real world ultimately. In the end it's all about balance.
pmarreck 5y ago
> Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted we also love rational argument, and this is an emotional appeal/argumentum ad populum/"appeal to taste" fallacy. Also, "mindless clicking" is disparaging, I wouldn't call what I'm literally doing right now "mindless clicking" > Is a sunset through a lens ever as satisfying or heart wrenching as a real one? Depends on the fidelity of the reproduction ;) I've certainly seen some quite impressive skyboxes in games. And somehow, people seem to survive without ever having seen a sunset over a body of water... > I’m happier, my wife is happier, my two teen kids are happier what's good for the goose is not always what's good for the gander
gus_massa 5y ago
Intuition is nice, but it can send you in the wrong path. A typical case is what to do when it's cold. Most people prefer to close all the windows and turn on the heating to prevent getting cold and catching the flu or a common cold. (That is a very confusing name.) But we know they are caused by virus, so it's better to keep the windows as open as possible and use warm cloth. (Unless there is a blizzard outside.)
majormajor 5y ago
Could a novel be as moving as real life? Possibly more, I'd argue: that work of fiction may have a much more emotional arc than your own life. Not everybody's direct immediate "real world" life is great, or has the ingredients available to be great "in person." This goes back as long as we've been telling stories.

by dmje 5y ago

hmwhy 5y ago

I see your point and I agree that there is often room for intuition for most real-world problems, but I'm not sure that you have a valid argument there: not everyone clicking does them mindlessly, and some people see a beautiful world through pixels. At the end of the day, I guess the two are not mutually exclusive in the current context.

ImaCake 5y ago

There is space for intuition, but the argument the author makes is that intuition is making a mistake here (as it often does). Namely that we think increased phone use is correlated with (or even causal for) negative mental health, but the data does not support this yet. The author thinks we don't have the data to support or debunk this because of poor measurements, and I agree with this. Maybe better, more nuanced measurement will prove a link. But it probably won't be as simple as more phone time == more mental health problems. My intuition is often wrong, but it is undoubtably useful for me as an individual. But the intuition of crowds is bad. It is no substitute for randomised controlled trials, mendelian randomisation, or even cohort and observational studies. For public health policy I prefer to use evidence over intuition.

oxymoran 5y ago
The intuition is not 100% accurate but it points you in the right direction for further inquiry. So in this case, maybe it’s not that the amount of screen time in general is causing the mental health issues but it’s constantly being tethered to social media on the phone.
- civilized 5y ago
  Lots of social media isn't necessarily bad either. HN, a carefully-curated Twitter feed, or the right subreddit or web forum can be wonderfully mind-expanding. Without regrets, I have spent many hours reading and discussing things in these digital spaces. My intuition is that the connection between digital environment and mental health will prove similar to the connection between family environment or school environment and mental health: the quality of the environment is overwhelmingly what matters, not how much time is spent in different environments.

jraph 5y ago

Intuition is prone to all sort of biases. It is a powerful tool, but a dangerous one. Tread carefully. As time passes, I have less and less confidence in other's intuitions. Why should other people trust mine? I do spend a great part of my time on "devices" yet I am happy, see a lot of people, and I don't let devices interrupt me when I'm with people most of the time. I usually do not wander mindlessly on the web. The connection between time spent on devices and mental health is far from obvious, there's a lot more to this.

planet-and-halo 5y ago

I agree with everything you said, but device use ≠ mindless clicking, at least not necessarily. I actually think this highlights one of the main problems with this issue, which is that devices may encourage certain usage patterns and behavior that are harmful, but they may also promote some usage patterns that are healthful. We could probably learn a lot by examining in more detail how people are using devices and how those usage patterns correlate to outcomes.

mumblemumble 5y ago
I just finished How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell, and this was one of the big take-aways I got from the book. She's not advocating total digital detox - she's actually fairly critical of the idea. Her argument that it isn't how much you use devices, it's simply how you use devices. That said she also pushes back against the idea of using things like notifications and gamification to try and mold our behavior. I'm kind of inclined to agree; my instinct is to say that this is a spot where the ends don't justify the means; encouraging addictive behavior patterns is still encouraging addictive behavior patterns.
- rhizome 5y ago
  >encouraging addictive behavior patterns is still encouraging addictive behavior patterns. The companies using them know, and that's the goal. It's all intentional, and many companies have had many meetings over many years about it. For lack of a better term, they simply aren't good people safe for polite society, and their mission in life is to reduce the quality of your life. This they call "engagement." People buy houses with these techniques. They like it when your kids have to yell "Mom!" 10 times because you want to finish that one level. Their bonuses depend on it.
- waterhouse 5y ago
  Just for the sake of argument, what would you think of using notifications and gamification to get people to, say, work their way through trigonometry problems or foreign-language practice?

redis_mlc 5y ago

There's plenty of evidence that US society in 2021 is causing girls and women to use head meds at an alarming rate. The last figure I saw is 25% of all women. If you watch social media videos of their behavior, you'll be shocked at their extreme need for attention and validation - it's like an endless "Girls Gone Wild" loop.

bodge5000 5y ago

I see your point and largely agree, but I think comparing sunsets and having a laugh with friends to endless drudging of clicking is a bit of an unfair comparison, as its taking the best of one side and the worst of the other. Perhaps a fairer comparison would be endless clicking versus standing in an endless queue at the supermarket. At least in my experiences, the highs in the "real world" are much higher, but the lows are much lower. That doesnt mean you don't have highs or lows digitally, but they're not as extreme. Both my happiest and most depressing memories are from the real world.

vsareto 5y ago

I think if we want to go down the intuition route, we should compare people who don't have a partner/kids and the kind of relationship (good or bad). Are you alone and happier on the device or the real world? Do you hate your partner and are happier on the device or the real world? Stuff like that. Devices can offer escapes and distractions from bad situations and that might actually help your mental health. However, if real life is good, escaping isn't what you want to do and probably isn't going to help your mental health.

IshKebab 5y ago

> Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted? Maybe not but is that really the alternative? If we're allowed to use intuition then my intuition is that people haven't replaced this wholesome cliche of friendship with mindless clicking; they have replaced mindless TV with mindless clicking.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

> Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted? Is a life engaging with rich virtual worlds ever going to be good as a real one, spent in the company of bitter old farts who just want to complain about things? > Is a sunset through a lens ever as satisfying or heart wrenching as a real one? Is a beautiful artist driven sunset scene more satisfying than your cloudy real life nothing over a boring looking town? It's all relative. There are definitely cases where a technological interaction is better than a natural one.

melomal 5y ago
> spent in the company of bitter old farts who just want to complain about things? I'm sorry but this entire thread is a collection of various complaints. In fact I would argue that HN is nothing but an endless feed of people complaining about things.
- MaxikCZ 5y ago
  The point wasnt to complain about anyones life, it was to show how OP's idea of "real world is better than virtual one" might not be as ubiquitous as he believes. For some, virtual worlds might be better than real ones.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  HN being an endless feed of people complaining about things is no more meaningful about the entirety of the digital world than a bunch of grumpy old complainers are of all humanity.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  You could say something similar about the news. Complaint can be extremely useful, if someone hears it and finds a solution. Of course complaint can also be a really dumb waste of time, or even harmful. But few things beat the utility of the right complaint to the right audience.
- chaos_emergent 5y ago

tharne 5y ago

> I know we love evidence, and rightly so. But I do think there is space here for intuition. Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted? This 100%. Some things you just know are bad news. No one feels good after several hours of late night doom scrolling. You don't need mountains of research to understand that spending ours on your device instead of in the world is bad for your well being.

jstanley 5y ago
That's a complete non-sequitur. Just because you're using a computer doesn't mean you're "doom-scrolling".
- civilized 5y ago
  The assumption that digital = doom-scrolling is illuminating. What we call "intuition" is often just a blinkered, haphazardly assembled pile of our recent experiences. This is precisely why data is considered real evidence in science and intuition isn't.

ramraj07 5y ago

Watching a sunset is a privilege. A kid in a dense urban setting isn’t going to see a sunset. A kid in a third world village wouldn’t think twice about it in between all their other worries. Technologies and screens democratize access to ideas and knowledge of what could be. There was a golden era when every businessman wasn’t trying to game this system and it was beautiful. We don’t live in that era so screens seem bad. But screens were life altering and eye opening to a middle class kid in India. Not everyone Can afford to camp or trek or take a break year and honestly I’ve met a metric ton of people who have done all of that and I don’t want to spend a minute of my life around them. I have a feeling your instinct might not be accurate here.

bitexploder 5y ago
Our of curiosity, why don't you want to spend time around people who have camped, trekked, or had time off? That seems like a large group of people to exclude from your social circle.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Just to clarify a bit I wouldn’t consider a break year by itself as a deal breaker, and I love to travel myself. I just have strong opinions on people who do it frequently (twice a year?), vocally, try hard to sound “hardcore” (camping and trekking) and make it part of their identity. I didn’t start that way but just noticed patterns over a decade of meeting such folks. Some of the reasons include: 1. Many are often trying really hard to find meaning in travel, as if a forest or a mountain trek would suddenly change their outlook in life. Correlated, many of the most depressed folks and people who struggle to find their place in life I know almost all universally “like the outdoors” and would rate a trek in a beautiful path as their ideal past-time. 2. They look down at least subconsciously at the “urban” way of life as if they’ve somehow disconnected themselves from that hypocrisy. Like you realize you burned down a few trees personally (the equivalent) by flying to Hawaii right? The general wisdom seems to be that travel will open your mind to new perspectives and tolerance but I’ve not experienced that personally. The folks who travel seem to do it mostly for pleasure, and rarely Appear to have gained any real insight into any worldly process. In this connected age if you want to understand the ramifications of capital punishment in China you don’t need to travel there to know it. In fact you might get a more unbiased picture if you don’t. An analogy here would be like learning science by making a vinegar volcano or that “heavy pendulum to the face” trick - in principle it’s science I guess? And everyone’s happy to do it, but the kids don’t learn much at all, and clearly given the scientific acumen of the American public which grew up with this stuff they haven’t learned much about what science even stands for. Probably the same with travel.

darepublic 5y ago

nothing mindless about my clicking through the titles of HN frontpage!

meheleventyone 5y ago

My grandparents had the same intuition about books. "Oh why is he always reading all the time instead of going out in the fresh air?"

ren_engineer 5y ago

you also have to factor in how money can influence "science" cigarette and oil companies paid off researchers for decades to drown out negative research results. Facebook and other major tech companies have literally trillions of dollars incentivizing them to try and discredit all these research results

Pokepokalypse 5y ago
That's not science being influenced. That's our legal and court systems being influenced by junk science funded by shitty corporate actors. Actual science is what they're trying to drown-out. And yes, big-money can influence academic review and publishing, and it's a real problem. (actually a HUGE problem). But that's not what you're describing. There are good scientists doing real and valid work in both establishing the cancer-tobacco link, and climate research with regard to carbon from fossil/petroleum fuel burning. That's not being drowned out in academia. It's being drowned out in the profit-driven political and newsmedia spheres.

civilized 5y ago

This would make sense if there was some kind of causative link between the peak-ness of your experiences and your mental health, but I doubt that someone who only gets to see sunsets on their phone is doomed to worse mental health than someone who gets to see real ones.

delusional 5y ago

How are you going to research your intuition? What if mine differs from yours? In the absence of arguments we give in to arguments of emotion, which your are in this post. Absolutely drive your own life in accordance with your own intuition. Without accurate and compelling research it's all you have. If you're a scientist though, intuition is the starting point of new research.

Mikeb85 5y ago

I live in the mountains and you're absolutely correct that the digital world doesn't compare to the real world in many cases. That being said, I have disconnected from technology for up to a year at a time and overall it's not better. Technology introduces a lot of convenience and can reduce the time we spend on a lot of mundane chores, clearing up more time to spend in the real world ultimately. In the end it's all about balance.

pmarreck 5y ago

> Is a life of mindless clicking ever going to be as good as a real one, spent in the company of real people who aren’t endlessly distracted we also love rational argument, and this is an emotional appeal/argumentum ad populum/"appeal to taste" fallacy. Also, "mindless clicking" is disparaging, I wouldn't call what I'm literally doing right now "mindless clicking" > Is a sunset through a lens ever as satisfying or heart wrenching as a real one? Depends on the fidelity of the reproduction ;) I've certainly seen some quite impressive skyboxes in games. And somehow, people seem to survive without ever having seen a sunset over a body of water... > I’m happier, my wife is happier, my two teen kids are happier what's good for the goose is not always what's good for the gander

gus_massa 5y ago

Intuition is nice, but it can send you in the wrong path. A typical case is what to do when it's cold. Most people prefer to close all the windows and turn on the heating to prevent getting cold and catching the flu or a common cold. (That is a very confusing name.) But we know they are caused by virus, so it's better to keep the windows as open as possible and use warm cloth. (Unless there is a blizzard outside.)

majormajor 5y ago

Could a novel be as moving as real life? Possibly more, I'd argue: that work of fiction may have a much more emotional arc than your own life. Not everybody's direct immediate "real world" life is great, or has the ingredients available to be great "in person." This goes back as long as we've been telling stories.