11 ms·

Avoiding the Global Lobotomy

83 points by bramhaag 1y ago

nathan_compton 1y ago
>Now, as we can see from the previous section on dopamine-reward-systems, what social media and quantifiable discourse is doing is mentally limiting what we can say and do, not by way of oppression, but by way or ostracization, alienation and peer-pressure. The overton window is wider than its ever been at any point in history. Like I think this particular thing was overblown in the first place and also people are already correcting for it.
- Muromec 1y ago
  I was with the author until that moment and the list of things "we" have supposedly forgot. Overtone window seems to be widening if anything. With the most unhinged hot takes of the 20th century being talked over again and all that. At least the article doesn't blame "them" for doing it to "us". Or is it implied? Does the other article blame on the usual suspects of the day?
  - nathan_compton 1y ago
    The main difference now is that everyone sees everyone else's overton window because we are all just letting our asses hang out on social media and this engenders a lot of conflict, dog-piling, etc. Not great stuff, certainly, but not really evidence that the overton window is narrowing. In other respects I think the submission is more on point, though still reactionary.
- 4bpp 1y ago
  If the author's theory were true and social media dynamics were indeed compressing the Overton window, wouldn't these sorts of "the Overton window is way too wide" posts be exactly the reaction one would expect to it on social media? Thinking that extremism is running rampant is what it feels like to be the thought police from the inside.
  - phoronixrly 1y ago
    I think both you and the commenter you responded to are misreading the article. I read it as 'hey, currently everyone on social media is discussing $latest US political news, posting over-directed short-form content, etc., so you posting a family photo, a photo of your favourite plant, sharing a favourite song, or a passage of a book you're reading would be considered odd, weird, despite being a completely normal thing to do and many people used to do regularly.'
    - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
      That reading seems obviously false to me. I routinely see people posting those things on social media.
      - phoronixrly 1y ago
        Really? I don't, and self-censor in tune with that. shrug Also how many of the posts you see hit the front pages or become viral? Are you sure they aren't shunned and ostricised by not being awarded comments/likes/shares?
        mattgreenrocks 1y ago
        I agree. This is exemplified by social media’s constant refrain to join “the conversation.” The subtext is you joining in to talk about what’s relevant, which, of course, ends up being the current talking points of the world/your niche. In this way, social media can be almost unbearably lonely for me. So many people corralled to talk about that which gets them Internet Points. But they seem like they’re right there. Concrete example is I’m trying to learn how to build a tone for djent metal, which is a highly syncopated guitar sound that needs special considerations from your signal chain to achieve a distorted, highly staccato (at times) clear tone. I find a lot of discussion when it was fresh (2010-2015) but have difficulty getting much discussion on it nowadays because it’s not seen as fresh. Is it because it is somewhat niche? Absolutely. But even the people that are into it are much less enthused. It’s like the info has to be dug up vs being easily passed around.
- komali2 1y ago
  Maybe in certain domains, but I'm not sure. Check out all the new religions that popped up, and new forms of communal living and societal organization that were being experimented with in the early 1800s in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district I feel like these kinds of conversations and experiments don't really happen anymore, despite our incredible interconnectedness. Where's the global Oneida movement? Or think about the world during early to mid 20th century, when socialist revolutions were occuring everywhere. I believe the Overton window of this era was wide enough to cause sweeping change in capitalist nations as well, such as improvements to worker's conditions. George Lucas somewhat addresses the shrinking of the Overton window in this era in an interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI "They never would have let me make [Star Wars] if they knew what I was doing..." These days, organization of society as a capitalist liberal democracy is a given. It's such a given that anyone even aesthetically organized differently is automatically the world's bad guy - e.g. market-organized but still "Communist" China. Or perhaps evil Iran, with its restrictions on what women can wear (outside of Tehran) (no capitalist liberal democracy restricts women's rights at a fundamental level!!!). I haven't seen a serious conversation about alternative modes of organization outside of little bubbles of fascists or leftists. In what ways are you seeing a wider Overton window than before? For me I think the obvious ways are surrounding mental health, minority rights, and queer lifestyles. Definitely people talk more openly in the western world about that now, and it seems much less scary now to be queer than even a few decades ago.
  - Nopoint2 1y ago
    There is no such a thing as the Overton window. It's a made up term created by insane people who can't perceive reality, and don't understand that valid opinions are restricted by it. So they didn't understand why some ideas were accepted, while other opinions got rejected, and thought that it must be some kind of social consensus, that could be potentially changed.
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Nopoint2 1y ago
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- perching_aix 1y ago
  Are you on drugs or something?
  - Nopoint2 1y ago
    No, I'm not. Explain it. If iron is healthy, and heavy metals are, indeed toxic, why did we end up with a crowd of hare brained idiots, and not super geniuses who built a moon city? reply to below: It doesn't have to be space, that was just an example. It could be anything else. What I'm saying is that the cerebellum is the statistical machine. But its power is limited by fundamental limits. You start getting correlations everywhere as the number of inputs grows. And you get paranoid. This is probably why even land birds don't get brains much larger than what they have, there is no point. So you need data reduction (like the autoencoder, or similar) that reduces the data into fewer outputs that carry all the essential meaning, so that the correlation machine only operates in the latent space that only contains sensible things. (I suppose you could use it to make an actual AGI with resources that I don't have) The thing is, if you disable the neocortex, the data reduction machine, you get people that seem smarter. They make conclusions that others can't and understand things that look like nonsense to everybody else. But all that extra stuff is delusions, hallucinations, and pure nonsese. Yes, as far as I know iron and iron rich foods are traditionally known to be harmful in china, agriculture depended heavily on recycling, which keeps heavy metals in soil, and some foods that limit lead absorption (such as cheese) have been abandoned at some point in their history. But more or less, they are just lagging behind in the "cleanup" and "fignting anemia".
    - thfuran 1y ago
      What?
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      Because investment to space stuff fell out of fashion at the end of the cold war, and because - unlike in better cultures - being a "nerd" has been culturally frowned upon for an all too important half a century, while being a borderline braindead jock was considered the epitome of human existence. Where iron and heavy metals enter the picture remains a mystery to me though. Do you reckon the asian minority of America disproportionately manages to snatch most every academic award because they dodge them iron particles like Neo from Matrix or something? Or are they participating in some seriously secretive lead snorting competitions? I sure wonder how to explain a totally made up scenario. Maybe that onus is on you? And why not reply to this comment if you have a reply prepared instead of editing your previous one?
snozolli 1y ago
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Nopoint2 1y ago
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- QuercusMax 1y ago
  What?
  - Nopoint2 1y ago
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    - Tabular-Iceberg 1y ago
      I don’t think the article made any claims about iron or heavy metals. At least nothing comes up when I search for either.
    - perching_aix 1y ago
      > If heavy metals are toxic (as you claim) But they don't claim that? I mean, I'm sure they would agree, but they really aren't claiming a thing. They just asked "What?". The person you replied to there hasn't left any other comments in this thread, and is not the blogpost's author either. > and iron is healthy (as you claim) Same as the previous. > we should now see people being healthiest and smartest they have ever been This is logically incorrect because of the simple existence of confounding factors; there are more variables that can affect these attributes than just the biological function of iron and heavy metals. It's why people go through all that trouble of separating correlation vs causation you know? > If heavy metals are essential (as I claim) and iron is toxic (as I, and many others claim) So as long as many people claim it, it's good? Thought that was your whole issue just the other way around? Which is it then? > we should see retards unable to function normally You mean like being able to properly identify who they are talking to and what they are saying? Or like staying on topic with respect to the content you're supposedly commenting on (the blogpost above)?
eabeezxjc 1y ago
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- mft_ 1y ago
  Lobectomy is the removal of a lobe of a lung.
- QuercusMax 1y ago
  You might have gotten the wrong procedure if you think so
Aerbil313 1y ago
Preach. I've noticed this exact effect and wrote about it recently, calling it 'ungrounding': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44046389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44046389 I don't think anybody can even begin to notice the effect unless they detach from the various channels first. If you don't consume any content (including TV, radio, Hackernews) for a few months (near impossible, but I did it once) you realize the absolute mental captivity literally everybody else, including your very loved ones are living in.
coffeefirst 1y ago
Well, I'm not sure who forgot COVID, but elements of this are absolutely true. I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo—a 1200 pages unabridged, clothbound edition that will spend 40 pages of wandering setup just to deliver one striking image. It was a banger in it's time, and it's still a banger, but it's striking how much it asked of its readers. It will take me the rest of the year to finish. And this is the thing, we really do live in a toxic attention ecosystem that rots our brains. Like the author, I've been trying to reassert control my own attention, and it's shockingly hard to do. I'm not sure if I'll manage to make it work. But let's suppose I do: I've deleted all social media, deliberately set my relationship with news, if I feel the urge to post dump it in a paper notebook instead, and somehow achieve the miracle of getting slack to chill out... ... much like learning to cook is great for me but doesn't solve the social costs from widespread ultraprocessed diets and resulting metabolic disorders, getting my own attentive house in order does not change the global brainrot and toxic political incentives. If anyone has found a way to turn that tide, I'm all ears.
- bob1029 1y ago
  > If anyone has found a way to turn that tide, I'm all ears. Leading by example might not seem like it has immediate or direct impact, but it does have an effect nevertheless. You don't necessarily need to beat everyone over the head with a new way to live life. This tends to have the opposite of the desired effect. If others passively observe you and think "wow that person looks super healthy and happy" they may subconsciously seek to emulate your behavior.
  - disqard 1y ago
    I've heard this before, expressed as: "don't be a buddhist, be a Buddha".
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  > Well, I'm not sure who forgot COVID, but elements of this are absolutely true. That it happened, perhaps not, but some of the details are definitely getting lost in the collective memory. The other day I heard a political commentator claim that lockdowns in the states were in place for “years”, which is false by any objective measure.
Nopoint2 1y ago
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floundy 1y ago
There are some interesting thoughts here, but reading this I can't help but think the author is themselves afflicted by some sort of internet-addiction-induced psychosis. This reads like the mental dump of a mild schizophrenic, and perhaps that's what makes it interesting enough to read until the end despite the lack of any clear or convincing conclusions. Definitely a writer in need of two or three additional editing sessions, but I think with more work the author has an interesting stylistic element that could endear in an online world increasingly filled with mediocre and predictable AI slop. Regarding the "do you remember" section, I honestly don't think I ever knew who three of those people are, and I lack context for what another two events are supposed to mean to me. But then again I've been opting out of most news for several years.
rr808 1y ago
I've been trying to read classic books from gutenberg.org, holy ** I haven't managed to finish any of them. Usually give up after 50 pages, start a new one a month or three later.
- mattgreenrocks 1y ago
  Older books seem perfectly content not to try to hook you within the first few pages. Keep at it. I read Crime and Punishment recently and it is quite slow to start, but was rewarded by the depth of characterization that is present. Also if you want to read classic books I highly recommend getting the most accessible translation/version you can find. The material is often dense enough without the style of writing making things harder. But this sometimes means paying for one vs finding it on Gutenberg.
  - wafflemaker 1y ago
    I remember reading Jules Verne and similar books from my mums library at 10y. First 50 pages were excruciatin and it applied to most classic books. However Verne was special at making them boring. OTOH I remember Velocity from Dean Koontz, picked up on an airport (as an adult), which I didn't put back until landing and having to leave the plane. Somebody on HN once commented that these days books are much more like current TV shows, action packed and full of cliff hangers.
  - apetresc 1y ago
    Definitely grab them from Standard Ebooks. Not as huge a selection as Gutenberg, obviously, but still several lifetimes worth of reading, and the quality is way higher.
    - rr808 1y ago
      Thanks that is handy, I hadn't heard of them before.
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
I actually wonder about current co2 levels and concentration. We’ve roughly doubled co2 in human history. Much of that in the last 100 years alone. They say that measurable drowsiness at 1000ppm and when you consider the atmospheric co2 being well above 400ppm and indoor conditions often more than doubling that i wonder if we’re not going to hit a measurable stupefaction of the world. Perhaps it’s already happening.
- escapecharacter 1y ago
  I think this seems like an interesting point, but one would also need to take into account indoor ventilation, which has gotten much better over the last couple centuries.
  - blargey 1y ago
    Insulation has also gotten much better (stronger) so IME you really need to take advantage of those ventilation advancements just to counterbalance it in newer construction.
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  My office installed CO2 sensors a couple years ago and it’s been very concerning to see them hit 600-750ppm somewhat regularly. But nobody else seems to notice or care? I guess there’s not much can be done when it’s roughly 400ppm outside.
  - ivm 1y ago
    600-750ppm is fine for a closed space, even Aranet4 (the best home sensor) goes yellow only after 1000ppm. I maintain it under 800ppm in winter because that's roughly the value from where serious cognitive decline starts: https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037d-db2a-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b/content https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037d...
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
thomassmith65 1y ago
Do you remember James Mason? Can someone tell me which James Mason the author is talking about? I remember the James Mason who was one of the most famous actors of his decades in the film business. I remember the obscure funk artist James Mason, who released a fantastic album called Rhythm Of Life. Neither of these strike me as someone most people today would know.
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  I assume they mean the American Neo-Nazi. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mason_(neo-Nazi) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mason_(neo-Nazi)
  - thomassmith65 1y ago
    That will take some getting used to for me. It feels like telling someone 'Tom Hanks is one of my favorite celebrities' and having them ask if I'm talking about Tom Hanks, the infamous serial killer.
kspacewalk2 1y ago
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dash2 1y ago
> Those of you who paid attention to my Free Floating Power essay… I would urge people not to write like this. It is likely to backfire by sounding pompous and sophomoric.
ausbah 1y ago
hard to agree with the overton window when a lot of more radical political elements have gained mass momentum in the past couple decades. maybe for ingroup status but not whole societal positioning
- phoronixrly 1y ago
  You need to go one level up on that -- the current Overton Window for social media is focused only on stuff that is considered viral. This includes dumping fascist/misogynistic shit barely covered as jokes/memes. It also includes purposely-directed rage bait. It does not include slow and meaningful content. This content gets shunned by not being shared/liked/commented on.
wiseowise 1y ago
> Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s, it really alters your psyche to realise how different things were just 100 or so years ago. You don't need to go that far. Something from 30 years ago will pretty much seem like an alternative reality.
- eterm 1y ago
  Something from 30 years ago falls in an uncomfortable spot between feeling current and yet not so at the same time. Many of the themes and concerns and even way of living will be similar, yet also just unfamiliar enough. Contemporary fiction from 60 years ago however feels just as much like a "period piece" as the victorian classics now do. Reading "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" I was most struck by passages containing things that were so normal back then they needed no explanation or elaboration, yet are so alien to us now I had to read up a lot more about what they were talking about.
  - PantaloonFlames 1y ago
    Can you give me some examples of “normal then, inscrutable now” ?
    - komali2 1y ago
      Very young people occasionally end up in my reading clubs and they of course intellectually understand that we didn't used to all carry cell phones, but I remember one specific time someone had a very hard time wrapping their head around the era when landline phones existed, but not everyone had one at home, and so you had to try to get someone at work or call a neighbor to ask about them. I guess there's going to be more inscrutable things from my childhood the older I get.
      - Nopoint2 1y ago
        I think that the incomprehensible part might be the levels of cooperation and trust to make it possible.
androng 1y ago
I couldn't finish the article because my attention span was too small and the author was going on rambles and tangents. I have no patience. But like the article says, I also noticed while reading history books that people's speech was way more sophisticated and used flowery language in 1900 that we simply do not use today. My lexicon is probably only 25% of people back then. eg Ada Lovelace quote: “I believe myself to possess a most singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me pre-eminently a discoverer of the hidden realities of nature.”, in my language: "I think I'm special enough to be a scientist"
- toxik 1y ago
  I think it's just a matter of style. It comes across as pretentious.
  - Apocryphon 1y ago
    I think people often forget about correlations between literacy and class, especially in the past. All of those fancy 19th century high school curricula teaching Latin and Xenophon were for the sons of gentry.
- blargey 1y ago
  If that "in my language" version is a serious attempt at condensing the meaning of the quote instead of taking a potshot at the author, that illustrates a severe decline in reading comprehension more than any blog post argument.
  - kamaal 1y ago
    Nah, almost all the times a thing can be said straight without having to resort to metaphors, similes, adjective, adverbs etc. You don't have to exaggerate the description of anything to send a message, thats the literary equivalent of screaming.
satisfice 1y ago
Some disconnected reactions: - There was never a golden age of wide “Overton Windows.” - Composing a rambling article like this takes a lot of concentration. - In the oldest days a typical man would get sufficient exercise with the physical labor of life as a warrior or farmer or peasant laborer. I suspect even merchants were more active. Now we have to make a specific activity for ourselves called “working out.” I guess it’s the same with phones, etc. We must explicitly choose to concentrate. - Avoid TikTok.
- Apocryphon 1y ago
  Forget about some romanticized past, isn’t that already the case in Europe and East Asia, where people living in dense communities just walk everywhere, every day?
Havoc 1y ago
As I’ve definitely noticed an impact on attention span but not the level of forgetfulness author alludes to.
johnea 1y ago
Is this you: No, actually, not at all. I didn't feel that any of those bullet points was descriptive of me. > Don't worry... I'm not worried, at least, not about me. I am worried about just how many people _do_ think this is descriptive of themselves. I was going to rant here about loss of a sense of individual autonomy, and how the modern sense of "we can't help being addicted to doomscrolling" is another example of adopting victimhood; but as I got to the bottom of the article, I found the advice to be things I actually agree with: > Go outside, seriously go outside. Look around, it’s great out there. I couldn't agree more 8-) Really, literally, just turn off the phone, at least during recreational times of the day (and make sure you have "recreational times of the day").

83 points by bramhaag 1y ago

>Now, as we can see from the previous section on dopamine-reward-systems, what social media and quantifiable discourse is doing is mentally limiting what we can say and do, not by way of oppression, but by way or ostracization, alienation and peer-pressure. The overton window is wider than its ever been at any point in history. Like I think this particular thing was overblown in the first place and also people are already correcting for it.

Muromec 1y ago
I was with the author until that moment and the list of things "we" have supposedly forgot. Overtone window seems to be widening if anything. With the most unhinged hot takes of the 20th century being talked over again and all that. At least the article doesn't blame "them" for doing it to "us". Or is it implied? Does the other article blame on the usual suspects of the day?
- nathan_compton 1y ago
  The main difference now is that everyone sees everyone else's overton window because we are all just letting our asses hang out on social media and this engenders a lot of conflict, dog-piling, etc. Not great stuff, certainly, but not really evidence that the overton window is narrowing. In other respects I think the submission is more on point, though still reactionary.
4bpp 1y ago
If the author's theory were true and social media dynamics were indeed compressing the Overton window, wouldn't these sorts of "the Overton window is way too wide" posts be exactly the reaction one would expect to it on social media? Thinking that extremism is running rampant is what it feels like to be the thought police from the inside.
- phoronixrly 1y ago
  I think both you and the commenter you responded to are misreading the article. I read it as 'hey, currently everyone on social media is discussing $latest US political news, posting over-directed short-form content, etc., so you posting a family photo, a photo of your favourite plant, sharing a favourite song, or a passage of a book you're reading would be considered odd, weird, despite being a completely normal thing to do and many people used to do regularly.'
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    That reading seems obviously false to me. I routinely see people posting those things on social media.
    - phoronixrly 1y ago
      Really? I don't, and self-censor in tune with that. shrug Also how many of the posts you see hit the front pages or become viral? Are you sure they aren't shunned and ostricised by not being awarded comments/likes/shares?
      - mattgreenrocks 1y ago
        I agree. This is exemplified by social media’s constant refrain to join “the conversation.” The subtext is you joining in to talk about what’s relevant, which, of course, ends up being the current talking points of the world/your niche. In this way, social media can be almost unbearably lonely for me. So many people corralled to talk about that which gets them Internet Points. But they seem like they’re right there. Concrete example is I’m trying to learn how to build a tone for djent metal, which is a highly syncopated guitar sound that needs special considerations from your signal chain to achieve a distorted, highly staccato (at times) clear tone. I find a lot of discussion when it was fresh (2010-2015) but have difficulty getting much discussion on it nowadays because it’s not seen as fresh. Is it because it is somewhat niche? Absolutely. But even the people that are into it are much less enthused. It’s like the info has to be dug up vs being easily passed around.
komali2 1y ago
Maybe in certain domains, but I'm not sure. Check out all the new religions that popped up, and new forms of communal living and societal organization that were being experimented with in the early 1800s in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district I feel like these kinds of conversations and experiments don't really happen anymore, despite our incredible interconnectedness. Where's the global Oneida movement? Or think about the world during early to mid 20th century, when socialist revolutions were occuring everywhere. I believe the Overton window of this era was wide enough to cause sweeping change in capitalist nations as well, such as improvements to worker's conditions. George Lucas somewhat addresses the shrinking of the Overton window in this era in an interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI "They never would have let me make [Star Wars] if they knew what I was doing..." These days, organization of society as a capitalist liberal democracy is a given. It's such a given that anyone even aesthetically organized differently is automatically the world's bad guy - e.g. market-organized but still "Communist" China. Or perhaps evil Iran, with its restrictions on what women can wear (outside of Tehran) (no capitalist liberal democracy restricts women's rights at a fundamental level!!!). I haven't seen a serious conversation about alternative modes of organization outside of little bubbles of fascists or leftists. In what ways are you seeing a wider Overton window than before? For me I think the obvious ways are surrounding mental health, minority rights, and queer lifestyles. Definitely people talk more openly in the western world about that now, and it seems much less scary now to be queer than even a few decades ago.
- Nopoint2 1y ago
  There is no such a thing as the Overton window. It's a made up term created by insane people who can't perceive reality, and don't understand that valid opinions are restricted by it. So they didn't understand why some ideas were accepted, while other opinions got rejected, and thought that it must be some kind of social consensus, that could be potentially changed.

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Nopoint2 1y ago

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perching_aix 1y ago
Are you on drugs or something?
- Nopoint2 1y ago
  No, I'm not. Explain it. If iron is healthy, and heavy metals are, indeed toxic, why did we end up with a crowd of hare brained idiots, and not super geniuses who built a moon city? reply to below: It doesn't have to be space, that was just an example. It could be anything else. What I'm saying is that the cerebellum is the statistical machine. But its power is limited by fundamental limits. You start getting correlations everywhere as the number of inputs grows. And you get paranoid. This is probably why even land birds don't get brains much larger than what they have, there is no point. So you need data reduction (like the autoencoder, or similar) that reduces the data into fewer outputs that carry all the essential meaning, so that the correlation machine only operates in the latent space that only contains sensible things. (I suppose you could use it to make an actual AGI with resources that I don't have) The thing is, if you disable the neocortex, the data reduction machine, you get people that seem smarter. They make conclusions that others can't and understand things that look like nonsense to everybody else. But all that extra stuff is delusions, hallucinations, and pure nonsese. Yes, as far as I know iron and iron rich foods are traditionally known to be harmful in china, agriculture depended heavily on recycling, which keeps heavy metals in soil, and some foods that limit lead absorption (such as cheese) have been abandoned at some point in their history. But more or less, they are just lagging behind in the "cleanup" and "fignting anemia".
  - thfuran 1y ago
    What?
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    Because investment to space stuff fell out of fashion at the end of the cold war, and because - unlike in better cultures - being a "nerd" has been culturally frowned upon for an all too important half a century, while being a borderline braindead jock was considered the epitome of human existence. Where iron and heavy metals enter the picture remains a mystery to me though. Do you reckon the asian minority of America disproportionately manages to snatch most every academic award because they dodge them iron particles like Neo from Matrix or something? Or are they participating in some seriously secretive lead snorting competitions? I sure wonder how to explain a totally made up scenario. Maybe that onus is on you? And why not reply to this comment if you have a reply prepared instead of editing your previous one?

snozolli 1y ago

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Nopoint2 1y ago

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QuercusMax 1y ago
What?
- Nopoint2 1y ago
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  - Tabular-Iceberg 1y ago
    I don’t think the article made any claims about iron or heavy metals. At least nothing comes up when I search for either.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    > If heavy metals are toxic (as you claim) But they don't claim that? I mean, I'm sure they would agree, but they really aren't claiming a thing. They just asked "What?". The person you replied to there hasn't left any other comments in this thread, and is not the blogpost's author either. > and iron is healthy (as you claim) Same as the previous. > we should now see people being healthiest and smartest they have ever been This is logically incorrect because of the simple existence of confounding factors; there are more variables that can affect these attributes than just the biological function of iron and heavy metals. It's why people go through all that trouble of separating correlation vs causation you know? > If heavy metals are essential (as I claim) and iron is toxic (as I, and many others claim) So as long as many people claim it, it's good? Thought that was your whole issue just the other way around? Which is it then? > we should see retards unable to function normally You mean like being able to properly identify who they are talking to and what they are saying? Or like staying on topic with respect to the content you're supposedly commenting on (the blogpost above)?

eabeezxjc 1y ago

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mft_ 1y ago
Lobectomy is the removal of a lobe of a lung.
QuercusMax 1y ago
You might have gotten the wrong procedure if you think so

Aerbil313 1y ago

Preach. I've noticed this exact effect and wrote about it recently, calling it 'ungrounding': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44046389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44046389 I don't think anybody can even begin to notice the effect unless they detach from the various channels first. If you don't consume any content (including TV, radio, Hackernews) for a few months (near impossible, but I did it once) you realize the absolute mental captivity literally everybody else, including your very loved ones are living in.

coffeefirst 1y ago

Well, I'm not sure who forgot COVID, but elements of this are absolutely true. I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo—a 1200 pages unabridged, clothbound edition that will spend 40 pages of wandering setup just to deliver one striking image. It was a banger in it's time, and it's still a banger, but it's striking how much it asked of its readers. It will take me the rest of the year to finish. And this is the thing, we really do live in a toxic attention ecosystem that rots our brains. Like the author, I've been trying to reassert control my own attention, and it's shockingly hard to do. I'm not sure if I'll manage to make it work. But let's suppose I do: I've deleted all social media, deliberately set my relationship with news, if I feel the urge to post dump it in a paper notebook instead, and somehow achieve the miracle of getting slack to chill out... ... much like learning to cook is great for me but doesn't solve the social costs from widespread ultraprocessed diets and resulting metabolic disorders, getting my own attentive house in order does not change the global brainrot and toxic political incentives. If anyone has found a way to turn that tide, I'm all ears.

bob1029 1y ago
> If anyone has found a way to turn that tide, I'm all ears. Leading by example might not seem like it has immediate or direct impact, but it does have an effect nevertheless. You don't necessarily need to beat everyone over the head with a new way to live life. This tends to have the opposite of the desired effect. If others passively observe you and think "wow that person looks super healthy and happy" they may subconsciously seek to emulate your behavior.
- disqard 1y ago
  I've heard this before, expressed as: "don't be a buddhist, be a Buddha".
TimorousBestie 1y ago
> Well, I'm not sure who forgot COVID, but elements of this are absolutely true. That it happened, perhaps not, but some of the details are definitely getting lost in the collective memory. The other day I heard a political commentator claim that lockdowns in the states were in place for “years”, which is false by any objective measure.

Nopoint2 1y ago

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floundy 1y ago

There are some interesting thoughts here, but reading this I can't help but think the author is themselves afflicted by some sort of internet-addiction-induced psychosis. This reads like the mental dump of a mild schizophrenic, and perhaps that's what makes it interesting enough to read until the end despite the lack of any clear or convincing conclusions. Definitely a writer in need of two or three additional editing sessions, but I think with more work the author has an interesting stylistic element that could endear in an online world increasingly filled with mediocre and predictable AI slop. Regarding the "do you remember" section, I honestly don't think I ever knew who three of those people are, and I lack context for what another two events are supposed to mean to me. But then again I've been opting out of most news for several years.

rr808 1y ago

I've been trying to read classic books from gutenberg.org, holy ** I haven't managed to finish any of them. Usually give up after 50 pages, start a new one a month or three later.

mattgreenrocks 1y ago
Older books seem perfectly content not to try to hook you within the first few pages. Keep at it. I read Crime and Punishment recently and it is quite slow to start, but was rewarded by the depth of characterization that is present. Also if you want to read classic books I highly recommend getting the most accessible translation/version you can find. The material is often dense enough without the style of writing making things harder. But this sometimes means paying for one vs finding it on Gutenberg.
- wafflemaker 1y ago
  I remember reading Jules Verne and similar books from my mums library at 10y. First 50 pages were excruciatin and it applied to most classic books. However Verne was special at making them boring. OTOH I remember Velocity from Dean Koontz, picked up on an airport (as an adult), which I didn't put back until landing and having to leave the plane. Somebody on HN once commented that these days books are much more like current TV shows, action packed and full of cliff hangers.
- apetresc 1y ago
  Definitely grab them from Standard Ebooks. Not as huge a selection as Gutenberg, obviously, but still several lifetimes worth of reading, and the quality is way higher.
  - rr808 1y ago
    Thanks that is handy, I hadn't heard of them before.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

I actually wonder about current co2 levels and concentration. We’ve roughly doubled co2 in human history. Much of that in the last 100 years alone. They say that measurable drowsiness at 1000ppm and when you consider the atmospheric co2 being well above 400ppm and indoor conditions often more than doubling that i wonder if we’re not going to hit a measurable stupefaction of the world. Perhaps it’s already happening.

escapecharacter 1y ago
I think this seems like an interesting point, but one would also need to take into account indoor ventilation, which has gotten much better over the last couple centuries.
- blargey 1y ago
  Insulation has also gotten much better (stronger) so IME you really need to take advantage of those ventilation advancements just to counterbalance it in newer construction.
TimorousBestie 1y ago
My office installed CO2 sensors a couple years ago and it’s been very concerning to see them hit 600-750ppm somewhat regularly. But nobody else seems to notice or care? I guess there’s not much can be done when it’s roughly 400ppm outside.
- ivm 1y ago
  600-750ppm is fine for a closed space, even Aranet4 (the best home sensor) goes yellow only after 1000ppm. I maintain it under 800ppm in winter because that's roughly the value from where serious cognitive decline starts: https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037d-db2a-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b/content https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037d...
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago

thomassmith65 1y ago

Do you remember James Mason? Can someone tell me which James Mason the author is talking about? I remember the James Mason who was one of the most famous actors of his decades in the film business. I remember the obscure funk artist James Mason, who released a fantastic album called Rhythm Of Life. Neither of these strike me as someone most people today would know.

TimorousBestie 1y ago
I assume they mean the American Neo-Nazi. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mason_(neo-Nazi) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mason_(neo-Nazi)
- thomassmith65 1y ago
  That will take some getting used to for me. It feels like telling someone 'Tom Hanks is one of my favorite celebrities' and having them ask if I'm talking about Tom Hanks, the infamous serial killer.

kspacewalk2 1y ago

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dash2 1y ago

> Those of you who paid attention to my Free Floating Power essay… I would urge people not to write like this. It is likely to backfire by sounding pompous and sophomoric.

ausbah 1y ago

hard to agree with the overton window when a lot of more radical political elements have gained mass momentum in the past couple decades. maybe for ingroup status but not whole societal positioning

phoronixrly 1y ago
You need to go one level up on that -- the current Overton Window for social media is focused only on stuff that is considered viral. This includes dumping fascist/misogynistic shit barely covered as jokes/memes. It also includes purposely-directed rage bait. It does not include slow and meaningful content. This content gets shunned by not being shared/liked/commented on.

wiseowise 1y ago

> Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s, it really alters your psyche to realise how different things were just 100 or so years ago. You don't need to go that far. Something from 30 years ago will pretty much seem like an alternative reality.

eterm 1y ago
Something from 30 years ago falls in an uncomfortable spot between feeling current and yet not so at the same time. Many of the themes and concerns and even way of living will be similar, yet also just unfamiliar enough. Contemporary fiction from 60 years ago however feels just as much like a "period piece" as the victorian classics now do. Reading "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" I was most struck by passages containing things that were so normal back then they needed no explanation or elaboration, yet are so alien to us now I had to read up a lot more about what they were talking about.
- PantaloonFlames 1y ago
  Can you give me some examples of “normal then, inscrutable now” ?
  - komali2 1y ago
    Very young people occasionally end up in my reading clubs and they of course intellectually understand that we didn't used to all carry cell phones, but I remember one specific time someone had a very hard time wrapping their head around the era when landline phones existed, but not everyone had one at home, and so you had to try to get someone at work or call a neighbor to ask about them. I guess there's going to be more inscrutable things from my childhood the older I get.
    - Nopoint2 1y ago
      I think that the incomprehensible part might be the levels of cooperation and trust to make it possible.

androng 1y ago

I couldn't finish the article because my attention span was too small and the author was going on rambles and tangents. I have no patience. But like the article says, I also noticed while reading history books that people's speech was way more sophisticated and used flowery language in 1900 that we simply do not use today. My lexicon is probably only 25% of people back then. eg Ada Lovelace quote: “I believe myself to possess a most singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me pre-eminently a discoverer of the hidden realities of nature.”, in my language: "I think I'm special enough to be a scientist"

toxik 1y ago
I think it's just a matter of style. It comes across as pretentious.
- Apocryphon 1y ago
  I think people often forget about correlations between literacy and class, especially in the past. All of those fancy 19th century high school curricula teaching Latin and Xenophon were for the sons of gentry.
blargey 1y ago
If that "in my language" version is a serious attempt at condensing the meaning of the quote instead of taking a potshot at the author, that illustrates a severe decline in reading comprehension more than any blog post argument.
- kamaal 1y ago
  Nah, almost all the times a thing can be said straight without having to resort to metaphors, similes, adjective, adverbs etc. You don't have to exaggerate the description of anything to send a message, thats the literary equivalent of screaming.

satisfice 1y ago

Some disconnected reactions: - There was never a golden age of wide “Overton Windows.” - Composing a rambling article like this takes a lot of concentration. - In the oldest days a typical man would get sufficient exercise with the physical labor of life as a warrior or farmer or peasant laborer. I suspect even merchants were more active. Now we have to make a specific activity for ourselves called “working out.” I guess it’s the same with phones, etc. We must explicitly choose to concentrate. - Avoid TikTok.

Apocryphon 1y ago
Forget about some romanticized past, isn’t that already the case in Europe and East Asia, where people living in dense communities just walk everywhere, every day?

Havoc 1y ago

As I’ve definitely noticed an impact on attention span but not the level of forgetfulness author alludes to.

johnea 1y ago

Is this you: No, actually, not at all. I didn't feel that any of those bullet points was descriptive of me. > Don't worry... I'm not worried, at least, not about me. I am worried about just how many people _do_ think this is descriptive of themselves. I was going to rant here about loss of a sense of individual autonomy, and how the modern sense of "we can't help being addicted to doomscrolling" is another example of adopting victimhood; but as I got to the bottom of the article, I found the advice to be things I actually agree with: > Go outside, seriously go outside. Look around, it’s great out there. I couldn't agree more 8-) Really, literally, just turn off the phone, at least during recreational times of the day (and make sure you have "recreational times of the day").