Hacker News Reader

Comment by songzme | Hacker News Reader

The struggles of first world problems...

This is a very Silicon Valley sort of framing of a problem that is very core to the human experience. I’ve been reading through the (NIV) bible and it’s really interesting to connect a lot of passages to mindfulness (which derived from buddhism, also been around for thousands of years). It’s clear that humans have been struggling with the overactive mind for a long while.

Anyways, knock the dopamine fasting practice all you want, I sure do xD. But it’s not a first world problem at its core, people have had these problems in much less active times in humans history and across different societal structures.

It's also a very old problem--the need for people to find meaning in a world that is essentially devoid of any kind of meaning for them. The old, ancient problem. I would argue that these are the two defining problems of life: finding meaning, and finding purpose. The way we solve the first, by seeking meaning, and the way we solve the second, by finding purpose, is the same way we solve all other problems. Because, if we aren't finding meaning and purpose in life, then we are missing out on the very essence of what makes our life worth living.

I don't know about that... for example, as smartphones become more and more ubiquitous, it becomes easy and cheap for people of all income levels to indulge in visual & auditory sensory overload.

I'm currently traveling in Asia and it's jarring to see the number of people sitting idly, watching some random YouTube videos or Facebooking to pass the time.

> I'm currently traveling in Asia and it's jarring to see the number of people sitting idly, watching some random YouTube videos or Facebooking to pass the time.

Why is it jarring?

Because this person comes from a place where people watch random YouTube videos or Facebook somewhere less visible, like their offices, or their own homes.

Because there's an actual real world, with real people around us that we could be interacting with, rather than staring at a smartphone screen?

Why is it jarring to see in Asia, as opposed to everywhere else?

The internet tells me that smoking costs about $2k a year. I’m pretty sure people are spending that much on cell phones now.

Hm. ~$600/yr for a not-great data plan. Call it $200/yr for the cheapest phone that won't make you want to toss it off a bridge or crush it underfoot, if you keep it three years. $800/yr as kinda the minimum to have a phone with the capabilities and usability to actually do anything with it without going into frugal-enough-it's-A-Thing-for-you territory, yeah, I could see $2k/yr not being that far off for a lot of people. Throw in $200/yr of IAP or subscriptions, a better data plan with a more realistic cap for heavy use, replacing your phone every two years instead of three and getting top-end models rather than older or mid-range ones.

Yeah, $2k/yr's probably not an uncommon amount of cellphone-related spending in the US, I bet.

People in second and third world countries also use phones. And view social media, read news.

It came across to me as a light version of Buddhist (Vipassanā) meditation.

Yes, I Ctrl-F-ed "Vipassana" when I read the description but it was used in a very different context.

From another post in this thread I found [1], written by the person who coined the term (Dr. Cameron Sepah, Executive Psychologist & Venture Capitalist, Assistant Clinical Professor, UCSF School of Medicine), and who sees it being hijacked in media.

> [...] Dopamine Fasting is based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), the gold standard treatment for compulsive behaviors like internet addiction, which I train psychiatrists in as a Clinical Professor at UCSF Medical School. [...]

> [...] This has been a wonderful opportunity to teach people a behavioral therapy technique to manage specific problematic/addictive behaviors (like excessive internet/gaming) by purposefully withdrawing from them for periods of time at the end of each day, week, quarter, and year. [...]

Another quote I liked

> [...] The American Psychiatric Association, who publishes the DSM-V, the bible of psychiatric disorders, now recognizes internet gaming disorder as a condition when the behavior becomes truly problematic and impairs social/occupational functioning. [...]

The whole article is an informative read. Much more informative and factual than the one which is linked to (nytimes.com one). The latter is basically about these 2 persons and how they applied the principle to their life, according to their vision. But they exclude also IRL social contact, which Dr. Sepah actually recommends.

[1] https://medium.com/@DrSepah/why-the-media-lies-to-you-about-...

Thank you, much appreciated!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com