7 ms·

My Paleo Media Diet

103 points by michael_fine 14y ago

kitplummer 14y ago
Well done Jim, you've made Hacker News. Now go eat a Twitterburger. ;) Knowing that you've reduced you media restrictions somewhat, I'm curious if you're now of the believe that, with all things, a balance is appropriate and too much of anything is bad. I still struggle with managing the overflow of data that is Twitter, at least to a point where it's not a huge distraction. I wish I could, but I can't.
- jstogdill 14y ago
  I think the question of balance is difficult if you really believe in addiction. For people that aren't addicted, moderation / balance is a great strategy. If behavior crosses into addiction the moderation strategy is much less realistic. That's the crux question for me.
  - kitplummer 14y ago
    That's an interesting point. I wonder how many people of are regular "socialites" are truly addicted, versus just think that's what you're supposed to do these days. Much like HSN, gambling, etc...I bet the percentage of the former is pretty high.
mechanical_fish 14y ago
Nice metaphor. To paraphrase Pollan: "Listen to people. Not too many. Mostly local."
- stephengillie 14y ago
  Listen to the people around you? That goes against the anti-echo-chamber advice.
  - alexmat 14y ago
    Just surround yourself with people who aren't like you? Easier said than done I guess...
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      Surround yourself with people who actually think and who aren't prone to just believe the echoes in the chamber.
      - brady747 14y ago
        As I was thinking - 'local' in values and principles, it doesn't have to mean 'local' in geography. :)
        dllthomas 14y ago
        Local in values and principles is precisely what leads to an echo chamber. Of course, an echo chamber is very much the state of the paleolithic human...
        mechanical_fish 14y ago
        My god, constructive responses. Some further observations: I didn't think about this koan for more than three minutes. I don't follow this very well myself. I also don't do paleo for that matter. I'm a baker. I think pies and pancakes are awesome, French bread is the height of human civilization, and while I try to moderate these things I wouldn't give them up unless they were killing me painfully. (I live in fear of gluten intolerance and eat a muffin every time I think about it.) When I wrote "local" I tried to find the better word. In the end, "local" is pretty good because it captures the paleo theme; our pre-literate ancestors were always local. But this is 2012 and we shouldn't read that word literally. Think of "local" as "among your friends, family, and neighbors". This "echo chamber" concept deserves its own essay. Here I will say that the word "mostly" is there for a reason, as it was in the quote I stole it from: Michael Pollan is no more opposed to French bread than I. And I wish I could give the same loving attention to the words of seven hundred diverse people, or seven thousand people, or seventy thousand people, which would bring me up to almost 0.001% of the people currently alive - but of course I should save some time for the great works of people now dead - but this is impossible, just as my living until 2170 is impossible, and the era has come where we need to face that squarely, because the technology is there but the human capability is not. You can meaningfully hear the words of a few hundred people per day, tops, and if those people are all different each day it isn't good for your personality.
- auxbuss 14y ago
  I had to look this up, so in case anyone else might need to: Michael Pollan said: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan
sp332 14y ago
This reminds me of Paul Miller's ongoing "Offline" series. http://www.theverge.com/label/offline http://www.theverge.com/label/offline (older articles at the bottom) He's a writer for tech blog The Verge, but he's taking a one-year break from the internet. He's also really good at writing about it.
- jstogdill 14y ago
  Yep. Great experiment. My thinking was also influenced by a book I read a few years ago. Better Off by Eric Brende published without irony, if I remember correctly, by MIT Press.
  - tkiley 14y ago
    Better Off inspired me to move to a small cabin on Vancouver Island; for the past year and a half (and the past order of magnitude of revenue and team size growth!) I've lived and worked in this cabin. That book helped me stay sane during an extremely hectic time of life, I highly recommend it. Nice to see it getting a plug here :)
    - jstogdill 14y ago
      Wow. Cool story. I assume you've seen the PBS special "Alone in the Wilderness"
- prawks 14y ago
  As are many people at The Verge, great publication started by some cast-offs from Engadget iirc.
  - sp332 14y ago
    If by "cast-offs" you include the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky; Managing Editor Nilay Patel; several other editors and the other personalities who made the Engadget Show: Paul Miller and Joanna Stern (who now primarily works for ABC network); etc.
mark_l_watson 14y ago
I try to do the same thing, but it is not easy with a Samsung Galaxy S III in my pocket :-) Instead of starting right in on work this morning I had coffee with three friends and then went fishing on Oak Creek near my house. I was going to say that I was offline for 90 minutes but I just remembered that I emailed a picture of the creek to my Dad while I was fishing. Oh well...
jstogdill 14y ago
I wrote that piece a few months ago when I was taking time off. Now that I'm back at work (I work for O'Reilly Media's Radar group) it's like being an alcoholic working behind a bar. I'm having a much harder time with it. I try to do intermittent fasting and I still won't touch my phone/email before about 10am - I even got a separate alarm clock so I wouldn't be relying on my phone for that.
- graeme 14y ago
  I hear you. I just started working for a startup, and have a lot more email to deal with, and web forums to monitor. I've got to work out a plan to deal with it productively. It's important and necessary, but carries a high potential for inefficiency if not managed well.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  You have a similar problem to food addicts (I was/am one). You can't completely abstain, so you have to find strategies. Things that have helped: Planning: Determine in advance what you will consume and when. Support: Find others like you that you can use for support (just not on Twitter ;). Self-empowerment: 12-steps call this your "higher power", but I think that brings too many religious overtones (even though they explicitly say it's not meant to). Regardless, there is a power we have (or are given, if you are religious), but you have to dig for it. The journey is what provides the power. Good luck!
  - jongleur 14y ago
    One of the benefits of intermittent fasting is that you can in fact completely abstain from food; not forever, but for a day, certainly.
    - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
      While that is certainly true, I, personally, would never do that because it would put me in a situation that the combination of biology (real hunger) and emotion (haven't eaten in a day!) would put me in an extremely dangerous place. Instead, I go for routine: regular, small meals; don't ever get really hungry; etc. Couple that with eating high quality food that you actually want to eat, and it has served me well. You are in a different boat. You physically can abstain forever, but your career doesn't allow you to. I could see how abstaining would be a very helpful option there.
nacker 14y ago
You want real Paleo? Try radio, or rather, this amazing podcast on media effects from Gutenberg to McLuhan: http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/episode206-lq.mp3 http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/episode206-lq.mp3
AtTheLast 14y ago
"The circuit" gets me all the time. Sometimes I don't even know why I'm checking email/twitter/reddit that I checked only a few minutes ago. I just blocked reddit and youtube as an experiment to see if I can be more productive without them.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- graeme 14y ago
  "the way we are eating now is poorly aligned with our biology" This statement seems unambiguously true. More than half of the population is overweight, we suffer from chronic diseases that don't afflict hunter gatherers, and there are clinical studies supporting the harmful effects of processed sugar. It doesn't follow, from the statement you highlighted, that paleo is the answer. We'd need evidence in support of that particular answer to the problem. But there clearly is a problem. We're not meant to eat the way we are eating - the evidence is all around us. The flowering of fad diets is an attempt to deal with this. It has its flaws and incorrect theories, like all experiments. You're also using an ad hominem fallacy. You say that a diet is wrong, because the reasons for it are wrong. But that isn't evidence about the diet itself. You should address whether the diet works. Edit: parent post deleted. Well, now I just look irrelevant.
  - jstogdill 14y ago
    True. Those are good points. I'll just say the piece isn't really about paleo diet so I didn't make any effort to justify it there. I only mentioned it because my lifestyle choices wrt food got me thinking along parallel lines for my technology addictions. I don't know if "paleo" is the answer. I'm not sure there is "an" answer. I do know that eight months into a significant lifestyle change my HDL is up, my LDL is down, my body fat is 13% (down from > 22%), I don't crash in the afternoon, and I'm wearing a pant size I last saw when I was 22. Of course, none of that says anything about longevity - which is the primary reason I started my fitness and dietary changes. To address that question I'm cloning a thousand instances of me and will feed 200 vegan, 200 paleo, 200 atkins, 200 standard american diet... Obviously I can't know with any certainty that what I'm doing is the "right" answer, all I know is that I feel good and am no longer manifesting the typical pathologies of the standard American diet. That makes me happy.
  - jongleur 14y ago
    I'll note so-called overweight - BMI 25-30 - is the longest-lived cohort, followed by normal (18-25), obese (30-40), underweight (<18), morbidly obese (40+).
docgnome 14y ago
I know this is slightly off topic and I apologize but I'm rather obsessed with the topic at the moment. First, vegan isn't a necessarily a moral choice. I'm vegan and my primary reason for being so is for one animal: me. Second, the China Study shows overwhelming evidence that animal-based foods are terrible for you. I'm no expert in the field of nutrition but it seems to me the paleo diet falls straight into the animal food based diet category and therefore into the greatly increases your risk of multiple kinds of diseases category. (If anyone knows of any real criticism of the China Study, I'd like to read it. All I can find boils down to "I like me therefore it's good for me")
- graeme 14y ago
  This one's circulated a fair bit on the internet: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/ http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal... The central idea is that the china study showed correlations (sometimes), but not causation, and that it isn't supported by causal evidence. I haven't read the China Study, or the critique in full, so I don't think I'm qualified to say more.
  - docgnome 14y ago
    He explicitly takes the time to discuss correlation vs causation. But thanks! I'll take a look.
- johndavi 14y ago
  Read Denise Minger's extremely thorough review of The China Study (note, the book and its conclusions by T. Colin Campbell as opposed to the actual China-Cornell-Oxford Project). His cherry-picked evidence is extremely fallible and unsupportable. Denise is now a fairly central figure in the neo-paleo movement, so she may appear biased, but she started as a vegan whose particular inspection of the book played a big role in her conversion. (On edit: yes, that link by Graeme.)
- lmm 14y ago
  In my personal, anecdotal experience, every vegan I know has serious health problems. Literally every single one. Never anything that can be traced directly to their diet (e.g. one of those I'm thinking of mostly has severe eczema), but it's such a sharp correlation that I can't help thinking there's something to it. While I haven't looked at that particular study, the result you're claiming seems implausible; one would expect humans to be optimized by evolution for living on the ancestral diet. While there are specific reasons why certain parts of our traditional diet are unhealthy (e.g. the ancestral lifestyle burned far more calories than current), in the absence of a specific mechanism like that, "I like me therefore it's good for me" is a perfectly reasonable inference. And if you're really only interested in health, it seems implausible that that would be 100% correlated with animal vs. non-animal. There are so many different possible food molecules and no reliable common factor that differentiates where they came from - even more so when it comes to the animal byproducts that make vegans different from vegetarians, such as honey.
jongleur 14y ago
By paleo standards writing = agriculture. Internet's more like HFCS.
- gojomo 14y ago
  I would reserve the idea of "attentional High Fructose Corn Sugar' for just some specific user-experiences, rather than the internet as a whole. There are some interface patterns that tend to heighten the sense of importance/urgency/novelty... without any real substance. Those help create the overstimulation-crash-craving cycle like dietary sugar binges. The interleaved Twitter/Facebook streams are one form of attentional sugar. But the HN format is, too: mixed topics, jittery time-influenced rankings, random arrival of comments/karma-deltas.
ZENmotherfucker 14y ago
I've been going information paleo, in staggered steps, for the last year and a half now. First, I stopped watching TV--which just turned into watching Hulu, Netflix, and torrented movies. BUT it also got me away from CNN, CSPAN, etc., which was big for me. Big enough that just three months in, I--who'd spent the last 3 years of my life debating politics online--was able to completely divest myself of politics as an interest. Politics is the mind-killer. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean; if you don't, that's cool too. But I'm not going to argue about it. ;)
argonz 14y ago
Another benefit that your friends filter out what they consider noise, they will only communicate what is worth communicating (putting in the effort) by their standards. Taleb also uses this method.
Apocryphon 14y ago
I feel this is going to be an inevitable practice for us. Just as the switch to white collar jobs have forced us to confront our sedentary lifestyles and allocate time specifically for exercise, the constant stream of information brought to us by the internet is going to force us to get away from our computers for an hour (and hopefully more) a day and get some bloody contemplation.
- gahahaha 14y ago
  Our distraction is a full-blown epidemic — a cognitive plague that has the potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought. It can be compared to smoking: People aren’t aware what’s happening to their mental processes, in the same way that people years ago couldn’t look into their lungs and see the residual deposits.
  - Apocryphon 14y ago
    There's potential for a huge industry built around "regrowing attention spans" and "info diets" and so forth. It will be partly a continuation of the efficiency/simplicity lifehacking practices of the last decade, except to a whole new level.
    - illuminate 14y ago
      And how much of it will be organized through Twitter, eh?
  - swah 14y ago
    Smoking doesn't harm you so quickly though...
- ftwinnovations 14y ago
  I think that is a most excellent analogy! I will now use that myself the next time the conversation comes up. Everyone is always so doom and gloom about any technology relating to the future of the human race but I think everyone adjusts, just as they always have. Thank you, sir! Or ma'am!
coltr 14y ago
I aspire to "be in the moment" as well, but being an INTJ I live in my head almost all of the time. If Stogdill is spending his time daydreaming or thinking about other things (I do this as well) then ignoring his phone is not helping him live in the present anyways.
- jstogdill 14y ago
  You aren't the first to mention that, and it's a good point. But I am not just day dreaming when I'm not looking at my phone or whatever. I spend a lot more time with people these days, and I'm loathe to pick the damned thing up when I'm with them.
keithpeter 14y ago
http://jnocook.net/linda/index.htm http://jnocook.net/linda/index.htm Jno Cook also did the Robert Frank Coloring Book, which is ace. Not sure if he has stuck with this diet for the last 8 years or not.
fingerprinter 14y ago
My own personal situation is that I've completely given up on Twitter. It was just too much noise. G+ is a once a day thing, maybe 30seconds. Facebook is a twice a day thing, mostly to respond to friends messages. 5 minutes, probably on average. 10 on busy days. I don't RSS anymore either. 0seconds Email is open most of the day. I'm more or less sick of it all and I feel better not having it clutter up my life. I've tried hard not to substitute anything for it either, which means I just have more free time. Kind of like when you stop watching one TV show, don't replace it with another, just have one less you watch (or stop all together). Over time, you'll end up with much more free time to do useful and productive things.

103 points by michael_fine 14y ago

Well done Jim, you've made Hacker News. Now go eat a Twitterburger. ;) Knowing that you've reduced you media restrictions somewhat, I'm curious if you're now of the believe that, with all things, a balance is appropriate and too much of anything is bad. I still struggle with managing the overflow of data that is Twitter, at least to a point where it's not a huge distraction. I wish I could, but I can't.

jstogdill 14y ago
I think the question of balance is difficult if you really believe in addiction. For people that aren't addicted, moderation / balance is a great strategy. If behavior crosses into addiction the moderation strategy is much less realistic. That's the crux question for me.
- kitplummer 14y ago
  That's an interesting point. I wonder how many people of are regular "socialites" are truly addicted, versus just think that's what you're supposed to do these days. Much like HSN, gambling, etc...I bet the percentage of the former is pretty high.

mechanical_fish 14y ago

Nice metaphor. To paraphrase Pollan: "Listen to people. Not too many. Mostly local."

stephengillie 14y ago
Listen to the people around you? That goes against the anti-echo-chamber advice.
- alexmat 14y ago
  Just surround yourself with people who aren't like you? Easier said than done I guess...
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Surround yourself with people who actually think and who aren't prone to just believe the echoes in the chamber.
    - brady747 14y ago
      As I was thinking - 'local' in values and principles, it doesn't have to mean 'local' in geography. :)
      - dllthomas 14y ago
        Local in values and principles is precisely what leads to an echo chamber. Of course, an echo chamber is very much the state of the paleolithic human...
        mechanical_fish 14y ago
        My god, constructive responses. Some further observations: I didn't think about this koan for more than three minutes. I don't follow this very well myself. I also don't do paleo for that matter. I'm a baker. I think pies and pancakes are awesome, French bread is the height of human civilization, and while I try to moderate these things I wouldn't give them up unless they were killing me painfully. (I live in fear of gluten intolerance and eat a muffin every time I think about it.) When I wrote "local" I tried to find the better word. In the end, "local" is pretty good because it captures the paleo theme; our pre-literate ancestors were always local. But this is 2012 and we shouldn't read that word literally. Think of "local" as "among your friends, family, and neighbors". This "echo chamber" concept deserves its own essay. Here I will say that the word "mostly" is there for a reason, as it was in the quote I stole it from: Michael Pollan is no more opposed to French bread than I. And I wish I could give the same loving attention to the words of seven hundred diverse people, or seven thousand people, or seventy thousand people, which would bring me up to almost 0.001% of the people currently alive - but of course I should save some time for the great works of people now dead - but this is impossible, just as my living until 2170 is impossible, and the era has come where we need to face that squarely, because the technology is there but the human capability is not. You can meaningfully hear the words of a few hundred people per day, tops, and if those people are all different each day it isn't good for your personality.
auxbuss 14y ago
I had to look this up, so in case anyone else might need to: Michael Pollan said: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan

sp332 14y ago

This reminds me of Paul Miller's ongoing "Offline" series. http://www.theverge.com/label/offline http://www.theverge.com/label/offline (older articles at the bottom) He's a writer for tech blog The Verge, but he's taking a one-year break from the internet. He's also really good at writing about it.

jstogdill 14y ago
Yep. Great experiment. My thinking was also influenced by a book I read a few years ago. Better Off by Eric Brende published without irony, if I remember correctly, by MIT Press.
- tkiley 14y ago
  Better Off inspired me to move to a small cabin on Vancouver Island; for the past year and a half (and the past order of magnitude of revenue and team size growth!) I've lived and worked in this cabin. That book helped me stay sane during an extremely hectic time of life, I highly recommend it. Nice to see it getting a plug here :)
  - jstogdill 14y ago
    Wow. Cool story. I assume you've seen the PBS special "Alone in the Wilderness"
prawks 14y ago
As are many people at The Verge, great publication started by some cast-offs from Engadget iirc.
- sp332 14y ago
  If by "cast-offs" you include the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky; Managing Editor Nilay Patel; several other editors and the other personalities who made the Engadget Show: Paul Miller and Joanna Stern (who now primarily works for ABC network); etc.

mark_l_watson 14y ago

I try to do the same thing, but it is not easy with a Samsung Galaxy S III in my pocket :-) Instead of starting right in on work this morning I had coffee with three friends and then went fishing on Oak Creek near my house. I was going to say that I was offline for 90 minutes but I just remembered that I emailed a picture of the creek to my Dad while I was fishing. Oh well...

jstogdill 14y ago

I wrote that piece a few months ago when I was taking time off. Now that I'm back at work (I work for O'Reilly Media's Radar group) it's like being an alcoholic working behind a bar. I'm having a much harder time with it. I try to do intermittent fasting and I still won't touch my phone/email before about 10am - I even got a separate alarm clock so I wouldn't be relying on my phone for that.

graeme 14y ago
I hear you. I just started working for a startup, and have a lot more email to deal with, and web forums to monitor. I've got to work out a plan to deal with it productively. It's important and necessary, but carries a high potential for inefficiency if not managed well.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
You have a similar problem to food addicts (I was/am one). You can't completely abstain, so you have to find strategies. Things that have helped: Planning: Determine in advance what you will consume and when. Support: Find others like you that you can use for support (just not on Twitter ;). Self-empowerment: 12-steps call this your "higher power", but I think that brings too many religious overtones (even though they explicitly say it's not meant to). Regardless, there is a power we have (or are given, if you are religious), but you have to dig for it. The journey is what provides the power. Good luck!
- jongleur 14y ago
  One of the benefits of intermittent fasting is that you can in fact completely abstain from food; not forever, but for a day, certainly.
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    While that is certainly true, I, personally, would never do that because it would put me in a situation that the combination of biology (real hunger) and emotion (haven't eaten in a day!) would put me in an extremely dangerous place. Instead, I go for routine: regular, small meals; don't ever get really hungry; etc. Couple that with eating high quality food that you actually want to eat, and it has served me well. You are in a different boat. You physically can abstain forever, but your career doesn't allow you to. I could see how abstaining would be a very helpful option there.

nacker 14y ago

You want real Paleo? Try radio, or rather, this amazing podcast on media effects from Gutenberg to McLuhan: http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/episode206-lq.mp3 http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/episode206-lq.mp3

AtTheLast 14y ago

"The circuit" gets me all the time. Sometimes I don't even know why I'm checking email/twitter/reddit that I checked only a few minutes ago. I just blocked reddit and youtube as an experiment to see if I can be more productive without them.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

graeme 14y ago
"the way we are eating now is poorly aligned with our biology" This statement seems unambiguously true. More than half of the population is overweight, we suffer from chronic diseases that don't afflict hunter gatherers, and there are clinical studies supporting the harmful effects of processed sugar. It doesn't follow, from the statement you highlighted, that paleo is the answer. We'd need evidence in support of that particular answer to the problem. But there clearly is a problem. We're not meant to eat the way we are eating - the evidence is all around us. The flowering of fad diets is an attempt to deal with this. It has its flaws and incorrect theories, like all experiments. You're also using an ad hominem fallacy. You say that a diet is wrong, because the reasons for it are wrong. But that isn't evidence about the diet itself. You should address whether the diet works. Edit: parent post deleted. Well, now I just look irrelevant.
- jstogdill 14y ago
  True. Those are good points. I'll just say the piece isn't really about paleo diet so I didn't make any effort to justify it there. I only mentioned it because my lifestyle choices wrt food got me thinking along parallel lines for my technology addictions. I don't know if "paleo" is the answer. I'm not sure there is "an" answer. I do know that eight months into a significant lifestyle change my HDL is up, my LDL is down, my body fat is 13% (down from > 22%), I don't crash in the afternoon, and I'm wearing a pant size I last saw when I was 22. Of course, none of that says anything about longevity - which is the primary reason I started my fitness and dietary changes. To address that question I'm cloning a thousand instances of me and will feed 200 vegan, 200 paleo, 200 atkins, 200 standard american diet... Obviously I can't know with any certainty that what I'm doing is the "right" answer, all I know is that I feel good and am no longer manifesting the typical pathologies of the standard American diet. That makes me happy.
- jongleur 14y ago
  I'll note so-called overweight - BMI 25-30 - is the longest-lived cohort, followed by normal (18-25), obese (30-40), underweight (<18), morbidly obese (40+).

docgnome 14y ago

I know this is slightly off topic and I apologize but I'm rather obsessed with the topic at the moment. First, vegan isn't a necessarily a moral choice. I'm vegan and my primary reason for being so is for one animal: me. Second, the China Study shows overwhelming evidence that animal-based foods are terrible for you. I'm no expert in the field of nutrition but it seems to me the paleo diet falls straight into the animal food based diet category and therefore into the greatly increases your risk of multiple kinds of diseases category. (If anyone knows of any real criticism of the China Study, I'd like to read it. All I can find boils down to "I like me therefore it's good for me")

graeme 14y ago
This one's circulated a fair bit on the internet: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/ http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal... The central idea is that the china study showed correlations (sometimes), but not causation, and that it isn't supported by causal evidence. I haven't read the China Study, or the critique in full, so I don't think I'm qualified to say more.
- docgnome 14y ago
  He explicitly takes the time to discuss correlation vs causation. But thanks! I'll take a look.
johndavi 14y ago
Read Denise Minger's extremely thorough review of The China Study (note, the book and its conclusions by T. Colin Campbell as opposed to the actual China-Cornell-Oxford Project). His cherry-picked evidence is extremely fallible and unsupportable. Denise is now a fairly central figure in the neo-paleo movement, so she may appear biased, but she started as a vegan whose particular inspection of the book played a big role in her conversion. (On edit: yes, that link by Graeme.)
lmm 14y ago
In my personal, anecdotal experience, every vegan I know has serious health problems. Literally every single one. Never anything that can be traced directly to their diet (e.g. one of those I'm thinking of mostly has severe eczema), but it's such a sharp correlation that I can't help thinking there's something to it. While I haven't looked at that particular study, the result you're claiming seems implausible; one would expect humans to be optimized by evolution for living on the ancestral diet. While there are specific reasons why certain parts of our traditional diet are unhealthy (e.g. the ancestral lifestyle burned far more calories than current), in the absence of a specific mechanism like that, "I like me therefore it's good for me" is a perfectly reasonable inference. And if you're really only interested in health, it seems implausible that that would be 100% correlated with animal vs. non-animal. There are so many different possible food molecules and no reliable common factor that differentiates where they came from - even more so when it comes to the animal byproducts that make vegans different from vegetarians, such as honey.

jongleur 14y ago

By paleo standards writing = agriculture. Internet's more like HFCS.

gojomo 14y ago
I would reserve the idea of "attentional High Fructose Corn Sugar' for just some specific user-experiences, rather than the internet as a whole. There are some interface patterns that tend to heighten the sense of importance/urgency/novelty... without any real substance. Those help create the overstimulation-crash-craving cycle like dietary sugar binges. The interleaved Twitter/Facebook streams are one form of attentional sugar. But the HN format is, too: mixed topics, jittery time-influenced rankings, random arrival of comments/karma-deltas.

ZENmotherfucker 14y ago

I've been going information paleo, in staggered steps, for the last year and a half now. First, I stopped watching TV--which just turned into watching Hulu, Netflix, and torrented movies. BUT it also got me away from CNN, CSPAN, etc., which was big for me. Big enough that just three months in, I--who'd spent the last 3 years of my life debating politics online--was able to completely divest myself of politics as an interest. Politics is the mind-killer. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean; if you don't, that's cool too. But I'm not going to argue about it. ;)

argonz 14y ago

Another benefit that your friends filter out what they consider noise, they will only communicate what is worth communicating (putting in the effort) by their standards. Taleb also uses this method.

Apocryphon 14y ago

I feel this is going to be an inevitable practice for us. Just as the switch to white collar jobs have forced us to confront our sedentary lifestyles and allocate time specifically for exercise, the constant stream of information brought to us by the internet is going to force us to get away from our computers for an hour (and hopefully more) a day and get some bloody contemplation.

gahahaha 14y ago
Our distraction is a full-blown epidemic — a cognitive plague that has the potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought. It can be compared to smoking: People aren’t aware what’s happening to their mental processes, in the same way that people years ago couldn’t look into their lungs and see the residual deposits.
- Apocryphon 14y ago
  There's potential for a huge industry built around "regrowing attention spans" and "info diets" and so forth. It will be partly a continuation of the efficiency/simplicity lifehacking practices of the last decade, except to a whole new level.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    And how much of it will be organized through Twitter, eh?
- swah 14y ago
  Smoking doesn't harm you so quickly though...
ftwinnovations 14y ago
I think that is a most excellent analogy! I will now use that myself the next time the conversation comes up. Everyone is always so doom and gloom about any technology relating to the future of the human race but I think everyone adjusts, just as they always have. Thank you, sir! Or ma'am!

coltr 14y ago

I aspire to "be in the moment" as well, but being an INTJ I live in my head almost all of the time. If Stogdill is spending his time daydreaming or thinking about other things (I do this as well) then ignoring his phone is not helping him live in the present anyways.

jstogdill 14y ago
You aren't the first to mention that, and it's a good point. But I am not just day dreaming when I'm not looking at my phone or whatever. I spend a lot more time with people these days, and I'm loathe to pick the damned thing up when I'm with them.

keithpeter 14y ago

http://jnocook.net/linda/index.htm http://jnocook.net/linda/index.htm Jno Cook also did the Robert Frank Coloring Book, which is ace. Not sure if he has stuck with this diet for the last 8 years or not.

fingerprinter 14y ago

My own personal situation is that I've completely given up on Twitter. It was just too much noise. G+ is a once a day thing, maybe 30seconds. Facebook is a twice a day thing, mostly to respond to friends messages. 5 minutes, probably on average. 10 on busy days. I don't RSS anymore either. 0seconds Email is open most of the day. I'm more or less sick of it all and I feel better not having it clutter up my life. I've tried hard not to substitute anything for it either, which means I just have more free time. Kind of like when you stop watching one TV show, don't replace it with another, just have one less you watch (or stop all together). Over time, you'll end up with much more free time to do useful and productive things.