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Brilliant idea and I feel like I've already got what I pressed - "focus". The first thing, of course, is to write a comment on HN and then I'll focus :)). But
by codeshaman 11y ago
Brilliant idea and I feel like I've already got what I pressed - "focus".
The first thing, of course, is to write a comment on HN and then I'll focus :)).
But the concept might just work.
People believe in crazy, irrational things and it actually seems to help them, so why not a button which does this ?
Here's a story. Last month I've travelled to Romania, which is a beautiful country and one of the main attractions there is the multitude of churches and beautiful monasteries on top of mountains. So I arrived at this monastery where a famous priest was buried and people from all over the country and the world come and visit his grave.
They wait for hours in line and eventually they get maybe 30 seconds in front of his grave and they kneel and kiss the cross and make all kinds of wishes.
From a rational perspective, what those people are doing is totally absurd - even if the dead priest could manipulate this world from 'the other world', why would people think that in order to be helped they have to kiss his grave ?
But I've heard countless stories of miracle cures - cancers, paralysis, etc, after people visited his grave so maybe there is a force at work which helps them, which I think is the force of placebo.
Stories like this are abundant all over the world so if you're in the Church of the Digital, a digital button might just be a trigger for some force inside our minds.
- linhchi 11y agoand Nocebo (the opposite) works, too. so i think it's possible that both works, it's just because it happens with our unconscious mind so it's hard to justify or falsify.
- degenerate 11y agoa digital button might just be a trigger for some force inside our minds Yup. Proof of that right here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thebutton/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thebutton/ Oh, wait, the experiment ended? The button finally hit 0! http://www.redditblog.com/2015/06/the-button-has-ended.html http://www.redditblog.com/2015/06/the-button-has-ended.html The game is over? Everyone will go back to their lives? Not quite..... https://www.reddit.com/r/buttonaftermath https://www.reddit.com/r/buttonaftermath
- stavros 11y agoIt hit zero multiple times, and they just kept resetting it. I think it just ended with them taking it down.
- degenerate 11y agoI was under the impression that each reset was in some way due to network issues, either reddit being down briefly or a valid press not resetting the timer. Either way, it's gone long enough. I am both surprised and not surprised there is a necro sub to keep it going.
- StavrosK 11y agoI think that's what the admins claimed, but there was some disbelief, and external monitoring websites were showing the button as being at 0 for a few seconds each time. If it were an actual problem, I think it would remain at 0 until it got noticed, not just for a few seconds. Noticed that the post never says anything like "it finally reached zero", it just mentions who the last presser was.
- ipsum2 11y agoIt was a mix of the Cassandra servers serving the button being down and the buffer mentioned previously.
- icefox 11y agoFor what it was worth I saw one of the times it went down. The monitor started beeping so I went to the tab and watched it count down to zero. Hitting refresh presented me with the "reddit is down" logo and nothing on reddit worked so I believe them when they say everything simply went down. Just think about it, it was an april 1st gag, it wasn't suppose to have this type of uptime.
- StavrosK 11y agoAh, then I stand corrected.
- zachrose 11y agoWhich church in Romania is this?
- codeshaman 11y agoIt's called the Prislop Monastery: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g675106-d4571093-Reviews-Prislop_Monastery-Hunedoara_Hunedoara_County_Western_Romania_Transylvania.html http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g675106-d457109...
- homarp 11y agoit is not just Romania see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_of_Our_Lady_of_Lourdes#Scepticism_and_criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_of_Our_Lady_of_Lourde...
- afarrell 11y agoAre you interested in advice about how to focus better?
- amalantony06 11y agoYes I am.