We're all being sucked in the internet. It's so easy to become addict to video, podcasts, games, etc. nowadays that I would not be surprised if that becomes a major society issue.
I always thought in 20 years, Facebook (or its equivalent) will have warning labels similar to how cigarettes do now. People should be free to do as they please, but I would hope that as a society, we would at least inform people as to what the actual product is designed to do.
You could think of it like the nutrition labels on food. Imagine a pop up when you log onto reddit saying "this site on average engages users for 90-120 minutes per session". That would give you some forethought about how much value you're getting from the engagement and prompt you to make a different decision. Or at least a more informed decision.
The problem I have is that some of the content is really good. I have been able to lose weight consistently and easily because I found resources online that helped me understand the science and cut through all the bullshit that we are inundated with around nutrition. My confidence and results in investing are at an all time high because I can fill in the gaps of understanding with a range of experts on YouTube.
But, it does seems like an addiction when I want to accomplish a task and 20 minutes into that task I'm back on YouTube or forums looking for more interesting data.
1. Physiological: This is relatively easy. The key is to understand how to get an accurate account of incoming calories and an accurate count of outgoing calories. When you have an accurate count of those you can lose weight. Andrew Huberman is really good on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqPGXG5TlZw&ab_channel=Andre...
I say this one is easy because it is very easy to be misinformed about food. For example, someone may have heard that salads or protein bars are low calorie and healthy, but that isn't necessarily true. And once they realize that they can adjust their food intake to account for accidently over eating.
2. Psychological: Generally speaking, a lot of people with drug, alcohol, or food problems are dealing with some sort of stress, anxiety, depression, or childhood trama. Everyone has a limit to their will power. So even if you strengthen your will power if there is another force acting against that will power it will win and you will stress eat or stress drink. Depending on this situation, Therapy, Meditation, life changes, rehab can help.
Not sure but anyway, 20 years ago it might have been accidentally addicting just because it was new, shiny and interesting. Today it's addicting because some people are employed full-time by large companies to make their products more addicting, and that's part of their OKRs and more ("Engagement" being one such metric that many companies try to increase religiously)
Yes. It might have been addicting too back then but no one I knew of was checking news/social networks 24/7 and was always available online.. because these things did not exist in the way they do today.
You went online to do something specific: play, research something or whatever else and you were not distracted by 500 services fighting for your attention. It was a much healthier way of consuming.
20 years ago you still had to go and search if you wanted to see something. Now you have endless streams of recommendations that do the thinking for you. All you got to do now is watch and consume. And of course 20 years ago we didn't even have Youtube, it was mostly all still mostly just text.
Very well written article. Congrats on defeating your tech addiction this time.
It is amazing how much thought and effort goes into designing Web2.0 to keep delivering small dopamine hits. I too burn thru hours watching tech videos, browsing tech subreddits, looking for juicy HN posts and rarely come across articles about how the stickiness is engineered. Maybe I'm browsing the wrong stuff or maybe they're just too embarrassed to publish it.
This hits hard. I recently counted hours watched on YT (via history export) and OH MY GD, it averaged around 3 hours daily throught the year, for several years. I just imagined WHAT IF I have spent this amount of effort and time on ANYTHING else: playing an instrument, learning a new language, coding a side-project. The thought scared me so much, aka the difference between current me and "potential" me that I have abstained from YT... for a week, and then I've slipped back. I am truly powerless, damn. Any other ideas besides cold turkey? I mean, some "quality time" needs also to exist, you cannot abstain from everything, right? Or is this a fallacy that gets alcoholics backs to alcohol?
There is no "official" way of doing this (as I imagine it will scare people away). You have to export your watch history as JSON that contains watch date and video ID. Then you obtain API key from google and iterate over all video IDs and add up video lengths. Yes, this is inaccurate for cases when you scroll thorugh a video and not watch it completely.
For all of this there were multiple projects on github that do all of this + with plots.
Ackshually, the mobile apps have statistics on watching, which seem to include what was watched on the desktop. Here's the support page about the feature: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9052667
Apparently videos watched on the desktop aren't counted correctly, but I imagine it's not worse than summing the durations.
I started learning Japanese about two years ago now and now all of the time I used to waste watching YouTube is spent watching YouTube in Japanese as language practice. It's still the same activity but is at least somewhat productive. I barely go on Hacker News too, since it feels like more of a waste of time ("I could be studying Japanese right now!").
Self study is weird. I'm having a hard time finding good resources because I feel like the content is either too easy, not applicable by me, or completely impenetrable. I lack vocabulary and kanji knowledge to actually utilize grammar I've learned, but I also don't do well with rote memorization so I need material that's interesting and practical to learn with.
Yeah, for me my grammar is pretty weak, but I think my vocabulary is better. But I feel the same way about content. It's either too easy, really boring, or way too hard.
It really depends on what you like. I personally just found Japanese versions of what I liked watching in English (cooking shows, true crime, some comedy, let's plays). Interestingly I found a new interest in house makeover shows after I saw some completely insane makeovers on 大改造 (in one episode they put the entire house on rails and pulled it to the side temporarily in order to make new foundations).
The only thing I couldn't find an abundance of is long-form video essays -- it seems that (for whatever reason) that isn't something that Japanese YouTube audiences want to watch. TV shows make documentaries which are kind of similar but those are also fairly hard to find.
Just found it interesting to be honest. I might move there for a short time just to experience it, but I wouldn't plan to live there for the long term.
still a lot, imho. considering how much we spend on commute, work, sport, preparing food and socializing, this is basically almost all your time budget as a "free" time. Then its either wasted consuming addictive crap or doing something interesting with it.
> I just imagined WHAT IF I have spent this amount of effort and time on ANYTHING else: playing an instrument, learning a new language, coding a side-project
This is a very unfair set of "ANYTHING else". I am sure you can come up with more real world list of what other people actually do after work, and that might make you feel a little more lenient about your own choices and needs.
I even have cron job which over writes /etc/hosts with an /etc/hosts.bak with that content and i have disabled any dns caching in firefox (don't ask me how). Yet ....
Sigh ....
Oh smart. I sometimes remove it and then forget to put it back, and forget that it was something I was supposed to put back, and also forget that those sites were something I was trying to avoid, so visiting them doesn't prompt me to put them back. The brain is really good at forgetting those minor details.
Read what Ted has to say about the necessity of going through the power process (paragraphs 33 onward) and the motives of scientists (paragraphs 87 onward) for some perspective in his manifesto on Industrial Society and Its Future:
Not to say it's a great use of your time, but watching YouTube videos is a fairly passive activity. You can do it when you're otherwise out of energy and barely able to pay attention, so it isn't necessarily competing with blocks of time in which you can do something like code up side projects and learn to play new instruments.
Also, again maybe not for you, but a lot of people's numbers if they're just looking at watch history are going to be totally out of whack if they're using YouTube as a music streaming service. My wife's account is the one logged into our television and this would constitute the vast bulk of watch hours, having music on in the background while cleaning the house, cooking dinner, and doing a whole lot of other things. You definitely can't practice tuba in the background while also cooking and cleaning.
Very un-HN take but maybe you're not meant to be 100% efficient all the time, maybe having some time to be passive and relax is good actually. Maybe we work far too much already and expecting to be additionally productive outside those hours is an express train to burnout?
I don't disagree with this but the constant state of being "plugged in" is the issue. Mind wandering is a real useful practice and the being plugged in is antithetical to mind wandering.
Some of my most clearest thoughts, ideas, or beliefs came to me when I was just walking on the street not listening to podcasts, audio books, music or browsing social media.
I think it's far more useful to literally stare at a wall for 3 hours than just mindlessly watch youtube videos. I say this as someone who is addicted to social media/internet as well and struggle very hard to overcome.
What I do is use the freedom app to set time limits and ban these sites during periods of the week. I bought one of those timed safes where I stick my phone in to completely stop the temptation for 4 or 6 hours. I know I can't completely end it, but what I want to do is just nudge myself to do something else. Instead of grabbing a phone maybe I'll attempt to read a book, or draw, or work on some data visualizations, or contribute to OSS. All activities I'd say I value more than browsing reddit (or twitter or youtube or HN) for hours every night, but my actions prove otherwise.
I'm not saying I've improved my habits 300% but at the beginning of the year I would read a book for 5 minutes put the book down pick up my phone then read reddit for an hour; at least now I can read a book for 45 minutes without being distracted. It hurts writing this because in college I'd read nearly 500 pages a week + my readings for class, I'd read nearly 200 books a year but over the last 5 years I've probably read 3.
I don't know where I'm going with this, I guess my mind wanders when writing as well...
It sounds like you're already approaching this idea on your own, but if you haven't checked it out already you should have a look at Digital Minimalism [1]. It's a really well thought out analysis of exactly what you're describing. In theory, a few hours here and there shouldn't be an issue. However, the main problem with modern media (social and otherwise) is that it is very insidious. It's not just about the time spent indulging, but also what that indulgence does to your mental state throughout the rest of the day.
Thanks for the suggestion; but after reading one similar book, Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, and another that was tangentially related, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. I now feel tapped out of the genre.
One thing I enjoyed about Four Thousand Weeks was the story how people viewed work 100s and thousands of years ago, how whatever you didn't finish that day, you had time tomorrow to continue; I think this is a useful idea because modern society feels so "rushed" over work that isn't exactly useful. Also the idea of JOMO (joy of missing out); it was just a new heuristic introduced to me. We make choices all the time, we neglect doing things all the time. It's just a part of life, missing out on things means enjoying others It sounds like it's more stressful but it's not, at least how the book describes this.
With Stolen Focus, I was a fan of the author's interview about his other book "Lost Connections" when he appeared on an episode of econtalk [1]. I won't say much else about Stolen Focus, except his tips on what he does to lessen the nodge toward social media is what I now do as well.
The self-perceived problem with such behavior is not the hours spent per se, but the hours spent in state of absent consciousness. You jump from one compulsory behavior to another, it's not fun, it's just unconscious existence.
Instead of seeing them trying to maximize efficiency, think of them trying to maximize fulfillment. Now it makes more sense why binging Youtube (or whatever) might be a problem. And it's not about getting work done.
It's about being happy with the life you're living, the life you chose, and being able to take control to work towards your fulfilling desires rather than just choosing the feel-good compulsions forever.
>I just imagined WHAT IF I have spent this amount of effort and time on ANYTHING else:
That's impossible. You can click on a youtube video instantly at any moment and waste 3 hours thanks to the power of the algorithm. Spending that time on anything specific would require you to plan that into your schedule. You are not going to work on a side project when you think you have 30 min for some "harmless" fun but you sure are going to be trapped by the algorithm for three hours without planning to do so.
If you have YouTube Premium & the YouTube mobile app; click on your profile picture, then YouTube Premium Benefits. It'll tell you there, of all places, your total "Ad-free video watchtime"; doesn't include the hours watched without Premium, not organizing it per day, not the greatest analytics, but its a number that will surprise every person reading this.
A lot of the addictive component comes from the ML generated suggestions.
Just curate a decently small list of high quality channels and only browse via the subscriptions list. You'll know when you're all caught up and the FOMO isn't there. You'll still catch the stuff you're interested in, but you won't be pulled in a million other random directions.
That said, I have the YouTube bug pretty bad myself.
Learning to play an instrument is fun and can be just as addicting. I'd recommend a small form keyboard that can be kept nearby at all times. I adore my Yamaha Reface CP, if you manage to find one. The best part - grinding through chords, arpeggios, scales and challenging song sections to get them into muscle memory can be done while watching unrelated videos.
This is very real. The time adds up and it's often not the best way to relax/learn. Not only you could spend this time being productive, you could also just be resting or sleeping or just reflecting on your life.
When you stop being able to participate, know anything about, learn about, or do anything else in a community without the internet, what other choice do you have?
> I'm simply incapable of doing things I've set out to do. Simple things. Everything is difficult.
“Independent discharges of dopamine neurons (tonic or pacemaker firing) determine the motivation to respond to such cues. As a result of habitual intake of addictive drugs, dopamine receptors expressed in the brain are decreased, thereby reducing interest in activities not already stamped in by habitual rewards.”
I'd like to add a couple more ideas, because what you're describing in your article is spot on, and I believe can be generalized past your own experience.
> Another angle that makes this ever more distressing is that my memory is very, very fallible ... I can confidently say that I've done nothing I said I would do there.”
Herbert Simon says: “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”.
As an information-addict myself, I've been meditating a lot about this topic. During the past two years I've been researching it from a psychological perspective (And for that, I'm grateful to @ericd for this HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24581016). I'll throw in some resources that I've came across during this journey, in case anyone finds them useful:
It should also be mentioned that the most addictive and dopaminergic drugs most people in the Anglosphere consume daily are the wide variety of pre-made pre-cooked fast food meals which are engineered for maximum palatability. These days this goes for just about everything that isn't bought in the grocery store in its purest form. Just about every product on the shelves these days is contaminated with engineered ingredients to get you a stronger feeling of reward so you come back for more.
“Talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that doesn’t taste good.” - Stephen Sanger, head of General Mills
You can search the web using that quote to begin your descent into the rabbit hole.
The food you eat does not just affect your body weight. It also affects your mental state.
I've read The Molecule of More and didn't consider it all too great of a read.
There were some correlations that didn't sit well with me - one, off the top of my head, was an implication that MDMA consumption could make me politically conservative.
I personally would recommend just Huberman as he covers Dopamine to a great extent.
Are you very familiar with ADHD? It's very much the same effect, except instead of substance abuse/addiction as the cause, it's a natural chronic deficit in stimulation.
It scares me how much this reminds me of myself. I don't know how I was able to keep my job (and keep the roof over my family's heads) with my habit of not being able to concentrate on work at all because the minute I need to think a bit harder I immediately switch to reading news, HN or watching YouTube, only to finish my work late in the evening to save my ass (on good days).
Music works for me too. When I listen to music, the feeling of choosing between "fun" and "work" disappears because I get to do both. Once I am focusing on the work I no longer pay attention to the music and I don't stop having fun with the work.
The biggest problem is that I am randomly bored and watch a youtube video. It's just 15 minutes after all, how much could it hurt? and then I waste 2 hours which is 105 minutes more than I had when I started watching that video. Maybe I should play mobile games because those have those pesky daily energy limits that stop you from playing more.
Same, or mostly just mixes that go on for an hour or two which I can put on so I don't end up distracted clicking through tracks and discovering shit I want to get. I also have to remind myself to set time aside for checking tracklists on tracks.
Helps I got a side gig playing music haha but my bookmarks on that are gargantuan. The dancehall reggae section alone is massive. I never listen to that and get stuff done, really the best concentration music for me doesn't matter the BPM it just has to be mostly free of lyrical content. So work music is mostly electronic or classical.
What are you listening to that's high BPM for work? That hard techno shit out of Europe lately is a lot of fun, Anetha is incredible [1]
Lucy Stoner on Soundcloud has been good for me. I've been putting https://soundcloud.com/lucystoner/bangface# on pretty much on loop. Before that it was DJ Sharpnel's Youtube channel. It's an open question for me what the best ratio of beats to memes is; I like when the music makes me smile a few times over a track, but is mostly fast, melodic rhythm without voice - or voice without content; remixes with japanese samples work well, like https://soundcloud.com/dreamydust/ddmix32 .
Holy crap, someone knows about DJ Sharpnel—who are of course in fact a duo and are producers, not DJs. The music is truly a ‘cure for ADHD’, though (in the spirit of https://youtu.be/DDFNgs7gp8M). Plus they have a whole label of friendly producers with similar taste and were around actively for more than a decade, so there's plenty of goodness.
Their VRDJ vtuber stuff qualifies as DJ work, surely? (Even if it sounds very different than their album stuff.)
Anyway, my pet theory is that the fast music acts as a stimulant, raising activity in every part of the brain - including executive function. Same principle as amphetamines.
That's funny, haven't heard that name in ages. I remember in like 2005 when you could get some mixes in low quality mp3s of japanese makina (that's what they called it before nightcore or anything) but to get them shipped on high quality cd-r's stateside you'd be paying like 100-200$. It's a weird musical tradition that traces itself all the way back to spain's take on early happy hardcore out of scotland (Check newton - streamline as an example of spanish makina which you still hear at football games today).
Shit is WAY too spazzy for me to focus though, I guess you guys got different brainwaves than I do. It's funny because in the suggestions I got this, titled pov: you have adhd (breakcore mix) [1]
It's a bit too spazzy for me as well. Sharpnel isn't always like that though. (Skip any songs by killingscum (alias) if you don't like that style. :P) I mean, take something like Invisible Trigger [1], it's a lot more melodically and thematically stable.
I think personally what I like about them is as much as they're not above taking some sample and running it into the ground, they have a really good ear for melody and pathos. IMO all their best songs start by them going "this anime soundtrack is great, but it could be about 25% faster and more high pitched and backed by a really hard beat." And you know, they're usually right.
A really good example for me is [2], Jersey*Spirit, which is a remix of Try Unite! [3], some anime opening. I think depending on which you listen to first you're going to have a totally different idea of how that melody is supposed to go, because as far as I can tell without a music education, by inserting a break with a slowed down voice sample and leaving out some parts, Sharpnel's version puts the verse emphasis on a totally different measure than the original (the "fly away" part is the "B" measure in the original, and the "A" measure in Jersey*Spirit). Would you have heard that was in there? I wouldn't! And I'm not making a statement on which take is better, but to me, having heard Sharpnel's take first, the just original seems unbearably slow, and also they should put that melodic idea in the center instead.
edit: And that's how I learnt that HNews strips unicode symbols...
edit: Also I challenge you to listen to Watashi wa Maid without getting it stuck permanently in your head. [4] but note that the album art is very nsfw. (Yes this was the only version I could find. Youtube probably keeps taking it down, can't imagine why.) Then compare to the [5] original - if you can, without falling asleep!
edit: Also that's from a hentai OVA. I should note that. Fucking Sharpnel, how do they find this stuff... but you can't argue they don't elevate it above the source material.
edit: As a final link, here's a (VR) DJ set they did recently that I like a lot. [6] It's less of their own songs and also a bit slower and less hyper. Might be more to your liking.
Yeah it is definitely for me a reaction to feeling overwhelmed. There's just that bit of activation energy that is missing so I slip back to equilibrium of doing easy things.
Adderall has helped, so has some behavioral approaches, but nothing is a cure. For me, trying to eliminate distractions is either a distraction itself or ineffective.
Structured procrastination is useful, at least I am practicing piano or getting more fit instead of sitting around watching TV or reading dumb articles and forums.
Not that I've conquered it by any means, but I find narrating helps for me to maintain a thread of activity. Lots of my work involves switching between applications & cloud folders and any break in that can trip me up. I find if I talk to myself as if I were explaining what I'm doing (ie a tutorial but not as rigorous) that really helps. I used to use screen capture software to take time-lapse videos to give myself the impression I was being watched/monitored. But that isn't as effective as I know I'll probably never watch them.
I used to be like this. I solved it by making my default activity reading (anything, stop if you don't enjoy it, novels are great) and working out. Just getting a week or month break is sometimes enough to break the habit (but best to do it in a way doesn't feel like an endurance challenge - that replaces it with something else fun or stimulating).
I can relate too. Throw in video games and beer too for good measure.
For me there was no big Aha moment or solution to getting distracted from what I actually want to do. It had been incremental steps, such as:
- focusing on consuming long form reading/videos
- heavily curating consumption with RSS, individual settings etc.
- disabling notifications of anything that is not important
- taking responsibility of things that I could avoid, engaging more
- regular exercise and sleep
Things like that. But again, incremental steps. Sometimes I shifted from one distraction to the next, but after recognizing this it becomes clearer what’s happening.
The results are quite powerful. Over just a couple of years I gained so much. I started to get bored of things that would distract me otherwise. I gained confidence and especially courage. I recognize undesirable behavior really quickly now and stopped fooling myself.
Other than just blanket banning stuff (which never works for me), I've tried to make reducing my technical consumption into something interesting. Listening to podcasts on an iPod adds friction, as does writing on an old Psion device. I bullet journal too, it's a maintainable balance right now. Even reading books, any book, nothing technical or what I "should be learning" if I'm not up for it. They're all a nice experience, with (for me) just enough tech involved for it to be sustainable and fun. I've failed too many times to just ban stuff or "not look at a screen".
I love the outdoors when I'm out there, but when someone suggests to just go outside instead of watching a video or playing a game, I just feel guilt and resent the outdoors a little more. Old tech has been a nice, interesting bridge.
Knowing that HN is generally against it, I say it anyway: I recommend religion and religious teachings which address this and many other daily worldly issues perfectly. Christianity and Judaism both have excellent resources. Religious scholars have actually been the best psychologists but are generally dismissed by non-believers.
Edit: for those asking for specific recommendations. It’s always best to find your own path according to the religion of your parents and environment. However, I can suggest that you investigate Mussar and look up some books in English.
“Musar is a path of contemplative practices and exercises that have evolved over the past thousand years to help an individual soul to pinpoint and then to break through the barriers that surround and obstruct the flow of inner light in our lives. Musar is a treasury of techniques and understandings that offers immensely valuable guidance for the journey of our lives.... The goal of Musar practice is to release the light of holiness that lives within the soul. The roots of all of our thoughts and actions can be traced to the depths of the soul, beyond the reach of the light of consciousness, and so the methods Musar provides include meditations, guided contemplations, exercises and chants that are all intended to penetrate down to the darkness of the subconscious, to bring about change right at the root of our nature.“
My issue with AA is that people can seek attention by relapsing. Going cold turkey and never drinking again is the simple solution and it doesn't require all the drama.
Coming at this as both someone who’s addicted to tobacco and has ADHD, I’ve spent a good chunk of my life having people naively (at best) or condescendingly (at worst) tell me things like:
- you just need to quit cold turkey, how hard can it possibly be to not do something?
- have you tried focusing?
- you should try making todo lists!
- if you would just sit still and listen, you could do better on your homework!
While I do agree that the parent wasn’t the most polite, comments like yours definitely fall somewhere in the naive-condescending spectrum and I read the parent’s comment as trying to figure which end of that spectrum it came from.
I agree with you that telling people to do things that do not work for them is not helpful. However, there is no substance you can stop taking to cure your ADHD.
Any advice for an alcoholic that does not include "stop drinking" is not good advice. Every alcohol-related problem stems from the alcohol. It may not be everything needed for their recovery, but it has to be the basis. AA at least gets this right. However, AA paints a picture of addicts as people who are unable to ever get this aspect of their life under control. Unlike non-drinkers, AA alcoholics are always fighting the demon Alcohol. The organization does not believe in full recovery. Sometimes I have read a no-true-Scotsman formulation which says that if you can survive sober without AA, then you were not really an alcoholic. How is this helpful?
I think the proof is really in the pudding. AA has a lot of former members who still do not drink. These are people who quit drinking and eventually found the meetings unhelpful.
I live without fear of relapse. This is because I know that I will never "need" alcohol again.
To address the other side of what you are talking about, I hope that one day I will be able to live properly with ADHD. As of yet, we have not found an approach that generally works. Stimulants are helpful but they are a band-aid on the problem and have side effects. Behavioral therapy is helpful, too, albeit a bit mild in effect. I hope that when a good approach is developed, I will have the sense to try it.
It is a rather controversial statement. I have more consideration for a controversial statement from somebody who knows what he is talking about (and provide arguments/anecdote) than from someone making a moral judgment. It was rather a challenge to your statement with a conditional diss to force you two elaborate.
Simple isn't easy. Losing weight is simple, just eat less than what your caloric expenditure per day is. It's still hard as fuck and just telling someone who has issues with eating "just eat less, it's simple" is not helpful at all.
Going cold turkey and never doing X is the simple solution for any addiction, now get addicted to anything and try that out...
I agree it is not easy, but for me it is better to approach it simply. It may be that the best way to eat less for an individual is to fast, or to eat five small meals, or whatever program they use. But advising people that it is next to impossible has never worked.
I have been addicted to cigarettes and alcohol. Going cold turkey is essential for getting over the addictions. Never doing them again makes relapse unlikely. These are simple facts. AA says you can't really achieve independence you have to replace it with meetings and prayer. I say you can get over it. And I have experience with people who go back and forth to AA relapsing, and so how will they ever get free?
That's like the simple solution for depression: think happy thoughts. Addiction rewires your brain so that simply stopping is a very heavy lift. Not impossible, but relapses are common and there's usually drama, AA or no.
This is actually dangerous advice for a lot of forms of addiction... You MUSTN'T quit certain substances cold turkey, especially after prolonged abuse, because the intake of them are part of the body's homeostasis.
It's also very inconsiderate... Addiction generally has much deeper roots than just "craving the high" since it can be maladaptive coping mechanisms people develop due to traumatic childhoods (or later life, but less likely). Eg, substance abuse/addiction is commonly found in people who suffer from CPTSD.
The high isn't "I'm having the time of my life" for these people, but a a way to disconnect and silence their brain demons.
Also, a lot of people don't know they were abused or neglected as children (becaus it's "their normal") and then go through life as struggling with all sorts of internalised shit.
Edit: Also a very important thing I want to put out there: if anyone struggling with addition reads this, addiction isn't something to be ashamed of or to put yourself down over. It might not be your fault. But most addictions are maladaptive, and the sooner resolved the more you will get out of life. Don't be ashamed of yourself, and don't hate yourself for it
You are reading a lot more into my comment that isn't there. I am specifically talking about alcohol as the comment is about AA. AA generally recommends stopping cold turkey, so you are also contradicting AA.
I was an alcoholic and now I am not. I don't think it is easy but it is relatively simple. A lot of stuff that is glommed onto recovery from alcoholism obscures the fact that you have to stop using the drug, that is fundamental. Anything that unintentionally encourages relapse is not useful.
For many drinkers, suddenly stopping can be life threatening, causing seizures and convulsions.
I also stopped drinking, effectively cold turkey - but I wasn't a very heavy drinker, just a habitual one. However, I rejected AA as far too prescriptive in its approach.
For anyone reading this who is considering quitting alcohol I recommend r/stopdrinking on reddit, which is an incredibly friendly and supportive place where people practice and discuss a variety of methods.
For some heavy and consistent drinkers, they should check themselves into a hospital or clinic when they quit. But the vast majority of alcoholics will not develop delerium tremens when they quit. I personally worried about DT when I was drinking a six pack per day and used it as an excuse to never miss a day of drinking. I am probably not alone in my neurosis so telling people that they are likely to develop severe alcohol withdrawal is probably not a good way to help them to quit.
Surmounting all of this is very much like a lot of difficult tasks - often made more difficult by well-meaning people who want to point out all the difficulties you hadn't considered yet. What we need is more resources like: do you drink this much? Go to this clinic when you quit. Worried? Then quit sooner rather than later when you are drinking even more.
I think I agree with your intent and sentiment, and you're definitely right that people make excuses when it comes to quitting (and relapsing).
But IMO more often than not, we should't be flippant or dismissive about the excuses (for relapses or for continuing to use).
For some people, maladaptive coping—and all its consequences—is a cheap price to pay compared to facing a sober existence when unequipped to deal with it.
So even if they quit cold-turkey (or just quit), they won't necessarily improve their quality of life because they don't know why they got into addiction in the first place. However, going to support groups can help meet people. Those who struggle with similar root causes of their addiction tend to cluster as well, and that can (indirectly, and with a bit of luck) help identify root causes. That was what happened with me, and I'm forever grateful to support groups.
In my case I was an adult child of narcissistic parents (ACoNs)[1] and I struggled with C-PTSD[2] all my life (I self-misdiagnosed myself many times with depression, autism, younameit) and I'll live with it forever. In a twisted and perverse way, I think drug abuse and addiction—with all the indirect suffering they caused—also saved my life. If it weren't for drugs, literally wouldn't have had any coping mechanism whatsoever. So, in cases like mine quitting cold-turkey means that the withdrawal symptoms just compounded compounded with our emotional dysregulation.
Also I want to finish with this: I am really glad you managed to turn your life around and quit using. I'm happy that you took steps to improve your life, and as cheesy as it sounds: I'm proud of you! Thank you for sharing your story; I know talking about these things isn't easy.
Quoted in Robert Sapolsky's book "Why Zebra don't get ulcers" on stress (highly recommended).
It's a nice quote because it is a bit more interesting than common popular wisdom that exists across humanity and in all religions simply telling you : "Accept what you cannot change"
That is often elided even more by "Accept your situation" or even "Obey" providing great convenience to the powers that be.
Got anything more specific to recommend? I'd like to read the main books of the main religions eventually out of personal culture, but they won't get to the top of the reading pile any time soon. Meanwhile, I'm sure procrastination, motivation and discipline are behaviors that religious scholars had to develop even in a pre-Internet world so I'm sure there are interesting takes written on the subject. I recall some reknown writer from a few centuries (like 16th/17th century?) writing about his struggles with procrastination and how he eliminated distractions (lol!) from his working environment.
The ancient Christian monks battled against procrastination, lack of motivation, etc.... they called it "Acedia" aka "The noon-day devil"...
Apparently the monks felt a huge urge just to sleep, rest and abandon their study around midday... it was a fairly well recognised psycho-spiritual problem in the middle ages for some monastic orders...
Thanks a lot for the terminology, looking at Google's first page for "Christian monk procrastination" I'm not sure I would've found it if I even looked for it.
They're interesting inputs for Marginalia's search engine FWIW.
I'm not against religion, but you just want to add you don't need religion to get what I think is the good core of religions: healing stories and narratives, texts, mantras, rituals that help you in the moment, a community which shares your perspective and in the end, an explanation for existential dread, horrible things happenings and a way to get meaning.
You can find it in humanism, you can find it in secular philosophy, you can get therapy, you can find it in social political communities, it's in many places. You can even get some old bearded dude tell you what to do if that's what you need.
The vast majority have staying power because of two primary things. Have children, teach those children your religion. In the days before mass education and when huge numbers of children died in early age making this a memnatic was an important way for societal continuation.
This says nothing about it's continued usefulness after a paradigm shift.
Zoroastrianism is still practiced. I met one just the other day. A quick google backs up your point though, there might only be a couple hundred thousand left.
> Religious scholars have actually been the best psychologists
Any sources that will back this claim? Oh wait, you don't need facts. Do you give this sort of unsolicited religious advice to everyone or do you specifically choose people who are troubled?
Depends on how you understand 'science'. I wouldn't describe empirical science as 'vague'. It doesn't aim for the core of a thing like other fields do. I mean, things are changing, but the goal for most psychologists is to help people.
I have no issues with religious people. I do however have issues with "missionary" types popping up around people who are vulnerable, trying to convince them with completely baseless claims of wellness.
Individuals love to look at individual bits of morality in said books in a choose your own adventure exploration. As much as the moral certainty says be nice to others, it will also contain many bits that are highly questionable and would deeply conflict with others views.
In general secular psychologists don't come with the violent historical baggage that religions do.
Considering the vast majority of people who have overcome addictions with the help of religion and a religious community, "completely baseless claims of wellness" is pretty exaggerated no?
This seems pretty interesting https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6759672/ . I didn't read the full paper, but based off the introduction it seems to be a study of how religion helps people overcome addition.
My comment was in no way missionary. In fact I didn’t even mention one specific religion and suggested that you investigate your ancestors instead and find your path.
They are just stating their opinion in an 100% neutral way. You are free to ignore it. People give "unsolicited advice" here all the time. It is a forum where people post things for others to read. Why do people get so easily upset whenever the word "religion" is displayed, heard or even implied?
Religion is quite a stirring theme, don't you think? I try really hard to avoid getting triggered (meant in a neutral way). It's easy to repress something, but that's not the point - people turn cynical when this happens and it just postpones the problem. One have to go deeper to really let go.
>Any sources that will back this claim? Oh wait, you don't need facts. Do you give this sort of unsolicited religious advice to everyone or do you specifically choose people who are troubled?
I mean, there's a fairly strong Darwinistic argument for the validity of certain religions. Very few belief systems have survived a hostile environment for anywhere near as long as the big religions.
If religious belief systems are "wrong" (in the sense of being useful for navigating the world, not in the sense of satisfying certain conditions of symbolic logic and reasoning), then why have these religions triumphed over secularism time and time again?
I'd still consider myself an atheist, but even then I'd be careful to be so dismissive of belief systems that have proven themselves over the course of millennia to be incredibly powerful, enlightening and enriching.
After reading through all the Dune books, I built up quite some awe for the catholic church. I'm not a believer, but this is fascinating how such an institution can survive for such a long time. I'm really wondering what happed behind closed doors or just things that we don't know that they pulled off to keep power. This is not meant as a critique.
> I mean, there's a fairly strong Darwinistic argument for the validity of certain religions
I always find it ironic when the "Facts and Reason" branch of atheism pretends that we would all be driving flying cars in a peaceful utopia if it weren't for pesky religion.
> why have these religions triumphed over secularism time and time again
I'm intrigued to understand your definition of "triumphed", as given the rest of the post I'm assuming you're not referring to the genocide of non-believers, which is, of course, precisely how the major religions achieved such longevity.
That's a very Christian idea. Christianity is (was) the religion of slaves, and outcasts. The whole ethic is that the individual is divinely (infinitely) valuable, despite circumstances on earth.
It doesn't take much of a leap to go from "I am valuable [because G-d says so]", to "I deserve to be equal to my fellow man, free to make my own choices".
> If religious belief systems are "wrong" (in the sense of being useful for navigating the world, not in the sense of satisfying certain conditions of symbolic logic and reasoning), then why have these religions triumphed over secularism time and time again?
To be fair, a lot of them spread by the sword. Convert or we kill your tribe. Some of them explicitly call out in their texts that it's OK to forcibly convert or murder non-believers, an attribute which is, I'm sure, a helpful "evolutionary gene" for the religion's spread. There are also religions with non-violent, but still coercive conversion, where there are non-death-related social consequences for nonbelievers.
If you read psychological works by ancient religious scholars you’ll understand. They delve extremely deeply and insightfully inside one’s soul. True: they didn’t use Chi-squared tests so you’ll not find that. But have you actually read anything of this?
You're making an assumption that 'they understood'. Humans have a lot of insight, but at the end of the day a deep understanding of everything is mathematically impossible.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Nihilism.
Religious beliefes provide a strong moral compass as a semi-coherent set that lets you define stances about a lot of things in your life without having to gs through the hassle and difficulties of building them. As long as it's a serious belief and adherence to the provided guidelines and not just posturing used to justify decadent conducts.
I am not religious and personally i think is best to develop this on your own than taking a prepackaged system, but the utility and practicality of having ssmething already done and battle-tested is undeniable.
Just like you don't need to reinvent the wheel and write a complex library on your own when there's one available, sometimes is best to just use a prepackaged beliefs set and moral system to follow.
Many people are even unable to produce that on their own and epd up disparaged, aimless, living their lives without any understanding of right, wrong, good, bad, moral, immoral.
For what religions are and what they do provide, i personally think some branches of buddhism are better, like the Sokka Gakkai International's approach provides.
I don't agree with the sentence that religious scholars are the best psychologists because they only can provide guidance inside what fits this prepackaged framework-for-living they adopted, and in many many cases (i.e. mentall illnesses, deep issues, moral hardship in grey areas, etc) they are unable to effectively help in any significant way.
Good news is that psychology isn't incompatible with religion and both can coexist peacefully, and one can get the best of both worlds wathout thinking one is best; they work in different ways and provide different things, and IMO they aren't directly comparable, as a psychologist cannot help you very well in terms of religion, and a religious scholar cannot help you very well in terms of psychology (except for the thinfs that fit witin the religious framework chosen).
So all in all, i agree that religion as a valid choice and should be part of discourse, as sometimes it can very well be the best course of action.
Just don't agree with throwing blanket statements of what's best or not in a world as plastic and complex as the one we live in.
An alternate to religion is Meditation. IMO, a lot of spiritual practices share very similar mental mechanics (eg mantras and prayers, various forms of fasting, support networks, etc)
The problem I have with religion is the focus on "removing the doubt", which I strongly disagree with - doubting a god's existance is a major no-no in most popular religions. And as soon as you remove the doubt ban, you don't really have a religion anymore, but a philosophy.
So I'd personally recommend philosophy to people, instead of religion. Bertrand Russell (also known for his mathematical work) is an excellent place to start.
EDIT:
For those who disagree, I'd recommend a Russell's essay "Why I Am Not A Christian" [0]. It is quite short and readable.
12 years of growing up in Christian schools.
Doubt came up a lot. Depended on the speaker too. Many would talk about their struggles. Times when they got angry at God, or fell away. Or there reasoning on why God exists.
One constant teaching was that Christianity is not a religion. But about forming a relationship with God through Christ.
Religion is a set of rules and traditions. Perform 50 hail marries. Light 50 candles. Only eat X on whatever day.
A relationship is trying to understand God. What he means. How you can serve him. What kind of life Christ lived. How to live as an example to others.
Everyone has doubts. Most of my teachers would talk about times that they struggled.
It takes a lot of faith to believe that there is an all powerful God. that loves you for you.
It also takes faith to believe that universe popped out of nothing, the conditions for life happened to be just right, and that it’s also meaningless.
Maybe Christians are wrong. But maybe not. Worse that happens is people were nicer to each other for awhile. The other is that you spend eternity in Heaven.
> It takes a lot of faith to believe that there is an all powerful God. that loves you for you.
I feel like I kind of get what you're saying. But it seems to even have this perspective that one ought to try to believe in God, to be motivated to struggle, one already has to accept religious teachings of some kind.
I don't struggle to believe that the universe popped out of nothing, I very easily and without any effort on my part maintain the belief that it's pretty much impossible for us to know where the universe came from and that it's probably not worth expending too much effort worrying about it. I'd see having to make an effort to believe something somewhat of a red flag regarding the validity of that belief.
> Worse that happens is people were nicer to each other for awhile. The other is that you spend eternity in Heaven.
I mean, some religious people are nice to each other. Others are downright nasty and make life very difficult for people who don't fit into their worldview (for example because they're gay). And presumably the worst case is that there is in fact a God who happens to take the opposite view on morality to the Christian one and thus Christians end up spending an eternity in Hell. As far as I can that's no less likely than there being a Christian God.
> I don't struggle to believe that the universe popped out of nothing, I very easily and without any effort on my part maintain the belief that it's pretty much impossible for us to know where the universe came from and that it's probably not worth expending too much effort worrying about it. I'd see having to make an effort to believe something somewhat of a red flag regarding the validity of that belief
A Christian can just as easily say:
I don't struggle to believe that God created the universe out of nothing, I very easily and without any effort on my part maintain the belief that it's pretty much impossible for us to know where the universe came from and that it's probably not worth expending too much effort worrying about it. I'd see having to make an effort to believe something somewhat of a red flag regarding the validity of that belief.
Most reasonable Christians (at least 90% of the Christians I know and have met) will readily admit that we don't know with a 100% certainty that God created the universe. We have faith that He did, but we could very well be wrong. If I'm wrong, at least I've lived a full life and felt like my life had meaning.
> Others are downright nasty and make life very difficult for people who don't fit into their worldview (for example because they're gay)
People get all hung up about a Christian saying that it's a sin to be gay. We also say it's a sin to lie, and it's a sin to lust after a woman (or man) that isn't your spouse, and it's a sin to engage in gluttony. Does that mean we look down on people who have sinned and reject them? No, because like Romans says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The law is like a mirror. It's a lot easier to see your flaws in a perfect reflective mirror then it is to see them in an old foggy one. The law is a perfect mirror that shows us the depravity we _all_ have inside of us, and it exists so we can strive to be better.
No one will ever attain perfection, but that doesn't mean we're free to go on sinning. Romans is an amazing book if you want to read about a devout Christian's struggle with sin.
Anyways, if a person engages in homosexual behavior, do I think that's a sin? Yes. But I also sin every day. It doesn't excuse it, but it's also no better or worse than any sin that I commit, it just happens to be one I don't struggle with. And if you don't want to be a Christian and still want to be gay, go for it! I'm not going to stop you. Because we're adults, and we make our own choices. It's as simple as that.
My opinion on the behavior means nothing, and I'm not going to berate strangers for engaging in an activity they already know I disapprove of because of my worldview. I literally don't need to say anything, and I won't unless they specifically ask me what my thoughts are on the matter.
A relationship with a person you cannot see, touch, feel, hear, or taste.
Who revealed themselves directly only before the enlightenment, and thereafter must be experienced only in ones mind, testimony from those long dead, or by the evidence of supposed creation.
I was just about to say the same thing. Thomas is the first person who comes to mind. He said he wouldn't believe Jesus rose from the dead unless he saw him and his scars. Job is an entire book about wrestling with God. It's all about why would a good God allow all this suffering? All his friends tell him to just denounce his faith and move on with life. And several of the people throughout the Bible don't doubt that God exists, but they do doubt that He will do what He promises.
So there are definitely religions that encourage doubting whether God exists. Eventually you have to come to some sort of immovable mover. Whether that's the Big Bang or God, so there's nothing inherently illogical about believing in something that is timeless and has always existed.
One of the most famous examples being C.S. Lewis himself, his book A Grief Observed (written after his wife passed) being one of the most clear examples of it. On a slightly related note, there's an excellent film adaptation about C.S. Lewis's relationship with his wife called Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins. Amazing that the man who played Hannibal Lecter could also portray the most famous Christian thinker of the 20th century so well.
I'll second that recommendation. Shadowlands is a superb film. It's very much worth watching even if you have little sympathy with Lewis's religious views.
Some of my favorite Christian works are all about doubt, but the conclusion tends to be faith is the only way. The Catholic priest in the movie may raise his hands during the thunderstorm and shout angrily at God to show himself, but what saves him is the "leap of faith" where he realizes that God will never give you proof of his existance - it's more sophisticated, but it's still the folksy blind faith.
Many Christians believe that you must believe in Jesus to get into heaven. I prefer what Proust said (paraphrasing - the actual quote I can't find and is far more beautiful): "Who is more likely to get into heaven - someone who believes in god, despises and judges the world and mankind or someone who loves all of gods creations without judgement but doesn't believe in him?" I refuse to think a loving god would make the litmus test such an arbitrary thing.
See ’faith’ as believing in that doing the ’right’ thing, when no one is looking, by your definition is the best way possible (no deceiving, lying and all other sins).
You cannot have faith and despise the world, you are supposed to judges your failings first before judging others.
How modern is modern? I have sources back to at least the 1490s which clearly use the word 'religion' (and many more, earlier, sources that use the latin 'religionem') ...
The word has been changing for a long time. For lack of a better way to put it, think of it as the difference between an insider's word and an outsiders. Older texts almost always have an implicit reference to a particular faith in it. A 16th writer who says "he is a religious man" means that "he is an observant $SECT". In modern uses, it almost always means "he believes in this class of beliefs and practices". The reason I refer to it as an outsiders term is that it groups together groups that don't generally think of themselves as one.
Modern usages of the word "religion" group Christians and Muslims (for example), groups that would see themselves as distinct.
Interestingly, you can see a bridge period of sorts. If you think back to characters in movies of the 30s and 40s saying "I am not a religious man, but..." or "I am not a praying man, but..." you can kind of see the shift. A little reference to the good standing meaning but also some of the outsider type frame.
But isn't that ingroup/outgroup-dynamic still happening? Very few westerners would consider the followers of Bagwhan 'religious', they'd rather use something like 'cultists'. Aum/Aleph is a 'cult', even though it represents itself as a syncretism between Buddhism and Christianity. Radical forms of Islam are sometimes called a cult, and sometimes a religion, depending on the speaker.
All that shift in meaning seems to do is that it determines which belief systems are considered appropriate by a speaker, and which aren't...
"Cult is a term which, as we value exactness, we can ill do without, seeing how completely religion has lost its original signification. Fitzedward Hall, "Modern English," 1873"
It strikes me as funny because the problem with the word 'religion' is noted as far back as 1873, but I'd argue 'cult' is now even less precise than 'religion'. I don't think it was always that way. References to Roman mystery religions as 'cults' generally lack the pejorative connotation.
That's kind of a strawman. Serious Catholic thought (John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Pope Benedict, etc) doesn't try to "remove the doubt" at all. I highly recommend Ratzinger / Benedict for modern text, and the great contemplatives for non-modern texts. They grapple with doubt and all other tricky subjects head on, and have a broad (and in my opinion accurate and subtle) view of the journey of life.
I was also going to recommend John of the Cross. There's also a whole tradition of apophatic (negative) theology, and an associated tradition of darkness mysticism (e.g. Pseudo-Dionysius). That your doubts are founded in the reality that God is unknowable-as-such, and even "existence" may be an invalid concept to apply to the divine.
In that vein, but I've been reading a book that synthesizes John and Teresa and the gospels. It had a few gems that stood out to me recently. On the importance of voiding oneself of all: "He is not only beyond all things, but boundlessly beyond them. Created realities are... more unlike God than like Him.... However impressive may be one's knowledge or feeling of God, that knowledge or feeling will have no resemblance to God and amount to very little."
> The problem I have with religion is the focus on "removing the doubt", which I strongly disagree with
This isn't the case as often as you might think. Consider religions like Unitarianism, for example. You can also make a strong case that the doubt is baked foundationally into Christianity itself-- consider Zizek's readings of Chesterton and Hegel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEuY46p5yH4
> And as soon as you remove the doubt ban, you don't really have a religion anymore, but a philosophy
Buddhism encourages doubt (in most lineages). There is a sutta where the Buddha said:
> “You have a right to be confused. This is a confusing situation. Do not take anything on trust merely because it has passed down through tradition, or because your teachers say it, or because your elders have taught you, or because it’s written in some famous scripture. When you have seen it and experienced it for yourself to be right and true, then you can accept it.”
I have had some limited exposure to Buddhism, but I very much like what I've read. Buddhism seems to focus more on human-as-is and making peace with existence, instead of human-as-should-be and making war with existence, as, for example, Christianity does - by the cardinal sin, the human is sinful through its very existence.
The cardinal sin represent the awakening of the human mind, we no longer live in the moment, we can imagine the future and that make us powerful but also miserable (we can suffer from problems we imagine in the future)
There is an interpretation that disagrees with what I said, I know. Whatever I say, there will be an interpretation out there that disagrees with what I said.
Even in Buddhism. I find pretty much anytime I say anything about it online I have to add "in most lineages" because there are certainly dogmatic ones.
I mean a big chunk of Christian teaching is about faith. It’s not like Christianity teaches “you believe in god? Good, let move on to other stuff now”.
>recommend philosophy to people, instead of religion
Religion is philosophy, plus ritual and aesthetics. It's the set of philosophies that have survived the ravages of time. It's a set of philosophies that are so useful to live by, that these philosophies have survived through books and rituals for millennia. Or put another way, these philosophies are so incredibly effective, that people are surviving today precisely because they've lived by those philosophies, and the only reason we know of these philosophies is because they are survived by, and helped to survive, the people who've passed and continue to pass them down to others.
There existed philosophies you've never heard of, that are dead, because they died with the people who've followed them. Is it just chance? Is it because the surviving philosophies are better? Who knows. But if you're a betting man, you should bet on those surviving philosophies being actually better, more useful, more conducive to survival.
>the focus on "removing the doubt"
I think this is a focus exclusive to "nu-Christian" Anglosphere denominations, primarily American ones, and their focus is made a spectacle of because: (1) their focus is understandably cringe and the outrage is entertaining (2) the spectacle is used as a tool to de-legitimize religion as a whole, especially Christianity.
This is pretty disingenuous don't you think? In the same book a few chapters later we read:
> Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
John 20:24-25
If that's not encouraging engaging with doubt I don't know what is.
> If that's not an effort to restrict doubt, then what is?
I can tell you that 1 + 1 = 2 and you can still doubt me. Just because you doubt me it doesn't make that statement any less true. Also, me stating that fact isn't me restricting doubt, it's just me stating a fact. If Jesus was God, and what He says here is true, He's stating a fact. You can choose to believe or not to believe, or doubt or not to doubt.
Personally I see it a ’truth’ like in scientific truth and personal integrity.
Imagine Jesus as the incarnation of the best possible person. I you where to try to based your actions in a similar way, what would you do?
"No man comes to the Father but by me”:
You won't be the best version of yourself by chasing any other things (fame, money, pleasure, etc)
I too was disgusted by the first degree interpretation (obviously false) but I now discover a second degree reading that explain our human condition and most of our problems.
Look into Peterson Biblical lecture on Youtube if you want to see a psychological way of looking at the bible.
One thing I dislike about Christianity in particular is how malleable to interpretation it is, making any kind of discussion with a Christian tedious. No matter what part of Bible you try to argue with, a Christian will always be able to say: "But that's not the real meaning! The real meaning is [thing I pulled out of thin air]", rendering your words moot, without actually engaging in your argument at all.
I still can't figure out how to deal with it, which is why I usually refrain from arguing with religious people. Afterall, when it comes to the big questions (like, is there a god), neither one of us can bring anything to the table - it's impossible to know by definition. And since all religious teachings are based on the existence of a god, there is no way to convince anyone of anything without first proving the unprovable. It's like two completely different sets of axioms - of course the conclusions are gonna be different, and the concept of axioms being "right" or "wrong" is meaningless by itself.
I see it as a fusion of the campfire stories that humans have told themselves over thousand of years.
The fact that it was written in a book gave it incredible power and have allow our civilisation to exist and science to be developed but also removed much of the evolutions of the stories.
Now that our world change so fast the stories seems very outdated to our modern mind but most of them speak about a deep human conditions and traps we feel into multiple times.
It hard to speak to christians as most see it a first level reading (literally true) but most people are not ready to go into deep analysis of meaning, they need a story to unite them, to show them a way to a good life and so it was for all people 200 years ago.
Without those stories people put other things in its place (false idols) like money, pleasure, diversity and equity, communism, fascism, etc.
To the question is there a God, the God of the bible is a mix of the natural environment (god of wind, god of the sun, etc) and the human civilisation ’thou shall not kill’ if you kill, God will be angry: you are going to have a bad time (at the hands of other humans)
If you have the time, the Peterson lectures gave me a way to understand it that make sense to me (no bearded magician in the sky)
> There existed philosophies you've never heard of, that are dead, because they died with the people who've followed them. Is it just chance? Is it because the surviving philosophies are better? Who knows. But if you're a betting man, you should bet on those surviving philosophies being actually better, more useful, more conducive to survival.
I get what you're saying but to offer another perspective, informed by the work of Rober Pirsig as presented in his second book 'Lila': I think those religions/philosophies you mention are an organism of their own, with humans as their hardware. Are they really more useful for any given human? (certainly some are not, if we choose a human who's an outlier, a 'black sheep', so to speak) Or ar they useful and more conductive to the survival of the religion/philosophy itself?
I think it's a struggle between intellect (the individual) and culture (religion, country, a political party, etc.).
>doubting a god's existance is a major no-no in most popular religions
This is certainly not true of the Christianity that I've been witness to all my life. In those circles, doubt is a given - an intrinsic component of the inquisitive human mind - and doubt is basically the core of all faith. If there's no room for doubt, there's no room for faith.
I truly think Buddhism has the best offer here on addictive behavior. Detachment is a main topic, their teaching can be consumed in "secular" way (with needed to believe in any unseen phenomena), the teaching does not place much outside of oneself.
Not really, it was a big motivator for me in three decades I wasted believing indoctrinated garbage. Thankfully I broke out of that tar pit of magical thinking.
It's a straw man in the context of using faith to battle addiction, regardless of the role it played in your personal life. Virtually no one advocates trying to scare addicts into recovery with the threat of hell.
People are motivated by many things. They don't need fairy tales. Religion and superstition has ruled over people for thousands of years. Let's give evidenced-based approaches a few millennia before we go back to that garbage.
So far evidence-based approach seems to end up as YOLO-style approaches.
Overall culture seems to be more and more nihilistic and individualistic after dropping religion. Few people may be doing the right thing and say that we have to care about future generations. But wast majority, looking at their actions, doesn’t care.
It may be hard to accept that the universe exists for no reason at all. You can fall in to a nihilistic trap where nothing matters. Or you can fall into a fantasy trap and say it matters for reasons that are not true.
I would rather follow a more humanistic path, that we define our own existence, and that we should attempt to minimize our own suffering.
If people would believe religion stuff, it’s be pretty easy to motivate them to clean up the damn planet. Of course, given that the leaders would sign off on that.
So true. Pork is forbidden for muslims for many centuries (an awesome kind of motivation) and yet people struggled to wear masks during the Covid19 pandemic while facing own potential death, maybe killing relatives or unknown consequences (at the time).
I’m going to start by absolutely agreeing with you on the second half: I have had direct personal contact with a number of addicts over the years, and in virtually all cases it started (and generally continued to be) as a way to escape or numb some kind of unaddressed trauma or other emotional pain. Victims of (childhood or adult) abuse, parental rejection for whatever reason, etc. Additionally, people who I wouldn’t categorize as addicts but rather as… acute substance abusers. The people who don’t drink all week but go to the bar with some friends and end up drinking a dozen beer.
Therapy has changed a lot of people around me’s lives for the better. Indisputably. I have seen 20-year alcoholics change virtually overnight when their abusers are finally caught and the addict-victim goes and talks it through with a therapist.
Where I’m going to disagree, though, is that this is a black and white “Christianity or therapy” issue. I’m coming at this pragmatically; I haven’t been to church in almost 20 years now and religion is virtually non-existent in my life. There’s two things, though, with religion in general that can be hugely useful for someone struggling with addiction and/or substance abuse:
- Therapy-like religious guidance. Many denominations of Christianity (and other religions, but I am not particularly familiar with the exact customs) encourage you to share your burdens with either the leadership or broader community.
- Community itself. Beyond the primary “you are destroying your body” issues with addiction, one of the worst secondary effects is the social effects. When you have a substance abuse problem, “ordinary” people will start to distance from you. This can either end up with you just isolating from the world and getting lonelier (amplifying the problem) or seeking community with whoever you can find who won’t reject you (other people with substance abuse problems… amplifying the problem)
Religion can provide these things and while it’s not for me, I have a hard time dismissing it outright. Especially since we have, as society has become more secular, mostly failed at establishing accessible community institutions that provide these things. One of the most interesting things to me is that almost every other community is generally focused around either specific activities (eg a rock climbing gym, martial arts, bird watching, knitting) or specific professions (eg software developer meet-ups). Church is one of the few places in the world that I’m likely to encounter a very broad cross-section of society.
That all being said, quality varies dramatically. There are some churches that are, to me, completely toxic and have strayed far from “bringing light into this world”.
YMMV, but it works for some people and provides exactly what they need to heal.
I have many family and friends that are christians, and was raised christian. It's a full fledged government-subsidized cult, maybe a benign cult, but a cult nonetheless.
I think you'll find that that varies dramatically from denomination to denomination. When I was a kid, my grandparents and parents took us to a Southern Baptist church. I agree, 100%, and I'm not even sure that I'd qualify that with the word "benign" :)
In university, I dated a Lutheran (in Canada, there's two "sub-Lutheran" organizations, she was a part of the "more welcoming one") and it was a night and day difference. Not to go too far into theology, but these folks were some of the most "Christ-like" folks I have ever met. They really embodied the "be good to each other" concepts and strongly rejected the more evangelical/recruiting position that many churches take; their philosophy was "be good people, treat others kindly, feel free to have a conversation about your religion if someone asks, but don't try to guilt/shame/whatever, just be a good person."
I'm actually surprised this morning to be defending churches somewhat. It's a tragedy: the worst kind of Christians, to me, are also the most prominent and vocal. From my own understanding of the Bible and basic theology, I absolutely agree that many denominations are cult-like and have also lost their way from the teachings they purport to embody.
Meanwhile there's folks like the Lutherans I hung out with who, for lack of a better turn of phrase, are actually bringing light into the world. These folks get painted with the same brush as the... crazies.
> Knowing that HN is generally against it, I say it anyway
I am actually on the contrarian side of you, but thanks for putting you out there. I understand and respect your point and everything, but there is one thing, that I want to put out regarding what you said. To state the following, is quite problematic:
> Religious scholars have actually been the best psychologists but are generally dismissed by non-believers.
Without going into detail, for every profession, there are people who are good and bad at it. This has nothing to do with any background or anything. The difference with psychologists and priests/ missionaries/ etc. is, that one is certified and the other is not necessarily certified. This makes a huge difference in liability of the term/ role and it's rather dangerous to put them in the same bag. And I don't think to make this distinction is not dismissive.
I've never had anything against religion and know it is good for my family but there's just no way I'll ever get over my skepticism so it's not a choice. I think most nonreligious people are the same
Having spent two years as a missionary in a majority atheist country (the Czech Republic) I'd have to say that wasn't my experience. For most Czechs, it seemed to be more of a general apathy about religion and the idea of God, not any serious skepticism or an active choice not to believe.
> I recommend religion and religious teachings which address this and many other daily worldly issues perfectly.
This advice simply doesn't work if the recipient is an atheist.
To me, Religious texts are made up fiction that hold no more meaning in my world view than Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. If you read enough fiction on a shared topic, you'll be able to pull the same number of 'enlightening' quotes from those books as religious people can from their own sacred tomes.
However, IF you are a religious person, and find meaning in your religious books, then take the win, and enjoy that path. It's just that it's not a path everyone can take.
I’ve known plenty of people who get a ton of meaning out of fictional works too. Just because you view it as fictional doesn’t mean it can’t have meaning.
The difference between Harry Potter and most religious texts is that the religious texts are often the result of thousands of years of evolutionary processes which refine them, and the people who have followed them have survived/thrived.
It doesn't matter if the Bible/Koran/whatever is a fact or not. Religious beliefs/texts are an extension of human evolution and should be seen that way. Questioning their wisdom in helping humans thrive is like questioning the value of arms.
This answer is on the right track. There will always be outliers, but most humans have a fundamental need for “religion”.
The west is in the process of creating a new one (modern liberal values), but as with most rewrites, you probably should have understood the existing solution before throwing it out.
A friend of mine stated this as such: "every human able to reason has a religion-shaped hole in them; and that spot will be filled with something whether or not the human expects it to or wants it to."
I submit that plenty of religious thought patterns (things and systems you are not allowed to question the wisdom of, obsequious deference to authority, etc.) exist outside the halls of churches. PG's essay on heresy comes to mind.
Like proscriptions on pork or seafood; we have a pretty good understanding of the consequences of eating pork and don't necessarily have to rely on something that was a useful rule of thumb absent that knowledge.
>> often the result of thousands of years of evolutionary processes which refine them
>> Religious beliefs/texts are an extension of human evolution and should be seen that way.
If this is true, does it mean that churches all over the world did a big disservice to the holy books and stopped the evolution by creating institutions dedicated to preserve text of this books in unchanged form argumenting that those books literally are word of God and thus cannot be changed?
You might be aware of the fact that different factions/sects exist within the major religions, similar to how humans physically evolve separate traits. Some of those off-shoots will be more successful than others.
I'm sure you have some great ideas about living. Let's check the reproductive rate of the people who follow your ideas in a thousand years.
I think it can be interesting to approach religious teachings from a perennialist mindset: what’s common between all religions.
There is a lot to learn about life and human nature in religion. You don’t have to believe in an afterlife or practice dogma to get something out of it.
I disagree - I do not believe in any organized religion but I do like the Bible - almost all of Western society is built on it so there is a power in the words as you're tapping into something fundamental that's been bounced around culture for centuries. I dip into it occasionally and find some passage that really speaks to me.
Admittedly I do ignore parts of it - there's a lot of "wives should be obedient" stuff in there that has not aged well for instance - and I read it as God representing something like the Chinese Dao - IE the impersonal and immaterial laws of nature, the way that things unfold, and faith in God being an active version of the Stoic idea that you can't change the things you don't have control over, so just let it be.
To me, Theology is really philosophy + God. That's kinda the beauty of it, you can interpret it however you like or however it fits you at the time. If you don't want the + God right now, just consider the philosophy.
>Religious texts are made up fiction that hold no more meaning in my world view
Plato's The Cave allegory is relevant, even though no one would ever live in a cave like that and it's obviously fiction. Some people treat the Bible as a historical text, but most don't. Some people believe the earth is flat too, there's always that 10-20%.
Having said that, I tried reading the Bible but I couldn't get through all the begats. I do like hearing honest people discuss it though. Like anything, it can certainly be weaponized.
I think philosophy without faith is nice but doesn't have the same benefits at all. I think what makes religious people happier is the strong sense of community and offloading some of their existential angst to a third party.
I am also a non-believer, but I think there is room for religion even for those who have a difficult time with the "fairy tale" aspect of it. Personally, I do not, but I'm thinking about giving it a shot.
The thing is that the stories in religious books help paint a picture of life and offer anecdotes on how one can navigate it. There is no need to look for enlightenment, just practical advice on how to deal with tough life situations and help you find motivation and strength to power through. Thousands of years of observing and documenting people's lives through stories and metaphors has value, even for us non-believers.
I think you'd even be surprised how many people who regularly attend church services don't actually believe in the mystic aspect of it all; it's the community and guidance that have the most value to them.
You can pick and choose philosophy and morals from a religion (or multiple religions) without buying the whole farm. To me, this seems like the right way to go. Cherry pick the good stuff and ignore the cruel parts and weird, supernatural stuff.
Church selection seems to play a big role. I don't know too much about it but from other commenters, there are apparently churches that emphasize the mysticism and paranormal side of Christianity, some that focus on the texts, some that mostly deal with hero-worship and the hero's origin story, some that are basically political Trump rallies, and some more laid back ones that are basically social/music clubs.
You really don't see the difference between popular fiction and cultural texts that have survived for thousands of years?
How do you feel about The Iliad, Plato's dialogues, the Mahabharata, Tao Te Ching, or the Epic of Gilgamesh? Do they also offer "no more meaning in your world" than modern fantasy novels?
I didn't think being an atheist meant closing ones mind to human culture. Guess I've been doing it wrong.
Do you have any more evidence for some of the claims made in those texts than you do for the claims made in religious texts? Read them all as fiction, but they're still culturally significant and a lot can be learned by reading them, even if all you are learning is more about your fellow human's perspective.
The Dao De Jing, Mahabharata, and Plato's dialogues have been or are currently used as religious texts (the former two more then the latter, but the Neo-Platonism is/was a hell of a drug).
I think the person you replied to simply meant they found no spiritual significance in religious texts. That is, their ONLY value is either as a piece of literature or as a historical recording of culture.
In context, your reply sounds like a negative take, but I find it rather positive.
I've always found good fiction enlightening. There is no need to be so serious about it.
My biggest criticism of religion is the very boundary drawn between fiction and scripture: that adherents to a religion must treat fiction as if it is reality.
All too often, that means obsessing over obedience to a structure of rules/dogma, instead of confronting the reality right in front of us; like voting to restrict gay marriage so God will bless our country, instead of learning to empathize with people around us to become a better community.
> My biggest criticism of religion is the very boundary drawn between fiction and scripture: that adherents to a religion must treat fiction as if it is reality.
Agreed. This is the part that really gets under my skin… its been my understanding for most of my life that the bible specifically is full of allegory, not history. Yet, so many many of the “believers” I encounter don’t know what “allegory” means. The bible is their literal truth!
Tbh, knowing this isn’t helpful. It somehow makes me more paralyzed in dealing with literal believers. It always feels like they know they’re full of shit, but won’t admit it. There’s a disingenuousness to it that very deeply bothers me.
like voting to restrict gay marriage so God will bless our country
Do we know how this is going to play out, though? Has matrimony between same sex couples ever been widely available in any civilization? Rome, Greece, China and Egypt all had various different approaches to open homosexual relationships overtime, but it's hard to find any significant civilization that broadly equated same sex unions and heterosexual marriage. I'll allow that my research on this is incomplete.
I think anyone who thinks they know for certain how this kind of social change will play out on the scale of decades or centuries is mistaken. It's possible that everything turns out great and we enter a golden era of tolerance and flourishing human relationships, but at the same time there's usually something worth fearing in the unknown, which is why we tend to.
If no one has tried it yet, it might be worth being the first one.
From what I can tell, the only group claiming to know what will happen in the future are religious conservatives who want gay marriage outlawed. It's their claim that homosexual unions will lead to a bad societal outcome, and that claim is based purely on religious dogma.
I mean, I used to be an atheist. Like, going to Richard Dawkins on campus, sneering at how stupid Christians were rolling my eyes at every little thing atheist. For a good ten to fifteen years. Then I realized it was terrible for my mental health and just got over myself and adopted more of a Pascal’s Wager outlook. Like, I frankly don’t give a damn about the truth or falsity of religion anymore. That’s not the point. It lets me act as if my life has meaning regardless of whether or not that’s true, which even when I directly reflect on it is a small amount of comfort insulating me from the yawning abyss of existential terror I felt throughout all of my 20s and half of my teens.
If pressed I guess I’ll say it’s unlikely to be true. But that’s not the point. I don’t even care to explain the point really. But both me and my wife ran Meetup groups about being atheist and eventually decided reading Christian philosophy and teachings was a better bet than the slow crushing millstone of the weight of the universe awaiting me behind the curtain of materialism.
There’s a lot of really bad stuff and I think Christianity needs reforming, but I still think it’s the better long term bet in terms of the wellbeing of me and my future generations.
I know the universe is a cold void but I find tons of meaning in seeing my family and friends be happy. From my relative perception of what's good and what matters, that's sufficient. Perpetuating mass delusion through religion doesn't seem like the better bet.
Replace the word "religion" by "communal life philosophy" and perhaps you'll start understanding its actual value.
I've been reading Stoic philosophers for some time now and it has helped me a lot. Christianity seems to take a lot from them and adds a mythical spin.
I think the biggest issue with religion stems from the fact that many people fail to understand religious texts are not factual they are metaphorical. Unfortunately, throughout history (and still today) this misunderstanding has been used and led to an incalculable number of heinous crimes.
> If pressed I guess I’ll say it’s unlikely to be true. But that’s not the point.
The problem is expecting the dogma of a thousands years old tradition and book to be absolutely true. There are things in the Bible and Christianity that are basically tall tales. For example, I doubt Jesus was immaculately conceived, but it makes for a great story. People make up stories about remarkable people. I believe Jesus was a real person who had world-changing insights, but I'm afraid a lot of cruft has built up around him and been carried forward as literal truth.
The challenge for an individual is separating the wheat from the chaff.
Most of my thoughts on the matter are derived from Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You.
I didn't read it, but I listened to an audiobook version of TKOGIWY about a year ago on a long road trip. I must have missed something, because my take-away was that the author was propounding the merits of of passivism, and anti-authoritarianism. I thought it was tedious. I remember being disappointed.
It is very dense and in a philosophical style. I'm not surprised it was tedious as an audiobook. I'd like to read it again myself. My takeaway was that Tolstoy believed Christ had ushered in a new era for man, philosophically. The previous eras were:
1. man serves self and family
2. man serves state and country
3. man serves god
He believed many of our problems are due to most of us still being stuck at level 2 of existence. A man at level 3 is immune to the problems of a man at level 2. For example, they couldn't even compel Jesus w/ bodily harm. They killed him, and what good did it do them?
He also argued that the shift to level 3 is inevitable and already in progress.
It seems like you've really loaded up the term "atheist" here with a lot of negative connotation. It's unfortunate, but a lot of people seem to think this way. Truth is, everyone in the world is an atheist if you just take the word at its basic definition of "a lack of belief in a god or god(s)". That is, there are surely gods you've never even heard of and so you lack belief in them. The way you feel about those unknown gods is the same way I feel about all gods
But the label of atheist has been imbued with all sorts of negativity. So much so that some people hear it and think being an atheist actually makes someone evil, without any care for the well-being of other humans. Or they think the atheist must be miserable and unfeeling.
It's why I don't even use the term any more. I don't know if other people I'm talking to will have the same definition of the term that I do. If someone asks me about my religious beliefs, I simply say that I have none.
I mean, did you live through the new Atheism and then the Atheism+ movement of the 2000s and 2010s? I watched peoples lives get ruined, mentally unwell people commit suicide, people get arrested for embezzling donations, the works.
The “atheist community” (and it was oddly enough a real thing for awhile, with atheist church and everything! Look up Oasis on YouTube). It attracted people who were hedonistic and amoral and, in retrospect, went down in flames about how you’d have expected.
I’m not just some isolated Christian who has never met an atheist deriding them as some sort of bogeyman, I was friends with people in Poly Quads and met spouses who were bullied by their SO into being swingers, then watched 50 year olds behave like teenagers with all the consummate drama as well.
Once we had kids we totally removed ourselves from that situation and it fell apart a few years later, after the leader (who was originally a Christian pastor, I might add) got #metoo’ed for (surprise surprise) having sex with half the women in the organization.
> Like, going to Richard Dawkins on campus, sneering at how stupid Christians were rolling my eyes at every little thing atheist. For a good ten to fifteen years. Then I realized it was terrible for my mental health and just got over myself and adopted more of a Pascal’s Wager outlook.
As an atheist, you weren't a practicing atheist. You were an agitator with a religion of your own, which is projecting and spreading atheism. I used to call these folks "militant atheists" because, like when I was a teenager and left the Catholic church, I was ready to treat others the way I'd been treated (and seen others treated). This is not a healthy paradigm for leaving any community though and furthermore it repeats the sins of the past.
> Like, I frankly don’t give a damn about the truth or falsity of religion anymore. That’s not the point. It lets me act as if my life has meaning regardless of whether or not that’s true, which even when I directly reflect on it is a small amount of comfort insulating me from the yawning abyss of existential terror I felt throughout all of my 20s and half of my teens.
... and then you adopted the mindset of an actual atheist (one without religion), and then adopted a religion!
For what it's worth, I'm glad you're happy, that's really what matters. Maybe now that you have experience as someone without religion it gives you perspective as someone with faith. From what you've written, it sounds like that's the case.
A final thought (and opinion) that no one asked for: as an atheist I applaud the healthy exercise of and engagement with religion. The only time in which I object to religions or institutions is when they think their ideas are proper enough to be codified into law. For that, we have science and bureaucracy, of which religion can be a part of neither due to self-interested hegemony, which is an obvious conflict of interest.
> f you read enough fiction on a shared topic, you'll be able to pull the same number of 'enlightening' quotes from those books as religious people can from their own sacred tomes.
In fact, Harry Potter And The Sacred Text does exactly that!
> Religious texts are made up fiction that hold no more meaning in my world view than Harry Potter or Game of Thrones
I have been downvoted many times (not sure why?) for stating this on HN, but I will state it again:
It's sad that this line of thinking has taken over the modern time. We now have "science", so we don't need any of that silly stuff like "philosophy" or "art" or "religion". All can be explained through the scientific method and all other branches of human intellect are null and avoid.
Of course, this comes from the new Atheists who influenced a lot of the younger generation years a go when they started but their ideas actually stems from older philosophers who shaped the modern day thinking.
Mainly Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche (who was also influenced by Feuerbach), Jean Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault.
For example, What did Jean-Paul Sartre say? "Existence precedes essence" and you can _clearly_ see how this has affected the modern Atheism mentality in the 21st century.
If existence precedes essence, then everything is relative and nothing can be objective and absolute; thus to claim things such as objective morality in the way that religion does is meaningless.
Don't forget that Sartre said: "If God exists, I can't be free, but I am free. Therefore God does not exist". Once again, if you look carefully enough, you absolutely see this in the modern world. The New Atheists for example, took all their ideas and spread them from these philosophers. What was Hitchen's famous quote? He would constantly regurgitate Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of the people" which again.. is rooted from Sartre philosophy.
More to it, to anyone who claims religious people are intellectual inept, I would simply challenge you to read any of the material written by the intellectuals of the tradition. For example, for Christianity they would be: Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas or John Henry Newman and tell me you're dealing with someone who has suspended his critical faculties.
You are welcome to disagree with them of course, but to claim that we should simply replace these materials with math books is disingenuous.
Religion would be ok to me and, I’d imagine, OP if it presented itself as philosophy or fairy tales that you could take or leave. Or a part of human history like medieval knights.
It’s a curios byproduct of human inquisitiveness and that’s it. it shouldn’t have any special rights or claims to have a deeper understanding of the universe that would even give certain people (priests etc) to be the judges of other people’s actions.
The world wouldn’t succumb into chaos if all churches / mosques etc . were gone in an instant and people forgot they existed as anything but pretty buildings.
There were of course smart and kind people at all times and they happened to use the vehicles of religion some long long time ago when it seemed like the best logic toolbox for the mind
>> More to it, to anyone who claims religious people are intellectual inept, I would simply challenge you to read any of the material written by the intellectuals of the tradition
That's a straw man - we all are idiots sometimes (I believe that most of times but that just me) and this little silly observation can be easily used to explain how otherwise rational and intelligent person can hold two opposite views in their had. Our rational abilities are greatly exaggerated by people like You who believe that there are magical others that can be rational all the time in all aspects of their life.
Those people believe in God because they want to believe (by which I mean its an emotional decision and not an logical one) and the logic is there only to rationalize what their emotions are telling them.
I suspect that if medicine will get advanced enough we will see finally that by just playing with memory and emotional state of person we can easily turn the most avid believer into Christopher Hitchens (and vice versa).
I hold spirituality to be a choice to hold things sacred. Almost everyone holds something sacred, whether it's family bonds or whatever. You can also choose to hold more things sacred, even the entire world, without believing in divinities.
IMO, one benefit of religion that is difficult to capture anywhere else is that it creates a mutually supportive community. I personally can't get over sacrificing my own intellectual honesty for the sake in group acceptance, but in most cases, I do think this is a trade off worth making. Secular Jews seem to be able to have it both ways, though I'm not sure this is something easily replicable.
> This advice simply doesn't work if the recipient is an atheist.
Then try Buddhism? More of a philosophy than a religion, and seems to have hit on the idea thousands of years ago that most problems in humanity are to do with mental illness of one sort or another.
Buddhism is definitely a religion with a specific epistemology, claims on the supernatural (karma, cycle of samsara), manifestations of the divine (Bodhisattva), rituals, chants and prayers. Some Buddhist sects can be pretty radical, even.
Buddhism as conceptualized in the western world is a marketing strategy that appeals to people thanks to the fact the Buddhism is exotic, the same reason Christian symbolism is à la mode in Asia (just see how many anime have Christian themes). If you could repackage Christianity to convince these people that it is new, exotic and exciting they would convert immediately.
By the way, there are philosophical traditions, both in Buddhism and Christianity, that reject any supernatural claim and see religion as a useful but not true moral framework, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism
P.S.: I'm an atheist. I'm not defending a religion or another.
There are 'religious but not spiritual' groups for those who appreciate the structure of religion in their life but who don't believe in God. Atheist Quakers are an established group, and some Jewish groups seem close to an atheistic religion.
Religion for a modern person with the easy access to the knowledge we now have is effectively just being intellectually lazy. Some people do need help right now, but I don’t think religions are any better than other addiction resources. AA gets a pass for me because I know atheists that used it and the religious component is easy to ignore. AA works because of the group and accountability, not faith in some higher power.
Anyway, not to be insulting, but it is all a bunch of made up nonsense for a time when we did not have actual explanatory knowledge for our existence and universe. We do now. Religion and its institutions are dying out in industrialized nations because they have lost their claim to having all the answers.
I'm an atheist, yet I don't think science can answer why we exist and what is the meaning of life. I think those questions are syntactically valid but semantically invalid. We kind of (in the 'broad strokes' you say) think () we know how we got here, how life got started, etc. But why? How do you know that? It's an honest question because, again, I don't think that question makes sense so I'd love to know your take on it.
() I say we think we know because I'm actually agnostic (I typically say 'atheist' because it stops some conversion attempts I'm not looking for from even starting, judging by your two comments on this thread I reckoned I can give you the honest answer as you won't try to convert me into anything!) and I believe we can only know what we conclude from the information collected by our senses and our thinking process after that, but an error in either the information collection (think of how the first scientific estimates of the age of the planet were off by a long shot on account of choosing a poor thing to measure -- I'm thinking about the work of Halley here) or in the thought process would result in bad knowledge, and it seems to me there's a part of the scientific-minded population right now that has a blind spot for this: there's overconfidence in science.
A fair response to my blithe and confident answer. In general, though, we have figured enough out to understand our origin well enough to rule out religious theories in our existence. To reduce things the way you did is a denial of progress at some level, while couching it in caution against trusting science too far. Our first bridges sucked, now they are better. Our first stabs at cosmology were not much better than another religion, now they are better. Is there some bad knowledge kicking around in science? Of course. That is why I said in “broad strokes”.
To cut to the chase: our brains are just piles of chemistry. There is no meaning. We make it up, and that is ok. “Why” we exist is coincidence and millions of years of happy little evolutionary experiments blindly conducted by nature. Maybe there is a Deus ex Machina in there, but for our purposes does it really matter?
We agree on the meaning then! :)
This reminded me of the intro to “A universe from nothing”, where the author says (paraphrasing) “why is there life is the wrong question, but we can try to answer how is there life?”
It means (pun intended) that the meaning is not self sustaining term in our reality - there is no absolute meaning outside of our perception.
There is only relative meaning (as in what kind of meaning my perception assigns to things that can be observed by me - simply put - we create our own meaning).
It can be simplified further to there is no meaning or the meaning does not exist but in my opinion this is oversimplification and reeks of nihilism.
So if You look at things from the point of view described above the "why" question (which can be paraphrased to "what is the meaning") is wrong.
I also wanted to add that it's not that I think it is wrong to ask such questions, only that I think they're wrong when considered from within our system of knowledge, so I find them unanswerable.
Kind of how like "what kind of food does that digital computer like?" is a wrong question.
> “Why” we exist is coincidence and millions of years of happy little evolutionary experiments blindly conducted by nature.
I'm not religious either, but I always find this hard to believe. What are the odds nature happened to provide all the building blocks for us to be here to question our existence? It seems far more likely that (i) nothing would exist, (ii) the universe wouldn't have the right combination of properties and forces to maintain its own existence, or (iii) it would be a boring universe filled with a couple of basic elements capable of producing nothing of interest. Instead, we have complex life and we're here building iPhones and spaceships.
For that reason I can't believe there's a single universe and through coincidence it happened to contain everything needed for life. Even if we go with the multiverse theory and a near infinite number of universes, I still find it difficult to believe. You can argue the universe is filled with a bunch of garbage and we're assigning meaning and value to that garbage because it's us, and we want to feel important. However, I really don't feel like anything (and certainly not something as complex as us) should exist in the first place. I want to say it's too much of a coincidence to happen by chance, but at the same time, I don't have a better answer as to why we're here.
Infinitesimally low probability doesn't imply impossibility. If the event is in the probability space then it can certainly happen, no matter how serendipitous we may find it.
What is so remarkable about the iPhone or the spaceship? Why is it worthy of note when compared to any other phenomena in the universe? What brings you to make a distinction between a live human body and an inanimate celestial body?
> What is so remarkable about the iPhone or the spaceship? What brings you to make a distinction between a "live" human body and an "inanimate" celestial body?
I'm not trying to say that humans are more important or meaningful than a rock. I agree with you that nothing inherently has meaning and it's an attribute we create and assign. I'm only saying that we're intelligent beings that are capable of some rather advanced tasks, such as creating a iPhone. In my opinion, it seems far less likely for us to exist than either nothing, or a simpler universe without us.
Yes, it's not impossible, just like I could throw a handful of sand in that air that falls to the ground and happens to write the story of my life. It's so unlikely though that I can't help but wonder if it wasn't just chance that we're here.
I think you are struggling with something I thought a lot about too. It is difficult for our brains to actually internalize the /immense/ amount of time evolutionary processes have been happening. It is so long and vast and our brains are barely good with comprehending hours and days. It is a mind bogglingly loooong time. Like really, really, really long. A lot can happen in a few billion years :)
I understand evolution and the time frame. I have no trouble with that concept. What I find difficult to believe is that a viable universe started in the first place to give evolution the opportunity to succeed.
You're engaging with religion only as an explanatory mechanism for physical occurrences, whereas the weight of the argument for and against religion are on philosophical and logical grounds. It's not a strawman, as many people have used God to fill the gaps in our understanding of the physical world, but it's entirely irrelevant to the really interesting discussions on the subject. If you want to see what religious people are on about, and why some scientifically literate people continue to have faith you need to understand those arguments.
I mean, I grew up in a very religious environment and have met and had long discussions with religious scholars. You can couch it in as much sentimentalism and philosophy as you want, but to me it almost always falls apart when you dig to the real roots of religious scholarhsip and philosophy. Ultimately these people decide to have some level of faith in a thing that is contradictory to all evidence we have. It is an interesting thought experiment, but I can't find any principled reasoning behind it all at the bottom. Yes there are a lot of religious scholar types who will agree with all of science, and they continuously reform their belief system and philosophy around the scientific evidence. It is like having a belief system that wobbles and wiggles like Jello. Not to say that science has all the answers and is purely axiomatic, but at least that is its goal. Religious scholarship has a completely different agenda in my opinion and starts from a very different place when it tries to reason and I fundamentally disagree that it is a "really interesting discussion" beyond how people get sucked into believing it all. Without being dismissive, I do think I have a basic grasp of those arguments and I find them wholly lacking. A lot of it comes down to things their parents taught them and their inability to get rid of their deep seated beliefs about the nature of existence.
The meaning of life is to reproduce, which implies to survive until that age at least. Without this, there would be no continuous life and the "meaning" question cannot even be asked, as it's a question asked by living things. Or only one living thing that we know of.
The why question has no answer nor will it ever have an answer. Life doesn't need justification or orchestration. It's a freak accident of molecules. It could have never happened and it can end by means of a disaster and the universe will happily continue without it.
As to what a human can/should to with their life other than not dying and trying to reproduce, that's an entirely cultural question. Cultural is a fancy word for: we made it up.
As someone who was religious when they are younger but no longer, why? I used to be a devout Christian until I went exploring the world and saw the unreal amount of massive suffering, imbedded greed etc; If god is real, he is a cruel god.
We have the technology and means to ensure every person on this earth does not go hungry and has a safe place to sleep at night. But humans do human stuff.
You probably pass plenty of homeless in your daily life and never look/think of them again. Yet somehow religion constantly preaches harmony and giving to others. Most religious people I know are inherently greedy and abide by Capitalistic morals and act as such.
I guess I could create a bubble for myself and not care about others at an inherently deep level like most humans on earth do.
What would a religious Scholar/Teachings do for me if I can plainly see that teachings are only followed when convenient or warped to fit my world narrative? What would you suggest?
For those of you complaining about SnowHill9902 recommending religion, please check out Optimize.me (free) for something secular. It's still, IMO, the best collection of practical self-help knowledge and insight available on the internet.
How do I get the psychological benefits without having belief? Let me lay a story on you:
I fell in love with this girl who I had known on/off for a long time. I found out she was an escort (quietly but distinctly confirmed payment-for-sex) in her spare time (she was a student when this all happened). This was really upsetting and had me very distraught. I simultaneously could see a life with her, but also felt disgusted at the escorting.
I wished I could speak with my grandfather about it. I knew he'd know what to tell me. But he had recently passed away. "Well, what did I like about Grandpa? Could I find a substitute? I need like, an old person who has reliable wisdom and experience, not just some wino who has hung on. Why isn't this a thing? An old person a community can approach for advice on..."
"Oh I think I need a priest."
When I went looking for one though, it was all about accepting Jesus into my heart and spiritual learnings and miracles that I must accept literally happened, etc. Real hard to find the "old wise person who can help me navigate this thing".
There’s this Western conception of Buddhism that stripes away a lot of the religious beliefs—Siddhartha wasn’t divine at all, there is no Amitabha, Ksitigarbha is a folk tale. The emphasis is all on practice. Meditation, the 4 noble truths, Middle Way, etc.
This doesn’t represent true Buddhism like Asians would recognize it, but I think it does highlight how you can build a practice and adopt the world outlook without the supernatural.
A low-level Zen inspired practice may be what you’re looking for
The bible is a collection of many books and resources by various authors. It contains valuable ideas and experience which have survived the centuries. Many religious people however like it to be a 'single black & white truth of the all-mighty invisible ghost who says you are a guilty person'.
For me the bible is the same as any other (old) book where people write about their life experience. A good example is 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius. There is a lot of wisdom in it, and I have read it more than once over the years. It makes you reflect on your own life and decisions you make.
For youtube specifically, I found this great snippet for ublock origin. It removes (almost) all recommendations in youtube, which makes it much easier to quit after just one video:
The firefox/chrome extension Unhook provides these features as well, and gives you fine-grained controls over most of the addictive features on YouTube.
Consider talking to a doctor about ADD? (Alternatively, get some Adderall somewhere and experiment.) Executive control is a distinct mental capability.
This. Even with all the addictive technologies around, this essay makes problems sound too extreme to not be at least worth evaluating for ADD. Especially the consistently poor working memory is a dead giveaway.
People forget AD(H)D is fairly common, regardless of if you think it's overdiagnosed or not. And with how technology has been turning everything into dopamine slot machines it will exaggerate the symptoms even more.
Eh, as I understand it this (Adderall "abuse") is fairly common and mostly doesn't have bad consequences.
Note that inability to concentrate reliably has fairly severe downsides as well, like (at the extremes) inability to hold a job. This is not good for your medical situation either!
Depending on person, "ask a roomie to try their meds" can be a lot more viable than "go and talk to a medical professional." And it comes with a safety valve - your roomie will presumably cut you off if you get problems. Plus the dosage will be predictable and there won't be random additions. Note that I didn't say to go try meth.
(Google "death by adderall". It's not hard to avoid.)
Of course if there's medical contraindications like blood pressure or heart conditions this is a bad idea, but first of all the side effect profile is pretty mild, and second if you have a medical condition you should already know to not take meds on the basis of random HNews recommendations. - Actually, they should know their preferred risk profile anyway. I'm just reminding them that the option exists.
I’m a recovered amphetamine (Adderall) addict. I was enslaved to amphetamines for over 10 years. I started taking pills in college because they helped me focus and get things done, but I quickly fell into addiction and abuse.
Talked my psychiatrist into giving me ever higher doses. Frequently stole my wife’s ADHD medication after burning through all of my own. I couldn’t stop.
It all started (somewhat) innocently enough…
Yes it’s capable of giving you super powers at work, but it’s also really quite dangerous from an addiction standpoint.
I think for me I just really liked the way it made me feel.
I started taking ADHD medication during a time in my life where I was exploring and challenging boundaries. I had been a good rule following kid until college. In college I started experimenting with drugs in general. So naturally I wanted to experiment with taking more to see what it would be like.
I didn’t realize by chasing the high provided by Adderall that I would become addicted. Sounds dumb when I write it out like that…
No. But, it feels like people seem to only be able to name a single condition. ADHD gets misapplied frequently. I only scanned the original article, but it was really evident that the individual has a complex situation deserving more than self-help.
To underline this point. There are almost weekly threads here which either either start with a mention of "ADHD", or someone posting a comment on "ADHD" along with how they manage it with self-help books. It is hard to find the right professional help, but it's something worth doing because it's probably the only thing that will solve the problems. We should encourage people to seek that help instead of only pointing to self-help articles.
Nearly everyone is not a part of this conversation.
Technology - especially software - attracts people with ADHD traits like hyperfocus, so it's not a stretch to expect a higher percentage of ADHD brains on HN.
On top of that, "arguing with people on the internet" is an attractive source of stimulation for those of us with ADHD, meaning we will overrepresent ourselves in any discussion.
The visible symptoms of ADHD (ADD is no longer a separate thing) are things normal people experience all the time.
ADHD is very poorly named. It has similar symptoms at times but it is categorically different because they come from severely compromised self-regulation across many facets. Emotional control, memory, focus, sensory processing, etc.
Many people with ADHD find ways to work around this by finding ways to create a structure they can work in. This contributes to the belief that ADHD can be solved by diligent, disciplined work. Especially because discipline is the solution to normal people’s issues with attention.
But the reality is ADHD not a lack of discipline, but the inability to have it in the first place. Some people manage, but many can’t and other people make moral judgements that anyone with ADHD isn’t trying hard enough.
Edit: I said this more clearly elsewhere:
The symptoms are not the disorder and don't come from the same mechanism that causes normal people to have difficultly paying attention sometimes.
1. Ask yourself why do you think this is a problem and debug deeply. Maybe, after all, spending day watching videos is fine and what you want to do and the story that you don't is unnecessary.
2. Once you bring it to your conscious mind, you face a decision, do I want to watch videos and maybe learn something and relax, given that it comes with not delivering some things I promised and doing the thing I've been thinking I need to do for a long time, or do I want to do e.g. that thing.
3. Then do what you want. It requires no effort. You do what you want. I know habits and dopamine addiction narration, but there is no substance dependence here and the trick is that we cannot really hold contradicting beliefs in our conscious mind (we have plenty of them in the background but once you collide them actively you usually end up creating some micro-rationalization). But here your focus is consciously facing the choice. Plus there's plenty of dopamine for something that's been on todo for a long time.
I think we have completely different brains. What you said hits me like someone telling me to "be happy" when I'm depressed. It's not a matter of rationalization.
I am jealous this works for you. Life would be so much easier if my intrinsic motivation was well-aligned with my rational thinking.
If that's your experience most of the time, you might have ADHD. Here's a good (chest yet informative) introduction to the subject: https://m.youtube.com/c/HowtoADHD
I suspect they are not that different. Rationalization doesn't work, it's what creates "I should be doing X instead" in the first place.
I don't know if it can help you in whatever you want to achieve, but to me just realization that I always do what I want was huge. You can't honestly tell yourself you want to be doing this right now and that you don't want to be doing it right now. Once you unpack what does that mean in your head that you want it (requirements, consequences), whatever that means, you find some contradiction. But it took me some practice to be honest with myself and eliminating wishful thinking.
Accepting reality as it is, is huge. When you have in your head that if you spend time doing A you can't be doing B during this time, or that you can't achieve goal without going through steps you think are necessary, there really is not much left to do. Whatever you choose is fine, it's what you want.
E.g. I used to be thinking "I don't want to clean the kitchen, I have more interesting ideas for my life". Right now, it's a simple choice - don't clean the kitchen and have it dirty or clean it and have it cleaned up. Both are fine. Debugging gets complex when you have other people involved in your life etc but it still drops to the same thing.
Life's too short for telling yourself that you don't want to be doing what you are doing.[1]
If you take it deep enough, with our current understanding of the universe, there is no objective argument that working on renewable energy is better than watching youtube all day.
OK, I'm quitting this topic on HN, I've been selling this idea in many of my comments lately, just because it made my life so much better, but it's too verbose.
Btw if somebody knows this kind of thinking from a different source I would appreciate some pointers, because I'm sure I'm not the first one to come up with this but I haven't stumbled upon it yet and I would much prefer to point people to that direction.
1. And just to be clear I'm not ignoring very difficult situations that people are in saying that people are always doing what they want. The situation is difficult, whether that's hunger, war, illness or death. But that's reality. Given that terrible situation you decide to do something (or do nothing). It's what you decide, it's what you want. Telling yourself that you want to do something else that's not possible in that salutation is just wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is pure suffering. I strongly suggest stopping whatever you're doing if you think you don't want to be doing it and either stop doing that or fix the contradiction in your head.
> Btw if somebody knows this kind of thinking from a different source I would appreciate some pointers, because I'm sure I'm not the first one to come up with this but I haven't stumbled upon it yet and I would much prefer to point people to that direction.
I just finished the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time management for mortals. Similar thinking in that a lot of suffering and procrastination is caused by not accepting the reality of our finite time on earth, that we can never do it all, and we have to make tough choices and most people try avoid the anxiety of facing those by distracting themselves. I loved the book, and your comment, as refreshing take on “productivity” but I recognize it’s also extremely difficult for many people to practice.
I’ve been struggling with the same problem and found a solution that works for me. I was procrastinating up to 8 hours per day, on average.
The core idea is to make a contract with oneself to not exceed a daily budget of procrastination and implement it. Say, 4 hours per day, on average. Everything else follows from it.
There are few critical components to make this work:
1. You need to admit you have a problem that needs fixing. If you procrastinate so much, quite possibly you are depressed. Like, for realz. That's OK.
2. Self-understanding that this is a matter of survival. Either you will make this work, or your life will be truly miserable, up to and including destroying your career, relationships and health.
3. Comprehensive time tracking. If you were watching a YouTube video while eating and spent extra 5 minutes to finish off the video after you were done with your meal, you need to track these 5 minutes. If you pick up your phone in bed just to quickly scroll through pages for 3 minutes, you need to track it. I use Excel for that - very fast & easy if you know the right keyboard shortcuts.
4. You need to do the tracking _yourself_. This is to (a) increase awareness you procrastinated and (b) introduce friction to doing it.
5. Social accountability. I have a weekly session with a coach where I report if I stayed within the quota, or not. But anybody you don't want to disappoint will do.
6. You are good as long as you stay within the budget. If you spend the time you reclaimed by laying on the couch and looking at the ceiling for 3 hours - that's a huge win. More on that below.
7. As always, you cannot neglect your fundamentals: sleep, exercise, proper diet, socializing. But now you will have time to deal with it.
Once you implement this process, few observation immediately come to mind:
1. You have so much more time and mental energy. Wow.
2. If you fail to track these short 3-5 minute burst of procrastination, they quickly add up to half an hour, an hour, two hours. Hence, you really cannot slip on that. If you slip, you also won’t be able to trust yourself, which is critical.
3. You become bored with that extra time, meaning you finally have time to think and talk to yourself. I cannot overstate how important that is. You can use this time to direct your thoughts / visualize better outcomes and hence motivate yourself to do the right thing (aka Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).
4. Once you keep doing it successfully for some time, you can now trust yourself that you are in control. This is huge, because your emotions now will be on your side.
5. You become less afraid of doing productive things, because you actually have time to do them, instead of thinking "what's the point, I have 1 hour in the day left after wasting all of it, I am tired, and I will give into my procrastination cravings anyway".
6. You will sleep way more because now you cannot procrastinate in bed. This will repay your sleep debt and restore your energy levels, making everything else much easier to tackle.
Overall, this strategy works for me very well because (a) I admitted to myself I have a problem that is very serious. This means I need to seek help and develop a process to solve it. And (b) I don’t mind doing comprehensive time tracking of my procrastination time, which is a critical part of the entire process.
I wrote a dealio a bit back which was pretty popular here on reducing addiction to the internet by diluting it via latency, like it's harder to get addicted to small beer than to liquor. People thought when they were voting for prohibition a century ago that they were voting for banning liquor and leaving beer alone: I tend to think _that_ idea wasn't so incredibly bad, actually
I've been annoyed for a good while that online videos seem to be pretty resistant because of their variable lengths to the per-request futzing I've been doing. I probably need to get a pihole and inject latency at network level on streaming stuff, too, but this is pretty complicated and I have flatmates
There are many things that I think that I should blanket ban, but I refuse to do so because blanket banning something makes me feel like that that something won. It makes me feel completely out of control.
There's a lot of good literature and help out there.
I wrote this [1] specifically to help you understand some of what's
going on - well, at least some views for those of us who feel
passionate about technology but sometimes have unhealthy relationships
with it.
You already touch on many of the issues in your post. I have submitted
lists of other books here too (search through my history for Cal
Newport for example) that deal with tech overuse, addiction, hoarding
and so on. Hope it's useful.
Your post tells me you may be suffering from ADHD. Consider reading this book: Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most Out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder Paperback – 27 Dec. 2005
by M D Edward M Hallowell M D (Author), John J Ratey (Author)
If it strikes a chord, think of seeing your doctor about this.
Quietly turning back on the noprocrast hacker news setting
Getting out of Facebook or before watching TV was rather easy, it was mostly uninteresting stuff I did not choose to watch.
Youtube and Hacker News got me.
The quality, sometimes life-changing, content I have had access to there is really hard not to get into. Augmenting friction in accessing the content in the only way I found that works when I succeed convincing myself it is a real problem. This way it tilts the tediousness of accessing them towards the tediousness of boring tasks, which I have learned to find ways to make less tedious in turn. Trying to find balance in the addiction. Restraining from it in order to give time to interesting content to bubble up.
Also I have also been distancing so much from social activities only because they were slightly dissatisfying but instead of working on fixing them (which feels to me impossible because I lack the communication skills and I have an irrational core belief that no one can withstand even slight criticism) I'd rather spend time reading/watching about stuff that interests me on the internet. I manage to keep my life in order but I am not really investing in making something out of it. All the things I'd like to do irl, build a ecological passive house, build low tech devices, I lack the economical resources and social bonds to even start even though I am competent.
I don't know if I was always was a nerd (not the brilliant nerd type) or if I became one. Anyways I am doomed until this really becomes a hard problem in my life.
We're in the same boat! But I fell for it, like, 15-20yrs ago. Have been restricting myself since, basically, to the web 1.0 level. I don't have broadband anymore, only limited plan, - this stops me from watching videos. This was a conscious step. After setting up some physical barriers it became easier to change my own mindset (I knew I didn't have such an iron will to begin with). Also, knowledge helps. For example, being concerned with own privacy, security and health, prevents me from using garbage like tiktok or instagram. There's also conventional wisdom which tells me to stop trying to catch on with everything (HN news stream, for example :) ). Although it was necessary for my line of work for quite a while, but in life it brings nothing but sense of miss or loss like "Oh I could've done this/involved with that/joined those projects/used this library/visited that conference/etc.
Sorry if this comment turned into ramblings )
HN is somewhere in the middle of useful and interesting versus distracting and repetitive. It’s valuable enough for me to keep track of. I’ve noticed that I like it more through RSS. Because I don’t see upvotes and comment counts there.
Personally I've found that trying to limit hours spent on $badthing is not as effective as requiring hours spent on $goodthing. (Note that "good" here is shorthand for whatever you find to be more rewarding in the long term, not a universal or moral concept.) For example, instead of saying I will spend no more than X hours on social media or video games, I say that I will spend no less than Y hours on exercise or craft hobbies. The key is to center the good things and fit the bad things around those, instead of the other way around. Make a schedule if you have to. Some people find that making a commitment to other people - e.g. a workout buddy, a craft guild - can help. Start small, with goals that are easier to achieve (though they'll still require some exercise of will). As your self-discipline improves, you can change the balance accordingly.
It could be a symptom of a persistent depression disorder, it is for me.
EDIT: I've been blocked from replying
Because lack of ability to concentrate, lack of motivation, and engaging in repetitive behaviour because it's the only thing that makes you not bored, are all symptoms of it
Yes, start with that. Disable animation and auto-play in any browsers you use. And only use browsers to consume content. This worked for me, and now I can't stand video or animations.
601 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 347 ms ] threadYou could think of it like the nutrition labels on food. Imagine a pop up when you log onto reddit saying "this site on average engages users for 90-120 minutes per session". That would give you some forethought about how much value you're getting from the engagement and prompt you to make a different decision. Or at least a more informed decision.
But, it does seems like an addiction when I want to accomplish a task and 20 minutes into that task I'm back on YouTube or forums looking for more interesting data.
1. Physiological: This is relatively easy. The key is to understand how to get an accurate account of incoming calories and an accurate count of outgoing calories. When you have an accurate count of those you can lose weight. Andrew Huberman is really good on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqPGXG5TlZw&ab_channel=Andre...
I say this one is easy because it is very easy to be misinformed about food. For example, someone may have heard that salads or protein bars are low calorie and healthy, but that isn't necessarily true. And once they realize that they can adjust their food intake to account for accidently over eating.
2. Psychological: Generally speaking, a lot of people with drug, alcohol, or food problems are dealing with some sort of stress, anxiety, depression, or childhood trama. Everyone has a limit to their will power. So even if you strengthen your will power if there is another force acting against that will power it will win and you will stress eat or stress drink. Depending on this situation, Therapy, Meditation, life changes, rehab can help.
Nets are for trapping prey, that part has been completed a long time ago.
You went online to do something specific: play, research something or whatever else and you were not distracted by 500 services fighting for your attention. It was a much healthier way of consuming.
edited: grammar
It is amazing how much thought and effort goes into designing Web2.0 to keep delivering small dopamine hits. I too burn thru hours watching tech videos, browsing tech subreddits, looking for juicy HN posts and rarely come across articles about how the stickiness is engineered. Maybe I'm browsing the wrong stuff or maybe they're just too embarrassed to publish it.
As I recall there was no time spent stat, just video history eothout watchtime indication.
For all of this there were multiple projects on github that do all of this + with plots.
Apparently videos watched on the desktop aren't counted correctly, but I imagine it's not worse than summing the durations.
Edit: Maybe "upper beginner" is a better fit. I dunno, self study is weird.
I was hoping for an easy win here. ;)
The only thing I couldn't find an abundance of is long-form video essays -- it seems that (for whatever reason) that isn't something that Japanese YouTube audiences want to watch. TV shows make documentaries which are kind of similar but those are also fairly hard to find.
So, less than the average amount of time people spend watching TV?
This is a very unfair set of "ANYTHING else". I am sure you can come up with more real world list of what other people actually do after work, and that might make you feel a little more lenient about your own choices and needs.
> Any other ideas besides cold turkey?
/etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 youtube.com
127.0.0.1 www.youtube.com
Best of luck.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
Also, again maybe not for you, but a lot of people's numbers if they're just looking at watch history are going to be totally out of whack if they're using YouTube as a music streaming service. My wife's account is the one logged into our television and this would constitute the vast bulk of watch hours, having music on in the background while cleaning the house, cooking dinner, and doing a whole lot of other things. You definitely can't practice tuba in the background while also cooking and cleaning.
Some of my most clearest thoughts, ideas, or beliefs came to me when I was just walking on the street not listening to podcasts, audio books, music or browsing social media.
I think it's far more useful to literally stare at a wall for 3 hours than just mindlessly watch youtube videos. I say this as someone who is addicted to social media/internet as well and struggle very hard to overcome.
What I do is use the freedom app to set time limits and ban these sites during periods of the week. I bought one of those timed safes where I stick my phone in to completely stop the temptation for 4 or 6 hours. I know I can't completely end it, but what I want to do is just nudge myself to do something else. Instead of grabbing a phone maybe I'll attempt to read a book, or draw, or work on some data visualizations, or contribute to OSS. All activities I'd say I value more than browsing reddit (or twitter or youtube or HN) for hours every night, but my actions prove otherwise.
I'm not saying I've improved my habits 300% but at the beginning of the year I would read a book for 5 minutes put the book down pick up my phone then read reddit for an hour; at least now I can read a book for 45 minutes without being distracted. It hurts writing this because in college I'd read nearly 500 pages a week + my readings for class, I'd read nearly 200 books a year but over the last 5 years I've probably read 3.
I don't know where I'm going with this, I guess my mind wanders when writing as well...
[1] https://www.calnewport.com/books/digital-minimalism/
One thing I enjoyed about Four Thousand Weeks was the story how people viewed work 100s and thousands of years ago, how whatever you didn't finish that day, you had time tomorrow to continue; I think this is a useful idea because modern society feels so "rushed" over work that isn't exactly useful. Also the idea of JOMO (joy of missing out); it was just a new heuristic introduced to me. We make choices all the time, we neglect doing things all the time. It's just a part of life, missing out on things means enjoying others It sounds like it's more stressful but it's not, at least how the book describes this.
With Stolen Focus, I was a fan of the author's interview about his other book "Lost Connections" when he appeared on an episode of econtalk [1]. I won't say much else about Stolen Focus, except his tips on what he does to lessen the nodge toward social media is what I now do as well.
[1] https://www.econtalk.org/johann-hari-on-lost-connections/
It's about being happy with the life you're living, the life you chose, and being able to take control to work towards your fulfilling desires rather than just choosing the feel-good compulsions forever.
That's impossible. You can click on a youtube video instantly at any moment and waste 3 hours thanks to the power of the algorithm. Spending that time on anything specific would require you to plan that into your schedule. You are not going to work on a side project when you think you have 30 min for some "harmless" fun but you sure are going to be trapped by the algorithm for three hours without planning to do so.
Just curate a decently small list of high quality channels and only browse via the subscriptions list. You'll know when you're all caught up and the FOMO isn't there. You'll still catch the stuff you're interested in, but you won't be pulled in a million other random directions.
That said, I have the YouTube bug pretty bad myself.
You might want to check out https://watchlimits.com/ (free extension, I built this), or some other tools I mention in https://watchlimits.com/blog/posts/more_hours_per_week/
“Independent discharges of dopamine neurons (tonic or pacemaker firing) determine the motivation to respond to such cues. As a result of habitual intake of addictive drugs, dopamine receptors expressed in the brain are decreased, thereby reducing interest in activities not already stamped in by habitual rewards.”
From: Dopamine and Addiction | Annual Review of Psychology — https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-...
----
Edit:
I'd like to add a couple more ideas, because what you're describing in your article is spot on, and I believe can be generalized past your own experience.
> Another angle that makes this ever more distressing is that my memory is very, very fallible ... I can confidently say that I've done nothing I said I would do there.”
Herbert Simon says: “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”.
As an information-addict myself, I've been meditating a lot about this topic. During the past two years I've been researching it from a psychological perspective (And for that, I'm grateful to @ericd for this HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24581016). I'll throw in some resources that I've came across during this journey, in case anyone finds them useful:
- Dr Gabor Mate: Addiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-APGWvYupU
- Dr. Anna Lembke: Understanding & Treating Addiction | Huberman Lab Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3JLaF_4Tz8
- The book “The Molecule of More” by by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long.
- The book “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr.
“Talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that doesn’t taste good.” - Stephen Sanger, head of General Mills
You can search the web using that quote to begin your descent into the rabbit hole.
The food you eat does not just affect your body weight. It also affects your mental state.
There were some correlations that didn't sit well with me - one, off the top of my head, was an implication that MDMA consumption could make me politically conservative.
I personally would recommend just Huberman as he covers Dopamine to a great extent.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU
I find this YouTube channel very informative (albeit cheesy): https://m.youtube.com/c/HowtoADHD
Not really. But I'll check this, thanks!
The biggest problem is that I am randomly bored and watch a youtube video. It's just 15 minutes after all, how much could it hurt? and then I waste 2 hours which is 105 minutes more than I had when I started watching that video. Maybe I should play mobile games because those have those pesky daily energy limits that stop you from playing more.
Helps I got a side gig playing music haha but my bookmarks on that are gargantuan. The dancehall reggae section alone is massive. I never listen to that and get stuff done, really the best concentration music for me doesn't matter the BPM it just has to be mostly free of lyrical content. So work music is mostly electronic or classical.
What are you listening to that's high BPM for work? That hard techno shit out of Europe lately is a lot of fun, Anetha is incredible [1]
[1] https://youtu.be/qVRj8-t4PwI
Anyway, my pet theory is that the fast music acts as a stimulant, raising activity in every part of the brain - including executive function. Same principle as amphetamines.
Shit is WAY too spazzy for me to focus though, I guess you guys got different brainwaves than I do. It's funny because in the suggestions I got this, titled pov: you have adhd (breakcore mix) [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mojBQ6yo7_o
I think personally what I like about them is as much as they're not above taking some sample and running it into the ground, they have a really good ear for melody and pathos. IMO all their best songs start by them going "this anime soundtrack is great, but it could be about 25% faster and more high pitched and backed by a really hard beat." And you know, they're usually right.
A really good example for me is [2], Jersey*Spirit, which is a remix of Try Unite! [3], some anime opening. I think depending on which you listen to first you're going to have a totally different idea of how that melody is supposed to go, because as far as I can tell without a music education, by inserting a break with a slowed down voice sample and leaving out some parts, Sharpnel's version puts the verse emphasis on a totally different measure than the original (the "fly away" part is the "B" measure in the original, and the "A" measure in Jersey*Spirit). Would you have heard that was in there? I wouldn't! And I'm not making a statement on which take is better, but to me, having heard Sharpnel's take first, the just original seems unbearably slow, and also they should put that melodic idea in the center instead.
edit: And that's how I learnt that HNews strips unicode symbols...
edit: Also I challenge you to listen to Watashi wa Maid without getting it stuck permanently in your head. [4] but note that the album art is very nsfw. (Yes this was the only version I could find. Youtube probably keeps taking it down, can't imagine why.) Then compare to the [5] original - if you can, without falling asleep!
edit: Also that's from a hentai OVA. I should note that. Fucking Sharpnel, how do they find this stuff... but you can't argue they don't elevate it above the source material.
edit: As a final link, here's a (VR) DJ set they did recently that I like a lot. [6] It's less of their own songs and also a bit slower and less hyper. Might be more to your liking.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjpHgH8a8IY
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4x9W7kKl_k
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaKXIxnon_8
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=996u-54Fscs NSFW album cover!
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4eFsbnEHR4
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYMzaqzXqMo
I'm gonna need names.
Adderall has helped, so has some behavioral approaches, but nothing is a cure. For me, trying to eliminate distractions is either a distraction itself or ineffective.
Structured procrastination is useful, at least I am practicing piano or getting more fit instead of sitting around watching TV or reading dumb articles and forums.
For me there was no big Aha moment or solution to getting distracted from what I actually want to do. It had been incremental steps, such as:
- focusing on consuming long form reading/videos
- heavily curating consumption with RSS, individual settings etc.
- disabling notifications of anything that is not important
- taking responsibility of things that I could avoid, engaging more
- regular exercise and sleep
Things like that. But again, incremental steps. Sometimes I shifted from one distraction to the next, but after recognizing this it becomes clearer what’s happening.
The results are quite powerful. Over just a couple of years I gained so much. I started to get bored of things that would distract me otherwise. I gained confidence and especially courage. I recognize undesirable behavior really quickly now and stopped fooling myself.
Other than just blanket banning stuff (which never works for me), I've tried to make reducing my technical consumption into something interesting. Listening to podcasts on an iPod adds friction, as does writing on an old Psion device. I bullet journal too, it's a maintainable balance right now. Even reading books, any book, nothing technical or what I "should be learning" if I'm not up for it. They're all a nice experience, with (for me) just enough tech involved for it to be sustainable and fun. I've failed too many times to just ban stuff or "not look at a screen".
I love the outdoors when I'm out there, but when someone suggests to just go outside instead of watching a video or playing a game, I just feel guilt and resent the outdoors a little more. Old tech has been a nice, interesting bridge.
I read about resetting dopamine receptors, but it's quite hard. A bit like losing weight.
Edit: for those asking for specific recommendations. It’s always best to find your own path according to the religion of your parents and environment. However, I can suggest that you investigate Mussar and look up some books in English.
“Musar is a path of contemplative practices and exercises that have evolved over the past thousand years to help an individual soul to pinpoint and then to break through the barriers that surround and obstruct the flow of inner light in our lives. Musar is a treasury of techniques and understandings that offers immensely valuable guidance for the journey of our lives.... The goal of Musar practice is to release the light of holiness that lives within the soul. The roots of all of our thoughts and actions can be traced to the depths of the soul, beyond the reach of the light of consciousness, and so the methods Musar provides include meditations, guided contemplations, exercises and chants that are all intended to penetrate down to the darkness of the subconscious, to bring about change right at the root of our nature.“
AA, in particular the serenity prayer, has at least some overlap with the more tech friendly pursuit of Stoic philosophy.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
> Going cold turkey and never drinking again is the simple solution and it doesn't require all the drama
is very impolite to everyone who has ever struggled with any addiction.
- you just need to quit cold turkey, how hard can it possibly be to not do something?
- have you tried focusing?
- you should try making todo lists!
- if you would just sit still and listen, you could do better on your homework!
While I do agree that the parent wasn’t the most polite, comments like yours definitely fall somewhere in the naive-condescending spectrum and I read the parent’s comment as trying to figure which end of that spectrum it came from.
Any advice for an alcoholic that does not include "stop drinking" is not good advice. Every alcohol-related problem stems from the alcohol. It may not be everything needed for their recovery, but it has to be the basis. AA at least gets this right. However, AA paints a picture of addicts as people who are unable to ever get this aspect of their life under control. Unlike non-drinkers, AA alcoholics are always fighting the demon Alcohol. The organization does not believe in full recovery. Sometimes I have read a no-true-Scotsman formulation which says that if you can survive sober without AA, then you were not really an alcoholic. How is this helpful?
I think the proof is really in the pudding. AA has a lot of former members who still do not drink. These are people who quit drinking and eventually found the meetings unhelpful.
I live without fear of relapse. This is because I know that I will never "need" alcohol again.
To address the other side of what you are talking about, I hope that one day I will be able to live properly with ADHD. As of yet, we have not found an approach that generally works. Stimulants are helpful but they are a band-aid on the problem and have side effects. Behavioral therapy is helpful, too, albeit a bit mild in effect. I hope that when a good approach is developed, I will have the sense to try it.
Going cold turkey and never doing X is the simple solution for any addiction, now get addicted to anything and try that out...
I have been addicted to cigarettes and alcohol. Going cold turkey is essential for getting over the addictions. Never doing them again makes relapse unlikely. These are simple facts. AA says you can't really achieve independence you have to replace it with meetings and prayer. I say you can get over it. And I have experience with people who go back and forth to AA relapsing, and so how will they ever get free?
It's also very inconsiderate... Addiction generally has much deeper roots than just "craving the high" since it can be maladaptive coping mechanisms people develop due to traumatic childhoods (or later life, but less likely). Eg, substance abuse/addiction is commonly found in people who suffer from CPTSD.
The high isn't "I'm having the time of my life" for these people, but a a way to disconnect and silence their brain demons.
Also, a lot of people don't know they were abused or neglected as children (becaus it's "their normal") and then go through life as struggling with all sorts of internalised shit.
Edit: Also a very important thing I want to put out there: if anyone struggling with addition reads this, addiction isn't something to be ashamed of or to put yourself down over. It might not be your fault. But most addictions are maladaptive, and the sooner resolved the more you will get out of life. Don't be ashamed of yourself, and don't hate yourself for it
I was an alcoholic and now I am not. I don't think it is easy but it is relatively simple. A lot of stuff that is glommed onto recovery from alcoholism obscures the fact that you have to stop using the drug, that is fundamental. Anything that unintentionally encourages relapse is not useful.
For many drinkers, suddenly stopping can be life threatening, causing seizures and convulsions.
I also stopped drinking, effectively cold turkey - but I wasn't a very heavy drinker, just a habitual one. However, I rejected AA as far too prescriptive in its approach.
For anyone reading this who is considering quitting alcohol I recommend r/stopdrinking on reddit, which is an incredibly friendly and supportive place where people practice and discuss a variety of methods.
Surmounting all of this is very much like a lot of difficult tasks - often made more difficult by well-meaning people who want to point out all the difficulties you hadn't considered yet. What we need is more resources like: do you drink this much? Go to this clinic when you quit. Worried? Then quit sooner rather than later when you are drinking even more.
But IMO more often than not, we should't be flippant or dismissive about the excuses (for relapses or for continuing to use).
For some people, maladaptive coping—and all its consequences—is a cheap price to pay compared to facing a sober existence when unequipped to deal with it.
So even if they quit cold-turkey (or just quit), they won't necessarily improve their quality of life because they don't know why they got into addiction in the first place. However, going to support groups can help meet people. Those who struggle with similar root causes of their addiction tend to cluster as well, and that can (indirectly, and with a bit of luck) help identify root causes. That was what happened with me, and I'm forever grateful to support groups.
In my case I was an adult child of narcissistic parents (ACoNs)[1] and I struggled with C-PTSD[2] all my life (I self-misdiagnosed myself many times with depression, autism, younameit) and I'll live with it forever. In a twisted and perverse way, I think drug abuse and addiction—with all the indirect suffering they caused—also saved my life. If it weren't for drugs, literally wouldn't have had any coping mechanism whatsoever. So, in cases like mine quitting cold-turkey means that the withdrawal symptoms just compounded compounded with our emotional dysregulation.
Also I want to finish with this: I am really glad you managed to turn your life around and quit using. I'm happy that you took steps to improve your life, and as cheesy as it sounds: I'm proud of you! Thank you for sharing your story; I know talking about these things isn't easy.
Stay strong!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_parent [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_post-traumatic_stress_...
edit: wordsmithing
What an incredibly garbage take. Not genetics, having alcoholic family, none of that? You just distill it to that?
It's a nice quote because it is a bit more interesting than common popular wisdom that exists across humanity and in all religions simply telling you : "Accept what you cannot change"
That is often elided even more by "Accept your situation" or even "Obey" providing great convenience to the powers that be.
Apparently the monks felt a huge urge just to sleep, rest and abandon their study around midday... it was a fairly well recognised psycho-spiritual problem in the middle ages for some monastic orders...
They're interesting inputs for Marginalia's search engine FWIW.
You can find it in humanism, you can find it in secular philosophy, you can get therapy, you can find it in social political communities, it's in many places. You can even get some old bearded dude tell you what to do if that's what you need.
Religion is just one way to have faith.
Meanwhile many modern replacements usually don't have any longevity. Maybe one of them will survive but only time will tell.
The vast majority have staying power because of two primary things. Have children, teach those children your religion. In the days before mass education and when huge numbers of children died in early age making this a memnatic was an important way for societal continuation.
This says nothing about it's continued usefulness after a paradigm shift.
Zoroastrianism may also have something to offer here. Maybe it's time to revive it.
Any sources that will back this claim? Oh wait, you don't need facts. Do you give this sort of unsolicited religious advice to everyone or do you specifically choose people who are troubled?
> since psychology is the most vague of sciences
But since you make this claim, we can talk about it. So what's your advice? See religious scholars instead of board certified psychologists?
And yes, I used the word wisdom on purpose :)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that.
People that have gone through horrible circumstances can, and often do, benefit greatly from the moral certainty that religion provides.
Individuals love to look at individual bits of morality in said books in a choose your own adventure exploration. As much as the moral certainty says be nice to others, it will also contain many bits that are highly questionable and would deeply conflict with others views.
In general secular psychologists don't come with the violent historical baggage that religions do.
Who cares? It gets drug addicts clean and criminals reformed.
I'd be curious to see the stats on that.
I mean, there's a fairly strong Darwinistic argument for the validity of certain religions. Very few belief systems have survived a hostile environment for anywhere near as long as the big religions.
If religious belief systems are "wrong" (in the sense of being useful for navigating the world, not in the sense of satisfying certain conditions of symbolic logic and reasoning), then why have these religions triumphed over secularism time and time again?
I'd still consider myself an atheist, but even then I'd be careful to be so dismissive of belief systems that have proven themselves over the course of millennia to be incredibly powerful, enlightening and enriching.
I always find it ironic when the "Facts and Reason" branch of atheism pretends that we would all be driving flying cars in a peaceful utopia if it weren't for pesky religion.
I'm intrigued to understand your definition of "triumphed", as given the rest of the post I'm assuming you're not referring to the genocide of non-believers, which is, of course, precisely how the major religions achieved such longevity.
It doesn't take much of a leap to go from "I am valuable [because G-d says so]", to "I deserve to be equal to my fellow man, free to make my own choices".
To be fair, a lot of them spread by the sword. Convert or we kill your tribe. Some of them explicitly call out in their texts that it's OK to forcibly convert or murder non-believers, an attribute which is, I'm sure, a helpful "evolutionary gene" for the religion's spread. There are also religions with non-violent, but still coercive conversion, where there are non-death-related social consequences for nonbelievers.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Nihilism.
Could you recommend some?
I am not religious and personally i think is best to develop this on your own than taking a prepackaged system, but the utility and practicality of having ssmething already done and battle-tested is undeniable.
Just like you don't need to reinvent the wheel and write a complex library on your own when there's one available, sometimes is best to just use a prepackaged beliefs set and moral system to follow.
Many people are even unable to produce that on their own and epd up disparaged, aimless, living their lives without any understanding of right, wrong, good, bad, moral, immoral.
For what religions are and what they do provide, i personally think some branches of buddhism are better, like the Sokka Gakkai International's approach provides.
I don't agree with the sentence that religious scholars are the best psychologists because they only can provide guidance inside what fits this prepackaged framework-for-living they adopted, and in many many cases (i.e. mentall illnesses, deep issues, moral hardship in grey areas, etc) they are unable to effectively help in any significant way.
Good news is that psychology isn't incompatible with religion and both can coexist peacefully, and one can get the best of both worlds wathout thinking one is best; they work in different ways and provide different things, and IMO they aren't directly comparable, as a psychologist cannot help you very well in terms of religion, and a religious scholar cannot help you very well in terms of psychology (except for the thinfs that fit witin the religious framework chosen).
So all in all, i agree that religion as a valid choice and should be part of discourse, as sometimes it can very well be the best course of action.
Just don't agree with throwing blanket statements of what's best or not in a world as plastic and complex as the one we live in.
That ship sailed a while ago, my parents aren't religious, and I don't know any religious people.
So I'd personally recommend philosophy to people, instead of religion. Bertrand Russell (also known for his mathematical work) is an excellent place to start.
EDIT: For those who disagree, I'd recommend a Russell's essay "Why I Am Not A Christian" [0]. It is quite short and readable.
https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html
One constant teaching was that Christianity is not a religion. But about forming a relationship with God through Christ.
How can one even begin to attempt that task if one truly doubts that God exists? Also, is believing a God of some sort not exactly what a religion is?
A relationship is trying to understand God. What he means. How you can serve him. What kind of life Christ lived. How to live as an example to others.
Everyone has doubts. Most of my teachers would talk about times that they struggled.
It takes a lot of faith to believe that there is an all powerful God. that loves you for you.
It also takes faith to believe that universe popped out of nothing, the conditions for life happened to be just right, and that it’s also meaningless.
Maybe Christians are wrong. But maybe not. Worse that happens is people were nicer to each other for awhile. The other is that you spend eternity in Heaven.
I feel like I kind of get what you're saying. But it seems to even have this perspective that one ought to try to believe in God, to be motivated to struggle, one already has to accept religious teachings of some kind.
I don't struggle to believe that the universe popped out of nothing, I very easily and without any effort on my part maintain the belief that it's pretty much impossible for us to know where the universe came from and that it's probably not worth expending too much effort worrying about it. I'd see having to make an effort to believe something somewhat of a red flag regarding the validity of that belief.
> Worse that happens is people were nicer to each other for awhile. The other is that you spend eternity in Heaven.
I mean, some religious people are nice to each other. Others are downright nasty and make life very difficult for people who don't fit into their worldview (for example because they're gay). And presumably the worst case is that there is in fact a God who happens to take the opposite view on morality to the Christian one and thus Christians end up spending an eternity in Hell. As far as I can that's no less likely than there being a Christian God.
A Christian can just as easily say:
I don't struggle to believe that God created the universe out of nothing, I very easily and without any effort on my part maintain the belief that it's pretty much impossible for us to know where the universe came from and that it's probably not worth expending too much effort worrying about it. I'd see having to make an effort to believe something somewhat of a red flag regarding the validity of that belief.
Most reasonable Christians (at least 90% of the Christians I know and have met) will readily admit that we don't know with a 100% certainty that God created the universe. We have faith that He did, but we could very well be wrong. If I'm wrong, at least I've lived a full life and felt like my life had meaning.
> Others are downright nasty and make life very difficult for people who don't fit into their worldview (for example because they're gay)
People get all hung up about a Christian saying that it's a sin to be gay. We also say it's a sin to lie, and it's a sin to lust after a woman (or man) that isn't your spouse, and it's a sin to engage in gluttony. Does that mean we look down on people who have sinned and reject them? No, because like Romans says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The law is like a mirror. It's a lot easier to see your flaws in a perfect reflective mirror then it is to see them in an old foggy one. The law is a perfect mirror that shows us the depravity we _all_ have inside of us, and it exists so we can strive to be better.
No one will ever attain perfection, but that doesn't mean we're free to go on sinning. Romans is an amazing book if you want to read about a devout Christian's struggle with sin.
Anyways, if a person engages in homosexual behavior, do I think that's a sin? Yes. But I also sin every day. It doesn't excuse it, but it's also no better or worse than any sin that I commit, it just happens to be one I don't struggle with. And if you don't want to be a Christian and still want to be gay, go for it! I'm not going to stop you. Because we're adults, and we make our own choices. It's as simple as that.
My opinion on the behavior means nothing, and I'm not going to berate strangers for engaging in an activity they already know I disapprove of because of my worldview. I literally don't need to say anything, and I won't unless they specifically ask me what my thoughts are on the matter.
Who revealed themselves directly only before the enlightenment, and thereafter must be experienced only in ones mind, testimony from those long dead, or by the evidence of supposed creation.
So there are definitely religions that encourage doubting whether God exists. Eventually you have to come to some sort of immovable mover. Whether that's the Big Bang or God, so there's nothing inherently illogical about believing in something that is timeless and has always existed.
Many Christians believe that you must believe in Jesus to get into heaven. I prefer what Proust said (paraphrasing - the actual quote I can't find and is far more beautiful): "Who is more likely to get into heaven - someone who believes in god, despises and judges the world and mankind or someone who loves all of gods creations without judgement but doesn't believe in him?" I refuse to think a loving god would make the litmus test such an arbitrary thing.
You cannot have faith and despise the world, you are supposed to judges your failings first before judging others.
Modern usages of the word "religion" group Christians and Muslims (for example), groups that would see themselves as distinct.
Interestingly, you can see a bridge period of sorts. If you think back to characters in movies of the 30s and 40s saying "I am not a religious man, but..." or "I am not a praying man, but..." you can kind of see the shift. A little reference to the good standing meaning but also some of the outsider type frame.
All that shift in meaning seems to do is that it determines which belief systems are considered appropriate by a speaker, and which aren't...
As a funny aside, I went to look up the etymology of the word and a quotation is listed at https://www.etymonline.com/word/Cult:
"Cult is a term which, as we value exactness, we can ill do without, seeing how completely religion has lost its original signification. Fitzedward Hall, "Modern English," 1873"
It strikes me as funny because the problem with the word 'religion' is noted as far back as 1873, but I'd argue 'cult' is now even less precise than 'religion'. I don't think it was always that way. References to Roman mystery religions as 'cults' generally lack the pejorative connotation.
This isn't the case as often as you might think. Consider religions like Unitarianism, for example. You can also make a strong case that the doubt is baked foundationally into Christianity itself-- consider Zizek's readings of Chesterton and Hegel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEuY46p5yH4
> And as soon as you remove the doubt ban, you don't really have a religion anymore, but a philosophy
Lots of philosophers were/are extremely religious
> “You have a right to be confused. This is a confusing situation. Do not take anything on trust merely because it has passed down through tradition, or because your teachers say it, or because your elders have taught you, or because it’s written in some famous scripture. When you have seen it and experienced it for yourself to be right and true, then you can accept it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s
I really like the quote you've posted. I dislike bullshit. There are many bullshit Buddhism resources out there. Where can I find the real thing?
Religion is philosophy, plus ritual and aesthetics. It's the set of philosophies that have survived the ravages of time. It's a set of philosophies that are so useful to live by, that these philosophies have survived through books and rituals for millennia. Or put another way, these philosophies are so incredibly effective, that people are surviving today precisely because they've lived by those philosophies, and the only reason we know of these philosophies is because they are survived by, and helped to survive, the people who've passed and continue to pass them down to others.
There existed philosophies you've never heard of, that are dead, because they died with the people who've followed them. Is it just chance? Is it because the surviving philosophies are better? Who knows. But if you're a betting man, you should bet on those surviving philosophies being actually better, more useful, more conducive to survival.
>the focus on "removing the doubt"
I think this is a focus exclusive to "nu-Christian" Anglosphere denominations, primarily American ones, and their focus is made a spectacle of because: (1) their focus is understandably cringe and the outrage is entertaining (2) the spectacle is used as a tool to de-legitimize religion as a whole, especially Christianity.
Nope. Religion tends to bring people together, often making them much more powerful as a group. But to me, it's just not worth selling out.
> I think this is a focus exclusive to "nu-Christian" Anglosphere denominations
I don't think that is the case. John 14:6 says:
So basically, if you don't believe in Jesus, you can't go to heaven. If that's not an effort to restrict doubt, then what is?> Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” John 20:24-25
If that's not encouraging engaging with doubt I don't know what is.
> If that's not an effort to restrict doubt, then what is?
I can tell you that 1 + 1 = 2 and you can still doubt me. Just because you doubt me it doesn't make that statement any less true. Also, me stating that fact isn't me restricting doubt, it's just me stating a fact. If Jesus was God, and what He says here is true, He's stating a fact. You can choose to believe or not to believe, or doubt or not to doubt.
Personally I see it a ’truth’ like in scientific truth and personal integrity.
Imagine Jesus as the incarnation of the best possible person. I you where to try to based your actions in a similar way, what would you do?
"No man comes to the Father but by me”:
You won't be the best version of yourself by chasing any other things (fame, money, pleasure, etc)
I too was disgusted by the first degree interpretation (obviously false) but I now discover a second degree reading that explain our human condition and most of our problems.
Look into Peterson Biblical lecture on Youtube if you want to see a psychological way of looking at the bible.
I still can't figure out how to deal with it, which is why I usually refrain from arguing with religious people. Afterall, when it comes to the big questions (like, is there a god), neither one of us can bring anything to the table - it's impossible to know by definition. And since all religious teachings are based on the existence of a god, there is no way to convince anyone of anything without first proving the unprovable. It's like two completely different sets of axioms - of course the conclusions are gonna be different, and the concept of axioms being "right" or "wrong" is meaningless by itself.
The fact that it was written in a book gave it incredible power and have allow our civilisation to exist and science to be developed but also removed much of the evolutions of the stories.
Now that our world change so fast the stories seems very outdated to our modern mind but most of them speak about a deep human conditions and traps we feel into multiple times.
It hard to speak to christians as most see it a first level reading (literally true) but most people are not ready to go into deep analysis of meaning, they need a story to unite them, to show them a way to a good life and so it was for all people 200 years ago.
Without those stories people put other things in its place (false idols) like money, pleasure, diversity and equity, communism, fascism, etc.
To the question is there a God, the God of the bible is a mix of the natural environment (god of wind, god of the sun, etc) and the human civilisation ’thou shall not kill’ if you kill, God will be angry: you are going to have a bad time (at the hands of other humans)
If you have the time, the Peterson lectures gave me a way to understand it that make sense to me (no bearded magician in the sky)
I get what you're saying but to offer another perspective, informed by the work of Rober Pirsig as presented in his second book 'Lila': I think those religions/philosophies you mention are an organism of their own, with humans as their hardware. Are they really more useful for any given human? (certainly some are not, if we choose a human who's an outlier, a 'black sheep', so to speak) Or ar they useful and more conductive to the survival of the religion/philosophy itself?
I think it's a struggle between intellect (the individual) and culture (religion, country, a political party, etc.).
This is certainly not true of the Christianity that I've been witness to all my life. In those circles, doubt is a given - an intrinsic component of the inquisitive human mind - and doubt is basically the core of all faith. If there's no room for doubt, there's no room for faith.
Why strive for anything? Especially when the very bare minimum for survival is already covered by community.
Overall culture seems to be more and more nihilistic and individualistic after dropping religion. Few people may be doing the right thing and say that we have to care about future generations. But wast majority, looking at their actions, doesn’t care.
I would rather follow a more humanistic path, that we define our own existence, and that we should attempt to minimize our own suffering.
Same for minimising one's suffering. A healthy society requires a lot of sacrifice from individuals, even with today's technology.
Therapy has changed a lot of people around me’s lives for the better. Indisputably. I have seen 20-year alcoholics change virtually overnight when their abusers are finally caught and the addict-victim goes and talks it through with a therapist.
Where I’m going to disagree, though, is that this is a black and white “Christianity or therapy” issue. I’m coming at this pragmatically; I haven’t been to church in almost 20 years now and religion is virtually non-existent in my life. There’s two things, though, with religion in general that can be hugely useful for someone struggling with addiction and/or substance abuse:
- Therapy-like religious guidance. Many denominations of Christianity (and other religions, but I am not particularly familiar with the exact customs) encourage you to share your burdens with either the leadership or broader community.
- Community itself. Beyond the primary “you are destroying your body” issues with addiction, one of the worst secondary effects is the social effects. When you have a substance abuse problem, “ordinary” people will start to distance from you. This can either end up with you just isolating from the world and getting lonelier (amplifying the problem) or seeking community with whoever you can find who won’t reject you (other people with substance abuse problems… amplifying the problem)
Religion can provide these things and while it’s not for me, I have a hard time dismissing it outright. Especially since we have, as society has become more secular, mostly failed at establishing accessible community institutions that provide these things. One of the most interesting things to me is that almost every other community is generally focused around either specific activities (eg a rock climbing gym, martial arts, bird watching, knitting) or specific professions (eg software developer meet-ups). Church is one of the few places in the world that I’m likely to encounter a very broad cross-section of society.
That all being said, quality varies dramatically. There are some churches that are, to me, completely toxic and have strayed far from “bringing light into this world”.
YMMV, but it works for some people and provides exactly what they need to heal.
In university, I dated a Lutheran (in Canada, there's two "sub-Lutheran" organizations, she was a part of the "more welcoming one") and it was a night and day difference. Not to go too far into theology, but these folks were some of the most "Christ-like" folks I have ever met. They really embodied the "be good to each other" concepts and strongly rejected the more evangelical/recruiting position that many churches take; their philosophy was "be good people, treat others kindly, feel free to have a conversation about your religion if someone asks, but don't try to guilt/shame/whatever, just be a good person."
I'm actually surprised this morning to be defending churches somewhat. It's a tragedy: the worst kind of Christians, to me, are also the most prominent and vocal. From my own understanding of the Bible and basic theology, I absolutely agree that many denominations are cult-like and have also lost their way from the teachings they purport to embody.
Meanwhile there's folks like the Lutherans I hung out with who, for lack of a better turn of phrase, are actually bringing light into the world. These folks get painted with the same brush as the... crazies.
> Knowing that HN is generally against it, I say it anyway
I am actually on the contrarian side of you, but thanks for putting you out there. I understand and respect your point and everything, but there is one thing, that I want to put out regarding what you said. To state the following, is quite problematic:
> Religious scholars have actually been the best psychologists but are generally dismissed by non-believers.
Without going into detail, for every profession, there are people who are good and bad at it. This has nothing to do with any background or anything. The difference with psychologists and priests/ missionaries/ etc. is, that one is certified and the other is not necessarily certified. This makes a huge difference in liability of the term/ role and it's rather dangerous to put them in the same bag. And I don't think to make this distinction is not dismissive.
Citation not required, as long as you believe, assumedly?
Having spent two years as a missionary in a majority atheist country (the Czech Republic) I'd have to say that wasn't my experience. For most Czechs, it seemed to be more of a general apathy about religion and the idea of God, not any serious skepticism or an active choice not to believe.
This advice simply doesn't work if the recipient is an atheist.
To me, Religious texts are made up fiction that hold no more meaning in my world view than Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. If you read enough fiction on a shared topic, you'll be able to pull the same number of 'enlightening' quotes from those books as religious people can from their own sacred tomes.
However, IF you are a religious person, and find meaning in your religious books, then take the win, and enjoy that path. It's just that it's not a path everyone can take.
It doesn't matter if the Bible/Koran/whatever is a fact or not. Religious beliefs/texts are an extension of human evolution and should be seen that way. Questioning their wisdom in helping humans thrive is like questioning the value of arms.
The west is in the process of creating a new one (modern liberal values), but as with most rewrites, you probably should have understood the existing solution before throwing it out.
I submit that plenty of religious thought patterns (things and systems you are not allowed to question the wisdom of, obsequious deference to authority, etc.) exist outside the halls of churches. PG's essay on heresy comes to mind.
Like proscriptions on pork or seafood; we have a pretty good understanding of the consequences of eating pork and don't necessarily have to rely on something that was a useful rule of thumb absent that knowledge.
Did you also know the universe wasn't created in 6 days?
If this is true, does it mean that churches all over the world did a big disservice to the holy books and stopped the evolution by creating institutions dedicated to preserve text of this books in unchanged form argumenting that those books literally are word of God and thus cannot be changed?
I'm sure you have some great ideas about living. Let's check the reproductive rate of the people who follow your ideas in a thousand years.
There is a lot to learn about life and human nature in religion. You don’t have to believe in an afterlife or practice dogma to get something out of it.
Admittedly I do ignore parts of it - there's a lot of "wives should be obedient" stuff in there that has not aged well for instance - and I read it as God representing something like the Chinese Dao - IE the impersonal and immaterial laws of nature, the way that things unfold, and faith in God being an active version of the Stoic idea that you can't change the things you don't have control over, so just let it be.
>Religious texts are made up fiction that hold no more meaning in my world view
Plato's The Cave allegory is relevant, even though no one would ever live in a cave like that and it's obviously fiction. Some people treat the Bible as a historical text, but most don't. Some people believe the earth is flat too, there's always that 10-20%.
Having said that, I tried reading the Bible but I couldn't get through all the begats. I do like hearing honest people discuss it though. Like anything, it can certainly be weaponized.
The thing is that the stories in religious books help paint a picture of life and offer anecdotes on how one can navigate it. There is no need to look for enlightenment, just practical advice on how to deal with tough life situations and help you find motivation and strength to power through. Thousands of years of observing and documenting people's lives through stories and metaphors has value, even for us non-believers.
I think you'd even be surprised how many people who regularly attend church services don't actually believe in the mystic aspect of it all; it's the community and guidance that have the most value to them.
Church selection seems to play a big role. I don't know too much about it but from other commenters, there are apparently churches that emphasize the mysticism and paranormal side of Christianity, some that focus on the texts, some that mostly deal with hero-worship and the hero's origin story, some that are basically political Trump rallies, and some more laid back ones that are basically social/music clubs.
How do you feel about The Iliad, Plato's dialogues, the Mahabharata, Tao Te Ching, or the Epic of Gilgamesh? Do they also offer "no more meaning in your world" than modern fantasy novels?
I didn't think being an atheist meant closing ones mind to human culture. Guess I've been doing it wrong.
I've always found good fiction enlightening. There is no need to be so serious about it.
My biggest criticism of religion is the very boundary drawn between fiction and scripture: that adherents to a religion must treat fiction as if it is reality.
All too often, that means obsessing over obedience to a structure of rules/dogma, instead of confronting the reality right in front of us; like voting to restrict gay marriage so God will bless our country, instead of learning to empathize with people around us to become a better community.
Agreed. This is the part that really gets under my skin… its been my understanding for most of my life that the bible specifically is full of allegory, not history. Yet, so many many of the “believers” I encounter don’t know what “allegory” means. The bible is their literal truth!
Tbh, knowing this isn’t helpful. It somehow makes me more paralyzed in dealing with literal believers. It always feels like they know they’re full of shit, but won’t admit it. There’s a disingenuousness to it that very deeply bothers me.
Being able to think critically of religion means being agnostic or atheist.
My assertion is that it's not you who is paralyzed, but anyone who cannot criticize their own position.
Do we know how this is going to play out, though? Has matrimony between same sex couples ever been widely available in any civilization? Rome, Greece, China and Egypt all had various different approaches to open homosexual relationships overtime, but it's hard to find any significant civilization that broadly equated same sex unions and heterosexual marriage. I'll allow that my research on this is incomplete.
I think anyone who thinks they know for certain how this kind of social change will play out on the scale of decades or centuries is mistaken. It's possible that everything turns out great and we enter a golden era of tolerance and flourishing human relationships, but at the same time there's usually something worth fearing in the unknown, which is why we tend to.
From what I can tell, the only group claiming to know what will happen in the future are religious conservatives who want gay marriage outlawed. It's their claim that homosexual unions will lead to a bad societal outcome, and that claim is based purely on religious dogma.
If pressed I guess I’ll say it’s unlikely to be true. But that’s not the point. I don’t even care to explain the point really. But both me and my wife ran Meetup groups about being atheist and eventually decided reading Christian philosophy and teachings was a better bet than the slow crushing millstone of the weight of the universe awaiting me behind the curtain of materialism.
There’s a lot of really bad stuff and I think Christianity needs reforming, but I still think it’s the better long term bet in terms of the wellbeing of me and my future generations.
I've been reading Stoic philosophers for some time now and it has helped me a lot. Christianity seems to take a lot from them and adds a mythical spin.
I think the biggest issue with religion stems from the fact that many people fail to understand religious texts are not factual they are metaphorical. Unfortunately, throughout history (and still today) this misunderstanding has been used and led to an incalculable number of heinous crimes.
The problem is expecting the dogma of a thousands years old tradition and book to be absolutely true. There are things in the Bible and Christianity that are basically tall tales. For example, I doubt Jesus was immaculately conceived, but it makes for a great story. People make up stories about remarkable people. I believe Jesus was a real person who had world-changing insights, but I'm afraid a lot of cruft has built up around him and been carried forward as literal truth.
The challenge for an individual is separating the wheat from the chaff.
Most of my thoughts on the matter are derived from Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You.
1. man serves self and family
2. man serves state and country
3. man serves god
He believed many of our problems are due to most of us still being stuck at level 2 of existence. A man at level 3 is immune to the problems of a man at level 2. For example, they couldn't even compel Jesus w/ bodily harm. They killed him, and what good did it do them?
He also argued that the shift to level 3 is inevitable and already in progress.
But the label of atheist has been imbued with all sorts of negativity. So much so that some people hear it and think being an atheist actually makes someone evil, without any care for the well-being of other humans. Or they think the atheist must be miserable and unfeeling.
It's why I don't even use the term any more. I don't know if other people I'm talking to will have the same definition of the term that I do. If someone asks me about my religious beliefs, I simply say that I have none.
The “atheist community” (and it was oddly enough a real thing for awhile, with atheist church and everything! Look up Oasis on YouTube). It attracted people who were hedonistic and amoral and, in retrospect, went down in flames about how you’d have expected.
I’m not just some isolated Christian who has never met an atheist deriding them as some sort of bogeyman, I was friends with people in Poly Quads and met spouses who were bullied by their SO into being swingers, then watched 50 year olds behave like teenagers with all the consummate drama as well.
Once we had kids we totally removed ourselves from that situation and it fell apart a few years later, after the leader (who was originally a Christian pastor, I might add) got #metoo’ed for (surprise surprise) having sex with half the women in the organization.
As an atheist, you weren't a practicing atheist. You were an agitator with a religion of your own, which is projecting and spreading atheism. I used to call these folks "militant atheists" because, like when I was a teenager and left the Catholic church, I was ready to treat others the way I'd been treated (and seen others treated). This is not a healthy paradigm for leaving any community though and furthermore it repeats the sins of the past.
> Like, I frankly don’t give a damn about the truth or falsity of religion anymore. That’s not the point. It lets me act as if my life has meaning regardless of whether or not that’s true, which even when I directly reflect on it is a small amount of comfort insulating me from the yawning abyss of existential terror I felt throughout all of my 20s and half of my teens.
... and then you adopted the mindset of an actual atheist (one without religion), and then adopted a religion!
For what it's worth, I'm glad you're happy, that's really what matters. Maybe now that you have experience as someone without religion it gives you perspective as someone with faith. From what you've written, it sounds like that's the case.
A final thought (and opinion) that no one asked for: as an atheist I applaud the healthy exercise of and engagement with religion. The only time in which I object to religions or institutions is when they think their ideas are proper enough to be codified into law. For that, we have science and bureaucracy, of which religion can be a part of neither due to self-interested hegemony, which is an obvious conflict of interest.
In fact, Harry Potter And The Sacred Text does exactly that!
I have been downvoted many times (not sure why?) for stating this on HN, but I will state it again:
It's sad that this line of thinking has taken over the modern time. We now have "science", so we don't need any of that silly stuff like "philosophy" or "art" or "religion". All can be explained through the scientific method and all other branches of human intellect are null and avoid.
Of course, this comes from the new Atheists who influenced a lot of the younger generation years a go when they started but their ideas actually stems from older philosophers who shaped the modern day thinking.
Mainly Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche (who was also influenced by Feuerbach), Jean Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault.
For example, What did Jean-Paul Sartre say? "Existence precedes essence" and you can _clearly_ see how this has affected the modern Atheism mentality in the 21st century.
If existence precedes essence, then everything is relative and nothing can be objective and absolute; thus to claim things such as objective morality in the way that religion does is meaningless.
Don't forget that Sartre said: "If God exists, I can't be free, but I am free. Therefore God does not exist". Once again, if you look carefully enough, you absolutely see this in the modern world. The New Atheists for example, took all their ideas and spread them from these philosophers. What was Hitchen's famous quote? He would constantly regurgitate Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of the people" which again.. is rooted from Sartre philosophy.
There is a great talk about this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KQcm0Mi5To
More to it, to anyone who claims religious people are intellectual inept, I would simply challenge you to read any of the material written by the intellectuals of the tradition. For example, for Christianity they would be: Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas or John Henry Newman and tell me you're dealing with someone who has suspended his critical faculties.
You are welcome to disagree with them of course, but to claim that we should simply replace these materials with math books is disingenuous.
Just my 2c.
Op didn't say anything about art or philosophy. You added that stuff in. Atheism doesn't preclude art or philosophy.
> All can be explained through the scientific method
As opposed to "all can be explained through God"? How is that any better?
It’s a curios byproduct of human inquisitiveness and that’s it. it shouldn’t have any special rights or claims to have a deeper understanding of the universe that would even give certain people (priests etc) to be the judges of other people’s actions.
The world wouldn’t succumb into chaos if all churches / mosques etc . were gone in an instant and people forgot they existed as anything but pretty buildings.
There were of course smart and kind people at all times and they happened to use the vehicles of religion some long long time ago when it seemed like the best logic toolbox for the mind
That's a straw man - we all are idiots sometimes (I believe that most of times but that just me) and this little silly observation can be easily used to explain how otherwise rational and intelligent person can hold two opposite views in their had. Our rational abilities are greatly exaggerated by people like You who believe that there are magical others that can be rational all the time in all aspects of their life. Those people believe in God because they want to believe (by which I mean its an emotional decision and not an logical one) and the logic is there only to rationalize what their emotions are telling them. I suspect that if medicine will get advanced enough we will see finally that by just playing with memory and emotional state of person we can easily turn the most avid believer into Christopher Hitchens (and vice versa).
Then try Buddhism? More of a philosophy than a religion, and seems to have hit on the idea thousands of years ago that most problems in humanity are to do with mental illness of one sort or another.
Buddhism as conceptualized in the western world is a marketing strategy that appeals to people thanks to the fact the Buddhism is exotic, the same reason Christian symbolism is à la mode in Asia (just see how many anime have Christian themes). If you could repackage Christianity to convince these people that it is new, exotic and exciting they would convert immediately.
By the way, there are philosophical traditions, both in Buddhism and Christianity, that reject any supernatural claim and see religion as a useful but not true moral framework, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism
P.S.: I'm an atheist. I'm not defending a religion or another.
Anyway, not to be insulting, but it is all a bunch of made up nonsense for a time when we did not have actual explanatory knowledge for our existence and universe. We do now. Religion and its institutions are dying out in industrialized nations because they have lost their claim to having all the answers.
() I say we think we know because I'm actually agnostic (I typically say 'atheist' because it stops some conversion attempts I'm not looking for from even starting, judging by your two comments on this thread I reckoned I can give you the honest answer as you won't try to convert me into anything!) and I believe we can only know what we conclude from the information collected by our senses and our thinking process after that, but an error in either the information collection (think of how the first scientific estimates of the age of the planet were off by a long shot on account of choosing a poor thing to measure -- I'm thinking about the work of Halley here) or in the thought process would result in bad knowledge, and it seems to me there's a part of the scientific-minded population right now that has a blind spot for this: there's overconfidence in science.
To cut to the chase: our brains are just piles of chemistry. There is no meaning. We make it up, and that is ok. “Why” we exist is coincidence and millions of years of happy little evolutionary experiments blindly conducted by nature. Maybe there is a Deus ex Machina in there, but for our purposes does it really matter?
It means (pun intended) that the meaning is not self sustaining term in our reality - there is no absolute meaning outside of our perception. There is only relative meaning (as in what kind of meaning my perception assigns to things that can be observed by me - simply put - we create our own meaning).
It can be simplified further to there is no meaning or the meaning does not exist but in my opinion this is oversimplification and reeks of nihilism.
So if You look at things from the point of view described above the "why" question (which can be paraphrased to "what is the meaning") is wrong.
I also wanted to add that it's not that I think it is wrong to ask such questions, only that I think they're wrong when considered from within our system of knowledge, so I find them unanswerable.
Kind of how like "what kind of food does that digital computer like?" is a wrong question.
I'm not religious either, but I always find this hard to believe. What are the odds nature happened to provide all the building blocks for us to be here to question our existence? It seems far more likely that (i) nothing would exist, (ii) the universe wouldn't have the right combination of properties and forces to maintain its own existence, or (iii) it would be a boring universe filled with a couple of basic elements capable of producing nothing of interest. Instead, we have complex life and we're here building iPhones and spaceships.
For that reason I can't believe there's a single universe and through coincidence it happened to contain everything needed for life. Even if we go with the multiverse theory and a near infinite number of universes, I still find it difficult to believe. You can argue the universe is filled with a bunch of garbage and we're assigning meaning and value to that garbage because it's us, and we want to feel important. However, I really don't feel like anything (and certainly not something as complex as us) should exist in the first place. I want to say it's too much of a coincidence to happen by chance, but at the same time, I don't have a better answer as to why we're here.
What is so remarkable about the iPhone or the spaceship? Why is it worthy of note when compared to any other phenomena in the universe? What brings you to make a distinction between a live human body and an inanimate celestial body?
I'm not trying to say that humans are more important or meaningful than a rock. I agree with you that nothing inherently has meaning and it's an attribute we create and assign. I'm only saying that we're intelligent beings that are capable of some rather advanced tasks, such as creating a iPhone. In my opinion, it seems far less likely for us to exist than either nothing, or a simpler universe without us.
Yes, it's not impossible, just like I could throw a handful of sand in that air that falls to the ground and happens to write the story of my life. It's so unlikely though that I can't help but wonder if it wasn't just chance that we're here.
The why question has no answer nor will it ever have an answer. Life doesn't need justification or orchestration. It's a freak accident of molecules. It could have never happened and it can end by means of a disaster and the universe will happily continue without it.
As to what a human can/should to with their life other than not dying and trying to reproduce, that's an entirely cultural question. Cultural is a fancy word for: we made it up.
We have the technology and means to ensure every person on this earth does not go hungry and has a safe place to sleep at night. But humans do human stuff.
You probably pass plenty of homeless in your daily life and never look/think of them again. Yet somehow religion constantly preaches harmony and giving to others. Most religious people I know are inherently greedy and abide by Capitalistic morals and act as such.
I guess I could create a bubble for myself and not care about others at an inherently deep level like most humans on earth do.
What would a religious Scholar/Teachings do for me if I can plainly see that teachings are only followed when convenient or warped to fit my world narrative? What would you suggest?
His conclusion was: Absolute evil does not exist and pain is an instrument of good.
I can't find it online, my source is the documentary "The Genius of George Boole" [1].
Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death [2] could be a related reading too. I remember that I enjoyed it in a fun way.
Also a dumb theory of mine is: suffering is the proof that you are still alive.
[1] https://youtu.be/Hljir_TyTEw?t=1855
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sickness_unto_Death
I fell in love with this girl who I had known on/off for a long time. I found out she was an escort (quietly but distinctly confirmed payment-for-sex) in her spare time (she was a student when this all happened). This was really upsetting and had me very distraught. I simultaneously could see a life with her, but also felt disgusted at the escorting.
I wished I could speak with my grandfather about it. I knew he'd know what to tell me. But he had recently passed away. "Well, what did I like about Grandpa? Could I find a substitute? I need like, an old person who has reliable wisdom and experience, not just some wino who has hung on. Why isn't this a thing? An old person a community can approach for advice on..."
"Oh I think I need a priest."
When I went looking for one though, it was all about accepting Jesus into my heart and spiritual learnings and miracles that I must accept literally happened, etc. Real hard to find the "old wise person who can help me navigate this thing".
This doesn’t represent true Buddhism like Asians would recognize it, but I think it does highlight how you can build a practice and adopt the world outlook without the supernatural.
A low-level Zen inspired practice may be what you’re looking for
For me the bible is the same as any other (old) book where people write about their life experience. A good example is 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius. There is a lot of wisdom in it, and I have read it more than once over the years. It makes you reflect on your own life and decisions you make.
www.youtube.com###secondary
www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"] #primary
www.youtube.com##.ytp-show-tiles.ytp-endscreen-paginate.videowall-endscreen.ytp-player-content.html5-endscreen
Source: https://pawelurbanek.com/youtube-addiction-selfcontrol
People forget AD(H)D is fairly common, regardless of if you think it's overdiagnosed or not. And with how technology has been turning everything into dopamine slot machines it will exaggerate the symptoms even more.
Note that inability to concentrate reliably has fairly severe downsides as well, like (at the extremes) inability to hold a job. This is not good for your medical situation either!
Depending on person, "ask a roomie to try their meds" can be a lot more viable than "go and talk to a medical professional." And it comes with a safety valve - your roomie will presumably cut you off if you get problems. Plus the dosage will be predictable and there won't be random additions. Note that I didn't say to go try meth.
(Google "death by adderall". It's not hard to avoid.)
Of course if there's medical contraindications like blood pressure or heart conditions this is a bad idea, but first of all the side effect profile is pretty mild, and second if you have a medical condition you should already know to not take meds on the basis of random HNews recommendations. - Actually, they should know their preferred risk profile anyway. I'm just reminding them that the option exists.
Even so, the rest of the advice is solid.
I’m a recovered amphetamine (Adderall) addict. I was enslaved to amphetamines for over 10 years. I started taking pills in college because they helped me focus and get things done, but I quickly fell into addiction and abuse.
Talked my psychiatrist into giving me ever higher doses. Frequently stole my wife’s ADHD medication after burning through all of my own. I couldn’t stop.
It all started (somewhat) innocently enough…
Yes it’s capable of giving you super powers at work, but it’s also really quite dangerous from an addiction standpoint.
Could you elaborate on why you increased your dose? Was there a loss of effectiveness?
I started taking ADHD medication during a time in my life where I was exploring and challenging boundaries. I had been a good rule following kid until college. In college I started experimenting with drugs in general. So naturally I wanted to experiment with taking more to see what it would be like.
I didn’t realize by chasing the high provided by Adderall that I would become addicted. Sounds dumb when I write it out like that…
To underline this point. There are almost weekly threads here which either either start with a mention of "ADHD", or someone posting a comment on "ADHD" along with how they manage it with self-help books. It is hard to find the right professional help, but it's something worth doing because it's probably the only thing that will solve the problems. We should encourage people to seek that help instead of only pointing to self-help articles.
Technology - especially software - attracts people with ADHD traits like hyperfocus, so it's not a stretch to expect a higher percentage of ADHD brains on HN.
On top of that, "arguing with people on the internet" is an attractive source of stimulation for those of us with ADHD, meaning we will overrepresent ourselves in any discussion.
ADHD is very poorly named. It has similar symptoms at times but it is categorically different because they come from severely compromised self-regulation across many facets. Emotional control, memory, focus, sensory processing, etc.
Many people with ADHD find ways to work around this by finding ways to create a structure they can work in. This contributes to the belief that ADHD can be solved by diligent, disciplined work. Especially because discipline is the solution to normal people’s issues with attention.
But the reality is ADHD not a lack of discipline, but the inability to have it in the first place. Some people manage, but many can’t and other people make moral judgements that anyone with ADHD isn’t trying hard enough.
Edit: I said this more clearly elsewhere:
The symptoms are not the disorder and don't come from the same mechanism that causes normal people to have difficultly paying attention sometimes.
1. Ask yourself why do you think this is a problem and debug deeply. Maybe, after all, spending day watching videos is fine and what you want to do and the story that you don't is unnecessary.
2. Once you bring it to your conscious mind, you face a decision, do I want to watch videos and maybe learn something and relax, given that it comes with not delivering some things I promised and doing the thing I've been thinking I need to do for a long time, or do I want to do e.g. that thing.
3. Then do what you want. It requires no effort. You do what you want. I know habits and dopamine addiction narration, but there is no substance dependence here and the trick is that we cannot really hold contradicting beliefs in our conscious mind (we have plenty of them in the background but once you collide them actively you usually end up creating some micro-rationalization). But here your focus is consciously facing the choice. Plus there's plenty of dopamine for something that's been on todo for a long time.
I am jealous this works for you. Life would be so much easier if my intrinsic motivation was well-aligned with my rational thinking.
I don't know if it can help you in whatever you want to achieve, but to me just realization that I always do what I want was huge. You can't honestly tell yourself you want to be doing this right now and that you don't want to be doing it right now. Once you unpack what does that mean in your head that you want it (requirements, consequences), whatever that means, you find some contradiction. But it took me some practice to be honest with myself and eliminating wishful thinking.
Accepting reality as it is, is huge. When you have in your head that if you spend time doing A you can't be doing B during this time, or that you can't achieve goal without going through steps you think are necessary, there really is not much left to do. Whatever you choose is fine, it's what you want.
E.g. I used to be thinking "I don't want to clean the kitchen, I have more interesting ideas for my life". Right now, it's a simple choice - don't clean the kitchen and have it dirty or clean it and have it cleaned up. Both are fine. Debugging gets complex when you have other people involved in your life etc but it still drops to the same thing.
Life's too short for telling yourself that you don't want to be doing what you are doing.[1]
If you take it deep enough, with our current understanding of the universe, there is no objective argument that working on renewable energy is better than watching youtube all day.
OK, I'm quitting this topic on HN, I've been selling this idea in many of my comments lately, just because it made my life so much better, but it's too verbose.
Btw if somebody knows this kind of thinking from a different source I would appreciate some pointers, because I'm sure I'm not the first one to come up with this but I haven't stumbled upon it yet and I would much prefer to point people to that direction.
1. And just to be clear I'm not ignoring very difficult situations that people are in saying that people are always doing what they want. The situation is difficult, whether that's hunger, war, illness or death. But that's reality. Given that terrible situation you decide to do something (or do nothing). It's what you decide, it's what you want. Telling yourself that you want to do something else that's not possible in that salutation is just wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is pure suffering. I strongly suggest stopping whatever you're doing if you think you don't want to be doing it and either stop doing that or fix the contradiction in your head.
No more verbose life views from comboy.
I just finished the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time management for mortals. Similar thinking in that a lot of suffering and procrastination is caused by not accepting the reality of our finite time on earth, that we can never do it all, and we have to make tough choices and most people try avoid the anxiety of facing those by distracting themselves. I loved the book, and your comment, as refreshing take on “productivity” but I recognize it’s also extremely difficult for many people to practice.
The core idea is to make a contract with oneself to not exceed a daily budget of procrastination and implement it. Say, 4 hours per day, on average. Everything else follows from it.
There are few critical components to make this work:
1. You need to admit you have a problem that needs fixing. If you procrastinate so much, quite possibly you are depressed. Like, for realz. That's OK.
2. Self-understanding that this is a matter of survival. Either you will make this work, or your life will be truly miserable, up to and including destroying your career, relationships and health.
3. Comprehensive time tracking. If you were watching a YouTube video while eating and spent extra 5 minutes to finish off the video after you were done with your meal, you need to track these 5 minutes. If you pick up your phone in bed just to quickly scroll through pages for 3 minutes, you need to track it. I use Excel for that - very fast & easy if you know the right keyboard shortcuts.
4. You need to do the tracking _yourself_. This is to (a) increase awareness you procrastinated and (b) introduce friction to doing it.
5. Social accountability. I have a weekly session with a coach where I report if I stayed within the quota, or not. But anybody you don't want to disappoint will do.
6. You are good as long as you stay within the budget. If you spend the time you reclaimed by laying on the couch and looking at the ceiling for 3 hours - that's a huge win. More on that below.
7. As always, you cannot neglect your fundamentals: sleep, exercise, proper diet, socializing. But now you will have time to deal with it.
Once you implement this process, few observation immediately come to mind:
1. You have so much more time and mental energy. Wow.
2. If you fail to track these short 3-5 minute burst of procrastination, they quickly add up to half an hour, an hour, two hours. Hence, you really cannot slip on that. If you slip, you also won’t be able to trust yourself, which is critical.
3. You become bored with that extra time, meaning you finally have time to think and talk to yourself. I cannot overstate how important that is. You can use this time to direct your thoughts / visualize better outcomes and hence motivate yourself to do the right thing (aka Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).
4. Once you keep doing it successfully for some time, you can now trust yourself that you are in control. This is huge, because your emotions now will be on your side.
5. You become less afraid of doing productive things, because you actually have time to do them, instead of thinking "what's the point, I have 1 hour in the day left after wasting all of it, I am tired, and I will give into my procrastination cravings anyway".
6. You will sleep way more because now you cannot procrastinate in bed. This will repay your sleep debt and restore your energy levels, making everything else much easier to tackle.
Overall, this strategy works for me very well because (a) I admitted to myself I have a problem that is very serious. This means I need to seek help and develop a process to solve it. And (b) I don’t mind doing comprehensive time tracking of my procrastination time, which is a critical part of the entire process.
Further reading:
"Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport
"Feeling Good" by David D. Burns
https://howonlee.github.io/2020/02/12/I-20Add-2020-20Seconds...
I've been annoyed for a good while that online videos seem to be pretty resistant because of their variable lengths to the per-request futzing I've been doing. I probably need to get a pihole and inject latency at network level on streaming stuff, too, but this is pretty complicated and I have flatmates
I wrote this [1] specifically to help you understand some of what's going on - well, at least some views for those of us who feel passionate about technology but sometimes have unhealthy relationships with it.
You already touch on many of the issues in your post. I have submitted lists of other books here too (search through my history for Cal Newport for example) that deal with tech overuse, addiction, hoarding and so on. Hope it's useful.
[1] https://digitalvegan.net
If it strikes a chord, think of seeing your doctor about this.
Getting out of Facebook or before watching TV was rather easy, it was mostly uninteresting stuff I did not choose to watch.
Youtube and Hacker News got me. The quality, sometimes life-changing, content I have had access to there is really hard not to get into. Augmenting friction in accessing the content in the only way I found that works when I succeed convincing myself it is a real problem. This way it tilts the tediousness of accessing them towards the tediousness of boring tasks, which I have learned to find ways to make less tedious in turn. Trying to find balance in the addiction. Restraining from it in order to give time to interesting content to bubble up.
Also I have also been distancing so much from social activities only because they were slightly dissatisfying but instead of working on fixing them (which feels to me impossible because I lack the communication skills and I have an irrational core belief that no one can withstand even slight criticism) I'd rather spend time reading/watching about stuff that interests me on the internet. I manage to keep my life in order but I am not really investing in making something out of it. All the things I'd like to do irl, build a ecological passive house, build low tech devices, I lack the economical resources and social bonds to even start even though I am competent.
I don't know if I was always was a nerd (not the brilliant nerd type) or if I became one. Anyways I am doomed until this really becomes a hard problem in my life.
EDIT: I've been blocked from replying
Because lack of ability to concentrate, lack of motivation, and engaging in repetitive behaviour because it's the only thing that makes you not bored, are all symptoms of it
Yes, start with that. Disable animation and auto-play in any browsers you use. And only use browsers to consume content. This worked for me, and now I can't stand video or animations.