Hacker News Reader

Can you elaborate on how you felt after you took your week off? In particular I'm interested in differences in sleep requirements & quality, difficulty handling eye contact (the 'slightly aspie' stuff), and general cognition. "In tatters": can I get a description of that also?

Only reason I ask is because I've had a similar experience...twice. Once when moving into an apartment (no power, close proximity to roommates) and again when on a trip (golfing all day, close proximity again). My "symptoms" include pretty serious social anxiety and an inability to think during conversations, inability to focus on non-interesting work, and just a general feeling of being dumber.

I felt more socially confident (perhaps not confident exactly, though that was an aspect -- more strident). My sleep was at healthy times, for slightly longer, but the difference between being 'asleep' and 'awake' was, well, night and day. Rather than the slow, drawn-out waking, for which there's a gateway to very negative appraisal of the world. When I came back, I binged, heavily.

'In tatters', hmm... My self-regulation is poor but I'm desperately trying to claw upwards, so I have erected a lot of barriers between me and my lovely but drug-addicted friends, which gives me a lot of free time. I spend a lot of time purposefully and sanely researching things I want to learn, where I should learn them from, then feeling pooped out and gawping in front of YouTube or Reddit, then blaming myself for wasting time etc etc. It's hard to summarise, to be honest. Feeling 'locked-up' and 'scattered', maybe? I'm often exhausted by reading Reddit, it really feels like work. Honestly, I feel like I spend most days working intensely and not sleeping enough to manage it. Despite spending most of my time gaining weight on a desk chair, and not actually working.

I'm very gullible. I tend to remember a lot of what I read, and I'm naturally full of doubt, and over-analytical. So reading a thousand conflicting opinions on subjects makes me... A little loopy and conflicted. Like I'm always in last place, trying to catch up with the 'right' opinion on everything. There was a Reddit thread for the OP's link just today, where someone mentioned arguing with their girlfriend like an anonymous Redditor - I also definitely empathise with that one.

I have problems with eye contact, for sure, I tend to 'fall into' it if I look too long, as it seems to me to be a remarkably intense thing to hold eye contact for longer than an instant.

I was diagnosed with ADHD-PI in September, and haven't gotten on medication for it just yet (I've been disorganised...). I think reddit-like media is particularly bad for people like us. They say ADHD is more of a working memory disorder than anything, and I think we need our cache clearing regularly, let's say. A Reddit addiction tops it up at every opportunity.

> My "symptoms" include pretty serious social anxiety and an inability to think during conversations, inability to focus on non-interesting work, and just a general feeling of being dumber.

That hit really close to home. I've attributed my symptoms to lack of exercise and perhaps not reading enough long-form but this all conjecture at this point.

> My "symptoms" include pretty serious social anxiety and an inability to think during conversations, inability to focus on non-interesting work, and just a general feeling of being dumber.

Well, I guess I'm not alone. I feel like I've struggled with that for many years.

Sounds kind of like ADD (or ADHD-PI, as it's now called)... do you find that coffee helps at all?

FWIW - I drink nearly an entire pot of coffee every day. No creamer or sugar or anything, just black. It's indispensable IMO.

I can relate with the fact that taking a longer break from connectivity is very healthy. I found that as I sat on a bus my first instinct was to call a friend. That is not a problem per se, but this I did for every ride. With enough friends I was be able to keep that up all the time. The same pattern was present in everything I did, sitting home alone was not an option.

In the end I lost my phone and felt that I shouldn't get a new one, at the same time my computer was at a friends place. All of a sudden my appartment was without mobile and computer connectivity (not a even a clock!). All of a sudden I could here myself again and I felt stronger and more filled with energy than in a long time.

Later on I have seen talks on precisely the same thing where they talk about how we end up skipping those small breaks we need to take during the day.

It was just a couple of days ago I heard about people who build dark rooms in their home where they can retract and replenish. Munks being the extremes.

I think it's great to find the things you can't handle, IRC, Reddit or Facebook, it's all the same if it steals those small breaks from your schedule. A compact schedule without those will eventually make you break.

Oddly enough I find that Hacker News is totally fine since it's easy to surf in on the most upvoted , read through the headlines, read comments for the interesting parts and be done with it. In the end that's basically the only site I read now a day since my life is busy enough with family and work.

I too have problems with controlling how much I do stuff, obviously. But taking note that it is actually an issue and doing it in controlled doses are really empowering. Choose platforms wisely :) Meditation helps.

Also, quitting IRC was about the hardest thing I've done (but I got my life back), but taking away part by part, channel by channel, i.e. stop gaming since that was why I used chats, made it so much easier to just walk away. Did the same with facebook recently and it was awesome.

Despite smoking 25 a day, I have found quitting Reddit much, much harder

I started using BBS systems in 1985 and reddit in 2006. Left reddit several times, deleting my account(s) each time. Finally left it for good about a year and a half ago and am so glad it's gone. I've replaced it with some similar things like HN but reddit is such a particularly addictive and destructive site it's worth singling out for avoidance.

You mention that you replaced Reddit with some similar things like HN. If you don't mind me asking, what are they? I've failed to find content with the quality of discussion that can be found here.

I recently put some money on bitcoin, I don't think there's much difference to the neverending stream web of today and gambling money. It's true you're rushing for something exciting. A new info, a new tweet, new joke, it's zapping web scale. I gradually tried to disconnect but I think I should just go full stop for a week.

I would always worry that if I permanently deleted (not deactivated -- deleted) my Facebook account something would be lost, but this just wasn't the case in practice. Once it was gone it felt like nothing was ever there to begin with, and I feel _so much better_. I highly recommend that others take a leap of faith and do the same.

the same goes for real life stuff that you don't use on a daily or weekly basis. just get rid of it if you haven't used it in a year.

Can you expand the SSC initialism? Google and Wikipedia don't seem to be very helpful.

Slate Star Codex, probably

My issue with replacing something like reddit is... what exactly to replace it with?

Reddit is entertaining and free. Every time I quit, I end up still seeking out entertainment, but it's no longer free. Movies, gambling, restaurants, bars. TV is free but even less entertaining, imo. Books feel like mental masturbation and very few change my worldviews at this point.

My overall conclusion has been that reddit is not that bad of a habit, comparatively.

The whole problem of the main thread is that people seek entertainment (dopamine.) This is mindless and not constructive. If the alternative was watching TV, yeah, Reddit isn't that bad. But if the alternative is exercise, or serving homeless, or inventing a new way of cleaning air, or having deep conversations with your family, or creating art, then that Reddit habit deprived your life of meaning and impact.

I mean, I already work 10-12 hours per day and have a gym routine.

My life has plenty of meaning (as far as I'm concerned) but yeah, I see your point. Reddit replaces other entertainment for me, it wouldn't be productive time anyway, which I've learned from experimenting.

What your life is missing is meaning. Meaning is action. If a word means anything at all it is because it is in reference to some kind of actual experience.

Blogs, books, and media of all kind are basically meaningless. Vanity of vanities and all that jazz.

You need to experience life. You need to find meaning through action. You need to become a poet by becoming the poem.

Help your neighbor with his hobbies. Cook dinner for your family. Sing a song for a friend. Do something, anything, for someone else.

Realize the inaction and the meaningless nature of sitting in one place and searching for answers on screen or in print.

If you must read, read all text as a poem, or at least read poetry itself!

The darkness that you see is just a fiction. How could it be anything else? The magic spells are just words on a page. Belief is what makes them seem real.

Go outside. Go for a walk. There is no darkness. It is boring and peaceful and that should put your mind to rest.

Consuming media without further participation in life may be meaningless, but to assert that they're inherently meaningless is nonsense. Many people are perfectly capable to grasping ideas in the abstract and then implementing them in reality.

You could argue that symbols are all 'inherently meaningless' without breathing some life in them from your own needs and experiences. 'Fingerspitzengefuhl' [1] is one of my favourite words in German and I think gaining that kind of understanding is impossible if one spends all their time in letters and doing nothing of the stuff that necessitates writing them. I took the author to mean that endlessly reading without doing any living is somewhat of a dead existence. As the person they're replying to, that's what I got from it anyways.

I tend to intellectualise this way of looking at depression (and how to get out of it - how to just get out the damn house!) as related to the Symbol Grounding Problem [2], in a semi-serious, semi-metaphorical way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengef%C3%BChl [2] http://www.socphilinfo.org/node/100

Thank you for such a charitable interpretation. This is basically what I was trying to get across.

Depression is a son of a bitch that I have also known at times and it really is as hard and as easy as just doing anything at all.

Wow, that was really spot on, and good to read.

Thank you for writing that.

Thank you.