Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
quintusertorius.com
quintusertorius.com
"If you want to let music inspire you and enjoy its real beauty, I have few very simple rules: Classical Music and no “skipping”. Then I will trust my appetite."
I do like sitting down and actually focusing on an album, but suggesting only that only classical music is worthy of appreciation is absurd. There is an amazing variety of wonderful modern music in a multitude of genres.
Nothing wrong with either. Sure there are definitely artists I respect more than others, but sometimes it's more fun to just put on some trashy [insert genre here, I wont get specific] and enjoy.
Truth. I picked up playing guitar over the pandemic. While I primarily play bluesy / folky / indie stuff on my own time, I find myself listening to 80s metal for inspiration because it’s honestly super nerdy from a music standpoint. You’ll actually probably learn more applicable technique dissecting an Iron Maiden song than a classical piece.
OnT: The title says overstimulating but with guidelines like that it feels more like criticism of stimulation from a broad range of bad entertainment. Is digitally distributed classical music a no go now?
Think of digital consumption like any drug or vice. The severity of its effects are different for every person, and so is the solution for each person.
Some alcoholics can do a social drink with friends as long as they don't drink at home alone. Others can't touch it.
For me, there are times when the mere presence of an internet-connected device in my headspace has a weight on me - a small weight, but it's there. I find myself feeling truly disconnected from the digital river /better/ when I put music on the record player and put my phone on silent in another room, dissuaded from touching it, "liking" a song, or responding to an unexpected text.
So pieces will be 10-20 minutes as opposed to 3 minutes.
That allows for a different listening experience.
I suggest something different for working: light EDM.
EDM is not designed to be 'actively listened to'. It's designed for your body, not your ears, it's generally 'beat and rhythm founded' instead of 'melody, chord and phrasing founded' - and so you can have it on for much longer and still use your mind for work.
Drum Circles last for hours, you can have a conversation while enjoying it.
So you don't waste great music while working away, you can burn the tedium of mediocre electronica all without looking for the dopamine chorus / mega riff.
Watching Rick Beato on YouTube dissect the latest top 10 is exceptionally enlightening. There are some exceptions, but there's quite a lot of interesting things going on, musically, in pretty much every song.
It was just the same old "I wish I was deep" stoic drivel till here and it's clear this was probably written by a 17 year old.
Not to mention pulling out "A Brave New World" after the first paragraph. This reads like a college freshman essay, including the typos. It's "time and time again" not "times and times again".
> Detractors say that the overall concept of dopamine fasting is unscientific since the chemical plays a vital role in everyday life; literally reducing it would not be good for a person,[10] and removing a particular stimulus like social media would not reduce the levels of dopamine in the body, only the stimulation of it.[10] Ciara McCabe, Associate Professor in Neuroscience at the University of Reading, considers the idea that the brain could be "reset" by avoiding dopamine triggers for a short time to be "nonsense".[9]
> Cameron Sepah, who has promoted the practice of dopamine fasting, agrees that the name is misleading and says that its purpose is not to literally reduce dopamine in the body[9] but rather to reduce the impulsive behaviors that are rewarded by it.[6]
For further thought: Stimulant medication significantly improves excessive impulsivity in those with some types of executive function disorders. ADHD is extremely well studied in this regard.
My reasoning is it's an entire profession to measure flavour profiles and quantities of food additives, hooks and drops in songs, microtransaction timings in games, et cetera. The science is clear, we simply ought to apply it in reverse.
I'm fairly certain the average neanderthal would feel ill after drinking a 500ml Monster and listening to djent.
But by framing it in moralistic language, it comes off as insultingly trite. For conversations like this I find it helpful to bring the focus to your personal experience. Say “this is what I did and how it affected me” and not “you have to do these things to be happy”. The former allows the reader to make an inference and decide for themselves if your experience sounds compelling, the latter is a command with no authority.
No?
The author sounds like such a condescending, self-congratulatory and ill-informed asshole. I don't understand how this is upvoted here at all.
I skimmed the article very quickly since I didn't like the authors writing style. That line at the end struck me though. I'm not against cynicism in general but it is particularly destructive when combined with bitterness and contempt.
That helped me realize why I couldn't get through a paragraph of the essay without wanting to skip forward. This rant isn't coming from a place of love but instead it feels like it is coming from a place of contempt. It seems the author feels they are above others. They are dictating the correct behaviour like a priest to sinners.
Kinda similar to how I use my gym membership ;)
As developers this is challenging since so many of our tools require network access. I've had minimal luck with various site blockers since you can always just disable them. So here's my plan:
1) Prepare. Download documentation you will want and invest in dead-tree copies of relevent books.
2) Have 2 desks, one with your computer, and one without. I physically move to the non-computer desk for design work and thinking, then get up and move to the computer desk to program. A comfy chair for more creative thinking is a nice addition to this setup.
3) Make it really hard to turn the internet back on. When I started this I would actually go and put the modem outside in my car to make it annoying enough to turn the internet back on. As I've gotten more comfortable with this practice I find it's enough to just go and turn off the modem, but I've found that simply turning off wifi on the computer is not enough distance.
Sounds extreme, but by seeing how much work I need to do to disconnect has taught me how much of an addict I really am and given the motivation to work on the problem.
Through this process I've gained a new level of respect for Emacs. The built-in documentation browser is amazing, both the tools for browsing and the quality of the documentation. I'm able to figure out everything I need to about Emacs without touching the network.
This also makes me want to put a lock on the refrigerator that can only be unlocked by running a certain distance on a treadmill. LOL. I have to create artificial grit, I don't have an overabundance of the natural kind.
Go to the beach for a couple of days to get a groundbreaking work related idea.
I find I'm quite mentally creative when doing tasks such as cutting the grass, which I don't find tedious, but instead require a sort of process-control mental activity. I actually enjoy cutting the grass for its physical side combined with the opportunity to get a good looking result from a task that takes about an hour. Hoovering doesn't inspire the same mental creativity.
To me mowing the lawn is an activity where my mind can disengage apart from watching for the occasional suicidal squirrel - while vacuuming is an activity where my brain is constantly on the watch for something being amiss and me accidentally chewing up an expensive cable or rug.
This all aligns closely with what I think the distinction is for tasks that allow you to be creative - something relatively straightforward that requires your hands to be busy but where you can mostly zone out. For this purpose I like eating "slow fruit" namely pomegranates and grapefruits - where I take both fruits apart laboriously by hand after peeling them (eat the grapefruit like an orange - but peel each slice). While I'm doing this my mind is free to do whatever and my hands continue with only minimal guidance.
It's also best done without the pressure of "I must come up with something". Sometimes there really is pressure and I have to spend some time to trick myself to build up momentum.
I like to schedule time to go on a 30 minute walk with my phone in Do Not Disturb mode.
LOL.
That's all I need to see from the author to know to ignore his advice. Logic dictates that if you're looking to suppress excess stimulation, then no music is better than background music. Likewise, if focusing is your goal, then a pair of simple noise cancelling headphones or maybe a nice nature sounds track would be better. Classical music, after all, was created at the whims of an elite ruling class. Big money and its influence on the art form didn't begin with modern music.
"I observe many people, interestingly the majority of it are girls, that seem to never stop messaging with their boyfriend, their friends, their mother,…"
Life advice from a child. What a brave new world, indeed.
Makes me feel like I have no free will.
Super strange honestly
This line couldn't have been written by someone who's opinion I respect or care about. Basically stopped right there.
That's what people used to say a decade after the printing press was invented too.
And the bit about music is ridiculous; elitism based on ignorance. Anyone claiming that only their favorite genre is acceptable to listen to either has a too high opinion of themselves or has been missing out on >99% of available content, perhaps even due to a fear of "overstimulating" their mind.
Some idle time now and then, maybe at a regular walk outside, is definitely helpful not only for creativity. But that doesn't mean the rest of the daily activities are bad. At least for me I'd say both are necessary.
He does have a point when he mentions that music in the Spotify era is produced in industrial quantities, and can be quite generic. I also do agree that playlists engender a tendency to rapidly switch from song to song, compared to listening to a full album. But you can't fix that with classical music. If people wanted to seek it out themselves, they would.
"Modern music is like junk food." There's amazing modern music, and total crap. Labeling the millions of hours of modern music as all bad is at best lazy, and at worst has undertones of racism (the only good music is that produced by dead white guys).
"Let me tell you: regulating your emotions with an external tool is dangerous. You start depending on it. You crave it when you don’t have it. It is called addiction." - again, just insanely lazy generalization. I regulate my emotions with an external tool most days. It's called exercise. It is a very good thing, not an addiction (trust me, I'd love to stop, I really don't enjoy exercise at all).
The bit about photos? I visited my mom's house recently and looked at the photos of my deceased grandparents. According to this guy, that's going to keep me in a slump.
This piece is generally pretty lazy ("I bet that 95% of Millenials start their day by looking at the phone." - first of all, if you're going to criticize a whole generation, at least spell it right, and second of all, why don't you do some kind of research instead of making unsupported assumptions about the behavior of a group of millions of people?) and extremely arrogant.
I award OP no points and may god have mercy on his soul.
Stop trying to see racism everywhere where where there is none, it'll do wonders for your blood pressure.
He specifically says classical music is the only acceptable kind, and the vast majority of the history of classical music was devoid of non-white people.
You should read the things you're responding to a little better - it'll do wonders for your comprehension.
PS I'm Iranian-Armenian; both have rich "classical" music history. I have myself enjoyed Celtic, Chinese and Japanese folk music. Music and rhythm is so ingrained in us that I don't need to do research to know all other nations had music in all eras too.
Because the literal definition of "Classical Music" is Western music from the period of 1750 to 1820. The "Classical Period". [1] It is by definition music from old white dudes from Europe.
Capitalization matters, it creates a proper name out of something whether we agree on that name's appropriateness or not (Classical Music being so narrowly defined could be considered a misnomer, as you've pointed out there's a lot more classical music out there).
[0] I couldn't remember when I initially wrote this when the Classical Period ended, it ended earlier in the 1800s than I realized, by the common definition apparently 1820. The start was 1730 (using the earliest time people use to be generous) so "Classical Music" defines a period of less than one century of, specifically, European music.
So you just said to every person who prefers classical music, "Hey, I think you could be a racist because I correlate a fondness for classical with racism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_composers_by_bi...
https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/page/1900
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/great-women-...
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/black-composers-who...
https://adaptistration.com/2018/06/04/the-composer-diversity...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_composers_of_African_d...
But it's a disingenuous (and sadly all-too-common) leap to conclude they're racist. People like different things. Get over it.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA
The TL;DR for people who will be immediately triggered by the title and not bother to view is that Western music theory was intentionally designed around white supremacist ideals. It is exclusionary of the ideas and contributions of non-European cultures, and purposely so, as it deems them inferior.
[0] if not exclusively.
I assume you've finished the video by now, so I look forward to reading your informed opinion of it.
if producers don't produce music of non-white people does that induce a racist bias? if educators don't include music of non-white people does that induce a racist bias? it was really not that long ago that other cultures were disregarded as uncivilized and unworthy of inclusion and in fact in need of destruction.
it does not require any active malice on your part for us to be living in a society that is the product of active and generational racism, and you might want to question why you think music is somehow exempt from this.
The same is true for music. People listen to pretty diverse things, and considering the success of rap music here (especially our own's country rap), it's hard to call that "active and generational racism" when it's one of the if not the most successful genre inside our country. Most young people listen to rap music and it's seen by older people as a bit weird/worse not because of racism, but because that's how old people see young people's music (The same thing happened with rock, and is still happening with metal. No racism here considering how white metal is.)
Producers do produce music of non-white people, non-white people are currently more popular than white people in music. I can't really speak about musical education since I didn't study it after high school, and before that we only had some bits, but I remember clearly that we talked about blues, jazz and their influence on modern music.
Racism exists, systemic racism exists, personal biaises exists, I'm not denying any of it. But personal preferences also do exists, and respecting them is important. Of course it's not easy to take that into account, because you could use "personal preferences" as an argument to only hire people like you because you "work better with them". But that's public/professional life. What I do in my private life is up to me. I'm not posting racist things, I'm not saying the music I listen to is better. I just support the artists I like and most of them happen to be white. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I listen to and support more transgender people than the majority of the population. Does that means that they are transphobic? Probably not. They may be, but not because of what they listen to.
Further, I can't speak for your country, but in mine explicitly racist policies have been the norm in living memory. You might look up 'red lining' and start there.
Why people like what they like is complicated. Often it's connected with what the people around them listened to. There is also research suggesting that aesthetic preferences can be tied to certain personality traits (which themselves are somewhat heritable).
To suggest that one might prefer music by white people is the result of conscious animus towards non-whites is reductionist in the extreme, and provides essentially no useful insight.
And even if that preference is rooted in racism, is what someone prefers to listen to in the privacy of their own home really something that should be a collective concern? I really doubt it.
Regardless of the motive, calling someone's tastes is music "racist" is probably the least effective way to get them to try out other kinds of music.
I know the GP contained a provocation, but that's no reason to single it out, pour fuel on it, and light it on fire. When you do that, you seriously damage this place.
The intended spirit of HN is curiosity (specifically intellectual curiosity), and that implies a completely different way of behaving: overlooking provocations and focusing on something else that's interesting. Please do that instead.
Flamewars, especially on classic flamewar topics, have nothing interesting in them because they're so tediously repetitive, and of course inevitably turn nasty as well (perhaps as a way of making them less boring [1]). So they do multiple kinds of damage here. That's not cool.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
EDIT: Actually, I think this is where HN's lack of a universal downvote button is a weakness. Had that been an option, I'd have simply downvoted his provocation and moved on.
That said, the GP comment was also a bad post for HN and I've posted a scolding here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27373460.
I don't think it's fair to let one person call people racist for being snooty about classical music, but lecture the person who finds that offensive and inappropriate on its own.
I've taken a closer look and agree that the originating comment was also bad, and have posted a reply up there now.
I understand it is not post of the year, but a bit of reading between the lines needs to be done. What is this person trying to tell us? Rather than rushing to find flaws (and perceived flaws) as quickly as possible.
There is a good post in here about how externalizing negative emotion to the internet is indeed addictive behavior, an emotional crutch. Unfortunately this one ain't it. Not to mention it's hardly breaking new ground with this thesis- pre-cancellation Louis C.K. arrived at the same conclusion much more concisely nearly a decade ago:
On HN idea the idea is to post out of curiosity and intellectual interest. If one article doesn't engage your curiosity, perhaps another will. Annoyances are best left where you encountered them, rather than hauled into the HN threads.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it unfortunately looks like you've been posting in the flamewar style repeatedly lately. Could you please not do that? It's destructive of everything we're trying for here. You've posted substantive, curious comments in the past, which is great; if you'd stick to that in the future, we'd be grateful.
Care to elaborate as to your reasoning?