No, you get bored with it. Tetris is fun for an hour, but then you get bored, it didn't get more fun after an hour, and people get even more bored after 10 hours. A very small subset of people continue after that and get ever more obsessed with it, that is not normal.
That's the default mode network. People that struggle with anxiety and rumination, as per the author's second section, lack the endogenous mechanisms to interrupt the default mode network.
Reminds me of The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han. It's difficult to succinctly state the premise of the book, but in a way, I think its about structuring time and attention vertically on top of itself instead of horizontally across moments and subjects
Sounds like concentration meditation. (The Buddhists call it "samatha")
Concentration causes your perception to penetrate things. What you observe dissolves, its former appearance a mere veil, parted, to reveal another appearance. And then that veil is parted. And so on.
The process could be described as a penetrating, blooming or revealing.
Sure. What you focus on will consume your mind and grow within it. The bad variety is often called dwelling or rumination.
Some will find the desert father John Cassian[0] interesting in this regard. He uses the analogy of a water mill for the mind. You cannot stop a water mill from turning - the water keeps flowing and keeps turning the grindstone - so all you can do is choose what is poured into the grindstone. If you fill it with high quality wheat, you will have high quality flour. If you fill it with or add to it darnel, you will produce something toxic.
You reap what you sow, and if you sow your mind and your attention with filth, filth will sprout and spread and metastasize. Cultivate the garden of your mind wisely. If the mind drifts, pull it back. Let the good crop choke out any weeds in your mind.
This is why there is an ethics of thought and imagination. It is wrong to intentionally think certain things. Stupid or ugly thoughts might enter our minds unintentionally, but we can pull our minds back to good thoughts. Indulging or pursuing bad thoughts corrupts you from the inside, and they prepare the ground for bad actions down the line.
(N.b., there was a link trending on HN a few years ago about a book of selections from Cassian's "Conferences" [1]. I can't find it at the moment, unfortunately.)
This did not go where I thought it was going, and I'm glad. I enjoyed the read. I'm not versed enough in psychiatry to validate the brain-chemistry stuff but my practical experience lines up.
Reminds me of the trick of telling yourself "let's give this my full attention for just 5 minutes, and if I still don't want to do it we can move on". I pretty much always end up wanting to keep doing that thing.
That's interesting. I really enjoy playing video games, when I have time. There are games that I objectively find fun, like recently, Clair Obscur Expedition 33. But oftentimes I'd play with my full attention, trying to absorb the beauty of the world and the music, and then I take my phone out during a loading screen and now I'm "second-screening" with my news feed or HN. And I'm still enjoying the game itself, but I feel like I'm robbing myself of the experience because I am not giving it my full attention.
I try not to second-screen when watching movies or TV, and I'm pretty good at it. I know it's a very common thing for people to do these days and it honestly kinda bugs me because at least for me, TV and movies are a shared experience, but video games, at least the ones that I play, are almost always solo experiences.
Anyway, I feel like I just diagnosed myself with ADHD in writing this comment.
I think there's something uniquely distracting about the constant availability of phones. We have muscle-memory now that can reflexively open a little hit of reward anytime we're in an idle moment.
Now instead of choosing to open our phones, we have to actively choose NOT to let that muscle memory spring into the action of unlocking the phone. Seems bad.
> Reminds me of the trick of telling yourself "let's give this my full attention for just 5 minutes, and if I still don't want to do it we can move on". I pretty much always end up wanting to keep doing that thing.
Inertia is a good mental model for attention in ADHD. I sometimes tell people that my attention is like a large truck. It can be hard to get it started and up to speed, but once it's up to speed it's hard to stop.
Spending 5 minutes on something is a way of forcing yourself to get started. Once you're up and running it's will be hard to break your attention. For that reason, it's important to choose carefully which things you deliberately spend attention on if you have ADHD.
This is how I started working out regularly. "I can quit 5 min after warming up".
Five minutes after warming up I've changed, in the gym and a couple of sets in. I quit maybe 1/20 sessions, and it's shrunk more over the years since, but it was an easy way to fool my brain.
I'm guessing this is different because the main threshold is starting to do the thing. Once you've started it's much less mental effort to keep going and just do the full workout.
I've been learning to draw lately and I was having some serious "getting started" issues every time. For me the trick was to not go "I will now practice drawing" but to go "I will now hold a pencil and browse through my old drawings". It ends me up holding a pencil and looking at a blank page.
I know it ends up with me drawing anyways every time and yet lying to myself that I'm not intending to draw works wonders.
This article discusses attention in a very immediate sense, but I think most of the points also apply to long-term attention.
Our behaviors are determined by habit far more than anything, willpower is seldom enough to result in behavioral patterns over time. Even things like the career we chose become habit; pivoting from technology to horticulture will not happen if you cannot change your daily habits to go from thinking about technology to thinking about horticulture.
Drug addicts, patients and recreational users start to increase the dosage and chase the high.
Others don't chase the high at all, but remember the state of mind and simply tune their brains to respond with said high on command whenever the chemistry in the brain fulfills the conditions, which can happen without taking the drug at all.
I don't see a loop there; I see different levels of awareness, consciousness and needs.
It's also what I think when I hear Hofstadter or (high-)functioning people talking about being "strange loops". ... use some of your opportunities, peace of mind and resources to sue people (you can probably come up with entire lists...) and the "strange loop" will break immediately.
Some people edge for days, others had to use various toys and stimuli before getting off since youth.
I can get psychdelic vision at will being sober (OEVs), mainly looking at grass (with other images it's more difficult). It's produced by sustained attention. It doesn't come with any other psychdelic effect, so it doesn't seem too valuable.
What does "loop on itself" mean in this context? The article repeats it 5 times but I can't find a thesaurus definition, and it's unclear to me if the author means it as a synonym repeat or *self-amplify or something different.
73 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 80.3 ms ] threadI find that 90% of the time the more you pay attention to something, the more interesting it gets.
> on the one hand, the kid shouting at the park is the latest fruiting body of an immortal superorganism that's older than dry land.
> on the other, they're sticky and smell a little like pee.
> my work helps me pay close attention like this. how can i experience a moment with the direct, fresh awareness that makes a good haiku?
[1]: https://lucaaurelia.com/about
Concentration causes your perception to penetrate things. What you observe dissolves, its former appearance a mere veil, parted, to reveal another appearance. And then that veil is parted. And so on.
The process could be described as a penetrating, blooming or revealing.
High school tier literature.
Some will find the desert father John Cassian[0] interesting in this regard. He uses the analogy of a water mill for the mind. You cannot stop a water mill from turning - the water keeps flowing and keeps turning the grindstone - so all you can do is choose what is poured into the grindstone. If you fill it with high quality wheat, you will have high quality flour. If you fill it with or add to it darnel, you will produce something toxic.
You reap what you sow, and if you sow your mind and your attention with filth, filth will sprout and spread and metastasize. Cultivate the garden of your mind wisely. If the mind drifts, pull it back. Let the good crop choke out any weeds in your mind.
This is why there is an ethics of thought and imagination. It is wrong to intentionally think certain things. Stupid or ugly thoughts might enter our minds unintentionally, but we can pull our minds back to good thoughts. Indulging or pursuing bad thoughts corrupts you from the inside, and they prepare the ground for bad actions down the line.
(N.b., there was a link trending on HN a few years ago about a book of selections from Cassian's "Conferences" [1]. I can't find it at the moment, unfortunately.)
[0] https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3508.htm
[1] https://a.co/d/cbxYLo7
Mind precedes all mental states.
Mind is their chief; they are mind-made.
If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts, suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
.
Mind precedes all mental states.
Mind is their chief; they are mind-made.
If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.
Source: https://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/dp01/
Reminds me of the trick of telling yourself "let's give this my full attention for just 5 minutes, and if I still don't want to do it we can move on". I pretty much always end up wanting to keep doing that thing.
I try not to second-screen when watching movies or TV, and I'm pretty good at it. I know it's a very common thing for people to do these days and it honestly kinda bugs me because at least for me, TV and movies are a shared experience, but video games, at least the ones that I play, are almost always solo experiences.
Anyway, I feel like I just diagnosed myself with ADHD in writing this comment.
Now instead of choosing to open our phones, we have to actively choose NOT to let that muscle memory spring into the action of unlocking the phone. Seems bad.
Inertia is a good mental model for attention in ADHD. I sometimes tell people that my attention is like a large truck. It can be hard to get it started and up to speed, but once it's up to speed it's hard to stop.
Spending 5 minutes on something is a way of forcing yourself to get started. Once you're up and running it's will be hard to break your attention. For that reason, it's important to choose carefully which things you deliberately spend attention on if you have ADHD.
Five minutes after warming up I've changed, in the gym and a couple of sets in. I quit maybe 1/20 sessions, and it's shrunk more over the years since, but it was an easy way to fool my brain.
I'm guessing this is different because the main threshold is starting to do the thing. Once you've started it's much less mental effort to keep going and just do the full workout.
I know it ends up with me drawing anyways every time and yet lying to myself that I'm not intending to draw works wonders.
Our behaviors are determined by habit far more than anything, willpower is seldom enough to result in behavioral patterns over time. Even things like the career we chose become habit; pivoting from technology to horticulture will not happen if you cannot change your daily habits to go from thinking about technology to thinking about horticulture.
Others don't chase the high at all, but remember the state of mind and simply tune their brains to respond with said high on command whenever the chemistry in the brain fulfills the conditions, which can happen without taking the drug at all.
I don't see a loop there; I see different levels of awareness, consciousness and needs.
It's also what I think when I hear Hofstadter or (high-)functioning people talking about being "strange loops". ... use some of your opportunities, peace of mind and resources to sue people (you can probably come up with entire lists...) and the "strange loop" will break immediately.
Some people edge for days, others had to use various toys and stimuli before getting off since youth.
In Hebrew you "place [your] heart" (lasim lev).
From the daydream that is described thereafter, “guided hallucination” would seem more fitting.
I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing, just that what is being described is different from meditation.
I can get psychdelic vision at will being sober (OEVs), mainly looking at grass (with other images it's more difficult). It's produced by sustained attention. It doesn't come with any other psychdelic effect, so it doesn't seem too valuable.