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The Intellectual Obesity Crisis (2022)

• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• zero-sharp 2y ago
  There are some places online where I have to timebox and force myself to stop consuming information. Otherwise I end up mentally draining myself. YouTube is one of those places and it does a really good job with the video recommendations. I wouldn't even call the content low quality or inaccurate. There's just too much that gets me interested.
  • LoganDark 2y ago
    Absolutely. The only place I get videos from is from my home page. I use an extension (Unhook) to remove the side recommendations and end cards, otherwise I'd never be able to finish. I go through some home page videos, close each tab after the video is done, and then only load more of the home page if I truly want to watch more videos. No getting sucked into endless rabbitholes by accident.
  • aaron695 2y ago
    [dead]
  • supriyo-biswas 2y ago
    For me, what usually happens is that I try to look for music to get into the zone when writing code, but then see an interesting video on the homepage (they’re usually educational like stuff from Veritasium or Wendover) and get sucked into watching something that is useful in some sense, but that I don’t have time for. I’m already using Sponsorblock and added DeArrow for my YouTube watching experience, and am hoping the latter will cut down on my behavior.
    • nehal3m 2y ago
      Try music.youtube.com, it's just music.
      • codelobe 2y ago
        Thanks for your suggestion! I tried cats.youtube.com also, but it's just like my IRL cat.
    • DaSHacka 2y ago
      DeArrow looks great! I've been using "Clickbait Remover for Youtube"[1] that replaces thumbnails with auto-generated ones, and changes capitalization of titles to de-emphisize clickbait, but I think a sponsorblock-like crowdsourcing approach is an amazing idea for an extension like this. [1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clickbait-remover-for-you/omoinegiohhgbikclijaniebjpkeopip https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clickbait-remover-f...
    • pompino 2y ago
      >educational like stuff from Veritasium People call his videos educational, but really, what is the actual education being imparted? Its superficial, and you will never know how rich the topic actually is, and what the nuances are who the critics are and what they say, etc, etc. I'd put those videos in the entertainment section. (FWIW I watch those videos too)
      • supriyo-biswas 2y ago
        The recent video about jumping spiders was pretty educational, for example; although I do agree that the informational content has reduced since he started heavily leaning on documentary style videos (the one about dropping pennies from a helicopter being one of the worse ones.)
        • pompino 2y ago
          I think he is good at building a narrative, but I guess I have a different view of what constitutes educational content. Nothing against the guy, I'm glad hes making the videos. Though I wish he would drop his scammy sponsor - betterhelp.
  • makeitdouble 2y ago
    It sounds like you found a happy place where your mind can get infinitely engaged and you can get back to it whenever needed ? Arguably that's better than being apathic and frustrated all day long with no escape. In particular you seem to handle it responsibly, it all sounds pretty nice as you put it.
    • layer8 2y ago
      One can be infinitely engaged and apathic and frustrated at the same time.
      • makeitdouble 2y ago
        Frustrated I get. Not while being apathic though, either you have feelings or you don't. Then actually being apathic while engaged looks a lot like a zen like state, which would be fine in most people's book.
        • layer8 2y ago
          I don’t particularly associate “engaged” with emotionality.
  • pompino 2y ago
    The trap is that the brain power required to consume the video is very low, due to the pressure to make content which the masses can consume. You can feel wonderful watching the video on time dilation but there is a zero chance a single viewer of that video actually understands any of the presented equations (or understands the various counter arguments/theories and nuances). You will leave with a shallow understanding of the topic. If you talk to an expert, they will have to work hard to not embarrass you.
    • Aerroon 2y ago
      But I think that's where learning begins. The most-likely point of failure in learning is motivation. Getting somebody interested with bite-sized information can bait a person to go further without them using up much motivation. You're not going to learn every topic you hear about, but you might learn some.
      • pompino 2y ago
        That sounds nice, but I don't agree that it is the most-likely point. Anyway, I would argue the point of failure is lack of expert level guidance/mentorship and (sometimes) monetary resources to pursue higher education. Once you've received formal training, you also need someone to bounce ideas off-off, or a community for collaboration etc, etc.
        • Aerroon 2y ago
          I think you're right in a sense. Expert-level guidance is helpful, but I think its main value is filling up the gaps of motivation. Take school as an example. You don't need a math teacher to learn math. Everything you learn in that class is in the textbook. The textbook will even teach you math in a more formal way than a teacher will (at least mine did). But very few people end up learning math from the textbook. It's not because the teacher has better expert knowledge than the book, but because the teacher keeps you engaged in the learning process. A book won't do that. I think a sufficient amount of motivation can overcome a lack of expert guidance and lack of formal training. It might not get you to the exact same result as somebody that did receive all that, but for a lot of things I think it can get you close. I do agree with you on monetary resources. That will kill motivation and limit your ability to get guidance.
• Jensson 2y ago
  > the brain treats information as a reward in itself; it doesn't matter whether the info is accurate or useful, the brain will still crave it and feel satisfied after consuming it This doesn't jive with me, what kind of information different people are attracted to is very different. I'd argue that the difference comes from the brain trying to classify what information is useful and then rewarding you for engaging with that useful information. So for example, at least for me TikTok isn't useful and thus doesn't engage me at all, its just irritating to try to get into it. But for many other people their brains obviously identifies TikTok differently than mine, likely seeing it as useful so rewards them for it. So the problem is information that most people misclassify as useful even when it isn't. It is like sweeteners, they don't give you calories but your taste buds still rewards you as if you did get a lot of calories. I'd say that isn't an obesity crisis though, people sit and eat those artificial sweetener information all day and thus starve out on real useful information since they don't get any of it.
  • schmidtleonard 2y ago
    > TikTok isn't useful If information is increasingly hyper-abundant and attention is not, we must increasingly learn to value high bandwidth / compressed communication. Like TikTok. Yeah, most of the content is unproductive attention bait, but that's true of any medium. Yeah, some information compresses poorly and really does require irreducible minutes or pages. However, I've seen a 10 second TikTok monkey-see-monkey-do beat a 10 page instruction manual full of diagrams and paragraphs at effectively instructing newbies who always struggled with cable assemblies -- until they didn't, because they had TikTok.
    • YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
      Nothing is stopping you from putting a 10-second webm in that instruction manual, and has the advantage that you're not selling your soul to a company that probably hates you.
    • skydhash 2y ago
      > If information is increasingly hyper-abundant and attention is not, we must increasingly learn to value high bandwidth / compressed communication. Like TikTok. What has grown is irrelevant information. We don't need compressed communication (which loose nuance and is dangerous, because it leads to erroneous understanding) or high bandwidth one (which doesn't lead to reflection and internalization). What we need is better filtering. Be conscious and mindful of what you're spending your time on. Instead of watching 500 hundreds video of making cakes, just buy a cookbook and go make cakes. > However, I've seen a 10 second TikTok monkey-see-monkey-do beat a 10 page instruction manual full of diagrams and paragraphs at effectively instructing newbies who always struggled with cable assemblies -- until they didn't, because they had TikTok. Short Training Videos existed before tiktok (I had a VHS tape for learning Windows and it was mostly a collection of these). But that's mostly like watching someone play a song on the piano and believing you can do it too. If you have a good memory, you can probably replay the same song, but you still can't play the piano. Some fields don't have that depth of theory. But books are still the best at transmitting it (watching an expert is best at understanding it).
• ninetyninenine 2y ago
  The first sign of this crisis started with Wikipedia. You’d just deep dive Wikipedia and follow information threads really really deep. It seemed healthy at first. This was waaay back in the day before this obesity crisis was as evident as it is now.
  • the_af 2y ago
    If this worries you, then please, I urge you to stay away from TVTropes. If you've ever visited you'll understand my warning; but then it's likely too late for you.
  • pbhjpbhj 2y ago
    Slashdot and web-rings seem pretty similar, well before Wikipedia. Heck, subscribing to Usenet newsgroups seems not dissimilar for information junkies.
• redwoolf 2y ago
  What a bunch of drivel. The way that the body processes sugar as an analogy for how the brain processes information is just wrong. This nonsense is the same kind of horseshit that’s been peddled for years about television and stinks like the work of Nicholas Carr who claims the internet is making us stupid. So what if someone spends a ton of time consuming information you don’t think is useful? It doesn’t affect you. Get off your intellectual high horse and go for a walk.
  • piripero 2y ago
    Agreed. It’s easy (and very rarely helpful) to get polemical about the ways people spend their leisure time. This has been true for so much longer than social media (or even the New York Times!) has been around
  • romwell 2y ago
    The article itself is a very fine example of the content that it criticizes.
  • wiseowise 2y ago
    > who claims the internet is making us stupid. You have to be delusional to think otherwise. Modern web absolutely makes us more stupid on average. I’m looking forward to studies in 10 years about long term exposure effects of junk platforms like TikTok and YouTube shorts. > So what if someone spends a ton of time consuming information you don’t think is useful? Because we don’t live in a vacuum? I don’t want to be around erratic, constantly outraged and disinformation fed people. And before you say “well, you don’t have to”, keep in mind that those people hold as much voting power as you, possibly more, because hordes of fanatic will eat whatever shit their influencer overlords will tell them. > Get off your intellectual high horse and go for a walk. What exactly makes you so outraged about the article?
    • redwoolf 2y ago
      > Because we don’t live in a vacuum? I don’t want to be around erratic, constantly outraged and disinformation fed people. And before you say “well, you don’t have to”, keep in mind that those people hold as much voting power as you, possibly more, because hordes of fanatic will eat whatever shit their influencer overlords will tell them. I would not rebut with “well, you don’t have to.” I know that we have to. But what is being complained about here is not a new problem enabled by the internet. Disinformation has been around as long as humanity has (see religion). This attitude that “those people” have as much voting power as I do is the kind of thinking that disenfranchised women and non white men. (As an aside, it’s funny that you think voting actually matters and that the populace has a say in anything that goes on in the halls of power). This type of intellectual exercise is nothing more than mental masturbation: it serves only to make the writer feel good about himself. You can’t force others to value what you value. And you certainly can’t shame them into it by calling them intellectually obese. > What exactly makes you so outraged about the article? Don’t worry about me. I don’t feel called out by this article. I’m careful about what information I consume, don’t spend my time on socials or YouTube, and I’m comfortable with my choices. What irks me about this article is that it serves no purpose but to cut other people down for their choices that don’t harm others.
• jrflowers 2y ago
  > The vast majority of the online content you consume today won't improve your understanding of the world. In fact, it may just do the opposite This is true and I am thankful to read this article about how the author has coined a new phrase
• bee_rider 2y ago
  I sort of feel this. I’m not 100% sure on the analogy. Obesity is bad, of course because it makes your life more difficult, but also due to the negative feedback loop. It’s hard to start exercising if you are already in bad health. I don’t see a similar feedback look with information. If anything it is like being an information gym fanatic that always skips leg day—my brain is strong I think (well, I hope at least), but no cardio. I didn’t love his specific examples. > A typical example on social media would be a photo of a freshly cooked burger, captioned with “Look what I just made!” but posted without a recipe so you can't even recreate it. > e.g. “feeling tired, might go to sleep, lol” These are sort of very obvious trivialities. I don’t think they scratch the itch for anybody. They aren’t dangerous, IMO. Politics and tech stuff seem more dangerous to me. They are legitimately important and useful. But, for politics, you can only read so many stories before your mind is made up. There’s important stuff going on, but reading a dozen stories about one thing and then listening to the podcast just amps up the anxiety. Tech stuff, I could waste ages reading about stacks and algorithms I’ll never use…
  • warcher 2y ago
    In the end if reading content, especially content that is emotionally evocative, does not initiate some sort of change in action or thinking, it is useless. The overwhelming majority of political content is useless. Did you do anything? Did anything actually happen? You could spend a week in late October doing whatever reading you need to inform your vote, and nothing more, and it would still more than is ultimately useful if you’re not going to do anything about it.
    • Aerroon 2y ago
      The difference is that when you have a steady stream of political information you're more likely to pick up lies and misdirections. Politicians are pretty good at glossing over mistakes, especially if they happen over topics that aren't salacious. If you hadn't paid any attention to politics over the past 15 years and only looked at it now you wouldn't know about things like the Snowden leaks.
      • 2y ago
• mrbluecoat 2y ago
  > You'll probably read this article, briefly consider the damage junk info has done to you, and then return to aimlessly scrolling Twitter. Great article but sadly unlikely to change any outcome so you wonder if the article itself qualifies as junk info or digital defeatism Case in point, TikTok is still alive and well: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-wea...
  • dotcoma 2y ago
    > Case in point, TikTok is still alive and well: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-weapon https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/tiktok-may-be-a-chinese-bio-wea... The writer never said that TikTok would self-destroy; he said that it’s “a time-bomb that’ll wreck a whole generation”.
  • warcher 2y ago
    I get a lot of interesting insights out of TikTok, as well as funny joke videos. I like a good laugh. If something is boring or dumb I swipe past pretty fast. TikTok catches on quick and treats me pretty good.
• cosmojg 2y ago
  I hope the fact that I feel I wasted my time reading this article means I'm already on the right track.
• _jab 2y ago
  When you strip away some of the more pretentious language, this article isn't really saying anything that extraordinary. If you just swap the phrase "information" with "content", i.e. "addiction to useless content", it becomes clear that the article is really just talking about the dangers of doomscrolling. At best, it's a useful reminder that doomscrolling happens not only on Instagram and YouTube, but also on "respectable" sites like the NYT, Hacker News, and Wikipedia, and that does resonate with me. But I don't see anything else that the author is really adding to the large corpus of discussion on doomscrolling and Internet addiciton.
• Scene_Cast2 2y ago
  Slightly tangential - there's this quote I've been thinking of: "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." On one hand, chess is pretty well regarded. On the other, it's pretty memorization heavy - not just openings, but end game strategies and patterns in general. It takes up brain space. I've been trying to frame it in terms of enjoyment. I see a lot of people strive for higher ELOs, but I sometimes miss the silliness of low triple digit ELO blitz.
  • richrichie 2y ago
    Nice quote. Perhaps it applies to programming, sports, etc?
    • dieselgate 2y ago
      Agreed it’s a good quote, have heard it more generally as “be careful what you get good at”
    • TeMPOraL 2y ago
      I had a variant, "clean house is a sign of wasted life". I find it hard to disagree with it.
    • red-iron-pine 2y ago
      being adaquate at programming and able to pick up IT stuff quickly got me a job, and eventually, a really good, well paid job. That put me in a new house. being adequate, even good, at rowing didn't get me anything but sunburn. had a good time, mind you -- love being on the water -- but I probably could have spent that time learning Ham Radio, carpentry, ceramics, or vollyball -- or some combination of those. might never have been good at rowing, or ceramics, etc., but it's one of those Opportunity-Cost things
      • schlick 2y ago
        Maybe life should be about more then capitalistic success? You enjoyed being on the water, wasn't that enough of a reward?
• fuzzfactor 2y ago
  >Common types of junk info include gossip, trivia, clickbait, hackery, marketing, churnalism, and babble. Seems to me that huge percentages of almost all cultures have indulged full-time in these endeavors long before media came along.
  • zer00eyz 2y ago
    This needs to be higher up. I miss tabloids at the grocery checkout with aliens and Bigfoot on the cover. I miss Mad Magazine. Some of that old junk was good!
    • fuzzfactor 2y ago
      My scientific philosophy was influenced at an early age and can still be partially codified in three simple words; "What? Me Worry?" For more than a couple decades now people around the world are using a chemical laboratory technique I developed single-handedly and never published since it gave my employer at the time an unfair advantage. Once it escaped the lab, it crossed borders like wildfire. Billions of dollars in chemicals are involved. That's not just bits on a ledger. Also wanted to work for the National Enquirer (home town gossip rag) when I graduated and turned 17, didn't get far even though I had been studying their texts for years ;)
      • zer00eyz 2y ago
        >> For more than a couple decades now people around the world are using a chemical laboratory technique I developed single-handedly and never published since it gave my employer at the time an unfair advantage. Once it escaped the lab, it crossed borders like wildfire. You dont just put this in a random post and NOT give details. Spill. Edit: After reading a bunch of the above posters HN comments it's the first time in forever I wanted to see a FOLLOW button on here...
        • fuzzfactor 2y ago
          Well, I'm an alcohol tester, among other petrochemicals, so over 40 years ago I pioneered the routine use of capillary gas chromatography for most of the commodity chemicals made locally and coming through. Computerized too when lots of the chemical plants still didn't have that either. For a while there I had the only advanced abilities in this type analysis. This is the modern apparatus in use today that was seen only rarely for research purposes when I set it up the first time for routine use. The technology was very well set to emerge on its own. Nothing that wouldn't have been done without me eventually, and by about 10 years later most operations had progressed in that direction, in many analytical fields besides chemicals, without any relationship to my particular early effort. But I've probably still run more experiments in this field than anybody else who didn't start that early. With the employee turnover of a measurement bureau having an inherently outdated approach to staff, alternative international testing labs were eager to pick up our people who knew how to do this. Bigger companies knew I was up to something the whole time but I was not trying to hide anything, just not giving away the details. When it comes to alcohols, at the beginning all the PhD's who were established chided me that it couldn't be done the way I had in mind. Little did they know I had already validated it for a year, so they didn't actually turn out to be wrong in the end. They were all wrong from the beginning and I knew it as I went along. And that's just the apparatus, which is all over the world now, plus for alcohols well-standardized internationally. Even though the standard allows for lower performance and uses lesser math than I had implemented originally. Now that I have officially retired from my last employer, I still consult and earlier this week the manager called me about a specialty chemical on the way that nobody knows how to do and there are no publications. We'll see if this ship comes in. It's really just a non-toxic hiatus for me, I grew up in a retirement community, so unspoiled resort life has already been accomplished and well behind me for decades. Still deciding whether it's best to present the advanced math at a conference this year or next. That I will be able to take full credit for if I want to, and it could be quite popular now that people have the corresponding apparatus already. Regardless, the way we do it is slides and lecture only, no publication will necessarily be forthcoming. That reminds me, I don't disclose much but last time it was 2021, maybe a week after Windows 11 was released. Here's how I did it, being the only one seen with W11 (even up to this year w10 outnumbers it 10:1). Two laptops, neither one fully meeting the stiffest software requirements, one with HDMI, the other much further out-of-date with VGA. Each alternatively multibootable to XP on demand (just in case) with the same Powerpoint, projectable from either OS on either laptop. All slides at the native resolution of the projector supplied by the AV service. HDMI it was, no need for XP arose but it turned out the HDMI cable that was supplied by AV was a worn out POS which would have been a show-stopper except I pulled out a long HDMI cord brand new in the package, manager hooked it up and we kept on going.
• inciampati 2y ago
  Key points (summarized): > You're drowning in low-quality, pointless content designed to hijack your attention. It's making you distracted, confused, and unable to think straight. > Be mindful of what you consume. Spend more time creating, less mindlessly scrolling. > Your mind deserves better than the junk clogging your feed. Cut it out before it rots your brain. That's literally it. I guess the piece is trying to be ironic by using the same style of junk information that it's telling us to watch out for?
  • jb1991 2y ago
    The same occurred to me while reading it.
  • joemoon 2y ago
    While the post didn't particularly speak to me, I think you are being overly reductionist. You can dismissively summarize anything into a few "key points." Just in the first couple of paragraphs alone: - The author discusses the "why" by pointing to research on how new information triggers dopamine pathways. Maybe this is obvious to you but it's not necessarily obvious to everyone. - The author points out that this would have historically been an evolutionary advantage (at least that's my interpretation), but access to modern high-volume, low-nutrient information has made this an addictive unhealthy habit. - For those already familiar with how modern access to high-calorie, low-nutrient food (that triggers the dopamine response), the author is showing that the same mechanisms are at play with information. I think it's actually your comment that contains the tweet-able one liners (as "key points") that are likely to result in head nods and smug self assurances but aren't doing anything to encourage deeper thought.
    • throwaway2037 2y ago
      Honestly, I like both of your posts. Thanks for the follow-up. Your thoughts are insightful. I hear it a lot that "too much information is ruining us", but what about crap daily newspapers that came in mass around 1900, then radio, then over-air television, then cable television? All of these are about providing large amounts of low quality information. These days, you can get satellite TV with 500 (five hundred!) channels. It must be 99% rubbish content. I guess the difference now is that the web is much more interactive, and our minds can be more easily hooked as a result. Dunno; when I was growing up, the kids who gorged themselves on shitty cable TV weren't the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. I feel the same now in the Internet era. My point for this post: Each time I hear (paraphrased): "It is different this time.", I try to imagine the world 25 years ago. Then think: Is this really that different? Most of time, I think, "No, it isn't that different." (I use the same mental exercise when I hear people say that "this generation is so different than the last for reason A, B, or C.")
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• chb 2y ago
  If downvoting “works” on HN, then why is this showing up in “Top Stories”?
  • redwoolf 2y ago
    This article is HN bait. This community is full of intellectual elitists who delude themselves into thinking that they are immune to the things that seduce common people. We’re all common people.
• Animats 2y ago
  The author is just talking about the usual problems of social media. I thought he was going to address the academic problem of too many bad papers. Or worse, press releases from university PR departments. There are far too many "we got this modest lab result, trillion dollar world changing industry by next year" articles. Published journals are no longer real sources of authority. Academic link-farming is a thing. It takes so much effort to push back. Remember the uBeam ultrasonic charging scheme? That scam kept going for over a decade. Finally went bust.[1] [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/54800-92#overview https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/54800-92#overview
• wakawaka28 2y ago
  This is anti-intellectualism shrouded in pompous moralizing nonsense. Who is this guy to tell us that information we think is valuable isn't actually? I think he's stumping for deliberate ignorance and/or censorship, under the premise that information (especially the kind he doesn't find convenient) is as harmful as junk food. I expected this to be a post about being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of good information that one can find online. Being stressed by too much information is an actual concern of mine. Instead I get lowkey propaganda vibes.
  • huygens6363 2y ago
    Indeed. I now know Firefox mobiles gives an infinity sign if you have more than 99 tabs open. These are all articles or topics I want to review. It’s definitely growing faster than I can review. There is just so much high-quality stuff out there. I’m not even on social media. Fundamentally interesting stuff will find it’s way off those islands and into the open web. It’s an useful filter for me.
    • verbalstone 2y ago
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  • verbalstone 2y ago
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• julianeon 2y ago
  I think the article gets the incentives a little wrong. The primary reason to engage with social media is not to consume useless content. If that's all it was, I wouldn't use it. No, the primary reasons are: to improve your professional standing, attract an audience that can be monetized, and learn useful information in your field (which can also be monetized). Or to make it even simpler: money, and power. That changes the perspective on what has value and what is worth saying & doing. For example, "low effort content" obviously has value if that's your goal, since you can spend 10 minutes crafting some tweet about your profession with low reach, or 10s photographing your food for a similar result. If you can type out something low effort than you can squeeze it in during work hours, for example - and building an audience is one example of how that could pay off. Second, if money and power are your goal, then getting very familiar with marketing content is useful also. You have to learn what engages people and what gets people to sign up for stuff, even if its tedious or slightly cheesy. And hanging out on social media is how you do that. Finally, if there are useful professional jewels amid all the chaff, then it may be okay that 95% of it is junk, if 5% of it is good. I will say that there are times when I've sworn off social media, then dipped back and noticed, actually, I do learn useful stuff here. If you want to use social media in a practical way, you can.
  • freilanzer 2y ago
    > No, the primary reasons are: to improve your professional standing, attract an audience that can be monetized, and learn useful information in your field (which can also be monetized). Or to make it even simpler: money, and power. Certainly not for most people. Everyone I know shares images and watches reels on Instagram, nothing else.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• ascension4h 2y ago
  I have a completely different take on the phenomenon of "rage bait". Far from being "junk information", I believe it to be a wonderful opportunity. Rather than avoid it, we should do the exact opposite by seeing the extraordinary opportunity in adverstity. What opportunity? The opportunity to mindfully explore why it triggers the emotion of rage in us. Why is this useful? Because rage is an accurate predictor of a learning disability that is holding us back from reaching our full potential. Both as individuals and as a species. Learning disability? What do you mean? The Buddha pointed out that avijjā, the choice to ignore uncomfortable truths, is the root cause of all suffering. The Buddha called such rage bait, the first arrow. The first arrow is, in reality, a notification of sensory motor misprediction. We experience this notification of misprediction as pain because this alerts the brain to the existence of an error in our sensory motor predictive model. In order to restore equanimity as we move through this domain of sensory experience, the brain should respond by striving to correct the error in the model so that sensory experience is predicted correctly. With the error corrected, we can now move through that domain of sensory experience without anxiety; confident that our model will guide us to make good decisions. Most of the time, we do this. However, sometimes, a bias we have prevents us from doing so. The Buddha called such biases, āsava. The path to liberating the mind involves the total destruction of the āsava. The suffering we experience in response to rage bait then is an inner conflict between 2 strategies to satiate our craving for the restoration of the certainty of an accurate predictive model of sensory experience. 1: The more intelligent strategy of seeking to find and correct the error in the predictive model so that we can "see the world the way it actually is" and 2: The less intelligent strategy of clinging to bias and demanding that sensory experience bend to our will now. i.e. between 1: mature delayed gratification and 2: immature immediate gratification ALL suffering we have ever experienced, are experiencing and will ever experience is an inner conflict between these 2 parts of us pulling in different directions. ALL suffering we have ever experienced, are experiencing and will ever experience is resolved by extinguishing the craving for things to be different than they actually are now in favor of seeing the world the way it actually is. We don't see it as such when we are doing it, but suffering is clearly a learning disability. Were we to free our mind of all such learning disabilities, rage bait would have no effect on us whatsoever. In this regard, rage bait everywhere should be seen as a wonderful opportunity to free our minds of a learning disability that is preventing us from contributing to our full potential. Both as individuals and as a species. What might billions of minds liberated from bias in this fashion be capable of producing? For this reason, "rage-bait" should be embraced as a wonderful opportunity.
• matricaria 2y ago
  Ironically, this article in itself is what I would call „junk info“.
• yawnxyz 2y ago
  Being a critic / writing critique for a newspaper is one of the very original ways to create content fluff, a hundred years before social media was ever invented. It's always much easier to be a critic than to actually do the work - and in this article all the person does is be a critic
• drewcoo 2y ago
  Redefinition of information to fit the thesis. Ironically vapid.
• richrichie 2y ago
  My theory is that the intellectual (or knowledge worker) periodically wakes up feeling immense guilt about his life of extraordinary physical comfort. He conjures up deprivations to introduce artificial discomfort for a brief period of time and then reverts to his life of extraordinary physical comfort.
• 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  Assuming you spend 8 hours a day working and 8 hours a day sleeping, that leaves 8 hours a day to relax. As long as you're going to spend 8 hours per day relaxing, why not learn something new along the way? If you're going to have fun while learning -- if it's not something you have to force yourself to do -- that's even better right? Sure, this learning will come in the form of lots of little bits and pieces. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Imagine going super deep into a single subject, then eventually realizing that subject isn't even useful. Plus, I've found that if I try to do intensive single-subject learning, it begins to feel like work anyways. Learning little bits and pieces seems less taxing for my brain, and is arguably better from a spaced-repetition point of view too. The piece seems to mainly rest on a single study which is here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3491102.3501899 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3491102.3501899 Based on a quick skim, that study didn't actually measure retention of info from social media. Even if it did, the right way to measure retention would not be to ask "Do you remember what you read this past week?" That's not a useful way for your brain to index information. It'd be better to ask someone about the topic of something they read, and see if they had any recollections related to it. I think many people do use social media in an unhealthy way. Staying up late to follow an online controversy isn't usually smart. But the picture presented in the OP feels oversimplified. I've tried many times to pull away from social media, but I keep coming back. It's actually kind of hard to find something that's: more relaxing, more edifying, more fun, and doesn't get old after 8 hours. I'm open to suggestions!
  • freilanzer 2y ago
    > As long as you're going to spend 8 hours per day relaxing, why not learn something new along the way? Learning is not relaxing. Not every hour of the day must be productive.
    • 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
      Is reading HN relaxing? Do you sometimes learn stuff when you read HN?
      • 2y ago
• robocat 2y ago
  Newspapers and TV news had the same problem? Perhaps social media has amplified the problem but I don't think it's a new phenomenon.
• agumonkey 2y ago
  It's a lesson in systems. The web era was all about infinite availability at no 'cost'. Then you realize that it only produces torrents of lo quality signals that overwhelms other parts.
  • ikr678 2y ago
    As it turns out, cost is an important signal in its own right.
    • agumonkey 2y ago
      Indeed.
• Anotheroneagain 2y ago
  I disagree, there is a lot of useless information on the plains of savanna - look at that blade of grass! In fact we face the exact same challenges as our ancestors, living in a world that is information sparse. It's that our brains went awry, and can no longer crunch the 100Mbs of inputs into the perhaps a few kbs of useful information. Not only that people get overwhelmed with useless garbage, they also proceed to vomit it on each other.
• Applejinx 2y ago
  This is quite good, at least in my experience. I feel it's one reason I tend to gravitate to 'known media' when I'm trying to relax: I need to rewatch stuff, even things like podcasts, where I know what's in there and I'm just reminding myself. Letting my brain engage with that in a more perfunctory manner. I've never been sure why I did this, but it makes sense: I'm capable of devouring so much new information that I get sick, because I crave it and go after it like an addict, at the cost of my own well-being. That makes very good sense to me as I'm in recovery and don't drink or do drugs, and it's a real familiar sensation even though it's been some time since I used.
• eb123 2y ago
  This piece lacks a good definition of "junk info". The closest is this: >"Common types of junk info include gossip, trivia, clickbait, hackery, marketing, churnalism, and babble. But in fact, any information that you can't use is junk info. A typical example on social media would be a photo of a freshly cooked burger, captioned with “Look what I just made!” but posted without a recipe so you can't even recreate it" There's huge gap between "info that you can use" and the examples given of "junk info". I enjoy reading Wikipedia entries on scientific topics, but I can rarely "use" that info in any practical sense
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• hamasho 2y ago
  For me, it's not just social media but also Hacker News. I often open Hacker News, scan the titles, and open all interesting threads in separate tabs for later reading (I opened this thread the same way). Each thread usually contains insightful discussions and useful references on topics I enjoy, like music, programming, and recently, LLMs. Unlike Reddit, I often read the original articles instead of just shit-posting on clickbait titles. Most of the discussions and articles are information-dense, requiring a significant amount of time and mental effort to read through them all (and close all the tabs). It's not uncommon for these dozens of open tabs to drain my willpower just by being there all day long. I feel like I'm driven by FOMO rather than sheer curiosity. Maybe some information diet helps?
  • kubanczyk 2y ago
    FOMO and curiosity are just different sides of the same coin for me. I can say what does not help much: I mostly open just one HN tab and mostly proceed sequentially inside of it. If there's a rabbit hole, all of it happens in that single tab (a lot of back button). Still, the consumption mode itself makes it harder to switch back to work mode or to creative mode.
    • stnmtn 2y ago
      I like this, this is probably a simple solution that could help with the problem that GP (and I) have with opening up many many tabs at once. This also is probably good advice to use with any site. Sometimes I'll open up 3 tabs of interesting-looking youtube videos from my home page. It would probably be best (and would make me watch less youtube) to restrict it to only 1 tab per site.
      • saratogacx 2y ago
        That would work great if it weren't for every site breaking back behavior or at least using it to regenerate the page with different results. For Youtube I will only queue up (by way of new tabs) interesting videos on a single row and only after finishing or discarding those will I go back to the YT tab to find another time burner. Essentially that sets my VIP (Videos in progress) limit to 4.
• unraveller 2y ago
  The answer is not to consider clickbait more deeply before devouring it, or take a future historical perspective on the nourishment value of every click you take. That's all priced in, and nostalgia won't help you. You need to break the cycle by training yourself to eschew all mystery, that is, be ready to change activities despite the titillating promise of information resolution to come. So watch half a good movie, read half an enticing article or status update and discard the rest on purpose, practice dragging yourself away at the most inopportune time to test your resolve - publishers can not derive benefit from you increasing your resolve without them.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• amai 2y ago
  Fast news is as bad for your brain as fast food is for your body.
• daltont 2y ago
  I've internally thought of a similar metaphor. Previous generations didn't have to conscientious of food intake. Food options were more limited, there wasn't as much processed/calorie-dense food, work was more manual in nature and people likely walked greater distances. My dad who grew up during the Depression in the U.S. weighed 140 pounds in his '20s, but hit 280 in his '40s. That generation was kind of blindsided by the affect of this. Likewise, my generation is dealing with an explosion of easy to consume streams of information and entertainment and we are kind of blindsided by that I have to conscientious of spending too much time consuming online information with Reddit being my biggest vice.
• Aerbil313 2y ago
  This article has been the most enlightening about my own behavior regarding reading HN. All this time I thought it's not supposed to be addictive. I'm reminded of what Paul Graham wrote back in 2009[1]: > The downside of tuning a site to attract certain people is that, to those people, it can be too attractive. I'm all too aware how addictive Hacker News can be. 1: https://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html https://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
• squarepizza 2y ago
  "The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it."
• lo_zamoyski 2y ago
  The general idea, that we suffer from a kind of information glut, is true. And by glut, I don't even mean the ubiquity of bad information. I mean specifically and especially the bad habit of consuming it inordinately. The desire to know is an appetite, like the desire for food, sex, etc. And like any appetite, it must be moderated, ordered, and tempered by restraint and reason, which is to say the good. Otherwise, it becomes a vice, a bad and destructive thing. It doesn't lead to wisdom and understanding. It doesn't contribute to your station in life or your life's ultimate end. It can become the basis for arrogance, and pride may be the motive. The ancients and medievals used to call this unrestrained appetite for knowledge the vice of curiosity, which they opposed to the virtue of studiousness. It is an idle or vain interest in things.
• _vaporwave_ 2y ago
  Much of the article is rehashing common takes on social media and the attention economy, but this is the money quote imo: “Eventually, the addiction to useless info leads to what I call “intellectual obesity.” Just as gorging on junk food bloats your body, so gorging on junk info bloats your mind, filling it with a cacophony of half-remembered gibberish that sidetracks your attention and confuses your senses. Unable to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant, you become concerned by trivialities and outraged by falsehoods. These concerns and outrages push you to consume even more, and all the time that you're consuming, you're prevented from doing anything else: learning, focusing, even thinking” I think a lot of people (myself included) have fallen for this pernicious trap at some point.