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Comment by scotty79 | Hacker News Reader

Funny how younger people don't even know how the true boredom looks like. They think they get bored on their phones. Only after they go on screen detox they realise how much more fucking boring the life is. Especially if you don't have an obsessive hobby and do not want to bother other people just because you personally are bored.

I feel bad for people older than me that never got adjusted to the smartphones when they have to wait staring blankly into space or trying to start up a monologue to random stangers because they can't stand how dull the inside of their head is. Before smartphones your only salvation was a book and it was limited tool also not for everyone.

Smartphone as entertainment devices are the greatest social invention so far.

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True boredom seems to be something that we learn over the years. Watching my 3y old daughter she never seems to get bored. If shes not entertained and realizes she won't get entertained anytime soon she starts singing (improving songs with her own text ;), telling herself stories that evolve while shes talking, exploring things that are around her. She grabs everyday things and looks what she is able to do with them and what the charecteristic of the object is. She knocks it on the table, sees if she can bend it, if they can be stacked etc. Shes not looking at them for what she learned they are, but what she can do with them. I often caught myself when I wanted to say "that won't work or that's not how it is used" just to see her doing something wonderful or funny or stupid.. She does that to not be bored. Getting creative is a wonderful smartphone replacement.

> exploring things that are around her.

That works for first few years of life.

> She does that to not be bored.

Exactly. But at age 7 or 9 she'll have most of the things figured out and when you place hear in novelty lacking, restricted environment like at or near the table adults are eating and talking about same things seemingly forever you'll see her suffer. I hope you'll notice and help her find entertainment.

I grew up without phones, and for the most part without computers (early years). There were many times I was bored as a kid but most of the time I found activities to fill that time. Being bored a is okay and should not be seen as time needed to be filled. Kids require boredom to enable creativity. It takes imagination to go from bored to doing something. It’s actually part of the developmental process and should not be disrupted by screen time.

My guess is you don’t have kids. This certainly feels like an opinion of a younger person and I can’t blame you for thinking that way. We were all once ignorant and if you ask a person yet older, we never stop.

Think about how long it took for humans to involve to get to where we were before instant entertainment. Now think about how long it’s been since we advanced from first mobile entertainment to now. Do you think hay sudden change is good for you as a natural evolving being?

> My guess is you don’t have kids. This certainly feels like an opinion of a younger person

I'm 40 and I don't have kids, but I remember quite a bit from my childhood and its challenges. My friends have kids and I like them and I see how they struggle to entertain themselves. I buy them legos to enrich their environments. I even occasionally get concerned how much they play on their phones when I'm not playing with them.

> Now think about how long it’s been since we advanced from first mobile entertainment to now.

Since first mobile entertainment device was a stick I'd say quite a bit of time has passed.

Smartphone is not the ultimate boredome nullifier. It's just the best, richest, most versatile tool we have so far. But if you think your kids should get bored don't worry. Boredom will always find the way. Kids get plenty bored when they are on their phones (more than a-dull-ts). Then they seek new stuff, on their phones and outside of them. There are lots of worse ways to fight the boredom like joining some cultish group or trying drugs.

>> exploring things that are around her.

> That works for first few years of life.

I don't think so. If I look around me right now there are hundreds of objects and there are lots of questions I've never asked myself and might be worth thinking about. Why is the cups handle placed like this, what made the designer choose this font on this brochure etc.

But reading your comment again I think we talked past each other. While I was talking about the "I have to wait in line for the next 15 minutes boredom" you seem to talk about something totally different.

> because they can't stand how dull the inside of their head is

This sounds more like you are talking about a state of mind

> I hope you'll notice and help her find entertainment.

Thanks, I'll give my best :)

I sometimes go on 8 hour car rides and don't require entertainment. Maybe it's just my personality, but the key is to foster interests that can live in your head. It's possible to spend 8 hours thinking about musical temperament, or lapsteel tunings, or word etymology, or writing song lyrics. Boredom just means you are used to low-effort stimuli being readily available.

I got asked on a 2.5 hour flight recently why I wasn't reading or looking at my phone/laptop. I like just zoning out and thinking about things. It's almost meditative, and being on a plane without internet access gives me a good reason not to be staring a screen for a change.

Maybe I'm just too old for it, but what is this "being bored" thing you're talking about? I clearly recall staring blankly into space while solving problems in my mind, or even just feeling the surroundings, as some of the most interesting moments of my life. I don't recall ever getting bored, not once.

You are very lucky. I clearly recall intense boredom from pre-phone times. Every time I was forced to stay in some place and do nothing, like while waiting at the doctor's, using public transport, at school during some classes, at family dinner, at couples dinner, in church, even at the funeral, sometimes even in my own home.

There was a saying that intelligent people are never bored. Untrue. I have IQ over 150 and boredom brought me to tears more than once.

I'd read to kill it, i'd play solitaire with real cards, I'd play one player games with pen and paper.

Now when I'm older I can handle being bored much better. As I accumulated scars I can reminiscence on how effed my life is and daydream of pleasure. Buy I still prefer my phone wherever it's socially acceptable.

If you want people to take you seriously. Never cite your iq unless there is a very good reason. This is not one

I was providing data point disproving (dumb) claim I heard some people make. If I just said I'm intelligent and bored you could just think I'm not that intelligent. I thought it was better to tell you exactly how intelligent I am so you can decide for yourself if that's intelligent enough or not. IQ is just a number like height or age. I just stated it as it was measured by Mensa membership test.

And I don't care much about people taking me seriously.

I'm with you, fellow alien! I don't know how to be bored. Sitting, standing, breathing, thinking, observing - it all seems quite captivating to me, with or without further activity.

>Maybe I'm just too old for it, but what is this "being bored" thing you're talking about?

Something for people that lack all of: personal life, friends, interests, goals, and curiosity.

I feel bored when I have to listen to boring conversations (or worse, monologues), and can't divide my attention without losing the thread.

Please tell me you just forgot the /s or were hoping most people were less cynical than me...

>I feel bad for people older than me that never got adjusted to the smartphones when they have to wait staring blankly into space or trying to start up a monologue to random stangers because they can't stand how dull the inside of their head is.

Looks like you have it backwards. You should feel sorry for them for how "dull the inside of their head is" -- not for not being used to having smartphones to compensate.

I don't feel sorry for people for being worse. Not everybody is the same, noone is perfect.

But I feel sorry to see them suffer while they might have not if they were able to use smartphone for entertainment.

>But I feel sorry to see them suffer while they might have not if they were able to use smartphone for entertainment.

Well, they also might have not if they have gotten a hobby, learned to read books, and so on.

Why feel sorry that they're not accustomed with one of the worse options? And one that everybody and their dog seems to want to cut down these days?

Smartphone is not one of the worse options. It's one of the best options. Thanks to it I'm just discusing ideas with you while lying in a garden. Which is at the moment my preferred way of wasting my time.

No other tool would allow me to waste my time this way. If I couldn't do it I'd read fantasy book I got for my recent birthday but it wouldn't be nearly as intelectually stimulating.

>It's one of the best options. Thanks to it I'm just discusing ideas with you while lying in a garden.

Which seems like a totally detrimental use of one's time!

At least it's not passive consumption.

Sounds like a waste of a perfectly good garden. Try looking at a plant for 5 straight minutes. It is amazing the number of details and features and events you can see if you just sit still for 5 mins and look.

I already looked at plants over my four decades of life and they are not that interesting unless you need them for something. And you rarely do.

Besides, I was looking today at small aphid infested tree for few minutes. Even poked some. Then I got bored and went back to discussing you. There are so many minutes to kill in a given day.

I think you got it completely the wrong way.

You can get a lot more bored if you're used to be entertained the whole time.

I can only tell from my own personal experience, that reducing entertainment also influences my consciousness, that I'm feeling less easily bored and I'm better able to just enjoy and see the beauty of my surroundings.

You are right that you can build up resistance to boredom by reducing entertainment.

I gained a ton after sitting through family dinners at my SO parents and grand parents. Initially I was bored out of my mind. Gradually I adapted and suffered less and less.

But I don't see it as something positive. I feel like it broke my mind in some way. It replaced frantically struggling against boredom with nearly catathonic apathy.

It feels more like a learned helplessness than improvement.

If you are in the rain for few minutes you are running and hiding. If you are in the rain for few hours you can no longer give a fuck as your feet melt in swampy shoes.

> But I don't see it as something positive. I feel like it broke my mind in some way. It replaced frantically struggling against boredom with nearly catathonic apathy.

For me the opposite of boredom isn't apathy, but more a kind of freeing your mind from any entertainment needs. If the need vanishes then there's also no pain.

> It feels more like a learned helplessness than improvement.

Needing entertainment is IMHO a lot more a learned helplessness.

> Needing entertainment is IMHO a lot more a learned helplessness.

Needing entertainment and seeking entertainment doesn't really fit the definition of learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is when you are suffering no matter what you do so you stop making any attempts to lessen your suffering because you learned nothing works.

If human had learned helplessness attitude toward boredom and entertainment he wouldn't even bother pick up the phone because he'd believe that it won't help him be entertained.

You would probably think the guy is depressed and you'd probably be right because bordom and entertainment are such foundational features of the brain that it would require some serious brain damage to end up like that.

> Learned helplessness is when you are suffering no matter what you do so you stop making any attempts to lessen your suffering because you learned nothing works.

I'm really confused by your reasoning, because you also said that you experienced ways of handling your boredom to suffer less, and then you called it a learned helplessness, which is exactly the opposite.

By your definition an addict isn't helpless, because he can reduce his suffering by just taking drugs.

Not being able to handle your emotions, to soften them and to have some degree of control over your actions, is IMHO a kind of learned helplessness.

I think quite a few people learned to handle their emotions in non constructive ways - I certainly have my own bad habits - by doing something to feel better, watch TV, eat too much or whatever else.

> By your definition

It's not my definition. It's THE definition. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

> addict isn't helpless, because he can reduce his suffering by just taking drugs.

Yes. Being an addict has nothing to do with learned helplessness.

> you experienced ways of handling your boredom to suffer less,

No. I didn't do anything. Just my suffering turned into apathy and I didn't suffer as much.

> Not being able to handle your emotions, to soften them and to have some degree of control over your actions, is IMHO a kind of learned helplessness.

Then update your definition of learned helplesness to match THE definition of learned helplessness. The thing you have in mind is called emotional dysregulation disorder , I think.

Boredom is what drives people to accomplish things.

Except when they are in the spot where they can accomplish nothing. Then boredom is an itch you can't scratch. Becomes torture.

You always have your mind. Are you incapable of just sitting and thinking about things? Do you need constant external stimulation?

There's a famous quote from Blaise Pascal that goes "All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room."

I wonder if someone like Richard Feynman would have accomplished anything at all if he had a phone to distract him and he was incapable of simply sitting and thinking. Einstein came up with the central ideas of the Theory of Relativity while he was day-dreaming at work or on public transport.

You can't daydream if you must focus your attention on something boring. I wonder if Einstein would have come up with Relativity if he had to write mind-numbing reports all day.

> You always have your mind.

Yeah. Human mind is very limited tool without external support. That's why writing was such a boon for humans and notation was such a boon for math.

> Are you incapable of just sitting and thinking about things?

Yeah. I can but that rarely acomplishes anything. If you think you can solve a problem just with your mind think again. Most problems are problems because you lack some information. And you won't get any missing information just by thinking. And if you have all the information, you just need to process it then you are still out of luck. Even moderately complex processing let's say roughly as hard as derivating moderately simple calculus requires at least a pen and piece of paper to support you wonderful mind with crappy operational memory that can hold at most seven things at once.

I would much rather do the thinking with my phone than without it.

I'm not Feynman and Einstein had plenty of paper.

You can accomplish all kinds of things with your mind.

Not to mention most people fight "boredom" with endless surfing at places where they have all the tools to accomplish tons of things -- in their home, in from of a screen.

Fits nicely with the Southpark creators views on Pot: it makes you feel fine with being bored and it's when you're bored that you should be learning a new skill or some new science or being creative.

Smartphones and everything that comes with it are more dangerous in that regard, in that a lot of activities on there are designed to give you a sense of accomplishment - finishing a level, getting an award, getting upvotes on the internets, winning at something, being moderately entertained by an endless stream of memes, dog / cat videos, etcetera. It's a continuous stream of short lived distractions.

Disclaimer: I use the phone all the time, Reddit takes up a lot of my attention. That said, I managed to sit down and read a book for a bit yesterday.

I think that's a fair notice. I have reduced my reliance on digital tools for passing time and I'm starting to remember boredom and why I was avoiding it.

Many articles portrait boredom too much as being good instead portraying it like the necessary rest you need between work outs.

Allowing yourself to get bored is good but you should understand why and what's a good/bad way to stop being bored.

Those who are never bored can't detect toxicity

There are no boring moments, only boring people :)

"No one is bored, everything is boring." -- K-Punk

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