Avoiding the Global Lobotomy
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"
I think it's just a matter of style. It comes across as pretentious.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Thanks, that’s very reassuring to know.
Why would carbon dioxide be a problem? I’ve always thought that oxygen levels are the most important factor. Even if carbon dioxide doubled, it would not make a significant difference. In indoor environments, we use carbon dioxide as a signal that oxygen levels are low.
Am I missing something?
You are. The brain actually responds to CO2 concentration, not oxygen concentration. Your metabolism turns O2 and various hydrocarbons into CO2 and water, but many of the feedback loops in this process that mediate how your body metabolizes are based on the CO2 concentration; so even if O2 is unchanged, if you body detects more CO2, it will start metabolizing less.
We added a CO2 monitor to our bedroom and it’s amazing how fast it builds up.
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.
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.
> 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.
Do you remember James Mason?
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.
I assume they mean the American Neo-Nazi.
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.
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.
>we really do live in a toxic attention ecosystem that rots our brains
Well it can be like that if you spend your time scrolling stupid stuff on tiktok but for learning about the world, if you want to, I think it's better than it used to be. "40 pages of wandering setup" doesn't make you smart, it wastes your time you could be using to learn something more interesting.
> 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.
I've heard this before, expressed as: "don't be a buddhist, be a Buddha".
> 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.
They lasted a year and a half or so on and off in Chicago. Maybe two, I forget exactly when the last one ended. So only a little exaggeration.
Was that a result of details being lost in memory, or moreso just a political commentator hyperbolically stretching the truth for some kind of, perhaps biased, political hot take?
True, it could have been. But they seemed sincere and IIRC self-identified as centrist.
I guess neither of those things is conclusive evidence either way. Bleh.
>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.
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.
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.'
That reading seems obviously false to me. I routinely see people posting those things on social media.
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?
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.
Yeah the fact that that statement got so much pushback in the comments sort of speaks for itself. I think in some cases, exposure to other views (or caricatures of them) is being confused with a widening Overton window in one's own group.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks that is handy, I hadn't heard of them before.
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.
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").
As I’ve definitely noticed an impact on attention span but not the level of forgetfulness author alludes to.
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
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.
Preach. I've noticed this exact effect and wrote about it recently, calling it 'ungrounding': 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.
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.
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?
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.
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What?
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> 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)?
I don’t think the article made any claims about iron or heavy metals. At least nothing comes up when I search for either.
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Lobectomy is the removal of a lobe of a lung.
You might have gotten the wrong procedure if you think so
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Are you on drugs or something?
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?
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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".
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?
What?
> 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.
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.
Can you give me some examples of “normal then, inscrutable now” ?
I feel when I read older stuff I'm more likely to be treated as an adult. I dont need 3 seperate forewords to Mein Kampf telling me the book is evil and cursed. I was surprised to read a 120+ yr old book on the conquest of peru that shit on the Christian Spanish where appropriate, without going full "noble savage", and shitting on the Incas where appropriate too.
I don’t think a book from 1995 is going be especially alternative. High Fidelity was written then, and it’s mostly concerned with issues we’d consider contemporary today - and it’s not as if it’s written to be a timeless classic. The weirdest thing in it would be landline telephones.
Gatsby on the other hand is a considerable departure from modernity.