Excessive Consumption Limits Creativity (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Excessive Consumption Limits Creativity (2016)

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I am trying to finish writing two books and I have a commercial knowledge graph project KGcreator. I have not been totally successful as indicted by my HN history, but here are my goals for digital decluttering:

Digital Declutter

Starting April 9, 2019 ending May 8, 2019. At that point I will decide what to add back.

Cold turkey, no use of:

1. Hacker News, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook. 2. Nothing on HBO or Netflix besides movies and Bill Maher. No series! 3. No use of computer except: work on a book or KGcreator (and patent calls) 4. no watching news 5. no playing Chess 6. no watching conference talks on YouTube (missing 30 days will not hurt)

Allowed digital activities:

1. Reading physical books or Kindle all I want 2. Email, Calendar 3. Writing 4. Watching movies 5. Playing Go on iPad and iPhone 6. listening to technical podcasts, and watching college lectures on YouTube

Get exercise:

1. Gym 2. Walks

long strolls are bliss

Interesting stuff but I wonder about the veracity of claiming that “every email you receive releases a hit of dopamine”. For one thing I thought the chemical models of the brain we have are far too primitive to know this. Secondly does this mean I can get high from reading emails? It’s not working.

I think I get the opposite reaction from receiving an email. It's definitely more on the "Oh hell, what now?" end of the spectrum most of the time.

I think "email" is probably meant to represent anything of that ilk: emails, tweets, text messages, Reddit posts, blog posts, etc.

Some variant of this sentence seems to be in every article about how tech is dangerous.

Deliberate and effective manipulation of addictive behavior is a real thing tech companies do, but IMO this "dopamine hit" language is so popular because 1. the word dopamine is sciencey and sounds good, plus it has "dope" in there, like the actual drug, and 2. the word hit also reminds people of hard drugs.

It reminds me of the continual stream of articles breathlessly proclaiming that some activity "rewires your brain!", like this is automatically some bad thing. But your brain is constantly rewiring itself; it's what it does. Your brain isn't rewiring itself because you played a ton of chess; it's rewiring itself constantly, and it's rewiring itself to play better chess if that's what you do. If you stop playing chess, it'll rewire itself to get worse at chess as it optimizes for other more local concerns.

Similarly, all sensory inputs release neurotransmitters. It's how you perceive things, so all perceptions release them, all the way from the bottom raw inputs up through the fully processed semantic content and emotional reactions. You can't say something is bad merely because it causes reactions; you need to do a lot more work and distinguish why some reactions are good and others are bad, which at the very least requires an operational definition of "good" and "bad".

I believe the brain assimilates, deletes and rewires when you're sleeping based on research and book by Matthew Walker.

I'm curious about this as well. I've hard a hard time finding any real science about this kind of neurochemistry since most of it seems to be "tech is bad for you" blog posts. It seems to be based on something many people recognize in their own lives (getting 'addicted' to email, always on mentality, etc) but I'd love to see some actual evidence of what this does to our brains.

I think the idea is that dopamine is involved in rewarding novelty seeking behavior. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060826180547.h...)

A new email is a source of novelty (it's new) and obtaining it requires little effort. So for the brain it's tastier than spending another block of time on some task that you've been working on and isn't new at all.

I recently picked up a book I'm reading by S.J. Gould. I read a sentence with the normal level of attention I'd use to read a Reddit comment or something similar and it seemed like the sentence was total nonsense.

Then I slowly re-read the sentence with more focus and it made total sense. That's when I realized I have been become accustomed to reading "shallow" content, content that doesn't require any work to understand. Both Reddit and S.J. Gould are technically "consumption" but I think they're qualitatively different kinds of consumption.

Do you know how many hours per day do you spend doing shallow reading?

I was shocked when my iPhone (screen time) told me: 4.5 hours per day on average. I was shaken so badly I actually took several measures to limit this, and experienced greatest improvement to my well-being in a decade.

This is the second shallow article I've read today about deep work. I'm starting to think it's a worthwhile shallow activity to produce content about deep work.

I think Deep Work makes sense if you are thinking about a hard CS problem, coming up with a strategy for a company, or doing something that requires a lot of attention. It could be something hard for you, just because you don't know how to do it, but easy for somebody that has done the same thing ten times before.

I disagree with Newport that Deep Work would be a competitive advantage in the tech industry. Most of execution on a project is "shallow work" or another word that people like to use is "grinding".

Deep work or uninterrupted thought is needed for people who are domain experts to come up with a strategy and vision. However, if that's correct, then it's time to grind.

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” - Albert Einstein

I come across people every day who seem stuck in analysis paralysis concerning some class of software problems.

They're typically reading every paper and book they can get their hands and engaging in endless discussions about definitions and hierarchies, but nothing of value seem to come out of the process.

I used to read a lot of books and blogs, but what works a lot better for me is to make an honest attempt at solving any problem before seeking assistance. At least then I know what I'm looking for and I always learn something worth knowing along the way.

That's why I use 2 profiles for every social media I use (why?) Because I hate how YouTube recommendations puts you into an echo chamber (first account is stuff I find interesting and train YouTube by not recommending me 5 ways to be stoic etc).

The same goes for Reddit (stopped using it for years instead used hacker news)

YouTube's algorithm is plain dumb... It's almost like it is deliberately trying to encourage people to use a service like Spotify for music. Who can withstand being recommended the same songs over and over again? I gave up a long time ago.

Except that's not what the algorithm does at all. It shows you things SIMILAR to what you've already watched, but not exactly the same. Of course no one wants to listen to the same songs over and over, but Spotify recommends you SIMILAR music so that you have a chance of finding something else that you like.

Sure, if your goal is to broaden your horizons and find media that's different to what you normally consume, then those algorithms probably won't allow you to do that. But for Youtube and Spotify, it means their users are constantly finding more things on their platform that they enjoy, which means more time on the platform and ultimately more ad revenue (or revenue from other premium services they offer).

It was about YouTube, not Spotify. YouTube will happily put you in an autoplay recommendation loop, cycling back and forth between the same 2 or 3 songs.

Can't confirm. They always recommend me new stuff, never stuff I've already seen. And I watch a lot of YouTube (too much...)

I wonder what the difference is between viewers - I end up in view loops as the previous poster, where I'm recommended the same stuff over and over.

That certainly has not been my experience for music on Youtube; for the most part, it's very much in line with stuff I'd want to be listening to.

I can't say the same for "Content" trash like "Bill Burr destroys feminism" and "Louis CK owns Parkland kids", because those do repeat heavily. Absurd recommendations when you consider that my view history in the comedy arena are Eddie Griffin and Dave Chappelle, two old-school comics who did not make their name off of culture-war "controversies".

Laterally, I have a few tunes I listen to exclusively through YouTube, so its reminding me of the link is handy when I'm logged in on different machines.

And yes, I listen to them over and over (and over).

Interestingly I have the same problem but reversed: Spotify seems to put me in a short loop, whereas Youtube's recommendation are quite good.

Possibly has something to do with our respective play histories on each service?

My own personal observation has been that I have so much brain juice to spend on things. How much brain juice varies based on diet, exercise, sleep, etc., but it is finite. Lately I've been learning how to spend it more efficiently.

My most recent insight has been that I seriously tax myself if I try to understand something too deeply. It's like I run out of physical memory with no swap file. If I spend Monday thru Wednesday during pegging the brain-o-meter at 100% trying to figure some flaky bug from 9a to 6p, I am useless Thursday and Friday. But if I work half as hard, I can pace myself for the whole week and actually end up getting way more done. And I also feel less interested in consuming all the things: email, HN, Reddit, yada yada.

It's kind if like tired begets tired. I don't know how else to explain it.

This is something I've been thinking about recently, although more in the context of why imagination appears to be more vivid in youth.

I thought that it may be a cognitive side effect of learning. The more we learn, or more generally speaking, the more information we receive, the more we might reject creative thought as incoherent with, or irrelevant to our environment.

The poor want money without the culture, while the rich want culture without the poverty.

When you're rich enough to buy what you need, you do. When you're poor enough to need, you make do. Culture and creativity arise from the frictions we experience in life. What's the saying, necessity is the mother of all invention?

Brilliant

I'm trying to limit my inflows, to regain my creative, and increase my productivity...but the tough part sometimes is deciding which "good" (inspiring) stuff to let in, and which "bad" (useless/distracting) stuff to ignore, etc. I can not simply shut all the incoming stuff; that's too simplistic, because that really leaves me barren of ideas. And, having multiple accounts creates a tad more overhead than the benefits it might create...At least, its good to hear others are on a similar journey herein.

On a more mundane level:

Every minute you spend scrolling social sites in that little addictive loop waiting for Fresh Content to click on and wonder why you bothered reading it is a minute you're not working on the Big Project.

Or a minute you're not sitting there staring off into space, watching thoughts wander through your mind and maybe bouncing off of each others in interesting ways that give you something that feels worth doing.

I cannot help but wonder if this concept might apply to a nation's workers and entrepreuners given restrictions on trade from, say, tariffs.

This is the converse of "constraints yield creativity" so I agree. Stop buying stuff.

This article seems like clickbait. The article doesn't provide any tangible evidence that consuming information impacts creativity.

Personally, I find that stimulus helps a lot with idea generation. Walking around, talking to friends, sitting in a bar, reading, etc. The more information that comes in, the more information that can be processed in unexpected ways. In contrast, just sitting in an empty room alone usually generates fewer novel ideas.

Yes but no. Rather there's a threshold. On top of that, no input doesn't stop one from being creative in a unique way. You're bound re-invent already existing things though. Some input helps you to jump ahead and keep improving on top of what is already created. Too much input causes fatigue.

Yes, and this is probably the more important half of it.

While I agree that too much or habitual over-stimulus can have a profound negative effect on productivity, without a diverse and varied body of experience, the other half of the process—convergent thinking—has nothing to converge from.

So while I don't think the article is inaccurate, it only explores half of the picture. _Excessive_ consumption does however imply an imbalance, but the article doesn't go much further than that.

>Walking around, talking to friends, sitting in a bar, reading, etc.

Those are proactive intellective activities; whoever carries them out has to put some kind of effort in doing so. On the other hand, passive media consumption is effortless and has nothing to do with a conscious decision to engage in a more demanding task; it is driven by inertia and doesn't constitute an activity through which one can exercise their minds to a satisfactory extent.

> In contrast, just sitting in an empty room alone usually generates fewer novel ideas.

I personally have had of my most creative ideas while being "idle" : in the shower, in the bathroom (yep), driving on a highway, in the train with no smartphone...

Actually I no longer use a smartphone (I've commented on it on HN recently), and this has benefited me in many ways, among which higher creativity.

Edit : I do read a lot, technical and non technical, which makes an input.

/end rant much?

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