And more fundamentally, the fact that we aren't essential pieces of the universe in our human forms (we are as energy.) Because if we were, wouldn't we be immortal? ;-)
On this face of it and without reading any of the other writings, this just sounds totally meaningless to me. Is the belief that true meaning or purpose in life can come only from within? What about your own thoughts are so sacred that everything else should be considered a distraction from them?
To add onto this, what do you think you're doing when you're not in a room all alone with your thoughts? You're still thinking. It's not like I can't watch a YouTube video and think to myself at the same time.
I think the aversion I have to being alone with my thoughts is the feeling that doing that won't help me. It's sort of like a neural network that I'd alone with its weights with no inputs to process except itself. I feel when I think to myself alone, I can't make any decisions because what I know is already what I knew before I started thinking to myself. Yo make decisions, I need external answers to questions. I need new information and evidence to start me to some conclusion.
For me it's definitely more that I have a smartphone which facilitates easy access to a socially accepted addiction - sitting alone might make me passingly think about some eventual demise but it certainly doesn't dominate my thinking. Wasn't this the basis of Terror Management theory ? I'm not sure that ever had much evidence for it, other than in some extremely general sense.
While still of course afraid of actually dying, instead of being perennial fearful of death I am instead now grateful for being alive this day. Try that change in perspective.
Background anxiety about our "eventual demise" is the consequence of false entitlement to life and health. Young and healthy people imagine good life without end, the dying and people who've lost health and ability often know better.
This change in perspective also helps you make the most out of each day, because those who make a point to remember that their good days are finite will not want to have spent them in waste.
Which is just depression. I don't think about dying, unless its the topic of conversation or whatever. I think about living. There's no real point in dwelling on the other.
I think there's a lot of merit on dwelling on death.
Death can put your current life in laser like focus and perspective.
Is what you're doing now really important?
Is that what you want to do if you only had 1 year to live?
Are you spending enough time on the things that are really important to you?
All of these questions became clearer to me once I started realising and contemplating death regularly.
I appreciate what you're saying, but on the other hand, I wouldn't want to live in a world where everyone lived as if they had only one year to live. Most institutions are already waaaay too focused on short term profits.
You do not need death, just discount rate preferring near experience to far. Thinking about what if you only had 1 year to live just encourages short-term gains to long-term ones.
For me it worked to stop identifying "me" with the physical person or my consciousness, instead to identify with my hereditary line - as if I'm only a carrier for information that gets passed on. My reasoning being - natural selection is the only game I can't not play, so it gives me a fundamental goal in life to do well at it. Also helps with avoiding hedonism / addictions.
When I successfully reproduce, I will stop fearing death.
> Your < reason maybe, not mine or the one of many others. The fear of death is tied to your culture/education, many people aren't anxious when they think about death
Usually it isn't too quiet for me, I don't even have time to read. I used to read books on the toilet in my youth. Now it's pretty quick (early 30s.)
Plus sitting on a toilet too long gives me pins and needles in my legs. And I hear it can cause blood clots. I suppose it depends on how comfortable one's toilet is, and whether you use one of those foot stools?
It's a funny thing. Most of us have no trouble driving a car for an hour without any further entertainment, and letting our brains wander freely in the meantime. Most of the driving we do on auto-pilot. (Spoiler: Much of the thinking, too, actually, it turns out when you look closer during meditation).
But put the same person in an empty room and the same task of letting your mind wander becomes odious.
Indeed, and maybe most would prefer to have something playing, but my point was that most wouldn't have any trouble spending an hour driving without it, even through driving is a fairly "mindless" activity.
I remember seeing an experiement where people out for a walk were asked to solve a maths puzzle. The first thing they did was stop walking while they considered it.
Why would you sit quietly alone in a room when you could be enjoying a sauna, soaking up the sun at the beach, or picnicking in a park? I don’t think the problem is sitting alone with one’s thoughts - but rather that an indoor room isn’t a particularly desirable environment. At least it isn’t as undesirable as an airplane seat though.
In a room was the setup for the alleged experiment, therefore not irrelevant.
I'm wary how quickly the writer jumps to the conclusion that it's thought avoidance and not, possibly, just the fact our minds seek stimulation
Okay as a personal example I like to take warm showers - they’re extremely comfortable and relaxing - essentially a makeshift sauna. I find that if I’m not deliberate enough about actually completing the shower, I can get lost in my own thoughts and spend over 30 minutes showering. Now I’m certainly more introverted than average, but I would guess that a lot of other people can likewise get lost in their own thoughts in a sufficiently relaxing environment.
There is some stimulation there, and you have a task to accomplish even if you don't go about it very steadily. I'm comfortable going for long walks outside alone with my thoughts, even if its far too cold. But the cold, or the sunlight, or the breeze is all stimulation. Being alone in a room for a period with no task to accomplish - or to not accomplish - without stimuli is definitely less comfortable.
That’s absurd. To take it to extremes, for example, if you made someone sit alone in the freezing cold and they complained, the environment is the issue not their ability to live alone with their thoughts.
I would assume the room is an average room, in contrast to a warm you could swim in, trampoline you could play on or similar physical outlets.
The key thing, I would claim, from a "whole person" perspective, is that the contrast is "sit quietly, forget your body entirely and think" and "get stressed by bodily tension and start an uncontrollable argument with yourself" where "bring your mind and body into harmony through movement" isn't an options.
But why "take it to extremes"? Yes, if you're sitting next to a volcano or on a glacier then outside conditions can affect your ability to think. Obviously.
However the OP said "an indoor room isn’t a particularly desirable environment" - and that actually is absurd. If you need to be in a sauna or on a beach then you're already too distracted by the environment to be able to think deeply.
Picnicking is doing something. Saunaing is doing something. Lying on the beach is doing something. They're all activities driven by desire, and the desire exists to distract you from inner contemplation.
When you're finally just thinking about yourself, your "desirable surroundings" will disappear. You'll be trapped in the discomfort of your mind. You'll then try to escape these thoughts by focusing on the picnic, sauna, beach.
Sitting in a room alone is just a metaphor for only thinking about your inner self. You can do that anywhere. And most people can't stand it, so they do something else. So, your conclusion is right, in that people would always prefer to do anything else other than focus on their inner thoughts. Like being in a place that distracts them.
But you're always "doing something" no matter if it's at the beach, in a room, laying on your bed, or in a solitary confinement prison. We are always cognizant of the fact that we are in some environment unless we are sleeping. But then when we sleep, the mind conjures up all sorts of scenarios and crazy environments without giving us a cohesive chance of actually "thinking".
Before small screens and walkmans, millions of people flew every day in an airplane seat trapped with their own thoughts. For many, it was probably the only time they experienced this.
I actually get comments from other passengers now how I can sit and look out the window for hours without music, movie or book.
In their rooms, they have other venues and probably less fear of negative self-conscious thoughts (too fat, ugly, whatever for the beach).
I wonder how many Hikikomori are in their own thoughts vs escaping into online venues.
Somewhat, mostly crosswords and then vocal frustration when the travel mag crossword was already filled out.
I can think of half a dozen very personal conversations with random seatmates about their lives and problems. Something about opening up to strangers, and am pretty sure it wasn’t my personality or looks. Now that doesn’t happen anymore because you’re never trapped together with no outlets for hours on end.
One of my writing ideas (probably not original) was a retired psychologist who just flew on random flights and talked to whomever they sat next to. Now that plot would make no sense.
I don't understand. Most of the time you decide to go to sleep you are alone with your thoughts without any distractions. It might only be for a brief time, but it's still true, no?
Recently I was having a debate with a friend who said "you thought about this lot" in a mocking tone, and I suddenly realized how strange it was that that phrase is used so commonly as an insult.
Solid thought isn't just good but necessary and we're seeing the symptoms of this everywhere.
Right, but sometimes it is. Strategic apathy is the dumb debate tactic of the moment and in that capacity I'd call it anti-intellectual.
It's hard to watch gel-haired youtubers going back and forth trying to out-apathy (and thereby out-cool) each other and come away with the idea that they are actually having an intellectual meta-debate about the allocation of time and attention. It seems far more likely that they saw someone win a debate by staying cool and projecting apathy, copied the behavior, and have spread it so far and wide that the tactic is now regularly played against itself with farcical results.
Science itself involves climbing many wrong ladders to verify that they are indeed wrong. Some things you can't know beforehand.
Not everything needs that level of dedication, but also, how confident are you that said ladder is wrong unless you've climbed it yourself or have extensive, reliable reports from others who have done so?
It's also easy to be like the fox in Aesop's Fables that declares grapes to be sour, untasted.
In your analogy, the climbing is what's important, not which ladder. Learning how to climb well is applicable regardless of which ladder you encounter in the future.
The person's point is likely that you spent a lot of energy on something that probably doesn't matter. This might be subjective, of course, but it is possible to think about something for longer than you should.
Navel-gazing isn't a virtue. Though ideally you probably want to be with people who think that the same stuff is important.
Immediate action isn't a virtue either, and trust me, I grew up with people who think their immediate action is virtuous enough, and no, you're not gonna get much community from that in the last resort as reassuring as it appears in real-time; most people do not recognize their own anxieties spurring them into some form of immediate action or other.
Also, we don't know what the subject was between OP and whoever, so its kinda hard to gauge what kind of lesson to derive from it
Everyone has spent a longer time than necessary thinking about something that is subjectively useless. Mocking someone for doing so demonstrates nothing more than a lack of self-awareness.
But everyone spends time on stuff that doesn't matter. At least thinking about a topic of discussion is better than watching the 18th season of the Bachelor (as an example)
Longer than you should? There is no such thing. Of course it's possible to spend thought without resulting in any new discoveries but that's not really a problem because thoughts are interconnected and build upon each other to create better mental models for other situations. It doesn't matter how petty or insignificant the topic is, it's the act of thinking deeply about something that's important.
Anyway, I understand the social context of the phrase, but my point is that it's used so often in place a real argument and is a sign of the greater superficiality of most discussions today.
But brooding for a long time is not really healthy. I don't know the exact issue on which you got mocked, but there are these unproductive loops of thought into which you can slip into, spending many days. It takes some other pressing issue to snap out of this.
Overthinking and dwelling on things is a real problem, particularly for people with anxiety disorders. And the suggestion that you can’t think about something for too long is ridiculous.
Clearly a disorder is something else other than healthy deep thought. Overthinking, dwelling (and brooding as the other commenter said) isn't the same as contemplative or investigative thought about a topic. Rather, it's the opposite and isn't very thoughtful at all.
Too long is so long that time spent thinking on the thing disrupted or took away time from some other higher priority thing / task / whatever. Or so long that it delayed the decision / outcome / whatever enough that it had materially negative impact compared to making a suboptimal, but earlier decision.
And Jobs spent too much time on calligraphy than he should.
And yet, that experience was tinder for the start of font rendering in computing. Whether it is naval gazing or creating unique insight, it's only known in hindsight.
My “inward-directed thought” happens while hiking alone. It’s been very therapeutic and helps me retain a lot more information by replaying a day or class’s events in my head. Some people think I’m weird for doing it, but I think they are weird for not.
Famous British philosopher Andrew Zaltzman put it like this: if you leave a man alone in a room an electric socket he will eventually try to stick his dick into it.
I don’t like this gatekeeping philosophy. I feel that this line of thinking discourages self reflection because the first thing we usually notice when we look honestly at ourselves is what we don’t like about ourselves, but that is just a small part of who we really are. Discomfort from self awareness may be the first step to self improvement. Instead of (falsely) equating mental discomfort with causing “all problems”, we should instead work to understand our imperfections and work together to correct them.
The point of the quote is that people use distraction to mask the discomfort of sitting alone with their thoughts and that this distraction causes problems. It’s not saying that the discomfort is a problem.
Distraction isn’t the problem, the inability to face one’s self is the problem, and distraction is the solution. However, even with distraction, there is still insight. It just comes indirectly.
Sure. I believe distraction is a solution for many because it allows them to discover the self at their own pace. It’s a more indirect route that may take longer, but which may be less psychologically jarring compared to direct introspection. For these types, self discovery might involve something as simple as watching a film and identifying with both the hero and the villain, something which hadn’t happened heretofore in their development. The film was intended as a distraction from the self, but the self is not avoidable; we constantly compare “not self” to “self” and update our world view based on these comparisons. Distractions may help people cope with their unavoidable development. In trying times, more of us may need more distractions because we are developing at a breakneck pace. I disapprove of shaming people for coping with their growth using distraction, because that’s how they prefer to learn.
I'm not convinced anyone is. Full objectivity is hindered by our minds ability to guess and rationalize.
Personally I find all attempts at self-knowledge are just a constant game of trying to sieve truth from rationalization, and I go back and forth on which is which constantly. Ultimately I cannot tell the difference within myself, and I cannot trust that anyone else can either.
I wasn’t speaking to a philosophical maxim, but rather practical application. Self-awareness is a real thing that can be objectively measured comparative between different people.
What's your method for measuring that? The general personality models that I've seen really only seem to be testing for a minimum amount of self-awareness.
> Full objectivity is hindered by our minds ability to guess and rationalize.
One of the main claims of some meditative traditions is that with enough practice you get to experience the workings of the mind. Once you get to experience them directly, you can see that they're projections and you can see through them.
> Yet even in 17th-century France, apparently, people hated being alone with their thoughts so intensely, they'd do almost anything else: play boules, start the Franco-Spanish war, and so on.
Is that a bad attempt at humor or sheer ignorance?
Yes, humans occasionally differentiate ourselves from arbitrary chunks of hydrogen ice. This puts us in the distinct minority in the universe, but vive la différence, as the monk said to the nun.
The article argues that we have an innate desire to be distracted from our thoughts. I agree, insofar I may generalize from my own experience. In my experience, being alone with my thoughts is depressing. I can't focus anyway.
This quote comes from Blaise Pascal's Pensées, accessible here.
"That is why we like noise and activity so much. That is why imprisonment is such a horrific punishment. That is why the pleasure of being alone is incomprehensible. That is, in fact, the main joy of the condition of kingship, because people are constantly trying to amuse kings and provide them with all sorts of distraction.—The king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to entertain him and prevent him from thinking about himself. King though he may be, he is unhappy if he thinks about it"
Just a bit more on why Pascal thought even a king is unhappy when he thinks about himself:
Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good
things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position
in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure
he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and
reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he
will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which
may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he
be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy
than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.
Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and high posts,
are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or
that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the
hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek
that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to think of our unhappy
condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the
bustle which averts these thoughts of ours, and amuses us.
Reasons why we like the chase better than the quarry.
Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that
the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure
of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest
source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly
to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures.
The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the
king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king
though he be, if he think of himself.
This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves
happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men
unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would
not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not
screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which
turns away our attention from these, does screen us.
Perhaps thats is because ants and amoebas have to find food in a bid to continue thier existence. Its safe to asume that for them to be satiated (not just resting) is to die.
Indeed. I read a book called The Songlines which was about Australian aboriginals and nomadism in general. It qouted Pascal and proposed that the solution is to walk and to wander. That's what we are made for. The solution to the problem of sitting in a room is not to sit in a room!
It is a misconception that all nomadic or foraging humans had to spend 100% of their time trying to stay alive.
I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.
There's a German standup comedian (Volker Pispers) who did a bit about this. It goes a bit like this: People always think that nature is so efficient. But nature doesn't optimize. Nature is lazy and does as little work as possible. You'll never see a lion hunt down a zebra and then go like "Okay, that took me 30 minutes, so I could do 10 more zebras today before dusk". He'll eat part of the zebra, leave the rest for the hyenas, and then spend the rest of the day basking in the sun.
> It is a misconception that all nomadic or foraging humans had to spend 100% of their time trying to stay alive.
Agreed.
> I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.
Generalizations about foraging populations are fraught with problems because there was a lot of diversity among them and its not possible to study them in a "pure" (untouched by agricultural peoples) setting.
As a Muslim, I pray five times a day, and of late I have begun to perform it "better", as in unshackling myself from worldly thoughts and other mental distractions. I attach zero importance to them and I remind myself that this صلاة (prayer) that I am doing alone deserves any importance, to the exclusion of all others. Thoughts used to come to me to try and induce panic in me, but overtime they have become so feeble that I am no longer aware of them.
And talking about the kings, one of the pious said : “If the kings and the children of the kings knew what [felicity] we are in, they would fight us over it with their swords.”
I don't think what Pascal is trying to get through is that we should numb ourself to inner thoughts. On the contrary, to acknowldege them and if anything, spend more time contemplating. That is when we can learn about ourself, others, and the universe, if I may say.
Working from home this entire year, I have tried to practice taking at least 15 minutes everyday, couple of times a day, laying down and just listening to my thoughts, understanding my anxieties. Trying to understand why I feel the way I do, instead of running away from them by distracting myself by various means.
This new habit of mine truly has been a life saver in this year.
Pascal is throwing light and expounding upon a weakness found in (most) people, that of depending on distractions to prevent themselves from dwelling on thoughts which remind them of their mortal nature.
I didn't read his works enough, none apart from the above quote in fact, to comment on whether or not he recommends acknowledging our inner thoughts and contemplating on them.
As for me, I feel real and lasting relief from worshipping Allaah. It's something very tangible and enlightening. It might seem counterintuitive, but it does boost my productivity a lot, even though I ignore thinking about work during prayer.
Now, having belief in Allaah has its manifest benefits. I am happy as I write this. I am able to keep afloat a bit in trying times. I was able to come out of depression (and quite a few other mental illnesses). None of it I could achieve except by Allaah's help.
When I used to go to hospital for psychiatric treatment, the doctor used to advise me that whenever I feel anxious, I lie down on a bed, relax and think of some beautiful place, in order to ward off the bad feelings. So, even the best advice the doctor could give me was this.
And what better place to think of than Paradise?
What Pascal was explicit in saying is that there is no inherent happiness in material possessions. But if you know that there is a life after death, that there is a Paradise and a Hell, that there is a Merciful God who, if you believe in Him and obey Him, will reward you for you good deeds and forgive your bad deeds, you will be humble, you will be hopeful, and you will be happy.
"the Paradise I am talking about, you don't die after entering it"
Not every religion considers eternal life desirable. In some forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, for example, the ultimate goal is to leave the cycle of death and rebirth.. not in to paradise, but in to nothingness.
The truly vast amount of literature on both Buddhism and Hinduism argue to the contrary.
Also, the ultimate reality in Buddhism, Hinduism, and (incidentally) mystic forms of Islam, is often described as being beyond words and even beyond conception, so there is a limited amount that could be said about it in ordinary language -- though that hasn't stopped people from trying.
In Buddhism one often hears the teachings described as the finger pointing towards the moon. Language may be inadequate to describe ultimate reality, but it can point to it.
As a Muslim, I can assure you there’s no such thing as mystic Islam. Islam is foremost about clarity, simplicity and straightforwardness in its message of pure monotheism. It does not seek to lure people by mesmerising them with incomprehensible riddles. It hides nothing.
The so called mystic Islam also known as Sufism, is a deviant sect, and is fundamentally a gateway to polytheism, as it borrows many practices from polytheistic religions. In fact, many of the famous ancient sufis have roots in India, where paganism and idol worshipping was and is still prevalent. Hence sufis are adored by Hindus.
Who decides what orthodox Islam and what is heresy?
You'll find Sunnis who think Shiites are heretics, and Shiites who think Sunnis are heretics, and both are major branches of Islam.
Of course you'll find both Sunnis and Shiites who think Sufis are heretics, and Sufis who think Sunnis and Shiites are heretics (or at least don't understand the true or secret meaning of the Koran or of Islam).
And does the Koran have a secret meaning, or only a surface meaning? This important question itself is also a matter of opinion and will differ based on who you ask.
There have also been mystics in Islam apart from the Sufis: Avicenna, the Ismailis, and Alawites spring to mind.
As a non-Muslim, when I see the members of these sects disagree with one another as to who is a "true Muslim" or what is or isn't Islam, what reason do I have for believing any one of them over the others?
Their appeals to scripture, lineage, famous commentators and the like are not very convincing both because as a non-Muslim I have no reason to believe in any of them and because you can easily find other people who claim to be Muslims making pretty much the same appeals in support of completely different conclusions.
At this point in my life, anyone who considers the Koran their central scripture is a Muslim in my eyes.
If you have a better definition that doesn't rely on appeals to scripture, to lineage, nor to the authority of some person, I'd love to hear it.
You are correct in assuming that whoever takes the Qur-aan as the central scripture is a Muslim. That’s really all that is to it. I will just add a bit of a historical background. You can read the Prophet’s history to best judge what Islam he brought.
I will start from the basics:
The fundamental word of Islam, the one word which differentiates between who is a Muslim and who is not is the well known Kalima (كلمة) of Islam, La ilaha illallaah. Which translates to there is none worthy of worship except Allaah. This statement encapsulates the entire monotheistic creed of Islam in it. It is the pivot of any Muslim’s religion. A Muslim strives to preserve this statement in his heart while believing in it. He does this by trying to ensure harmony in his speech and his deeds.
One who lacks firm belief in his heart in this word, is a weaker believer than one who has firm belief, even though both might utter the word in the same manner.
Though we can’t see what the heart contains and hence we can’t normally judge a person’s level of faith, his outward actions, to an extent, do communicate his level of belief. So much about this word.
The one who brought this word to the people was a man called Muhammad (upon him be peace) over 14 centuries ago. The people who he first invited to his religion were the people of of his birthplace, the city of Makkah. His people were originally on the religion of Abraham, worshipping the One God of all that exists, Allaah. But in due course of time, they forgot the truth and started worshiping idols.
So Muhammad (upon him be peace) was sent to them as Messenger by Allaah, just as Messengers from among men were sent by Allaah to earlier people, in order to warn them about the consequences of idol worship and to call them to the worship of the true God, Allaah. Some Messengers which were sent before him were Noah, Lot, Moses, Jonah, Jesus, all mentioned in the Bible and Qur-aan.
Muhammad (upon him be peace), warned the people of eternal hell if they did not believe in his Message and desist from idol worship. And he promised Paradise for whoever believed in him and acted upon what he commanded.
His Prophetic Mission lasted 23 years, of which the first 13 were spent in Makkah and the last 10 were in Madinah. He was made a Messenger at the age of 40, and he dies at the age of 63.
Throughout his mission, Allaah sent the Verses of His Book, Al -Qur-aan to guide him and his followers, gradually teaching them the rituals of prayer, charity, pilgrimage. As the Messenger (upon him be peace) and his followers were the subject of great deal of ridicule and torture, Allaah, in these Verses, also supported them and encouraged them. Allaah also taught His Messenger how to present his Message to people in the elegant way.
>The so called mystic Islam also known as Sufism, is a deviant sect, and is fundamentally a gateway to polytheism, as it borrows many practices from polytheistic religions.
This illustrates that you have a fundamentalist streak in you: you've described a form of Islam you don't like as being "deviant". You're gatekeeping Islam.
I kept reading your comments above till reach here. Your knowledge about Autism is pretty narrow and region-centric. No one considers taking drugs and shaking as Sufiism. It's opposite of that. Sufism is all about self discovery and connecting to God with Dikr. The Dikr as described as in Quran as satisfaction of heart.
LOL. I loved it when ppl assume others are ignorant. Why and how did you assume I haven't? I have read multiple, in Urdu And english. You didn't read what I said. Your knowledge of Suffism is narrow and wrong. No point arguing with you unless you get to know what Taswwuf is.
It is worthy of mention that the Buddha was a prince, destined to be come king, yet his father tried to lock him up in his golden palace with nothing but entertainment.
Eventually the prince does come into contact with suffering, and leads to him trying to find an end to suffering.
It is useful to add that even distraction and entertainment are suffering and unfulfilling in that they are impermanent, illusory and essentially devoid of meaning. All things have "equal taste", good or bad all comes to us through the senses which only produce a reflection of the world in our mind. Even our perception of our own inner world is an appearance of the same sort in consciousness. This shouldn't excuse inaction or wrongdoing or lead one to apathy, however, our actions in the world are still important and have consequences but we should be mindful that this is a condition we are all subject to, a reason for greater empathy and care and a motivation to improve the lives of others as much as we seek to improve our own.
"It is useful to add that even distraction and entertainment are suffering and unfulfilling in that they are impermanent, illusory and essentially devoid of meaning."
This doesn't fully make sense to me.
Sure, at some point your pleasure will end, but do you have to judge something by its end? Why not judge it by its beginning or middle instead?
It's like saying "don't enjoy your meal, because at some point later you're going to get hungry".
That makes no sense to me.
Also, regarding the lack of meaning of distraction and entertainment, it's not like "nothingness" (which Buddhism tries to put in its place) has any meaning either. So I'm not sure why one should seek to put one meaningless thing in the place of another.
Would you enjoy your favourite meal if it were the only thing you could eat for the rest of your life? If not, is it the food you enjoy or the variety, novelty and choice? After a strenuous workout would you prefer to sit down to a heavy meal or have a glass of water? The pleasure you derive from something is not an intrinsic property of that thing, the sense of pleasure comes from within your own mind. That is why pleasure is illusory, it is a state that exists only within your mind. The idea behind a practice like Buddhism is not to nullify everything, it is to draw the attention to the fact that all we know of the world is an illusion produced by our senses, we can never truly know the world outside of our consciousness since no matter how closely we examine it we are really just examining its representation within our own mind. It is meaningless in that all of these sense perceptions are essentially the same, the meaning we assign to them is once again something that originates from within us. This doesn't negate the external world, it is just a different way of viewing it and a useful one because it puts into perspective many of the frivolities and aimless paths we trace through it. You don't have to be an ascetic but you don't have to let the world subsume you completely either.
the day you can sit for hours without doing anything, you've attained the state of self-realization – self-love free from all conditions. The conditioned mind is no longer there, the thoughts no longer bombard you, the emotions no longer disturb you. You enjoy the deep peace, contentment and bliss of your infinite self. Then you can truly contemplate deeply on anything you feel important, then the deep mysteries of existence shall open up to you. Then, you see the truth, of life, existence and the universe.
> Then, you see the truth, of life, existence and the universe.
Pretty words, but do they mean anything? For example, if I reach this state, will it be revealed to me why there is something rather than nothing? I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
I'm interested in meditation to learn more about my own body and mind, maybe improve my life somehow. But IMHO the discussions around it could do with less of this type of mystic woo.
> I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
Well, they have, but nobody believes them :)
In any case, I understand your attitude to the mystic woo. It used to put me off a lot when I started meditating.
Now I take it as simply something that's there. They are statements that someone makes. If they're talking about states that someone could reach and they also give instructions, I might consider trying them to see what happens.
In any case as a programmer and scientifically minded meditator, I encourage you to pursue your interest in meditation. Try different techniques until you find something that works. Take it easy, take it slow, cultivate play and joy in your practice. If you manage to do that, you'll reap the fruit of your practice.
Thanks, I've read the start and found that Harris does a good job of explaining from the outset why a non-religous, mysticism-averse person would still want to explore this type of spirituality. That part wasn't very clear to me in the introduction of "Mind Illuminated".
Thanks for the recommendation. I've read the the free kindle sample now, which is already a couple hours of reading. I found the introduction and and overview very difficult to get through, even to the point of falling asleep. But the "first interlude" and "stage one" captured my attention better.
Although a bit verbose and repetitive at times, I liked the exploration of the concepts of attention and peripheral awareness. I may give the "stage one" instructions a try, and buy the rest of the book if it goes well.
This book may have value to learn something about meditation, but it also has exactly the kind of "mystic woo" I was talking about.
In the first few sentences it talks about the "soul" wanting to return back to it's source, the "supreme consciousness". Then a couple pages further, a statement about reincarnation:
"If you don’t believe in rebirth then this book will be of little use to you. As I said earlier, meditation to me is the most powerful tool to harness and channelize the restive and other tendencies of the mind we’ve been carrying with us over lifetimes."
FWIW I have a friend who is deep into spirituality, still works at a FAANG but definitely feels like he can attain higher states of awareness in his meditations. I don’t see him active on social media, he leads a reasonably ascetic life and so on.
This person doesn’t have much success in making others believe. At best, he gets ‘hey, I am happy that you’re happy’ from folks like me, most feedback is around ‘mystic woo’. I have another friend deep in this world, but she balances it with real world and doesn’t really proselytize.
I think it is very much a catch 22. You won’t believe it unless you’re doing it. So if belief is required for you to give it a shot, that’s a non-starter.
I would say try it out and make up your own mind! What do you got to lose anyway - stay away from holy men who make you uncomfortable, start with books or YouTube!
Just a comment regarding belief in the context of learning: a lot (in fact almost all) of learning is through our innately held beliefs. Without having beliefs we would be no different than an ML model, which just keeps adjusting weights according to the data it receives. Each of us has some beliefs, which "seems right" to us and this is what shapes our understanding of what we see around us, no matter what the "data" says.
If the belief is weak (or false), it might lead to confusion and distrust, which will make it impossible to learn anything.
Also, experiencing heightened states of awareness is not necessarily beneficial, people on drugs experience it routinely.
Are you sure that our beliefs aren't "just" (the appropriate equivalent) of a stimulus or data point that has really high weight, e.g. because it was created during childhood and constantly reinforced?
Take the biases that we've heard about in image recognition where these ML models misclassify black people. If a person had done that you would accuse them of racist beliefs.
Why is the computer model so different? Because you don't want to believe that computers can reach consciousness? (I don't either at this point but time will tell. We don't really know enough - or I don't - about what consciousness is and how it works.)
Well, what about Gebru's findings? Data in and of itself is not beneficial, we do have certain underlying beliefs about appropriateness and goodness. There is an element of innate belief at play.
Otherwise, chatbots are very good at learning abusive and racist language. It's due to our belief that it's not right and decent that we train them using a bias. And it's only due to beliefs that we rein in the rogue AI which misclassifies black people.
Edit: If you still want to think of belief as an input node whose link has weight, then set the weight to infinite
There is no legitimate platform for such a person to report back to. There have been many holy books over the years insofar as religions are centred around them.
That's basically how they con you into it. Using pretty words which appear to have "deeper" and "transcendental" meanings. They entice you with words like mystery, truth, existence, universe, but the TLDG (Too long didn't go) of this rabbit hole called meditation is (wading in) occult practices.
That's wrong, though. Occultism didn't have the evil meaning until very recently. That's similar to how nazis have changed the public image of swastika: before them it was an Egyptian symbol of light or something of that sort. "Occult" merely means hidden from plain sight. Coincidentally, the most occult thing out there is hiding in plain sight: it's electricity.
You first need to get yourself free of the opium of Islam. The unoriginal religion made up by stealing lots and lots of ideas from Judaism and Christianity, themselves sources of much suffering for humankind.
The hell and heaven are not of any next worlds but are what you create for yourself and live inside, here on this very Earth. And look at the hellish and backward state of most Muslim counties and their people: People trapped in ignorance, prejudice, poverty in a never ending hellish cycle. If your ideas and beliefs have made this world a living hell for you, how do you expect to die and then wake again in a heaven? The guys that told you so, were really swindlers.
You need to first rid your society from the actual opium and its derivatives. It’s very convenient to throw the opium of the masses on Muslims, when the masses in your society have puncture marks.
And yes Marxism has died. Communism is dead. It’s just a name for brutality and dictatorship.
> For example, if I reach this state, will it be revealed to me why there is something rather than nothing?
More-or-less. You do get the punchline, and the joke is quite good.
> I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
They have, over and over and over again. However, it's not something that fits in words. You have to stop wording in your mind, and know. Literally the first line in the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao."
Meditation sans "mystic woo" is like using your car only to drive from your garage to your mailbox at the end of the driveway to get your mail and back. You might learn a little more about your own car, and maybe improve your mail-retrieval somehow, but you're not really going anywhere, eh?
Here's an opinion from a deeply cynical person who's also 15 years deep into this mysticism rabbit hole.
My takeaway is that there's something in this meditation thing. At the very least, concentrating on a static imaginary shape activates some kind of drainage system in the brain: for a few minutes you feel what a clogged pipe would feel when it's being cleaned by a powerful water stream. That effect alone seems valuable.
Regarding the meaning of meditation, my conclusion is that it's a whistle. Just like you'd produce a certain whistle to summon an animal or a bird, you'd sharply imagine a certain shape or symbol to summon ideas or certain effects. The former is how you get inspiration. "Mysticism" begins when you are able to produce this whistle the right way and when you know which thoughts or symbols to target.
The most comprehensive explanation of meditation that's available in English is probably lamrim, volume 4 (500 or so pages, described by its author as a brief summary of key concepts from canonical sources that an interested reader should read himself).
Not if you are hungry. Deep mysteries are fine and all but doing so in -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach lays out the reality of existence with exacting clarity. We are merely animals. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Everyone born before 1600? Or maybe anyone who has done winter survival training. Hunger and cold have been with us since the beginning. The spiritual and meditative practices we’re talking about here were developed when these things were just daily facts of life and like other animals we’re adapted to deal with them as a matter of course. Modern humans live lives of luxury unknown to even the wealthiest and most fortunate people in the past. If you want a concrete modern example I’d offer Wim Hof.
This was the original statement "Not if you are hungry. Deep mysteries are fine and all but doing so in -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach lays out the reality of existence with exacting clarity".
It was more about questioning the relevance (and authenticity) of "deep mysteries" and "existence" etc. It was not about whether or not human beings can train themselves to endure such difficulties. Which they can, apparently.
When you said "it would be a cake walk for an ascetic" I thought that by ascetic you meant one who is into meditation and all such "deep realities". Not Wim Hof.
Nevertherless, I personally don't see any virtue in being hungry in -1 degree celsius, if I have food and a warm home. Except in case someone is making money out of it, like Wim.
"Published in science journal PLOS ONE in March 2013, the study documented reliable core body temperature increases for the first time in Tibetan nuns practising g-tummo meditation...
"The researchers collected data during the unique ceremony in Tibet, where nuns were able to raise their core body temperature and dry up wet sheets wrapped around their bodies in the cold Himalayan weather (-25 degree Celsius) while meditating. Using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings and temperature measures, the team observed increases in core body temperature up to 38.3 degree Celsius..."
If it’s scientific then it must be well understood in terms of cause and effect. In which case, it is like any other physical phenomenon, nothing special.
And if it’s not scientific, rather if it’s a mystery, then scientists will have to take a call on what is.
Science is not as black and white as it's made out to be. In this particular case, the observation seems to have been made with scientific rigor, so this part is definitely scientific. As for the parts of the causal chain that are not fully understood, these will be subject to further inquiry. It would be fair to call those parts "a mystery", but that doesn't imply them having any "mystical" properties. "Mystical" to me would mean "fundamentally outside the realm of scientific inquiry", not just "we have not gotten around to it yet".
The fact that we are even discussing such issues shows that we are indeed more than animals.
And yes, many such seemingly alluring but deceptive mysteries fall apart much before the onset of difficulties like the one you mentioned
>The king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to entertain him and prevent him from thinking about himself.
This is really interesting from a modern perspective. I'm an audiophile - I've spent countless hours just sitting in a chair in front of a stereo system I've spent a couple thousand on. If I ever lapse into non-attention to the music, I try and get back to the music. It's like mindfulness meditation, but unlike the monk, my mind is focusing on a sense, not emptying itself.
On the other hand, I can't lie in bed for more than two minutes without deep introspection - my morality, arguments for and against all positions, what projects I want to work on, the papers I've read, etc.
But before writing some comments on this website and elsewhere, I'll have a deep think about what I'm arguing, and why. Other times I'll just jump at it for the engagement, the thrill of refreshing in the morning to check the Hacker News Engagement Number, whatever else. I've tried to make an effort to not read outrage-bait on Reddit, I've deleted my Twitter account years ago, I've done countless things. This i my third HN account.
The best part of my day, after work and my energy is exhausted? Gaming. I only play one game - online and multi-player, with an Icelandic man I've never met. It's all a distraction. Why continue learning piano, Japanese, philosophy, literature, introspection, when I have this pleasure right here? Where will I be in 30 years? 20 years? Even writing this comment sadness comes over me.
To think that in the 19th century, there were men being compared to Hegel and Feuerbach at age 21. What the hell am I doing?
What game is it? I've been looking for something to play in the last few days. I've got my mind just racing with ideas for projects and things and I'm always feeling bad about not getting into it and then I'm not able to truly relax.
Not who you replied to, but in my experience, if you play Factorio, your mind will be racing with ideas for projects and things you can do in Factorio.
I wouldn't take comparison to Hegel as a great compliment. That said, the magnitude of knowledge and knowledgeable people in the 21st century (and onwards) will far outnumber the 19th century. So that what made one appear as a genius then would make them look ordinary now. I'm not asking us to see people of bygone eras differently than they're written about—I'm asking that we revere them, but with a healthy dose of skepticism which prevents us from seeing ourselves and times as failed in comparison.
That has a lot of resonance for me. In this modern age, we are all kings, and there are vast industries to save us from ever being alone from our thoughts.
For December, I quit sugar, social media, and video games. It's been really interesting to notice what state I'm in when I go to reach for those things. Sometimes it's just habit, but often it's because I'm uncomfortable or in distress and want to avoid those feelings. But indulging in those things often just kicks the problem down the road.
Indeed, breaking my social media habits reminds me of Oscar Wilde talking about cigarettes: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?" The same for me is definitely true with Twitter and Facebook. An infinite feed of shiny, entertaining, funny, and outraging things, but almost nothing that's ever satisfying.
Definitely, but they're commingled with the other change I made: minimum 10k steps per day. My mood and energy levels have been much better. I also find myself getting more done, because instead of turning to some disposable distraction, I'll get usefully bored. E.g., things around me are cleaner, I've read more long-form stuff, and I've called more friends on the phone than I otherwise have lately.
At some point I decided that abandoning social media as a whole would be a tremendous task because of years of being 'trained' by tech... Now I separate useful and useless social media. Shaping my perspective this way helps regulate my Internet use a lot.
Isn't reading a book the same, by this definition? You could say that when picking up a book you do control the topic (while in social media it is others), but this is an illusion if you do not read that book for the second time.
I think if you're disciplined in your HN use - like, check the front page twice a day, not a few times an hour - then it's basically a community-curated newspaper. And while newspapers may not be particularly healthy, they're probably better than most social media.
HN content tends to be longer-form which I feel is quite different from the typical infinite scrolling for quick dopamine hits on sites like Reddit or Twitter or Facebook.
The articles and the conversations are better quality than on any other social media with the added bonus that what I read is relevant for my daily job and career.
At the same time, it's still distracting, I almost never finish an article and go straight to the comments, thinking "entertain me, comment section". I feel productive, but in reality, it's superficial knowledge, and spending time here is time I don't spend on actually working on my goals.
In the end, it's all about balancing the pros and cons. For Facebook, Instagram, it's easy, I don't use them. For Twitter, I focus exclusively on tech so that I don't end up in a pointless yet vicious fight. For HN, it's spending 10 minutes on the top articles, keeping up with important industry news every second day.
Does it need to be a "direct" benefit? I think sometimes the things we do out of our own volition shape ourselves not only directly but also indirectly.
As a personal example, I have noticed how my way of discussing heated topics has changed based on discourse I have seen here.
And this would not have happened if I didn't invest time similar to yourself.
Yes in your case you identified a specific way to improve your communication skills by immersing yourself in the HN environment.
This is a hit or miss though, because you either identify specific ways to improve or not, and you may or may not actually improve those identified skills by reading trough the comments (and not taking action).
If improvement is the goal, then there are more efficient ways to eg. learn better ways to discuss heated topics (like reading a specific book on the topic, or attending a "Nonviolent Communication" workshop).
The more I think about this the more HN only seems like a place to get a specific flavour of entertainment (which I personally like), but nothing more.
How did you know that XorNot replied to your previous comment?
Notifications, addictive design and gamification are really bad practices that we should try to avoid - but the underlying drug of social media is that someone noticed and reacted to your content, and HN provides that just like Facebook or Twitter.
I think all three of you are actually hitting the nail on the head. Large headed nail I suppose ;) Take ne as an example. I could've had a really low user number on Slashdot if I had registered right away. I never actually did but I read Slashdot for many many many years.
I turn off notifications on my phone for almost any app. It's just way too annoying. I'll get to it when I get to it! I guess I'm part of that minority mentioned above but as you say I do keep coming back too. It's not black and white but we can stay on the healthy side.
If I try to find an analogy, it's the difference between sitting by the fire in the evening and chatting with other people vs. spending the entire day running around listening to and actively spreading rumors.
Less so now but the whole site used to be a filter bubble of people in tech/science or with tech/science interests. It was actually a fairly positive filter though since it resulted in some very interesting content being surfaced. It still stands head and shoulders above the rest but there has certainly been some decline in recent years. In its early days, Reddit was much the same but suffered a massive decline after becoming the "front page of the internet". All "free as in beer" communities seem to follow a similar progression, those with stronger gatekeeping tend to last longer but no site can survive an overwhelming influx of new users without a proportionate increase in the ability to educate those users in the norms of the group they are joining.
HN to me at least is an place I actively go towards when I have the time and I want to. I don't believe in dogmatism, if you want to reduce the impact social media has on you, just reduce your usage. You don't have to become a recluse and you won't become a heretic for going to social media once in a while, if you make it a conscious choice.
Just like that if you want to eat less meat because of the environment, just eat less meat. If you eat selected meat once in a while on selected occasions this won't make you a heretic, because you are still reaching your goal of reducing your impact on the environment etc.
The people who say "if you want to reduce X you are a heretic if you don't abstain 100% from using X" are projecting their own lack of dicipline onto others — they feel they wouldn't have the discipline to do it, but also realise it would be good for them to have it. So they have to invent an excuse why this is a goal that cannot be reached, not worth reaching etc.
Being a free thinking and acting person fundamentally means also to notice when you are manipulating yourself by making your thinking fit the image you already have of the world. I for example often fall into the trap of "if I can't do it perfectly it might not be worth doing at all", and because I know that, I try to work against it.
So what your comment does here is undermining another people's effort to be in control of their social media environment. Why you deem such an act necessary should be something you should know yourself.
How helpful to have a person who knows nothing about my situation police my behaviors because of a vague congruence and an apparent desire to score internet points.
No, for the purposes of what I'm doing, HN was not included in that. From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way. No personalized, UAM-optimized algorithmic feed, no infinite river of small content bites, no rich mechanisms for interaction. And, very importantly, it has the noprocrast feature, which I long ago set to low usage levels.
And as others point out, it's not like I took some sort of vow of internet chastity to a god who will now smite me because I looked at HN. The point was to partially undo some bad habits that had built up during the election cycle. I'll often make some 1-month change at the beginning of the month. For me it's valuable mainly as self-experiment and a way of getting back to some baseline.
"From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way."
I mean, it's fine that you feel this way, and you are probably correct - it wasn't designed for it. But I suspect for a lot of us , me included, it serves that exact purpose. I post so that strangers on the internet read it and give me likes. I compulsively check my comments section on my account to see how many upvotes my comments have. Every time I see my total Upvote count go up, I get excited and I rush to see who has agreed with me again. If it goes down I immediately get angry and defensive that someone is downvoting what I said. And surely, you participate in the same process, even if you don't feel as strongly about it - otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
It might not have been designed this way but it's exactly what it is. And clearly upvote/downvote system didn't happen by an accident, it's there for a reason.
> clearly upvote/downvote system didn't happen by an accident, it's there for a reason
It encourages and prominently displays good quality comments, and discourages and buries poor quality comments. It's not a perfect system as a lot of people vote based on whether they happen to agree rather than based on a comment's quality, but it's much better than nothing.
There's still value in knowing the scores though. When it works, it encourages better conversation, and this effect might be weakened if you couldn't see your comments' scores.
Slashdot's approach is to have different kinds of upvote (Insightful, Funny, etc) and different kinds of downvote (Off-topic, Flamebait, etc), and scores are clamped, iirc the lowest value is -1 and the highest is +5.
I don't see the numbers on HN? Which is why it is less addictive to me than Reddit.
I also lurked for nearly 2 years, as I was concerned about diluting conversations with low quality, unnecessary posts, which are far less frequent on HN than Reddit.
edit: Now I see the numbers. The quality of posts is still far better than Reddit and the interactions less addictive, at least in my experience.
> It encourages and prominently displays good quality comments, and discourages and buries poor quality comments. It's not a perfect system as a lot of people vote based on whether they happen to agree rather than based on a comment's quality, but it's much better than nothing.
Mostly. There is an unconscious hive mind on HN too, and it downvotes when you disagree with it. It just happens that most commenters belong to it, at least most of the time.
> otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
The act of writing out your thoughts gives them added clarity. This holds for long(er)-form comment-based sites such as HN and Reddit, not so much for FB and Twitter.
>And clearly upvote/downvote system didn't happen by an accident, it's there for a reason.
This system has been corrupted on websites like reddit to become a "like" system, but outside of very divisive political topics it still works mostly as intended on HN: they moderate bad contributions, not stuff people disagree with.
You can actually observe this in this very thread so far: while people express opposite viewpoints at this moment none of the comment are in the negative. I'm sure that on Reddit the hivemind would've decided what the Right Opinion(tm) would be and people disagreeing would be sitting at -200 comment score.
Maybe the system could be pushed further and hide the scores even for your own comments though, removing all gamification. I don't know if it would improve things but I'd be curious to see how it would impact the quality of the discourse.
>otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
I mean even on forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/BBSs/imageboards without scoring system (or even publicly identifiable accounts) people would do the same thing, so I think that you overestimate the influence of the scoring system. I guess the closest equivalent on these other forums in general is getting "replies", i.e. engagement with your content, which I suppose is what we really crave in the end. We want people to listen to us.
Beyond that HN does have a few huge quality advantages over other social media. A big one is that the focus is still on textual content, not images and videos which means that you have to take some time to digest every story instead of mindlessly scrolling through the main page one gif at a time.
News readers had scoring. Neither the NNTP protocol, nor NNTP servers, had a scoring mechanism, and certainly not one that was distributed over the world-wide Usenet infrastructure.
If you think otherwise, can you point to (e.g.) an RFC where it is documented?
I didn’t use newsgroups a huge amount, but certainly some, and none of the clients I used ever had scoring. So to me, newsgroups were completely devoid of ranking.
As mentioned earlier, engagement seemed to be the goal. And the newsgroups I frequented were usually about getting help with a tech problem, or helping someone else out, which has largely been replaced by Stack Overflow.
> This system has been corrupted on websites like reddit to become a "like" system, but outside of very divisive political topics it still works mostly as intended on HN: they moderate bad contributions, not stuff people disagree with.
A lot of people seemed to have liked (do like?) the system that Slashdot came up with: choose a random group of people every day and give them moderator posts to police the discussions. However, if you post in that day you lose your moderator points.
They seem to have gone with a wisdom-of-the-subset-of-the-crowds instead of a wisdom-of-the-entire-crowd/mob.
>This system has been corrupted on websites like reddit to become a "like" system, but outside of very divisive political topics it still works mostly as intended on HN: they moderate bad contributions, not stuff people disagree with. //
Disagree, a lot.
I've railed against it, but pg (the site owner) noted that voting as a proxy for like/dislike was not improper use on HN, much to my chagrin. In the early days (of my use, back on my first HN account) voting seemed mostly to be done to move a comment to it's "proper place".
Nowadays very good comments get greyed to non-readability. I find myself so often vouching for things I disagree with because comments that add well structured, logical, or interesting thoughts get voted out of view because they go against the group norms.
HN is for me in a sense the "front page" of the internet. I'll call it the thinking persons social media. Social? Check. We are here interacting. Media? Check. It's HN's raison d'être. Additive? Check. I check my up-vote score several times a day.
I also left every social media stuff behind. But I consider being on HN and reading some comments here and there as practicing basic human behavior. Its the same in real life, I cant just leave all human interaction behind. I must be able to deal with people. I think I can practice this a little.
I realized the aforementioned, checking my points and who responded what to my thoughts. I actually made an adblock rule to block out my points. So I dont get that rush, because I realized that too, that everytime I arrive at HN, I just checked my points, and if it were more than before, I felt the rush. And I just knew it was bad, and that is not indeed what I come for to this site.
Sure. I agree it has addiction potential, which is why I have the noprocrast feature turned on, and have for years. And clearly a lot of people get there "someone is wrong in the internet" fix here. But it wasn't a problem for me in the months of the election, so I didn't have the same need to quit it. Ergo I didn't.
As to the design question, I think the biggest things it's missing for me versus modern social networks in terms of addiction potential: 1) river-of-content setup; 2) algorithmic feed with personalized engagement; 3) images; 4) video; 5) wide topic variety; 6) follow graph; 7) real-world social connections in the platform; 8) on-platform notifications; 9) on-phone notifications.
> why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet
For me this platform is as close as I have to discussing things with my profession. So both with my professional Twitter account and this account, I see it as an opportunity to influence my field a bit and support younger colleagues where I can. Were it not for that, I'd just consume it in a read-only way, as over the years I've come to see on-line argumentation as unhealthy for me.
HN is addictive for me, similar to Instagram and TikTok for others.
business only policy, during 9-5. no news/socialmedia, cannot discuss irrelevant issues with my cofounder. Otherwise, I can go into rabbit holes for hours to research certain topic if my brain thinks that it is interesting.
> And surely, you participate in the same process, even if you don't feel as strongly about it - otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
Why not? Do you not value discussion, hearing new ideas, learning new concepts, having a soundboard for your thoughts? I also like sharing knowledge and participation in the process of humanity developing its collective memeplex (or at least fooling myself that I'm doing that). The fact that I'm not going to meet the people I discuss with has no bearing at all.
While what you describe in your comment is a factor, I cannot agree the rush is the dominant factor for commenting for me.
>>Why not? Do you not value discussion, hearing new ideas, learning new concepts, having a soundboard for your thoughts
I do, but ultimately, I post because I want someone else to read what I said and comment on it(good or bad). It triggers the same release of oxitocin in my brain that seeing likes on a post does.
Kudos for your self-awareness. Have a squirt of dopamine^W^W^W upvote. ;)
I have noticed the same reactions myself, and dislike them. I am slowly and gradually learning to be able to deflect that angry defensive reply impulse. Simple awareness seems to be the first step. I don't know yet what to do about the upvote thrill.
Didn't know HN could lead to this type of addiction.
I use it only as a news delivery system, and in there there's already pathological signs - for instance I rarely skip reading anything that pushbullet displays. And if by accident I "brush it aside" (literally), then I open the app and recover the link.
So let me get this straight, you 1. Come in bragging about how self-disciplined you are for not using social media on a social media platform and then 2. Get very defensive when someone points it out to you and 3. Assume the only possible reason anyone could disagree with you is that they’re trying to get internet points?
I think you may need to add a few more months to this social media cleanse...
I'm not trying to be judgmental, but I believe it might be worth it for you to re-evaluate some activities to assess what they really are at their core if you're pursuing mindfulness in time spending. Not acknowledging things for what they are can hold you back.
Just because HN doesn't have formal attributes of addictive social media like tailored feeds, shiny pictures, endless scrolling, etc., it doesn't mean that it's very different. I'm saying that, because I managed to get rid of almost all addictive sites, but HN sticks, and I still spend far more time here than I'd like to admit. If you look at it closer: this is an _endless_ list of _news_ with _a lot_ of _comments_ from your _peers_ that you _engage_ with. If you take words in italic it's obvious that this is exactly what makes other social media addictive. "News" and "peers" are the most important words here of course.
In a way, I believe sites like HN are even worse than others because they are somewhat disguised. I shrug FB, twitter and instagram easily (never actually even got into them), Reddit was harder but their stupid redesign made it much easier, HN sill stands for me.
I don’t consider HN to be social media anymore than a discussion forum on gardening is social media.
HN is not a SV startup selling ads spying on you manipulating your behaviour to sell crap or breaking democracy or depressing teenagers into suicide, it’s just not comparable and these false equivalences are just so tiring. Stop trying to bring other people down.
People have tried to define what social media is. Rather than responding immediately I tried to think about what makes places like Facebook and Twitter so toxic.
For some context I don't consider things like forums to be social media. As an early internet denizen I had lots of thoughtful discourse with folks that reminds me of what I experience at HN. I continue to use IRC, which I also don't consider to be social media.
So what makes them different? I think it's the underlying technology. The graph, our ability to search it and correlate immediate (mostly irrelevant) commonality is what makes things dangerous.
Humans are full of dumb or awful thoughts. They'll combat these ideas or thoughts with alternatives regularly which end up referring to as cognitive dissonance. The result is that these lesser ideas widdle away or drop off completely. On social media, the graph doesn't forget and continues to tie you to people, ideas, and thoughts that are increasingly useless. While this sells ads and generates interest in new products it doesn't align well to the way humans have discourse, socialize, or just relate in general.
> That has a lot of resonance for me. In this modern age, we are all kings, and there are vast industries to save us from ever being alone from our thoughts.
If you go online you can probably find a Jesuit retreat centre not too far from you where you can spend (say) eight days in total silence and seclusion; you can optionally (though recommended) talk with a spiritual director once a day to help you sort through anything that bubbles up during your stay.
The BBC had a short doc where a bunch of random men and women went through the exercise (episodes are available online if you search):
Perhaps worthwhile, even if that is not your particular worldview.
(This is separate than what monks do, which is seclusion from the world.)
Most faiths in the world have spiritual traditions where silence and reflection are done. Probably possible to find similar retreat centres following their traditions. It seems that it is only the modern secular worldview that hasn't adopted something (yet?). I think this is something most modern philosophical worldviews (especially in the materialist bend) overlook: human 'spiritually' (for lack of a better word).
Thank you. I have had friends, none Buddhist, attend Vipassana retreats that are similar. No phone, computer, media, or conversation for a week or a weekend, just a focus on silent meditation. And an absence of religious trappings, so suitable for both devout Christians and atheists.
They all told me it is very challenging and a good look at themselves and their cravings for interaction. I don't doubt it.
I want to pay $20/month for something like highscalability.com
It hits 80% of the stories I cared about during the week and I get them in 30-40 minutes on a Friday. I don't think this type of service exists because it would have to intentionally limit the growth of the company. When someone asked for a daily update / hourly update / or news feed you would have to say no. And a competitor may emerge that makes more money and eventually tries to buy you.
> The same for me is definitely true with Twitter and Facebook. An infinite feed of shiny, entertaining, funny, and outraging things, but almost nothing that's ever satisfying.
Facebook has been making it pretty easy for me to quit - it's mostly been an unending stream of boring advertisements with maybe one or two meaningful posts from friends.
Do people here feel the same way? That is, do you feel that it is uncomfortable to not do anything? I, like most people I guess, am easily distracted with various things like reading HN or fiddling with whatever is on the table. When given the opportunity to sit down with nothing with my thoughts however, I always feel very enjoyable. It is definitely nothing I would think about as uncomfortable.
> do you feel that it is uncomfortable to not do anything?
I don't. Although if reading qualifies as "doing something", I guess I'm almost never not doing anything, because if I don't have anything else to do, I almost always read. Of course I've always been careful to have plenty of reading material on hand; one nice thing about a smartphone is that you can carry a whole library around with you wherever you go.
In situations where I genuinely have nothing to do, not even read, I might get bored if I can't come up with something to think about, but I wouldn't say it's uncomfortable for me to not do anything. It's just a situation where it's on me to come up with something to think about.
>That is, do you feel that it is uncomfortable to not do anything?
I do like not doing anything, particularly not having to do anything. Perhaps over a longer time period I would think differently, but so far I haven't felt it. However, not doing anything is a waste of time. It doesn't really give me anything and excessive wasting of time has negative consequences on life. If I were wealthy enough then I'd probably do it way more.
I think we all crave to be engaged in something. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to not be able to sit in a plain room doing nothing. We have an innate desire to create, to solve problems, to interact with others. That doesn’t mean we don’t think and can’t be preoccupied or entertained by our thoughts. I think most of us just tend to be engaged in something mindless like showering, walking, or driving while we do our thinking.
Don't all of human achievements also come from this inability? The curiosity to find what's out there, and to explore the environment? I think this quote needs a lot of context to be useful - it makes sense to balance seeking stimulation with inward exploration. But to ban it outright is also flawed. Take time off to be with yourself, but don't renounce the world.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 316 ms ] threadBecause of man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Because I assume a significant portion of the site has completely forgotten which sites are paywalled.
Well, if you have a topic to think about, it's easy to justify the time.
Otherwise, not so much.
“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”
I think the aversion I have to being alone with my thoughts is the feeling that doing that won't help me. It's sort of like a neural network that I'd alone with its weights with no inputs to process except itself. I feel when I think to myself alone, I can't make any decisions because what I know is already what I knew before I started thinking to myself. Yo make decisions, I need external answers to questions. I need new information and evidence to start me to some conclusion.
Background anxiety about our "eventual demise" is the consequence of false entitlement to life and health. Young and healthy people imagine good life without end, the dying and people who've lost health and ability often know better.
This change in perspective also helps you make the most out of each day, because those who make a point to remember that their good days are finite will not want to have spent them in waste.
And will at least think about what this means.
It makes me feel like I need to be kind no matter what, not waste time (or at least, not tell myself that I’m wasting my time too many days in a row).
At least, I’m still expecting to someday figure out why mortality isn’t a problem after all (or not mortality in the first place).
When I successfully reproduce, I will stop fearing death.
> Your < reason maybe, not mine or the one of many others. The fear of death is tied to your culture/education, many people aren't anxious when they think about death
Plus sitting on a toilet too long gives me pins and needles in my legs. And I hear it can cause blood clots. I suppose it depends on how comfortable one's toilet is, and whether you use one of those foot stools?
But put the same person in an empty room and the same task of letting your mind wander becomes odious.
Odd, no?
The entire idea is that people hate being alone with their thoughts and will do nearly anything to avoid being in that situation.
The key thing, I would claim, from a "whole person" perspective, is that the contrast is "sit quietly, forget your body entirely and think" and "get stressed by bodily tension and start an uncontrollable argument with yourself" where "bring your mind and body into harmony through movement" isn't an options.
However the OP said "an indoor room isn’t a particularly desirable environment" - and that actually is absurd. If you need to be in a sauna or on a beach then you're already too distracted by the environment to be able to think deeply.
When you're finally just thinking about yourself, your "desirable surroundings" will disappear. You'll be trapped in the discomfort of your mind. You'll then try to escape these thoughts by focusing on the picnic, sauna, beach.
Sitting in a room alone is just a metaphor for only thinking about your inner self. You can do that anywhere. And most people can't stand it, so they do something else. So, your conclusion is right, in that people would always prefer to do anything else other than focus on their inner thoughts. Like being in a place that distracts them.
I actually get comments from other passengers now how I can sit and look out the window for hours without music, movie or book.
In their rooms, they have other venues and probably less fear of negative self-conscious thoughts (too fat, ugly, whatever for the beach).
I wonder how many Hikikomori are in their own thoughts vs escaping into online venues.
I can think of half a dozen very personal conversations with random seatmates about their lives and problems. Something about opening up to strangers, and am pretty sure it wasn’t my personality or looks. Now that doesn’t happen anymore because you’re never trapped together with no outlets for hours on end.
One of my writing ideas (probably not original) was a retired psychologist who just flew on random flights and talked to whomever they sat next to. Now that plot would make no sense.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with doing things, but there is, perhaps, with always having to be doing something.
```
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
```
Eliot is often beyond me, but The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Ash Wednesday both made intuitive sense to me in many ways.
Solid thought isn't just good but necessary and we're seeing the symptoms of this everywhere.
It's hard to watch gel-haired youtubers going back and forth trying to out-apathy (and thereby out-cool) each other and come away with the idea that they are actually having an intellectual meta-debate about the allocation of time and attention. It seems far more likely that they saw someone win a debate by staying cool and projecting apathy, copied the behavior, and have spread it so far and wide that the tactic is now regularly played against itself with farcical results.
Navel-gazing isn't a virtue. Though ideally you probably want to be with people who think that the same stuff is important.
Also, we don't know what the subject was between OP and whoever, so its kinda hard to gauge what kind of lesson to derive from it
Anyway, I understand the social context of the phrase, but my point is that it's used so often in place a real argument and is a sign of the greater superficiality of most discussions today.
Clearly a disorder is something else other than healthy deep thought. Overthinking, dwelling (and brooding as the other commenter said) isn't the same as contemplative or investigative thought about a topic. Rather, it's the opposite and isn't very thoughtful at all.
That concept is not clear to me at least. There is a limited physical aspect to life and there are steep opportunity costs
Try getting a toddler to clean up his toys.
And yet, that experience was tinder for the start of font rendering in computing. Whether it is naval gazing or creating unique insight, it's only known in hindsight.
Most people cannot achieve that level of objectivity or self-awareness. That is measurable.
Personally I find all attempts at self-knowledge are just a constant game of trying to sieve truth from rationalization, and I go back and forth on which is which constantly. Ultimately I cannot tell the difference within myself, and I cannot trust that anyone else can either.
One of the main claims of some meditative traditions is that with enough practice you get to experience the workings of the mind. Once you get to experience them directly, you can see that they're projections and you can see through them.
Is that a bad attempt at humor or sheer ignorance?
Granted, those worlds are built from experiences gained outside my mind.
"That is why we like noise and activity so much. That is why imprisonment is such a horrific punishment. That is why the pleasure of being alone is incomprehensible. That is, in fact, the main joy of the condition of kingship, because people are constantly trying to amuse kings and provide them with all sorts of distraction.—The king is surrounded by people whose only thought is to entertain him and prevent him from thinking about himself. King though he may be, he is unhappy if he thinks about it"
https://books.google.com/books?id=KezeDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=P...
Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.
Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and high posts, are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the bustle which averts these thoughts of ours, and amuses us.
Reasons why we like the chase better than the quarry.
Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures.
The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself.
This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.
Why are ants and amoebas always moving? Their biological drives continue to give them orders and so they are never satiated.
Wouldn't that itself be a form of distraction. Your subconscious will be activated but your conscious mind be distracted.
I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.
Agreed.
> I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.
Generalizations about foraging populations are fraught with problems because there was a lot of diversity among them and its not possible to study them in a "pure" (untouched by agricultural peoples) setting.
Maybe because ant society expects it and can only function with ants constant in motion.
And talking about the kings, one of the pious said : “If the kings and the children of the kings knew what [felicity] we are in, they would fight us over it with their swords.”
Working from home this entire year, I have tried to practice taking at least 15 minutes everyday, couple of times a day, laying down and just listening to my thoughts, understanding my anxieties. Trying to understand why I feel the way I do, instead of running away from them by distracting myself by various means.
This new habit of mine truly has been a life saver in this year.
I didn't read his works enough, none apart from the above quote in fact, to comment on whether or not he recommends acknowledging our inner thoughts and contemplating on them.
As for me, I feel real and lasting relief from worshipping Allaah. It's something very tangible and enlightening. It might seem counterintuitive, but it does boost my productivity a lot, even though I ignore thinking about work during prayer.
Now, having belief in Allaah has its manifest benefits. I am happy as I write this. I am able to keep afloat a bit in trying times. I was able to come out of depression (and quite a few other mental illnesses). None of it I could achieve except by Allaah's help.
When I used to go to hospital for psychiatric treatment, the doctor used to advise me that whenever I feel anxious, I lie down on a bed, relax and think of some beautiful place, in order to ward off the bad feelings. So, even the best advice the doctor could give me was this.
And what better place to think of than Paradise?
What Pascal was explicit in saying is that there is no inherent happiness in material possessions. But if you know that there is a life after death, that there is a Paradise and a Hell, that there is a Merciful God who, if you believe in Him and obey Him, will reward you for you good deeds and forgive your bad deeds, you will be humble, you will be hopeful, and you will be happy.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Glad did I live and gladly die, This be the verse you grave for me: Home is the sailor, home from sea, - Robert Louis StevensonNot every religion considers eternal life desirable. In some forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, for example, the ultimate goal is to leave the cycle of death and rebirth.. not in to paradise, but in to nothingness.
Also, the ultimate reality in Buddhism, Hinduism, and (incidentally) mystic forms of Islam, is often described as being beyond words and even beyond conception, so there is a limited amount that could be said about it in ordinary language -- though that hasn't stopped people from trying.
In Buddhism one often hears the teachings described as the finger pointing towards the moon. Language may be inadequate to describe ultimate reality, but it can point to it.
The so called mystic Islam also known as Sufism, is a deviant sect, and is fundamentally a gateway to polytheism, as it borrows many practices from polytheistic religions. In fact, many of the famous ancient sufis have roots in India, where paganism and idol worshipping was and is still prevalent. Hence sufis are adored by Hindus.
I hope i could be clear to you
You'll find Sunnis who think Shiites are heretics, and Shiites who think Sunnis are heretics, and both are major branches of Islam.
Of course you'll find both Sunnis and Shiites who think Sufis are heretics, and Sufis who think Sunnis and Shiites are heretics (or at least don't understand the true or secret meaning of the Koran or of Islam).
And does the Koran have a secret meaning, or only a surface meaning? This important question itself is also a matter of opinion and will differ based on who you ask.
There have also been mystics in Islam apart from the Sufis: Avicenna, the Ismailis, and Alawites spring to mind.
As a non-Muslim, when I see the members of these sects disagree with one another as to who is a "true Muslim" or what is or isn't Islam, what reason do I have for believing any one of them over the others?
Their appeals to scripture, lineage, famous commentators and the like are not very convincing both because as a non-Muslim I have no reason to believe in any of them and because you can easily find other people who claim to be Muslims making pretty much the same appeals in support of completely different conclusions.
At this point in my life, anyone who considers the Koran their central scripture is a Muslim in my eyes.
If you have a better definition that doesn't rely on appeals to scripture, to lineage, nor to the authority of some person, I'd love to hear it.
I will start from the basics:
The fundamental word of Islam, the one word which differentiates between who is a Muslim and who is not is the well known Kalima (كلمة) of Islam, La ilaha illallaah. Which translates to there is none worthy of worship except Allaah. This statement encapsulates the entire monotheistic creed of Islam in it. It is the pivot of any Muslim’s religion. A Muslim strives to preserve this statement in his heart while believing in it. He does this by trying to ensure harmony in his speech and his deeds.
One who lacks firm belief in his heart in this word, is a weaker believer than one who has firm belief, even though both might utter the word in the same manner.
Though we can’t see what the heart contains and hence we can’t normally judge a person’s level of faith, his outward actions, to an extent, do communicate his level of belief. So much about this word.
The one who brought this word to the people was a man called Muhammad (upon him be peace) over 14 centuries ago. The people who he first invited to his religion were the people of of his birthplace, the city of Makkah. His people were originally on the religion of Abraham, worshipping the One God of all that exists, Allaah. But in due course of time, they forgot the truth and started worshiping idols.
So Muhammad (upon him be peace) was sent to them as Messenger by Allaah, just as Messengers from among men were sent by Allaah to earlier people, in order to warn them about the consequences of idol worship and to call them to the worship of the true God, Allaah. Some Messengers which were sent before him were Noah, Lot, Moses, Jonah, Jesus, all mentioned in the Bible and Qur-aan.
Muhammad (upon him be peace), warned the people of eternal hell if they did not believe in his Message and desist from idol worship. And he promised Paradise for whoever believed in him and acted upon what he commanded.
His Prophetic Mission lasted 23 years, of which the first 13 were spent in Makkah and the last 10 were in Madinah. He was made a Messenger at the age of 40, and he dies at the age of 63.
Throughout his mission, Allaah sent the Verses of His Book, Al -Qur-aan to guide him and his followers, gradually teaching them the rituals of prayer, charity, pilgrimage. As the Messenger (upon him be peace) and his followers were the subject of great deal of ridicule and torture, Allaah, in these Verses, also supported them and encouraged them. Allaah also taught His Messenger how to present his Message to people in the elegant way.
That’s all I could muster. Wish you best.
This illustrates that you have a fundamentalist streak in you: you've described a form of Islam you don't like as being "deviant". You're gatekeeping Islam.
Sufism is a later invention.
Eventually the prince does come into contact with suffering, and leads to him trying to find an end to suffering.
This doesn't fully make sense to me.
Sure, at some point your pleasure will end, but do you have to judge something by its end? Why not judge it by its beginning or middle instead?
It's like saying "don't enjoy your meal, because at some point later you're going to get hungry".
That makes no sense to me.
Also, regarding the lack of meaning of distraction and entertainment, it's not like "nothingness" (which Buddhism tries to put in its place) has any meaning either. So I'm not sure why one should seek to put one meaningless thing in the place of another.
Suffering can be temporarily staved off, but not completely removed.
Pretty words, but do they mean anything? For example, if I reach this state, will it be revealed to me why there is something rather than nothing? I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
I'm interested in meditation to learn more about my own body and mind, maybe improve my life somehow. But IMHO the discussions around it could do with less of this type of mystic woo.
Well, they have, but nobody believes them :)
In any case, I understand your attitude to the mystic woo. It used to put me off a lot when I started meditating.
Now I take it as simply something that's there. They are statements that someone makes. If they're talking about states that someone could reach and they also give instructions, I might consider trying them to see what happens.
In any case as a programmer and scientifically minded meditator, I encourage you to pursue your interest in meditation. Try different techniques until you find something that works. Take it easy, take it slow, cultivate play and joy in your practice. If you manage to do that, you'll reap the fruit of your practice.
I wish you good luck!
Although a bit verbose and repetitive at times, I liked the exploration of the concepts of attention and peripheral awareness. I may give the "stage one" instructions a try, and buy the rest of the book if it goes well.
In the first few sentences it talks about the "soul" wanting to return back to it's source, the "supreme consciousness". Then a couple pages further, a statement about reincarnation:
"If you don’t believe in rebirth then this book will be of little use to you. As I said earlier, meditation to me is the most powerful tool to harness and channelize the restive and other tendencies of the mind we’ve been carrying with us over lifetimes."
FWIW I have a friend who is deep into spirituality, still works at a FAANG but definitely feels like he can attain higher states of awareness in his meditations. I don’t see him active on social media, he leads a reasonably ascetic life and so on.
This person doesn’t have much success in making others believe. At best, he gets ‘hey, I am happy that you’re happy’ from folks like me, most feedback is around ‘mystic woo’. I have another friend deep in this world, but she balances it with real world and doesn’t really proselytize.
I think it is very much a catch 22. You won’t believe it unless you’re doing it. So if belief is required for you to give it a shot, that’s a non-starter.
I would say try it out and make up your own mind! What do you got to lose anyway - stay away from holy men who make you uncomfortable, start with books or YouTube!
If the belief is weak (or false), it might lead to confusion and distrust, which will make it impossible to learn anything.
Also, experiencing heightened states of awareness is not necessarily beneficial, people on drugs experience it routinely.
Take the biases that we've heard about in image recognition where these ML models misclassify black people. If a person had done that you would accuse them of racist beliefs.
Why is the computer model so different? Because you don't want to believe that computers can reach consciousness? (I don't either at this point but time will tell. We don't really know enough - or I don't - about what consciousness is and how it works.)
Otherwise, chatbots are very good at learning abusive and racist language. It's due to our belief that it's not right and decent that we train them using a bias. And it's only due to beliefs that we rein in the rogue AI which misclassifies black people.
Edit: If you still want to think of belief as an input node whose link has weight, then set the weight to infinite
What do the words "occult practices" mean to you? Do you consider them bad? If so, why?
And yes Marxism has died. Communism is dead. It’s just a name for brutality and dictatorship.
Contemplation of dependent origination is a meditative practice.
Is there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
Yes.
> For example, if I reach this state, will it be revealed to me why there is something rather than nothing?
More-or-less. You do get the punchline, and the joke is quite good.
> I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
They have, over and over and over again. However, it's not something that fits in words. You have to stop wording in your mind, and know. Literally the first line in the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao."
Meditation sans "mystic woo" is like using your car only to drive from your garage to your mailbox at the end of the driveway to get your mail and back. You might learn a little more about your own car, and maybe improve your mail-retrieval somehow, but you're not really going anywhere, eh?
My takeaway is that there's something in this meditation thing. At the very least, concentrating on a static imaginary shape activates some kind of drainage system in the brain: for a few minutes you feel what a clogged pipe would feel when it's being cleaned by a powerful water stream. That effect alone seems valuable.
Regarding the meaning of meditation, my conclusion is that it's a whistle. Just like you'd produce a certain whistle to summon an animal or a bird, you'd sharply imagine a certain shape or symbol to summon ideas or certain effects. The former is how you get inspiration. "Mysticism" begins when you are able to produce this whistle the right way and when you know which thoughts or symbols to target.
The most comprehensive explanation of meditation that's available in English is probably lamrim, volume 4 (500 or so pages, described by its author as a brief summary of key concepts from canonical sources that an interested reader should read himself).
Sounds like a walk in the park for an ascetic. We forget how comfortable we’ve become, 250 years ago this would have been your average Tuesday.
It was more about questioning the relevance (and authenticity) of "deep mysteries" and "existence" etc. It was not about whether or not human beings can train themselves to endure such difficulties. Which they can, apparently.
When you said "it would be a cake walk for an ascetic" I thought that by ascetic you meant one who is into meditation and all such "deep realities". Not Wim Hof.
Nevertherless, I personally don't see any virtue in being hungry in -1 degree celsius, if I have food and a warm home. Except in case someone is making money out of it, like Wim.
"The researchers collected data during the unique ceremony in Tibet, where nuns were able to raise their core body temperature and dry up wet sheets wrapped around their bodies in the cold Himalayan weather (-25 degree Celsius) while meditating. Using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings and temperature measures, the team observed increases in core body temperature up to 38.3 degree Celsius..."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130408084858.h...
If it’s scientific then it must be well understood in terms of cause and effect. In which case, it is like any other physical phenomenon, nothing special.
And if it’s not scientific, rather if it’s a mystery, then scientists will have to take a call on what is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
This is really interesting from a modern perspective. I'm an audiophile - I've spent countless hours just sitting in a chair in front of a stereo system I've spent a couple thousand on. If I ever lapse into non-attention to the music, I try and get back to the music. It's like mindfulness meditation, but unlike the monk, my mind is focusing on a sense, not emptying itself.
On the other hand, I can't lie in bed for more than two minutes without deep introspection - my morality, arguments for and against all positions, what projects I want to work on, the papers I've read, etc.
But before writing some comments on this website and elsewhere, I'll have a deep think about what I'm arguing, and why. Other times I'll just jump at it for the engagement, the thrill of refreshing in the morning to check the Hacker News Engagement Number, whatever else. I've tried to make an effort to not read outrage-bait on Reddit, I've deleted my Twitter account years ago, I've done countless things. This i my third HN account.
The best part of my day, after work and my energy is exhausted? Gaming. I only play one game - online and multi-player, with an Icelandic man I've never met. It's all a distraction. Why continue learning piano, Japanese, philosophy, literature, introspection, when I have this pleasure right here? Where will I be in 30 years? 20 years? Even writing this comment sadness comes over me.
To think that in the 19th century, there were men being compared to Hegel and Feuerbach at age 21. What the hell am I doing?
Like 3-5 men (i.e. the Young Hegelians) among a billion people?
It's not like it was some common accomplishment...
For December, I quit sugar, social media, and video games. It's been really interesting to notice what state I'm in when I go to reach for those things. Sometimes it's just habit, but often it's because I'm uncomfortable or in distress and want to avoid those feelings. But indulging in those things often just kicks the problem down the road.
Indeed, breaking my social media habits reminds me of Oscar Wilde talking about cigarettes: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?" The same for me is definitely true with Twitter and Facebook. An infinite feed of shiny, entertaining, funny, and outraging things, but almost nothing that's ever satisfying.
HN content tends to be longer-form which I feel is quite different from the typical infinite scrolling for quick dopamine hits on sites like Reddit or Twitter or Facebook.
The articles and the conversations are better quality than on any other social media with the added bonus that what I read is relevant for my daily job and career.
At the same time, it's still distracting, I almost never finish an article and go straight to the comments, thinking "entertain me, comment section". I feel productive, but in reality, it's superficial knowledge, and spending time here is time I don't spend on actually working on my goals.
In the end, it's all about balancing the pros and cons. For Facebook, Instagram, it's easy, I don't use them. For Twitter, I focus exclusively on tech so that I don't end up in a pointless yet vicious fight. For HN, it's spending 10 minutes on the top articles, keeping up with important industry news every second day.
I've spent countless hours in the last ~5 years on reading seemingly useful articles, and comment sections.
I cannot pinpoint even one instance where anything helped me IRL.
Something might've helped indirectly, but the connection is not clear.
As a personal example, I have noticed how my way of discussing heated topics has changed based on discourse I have seen here.
And this would not have happened if I didn't invest time similar to yourself.
This is a hit or miss though, because you either identify specific ways to improve or not, and you may or may not actually improve those identified skills by reading trough the comments (and not taking action).
If improvement is the goal, then there are more efficient ways to eg. learn better ways to discuss heated topics (like reading a specific book on the topic, or attending a "Nonviolent Communication" workshop).
The more I think about this the more HN only seems like a place to get a specific flavour of entertainment (which I personally like), but nothing more.
If you disable the notifications, that's good for you. But you're a small exceptional minority.
HN afaik has no such feature at all.
Notifications, addictive design and gamification are really bad practices that we should try to avoid - but the underlying drug of social media is that someone noticed and reacted to your content, and HN provides that just like Facebook or Twitter.
I turn off notifications on my phone for almost any app. It's just way too annoying. I'll get to it when I get to it! I guess I'm part of that minority mentioned above but as you say I do keep coming back too. It's not black and white but we can stay on the healthy side.
If I try to find an analogy, it's the difference between sitting by the fire in the evening and chatting with other people vs. spending the entire day running around listening to and actively spreading rumors.
Just like that if you want to eat less meat because of the environment, just eat less meat. If you eat selected meat once in a while on selected occasions this won't make you a heretic, because you are still reaching your goal of reducing your impact on the environment etc.
The people who say "if you want to reduce X you are a heretic if you don't abstain 100% from using X" are projecting their own lack of dicipline onto others — they feel they wouldn't have the discipline to do it, but also realise it would be good for them to have it. So they have to invent an excuse why this is a goal that cannot be reached, not worth reaching etc.
Being a free thinking and acting person fundamentally means also to notice when you are manipulating yourself by making your thinking fit the image you already have of the world. I for example often fall into the trap of "if I can't do it perfectly it might not be worth doing at all", and because I know that, I try to work against it.
So what your comment does here is undermining another people's effort to be in control of their social media environment. Why you deem such an act necessary should be something you should know yourself.
No, for the purposes of what I'm doing, HN was not included in that. From my perspective, HN isn't really designed for addiction in the same way. No personalized, UAM-optimized algorithmic feed, no infinite river of small content bites, no rich mechanisms for interaction. And, very importantly, it has the noprocrast feature, which I long ago set to low usage levels.
And as others point out, it's not like I took some sort of vow of internet chastity to a god who will now smite me because I looked at HN. The point was to partially undo some bad habits that had built up during the election cycle. I'll often make some 1-month change at the beginning of the month. For me it's valuable mainly as self-experiment and a way of getting back to some baseline.
I mean, it's fine that you feel this way, and you are probably correct - it wasn't designed for it. But I suspect for a lot of us , me included, it serves that exact purpose. I post so that strangers on the internet read it and give me likes. I compulsively check my comments section on my account to see how many upvotes my comments have. Every time I see my total Upvote count go up, I get excited and I rush to see who has agreed with me again. If it goes down I immediately get angry and defensive that someone is downvoting what I said. And surely, you participate in the same process, even if you don't feel as strongly about it - otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
It might not have been designed this way but it's exactly what it is. And clearly upvote/downvote system didn't happen by an accident, it's there for a reason.
It encourages and prominently displays good quality comments, and discourages and buries poor quality comments. It's not a perfect system as a lot of people vote based on whether they happen to agree rather than based on a comment's quality, but it's much better than nothing.
Slashdot's approach is to have different kinds of upvote (Insightful, Funny, etc) and different kinds of downvote (Off-topic, Flamebait, etc), and scores are clamped, iirc the lowest value is -1 and the highest is +5.
https://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml
edit: Now I see the numbers. The quality of posts is still far better than Reddit and the interactions less addictive, at least in my experience.
Mostly. There is an unconscious hive mind on HN too, and it downvotes when you disagree with it. It just happens that most commenters belong to it, at least most of the time.
The act of writing out your thoughts gives them added clarity. This holds for long(er)-form comment-based sites such as HN and Reddit, not so much for FB and Twitter.
Feels familiar, but I'm still in control. Much like with alcohol.
This system has been corrupted on websites like reddit to become a "like" system, but outside of very divisive political topics it still works mostly as intended on HN: they moderate bad contributions, not stuff people disagree with.
You can actually observe this in this very thread so far: while people express opposite viewpoints at this moment none of the comment are in the negative. I'm sure that on Reddit the hivemind would've decided what the Right Opinion(tm) would be and people disagreeing would be sitting at -200 comment score.
Maybe the system could be pushed further and hide the scores even for your own comments though, removing all gamification. I don't know if it would improve things but I'd be curious to see how it would impact the quality of the discourse.
>otherwise, why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet or speak to again?
I mean even on forums/mailing lists/newsgroups/BBSs/imageboards without scoring system (or even publicly identifiable accounts) people would do the same thing, so I think that you overestimate the influence of the scoring system. I guess the closest equivalent on these other forums in general is getting "replies", i.e. engagement with your content, which I suppose is what we really crave in the end. We want people to listen to us.
Beyond that HN does have a few huge quality advantages over other social media. A big one is that the focus is still on textual content, not images and videos which means that you have to take some time to digest every story instead of mindlessly scrolling through the main page one gif at a time.
News readers had scoring. Neither the NNTP protocol, nor NNTP servers, had a scoring mechanism, and certainly not one that was distributed over the world-wide Usenet infrastructure.
If you think otherwise, can you point to (e.g.) an RFC where it is documented?
As mentioned earlier, engagement seemed to be the goal. And the newsgroups I frequented were usually about getting help with a tech problem, or helping someone else out, which has largely been replaced by Stack Overflow.
A lot of people seemed to have liked (do like?) the system that Slashdot came up with: choose a random group of people every day and give them moderator posts to police the discussions. However, if you post in that day you lose your moderator points.
They seem to have gone with a wisdom-of-the-subset-of-the-crowds instead of a wisdom-of-the-entire-crowd/mob.
Disagree, a lot.
I've railed against it, but pg (the site owner) noted that voting as a proxy for like/dislike was not improper use on HN, much to my chagrin. In the early days (of my use, back on my first HN account) voting seemed mostly to be done to move a comment to it's "proper place".
Nowadays very good comments get greyed to non-readability. I find myself so often vouching for things I disagree with because comments that add well structured, logical, or interesting thoughts get voted out of view because they go against the group norms.
I realized the aforementioned, checking my points and who responded what to my thoughts. I actually made an adblock rule to block out my points. So I dont get that rush, because I realized that too, that everytime I arrive at HN, I just checked my points, and if it were more than before, I felt the rush. And I just knew it was bad, and that is not indeed what I come for to this site.
As to the design question, I think the biggest things it's missing for me versus modern social networks in terms of addiction potential: 1) river-of-content setup; 2) algorithmic feed with personalized engagement; 3) images; 4) video; 5) wide topic variety; 6) follow graph; 7) real-world social connections in the platform; 8) on-platform notifications; 9) on-phone notifications.
> why are you replying to strangers that you are unlikely to ever meet
For me this platform is as close as I have to discussing things with my profession. So both with my professional Twitter account and this account, I see it as an opportunity to influence my field a bit and support younger colleagues where I can. Were it not for that, I'd just consume it in a read-only way, as over the years I've come to see on-line argumentation as unhealthy for me.
business only policy, during 9-5. no news/socialmedia, cannot discuss irrelevant issues with my cofounder. Otherwise, I can go into rabbit holes for hours to research certain topic if my brain thinks that it is interesting.
Why not? Do you not value discussion, hearing new ideas, learning new concepts, having a soundboard for your thoughts? I also like sharing knowledge and participation in the process of humanity developing its collective memeplex (or at least fooling myself that I'm doing that). The fact that I'm not going to meet the people I discuss with has no bearing at all.
While what you describe in your comment is a factor, I cannot agree the rush is the dominant factor for commenting for me.
I do, but ultimately, I post because I want someone else to read what I said and comment on it(good or bad). It triggers the same release of oxitocin in my brain that seeing likes on a post does.
I have noticed the same reactions myself, and dislike them. I am slowly and gradually learning to be able to deflect that angry defensive reply impulse. Simple awareness seems to be the first step. I don't know yet what to do about the upvote thrill.
I use it only as a news delivery system, and in there there's already pathological signs - for instance I rarely skip reading anything that pushbullet displays. And if by accident I "brush it aside" (literally), then I open the app and recover the link.
Like in a social media you mean?.. :)
I’m not sure there are « good » and « bad » platforms. It’s not about the platform, it’s about our usage.
I think you may need to add a few more months to this social media cleanse...
Just because HN doesn't have formal attributes of addictive social media like tailored feeds, shiny pictures, endless scrolling, etc., it doesn't mean that it's very different. I'm saying that, because I managed to get rid of almost all addictive sites, but HN sticks, and I still spend far more time here than I'd like to admit. If you look at it closer: this is an _endless_ list of _news_ with _a lot_ of _comments_ from your _peers_ that you _engage_ with. If you take words in italic it's obvious that this is exactly what makes other social media addictive. "News" and "peers" are the most important words here of course.
In a way, I believe sites like HN are even worse than others because they are somewhat disguised. I shrug FB, twitter and instagram easily (never actually even got into them), Reddit was harder but their stupid redesign made it much easier, HN sill stands for me.
I don’t consider HN to be social media anymore than a discussion forum on gardening is social media.
HN is not a SV startup selling ads spying on you manipulating your behaviour to sell crap or breaking democracy or depressing teenagers into suicide, it’s just not comparable and these false equivalences are just so tiring. Stop trying to bring other people down.
For some context I don't consider things like forums to be social media. As an early internet denizen I had lots of thoughtful discourse with folks that reminds me of what I experience at HN. I continue to use IRC, which I also don't consider to be social media.
So what makes them different? I think it's the underlying technology. The graph, our ability to search it and correlate immediate (mostly irrelevant) commonality is what makes things dangerous.
Humans are full of dumb or awful thoughts. They'll combat these ideas or thoughts with alternatives regularly which end up referring to as cognitive dissonance. The result is that these lesser ideas widdle away or drop off completely. On social media, the graph doesn't forget and continues to tie you to people, ideas, and thoughts that are increasingly useless. While this sells ads and generates interest in new products it doesn't align well to the way humans have discourse, socialize, or just relate in general.
That to say, HN isn't social media to me.
very valuable quote
Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit religious order, set up a daily ritual to help keep himself (and those in the order) centred:
> To help me remember the five steps, I like to use a 5-Rs mnemonic:
> Relish the moments that went well and all of the gifts I have today.
> Request the Spirit to lead me through my review of the day.
> Review the day.
> Repent of any mistakes or failures.
> Resolve, in concrete ways, to live tomorrow well.
* https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/ignatian-spir...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_Exercises_of_Ignatiu...
If you go online you can probably find a Jesuit retreat centre not too far from you where you can spend (say) eight days in total silence and seclusion; you can optionally (though recommended) talk with a spiritual director once a day to help you sort through anything that bubbles up during your stay.
The BBC had a short doc where a bunch of random men and women went through the exercise (episodes are available online if you search):
* https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2117584/
Perhaps worthwhile, even if that is not your particular worldview.
(This is separate than what monks do, which is seclusion from the world.)
Most faiths in the world have spiritual traditions where silence and reflection are done. Probably possible to find similar retreat centres following their traditions. It seems that it is only the modern secular worldview that hasn't adopted something (yet?). I think this is something most modern philosophical worldviews (especially in the materialist bend) overlook: human 'spiritually' (for lack of a better word).
It's akin to eating processed snacks when you're hungry, instead of nutrient whole foods
Facebook has been making it pretty easy for me to quit - it's mostly been an unending stream of boring advertisements with maybe one or two meaningful posts from friends.
Someone can paste it here after googling.
Couldn't someone just as easily use that quiet time to concoct 17 brand new ways to repackage trickle-down economics?
I don't. Although if reading qualifies as "doing something", I guess I'm almost never not doing anything, because if I don't have anything else to do, I almost always read. Of course I've always been careful to have plenty of reading material on hand; one nice thing about a smartphone is that you can carry a whole library around with you wherever you go.
In situations where I genuinely have nothing to do, not even read, I might get bored if I can't come up with something to think about, but I wouldn't say it's uncomfortable for me to not do anything. It's just a situation where it's on me to come up with something to think about.
I do like not doing anything, particularly not having to do anything. Perhaps over a longer time period I would think differently, but so far I haven't felt it. However, not doing anything is a waste of time. It doesn't really give me anything and excessive wasting of time has negative consequences on life. If I were wealthy enough then I'd probably do it way more.