Doing something is better than doing nothing for most people: study (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Doing something is better than doing nothing for most people: study (2014)

news.virginia.edu

267 pointslooperhacks194 comments

Ever since reading Bertrand Russell's "The Conquest of Happiness", I've thought a lot about the importance of being able to sit inside my own head. One quote that I wrote down:

> A life too full of excitement is an exhausting life, in which continually stronger stimuli are needed to give the thrill that has come to be thought an essential part of pleasure. A person accustomed to too much excitement is like a person with a morbid craving for pepper, who comes at last to be unable even to taste a quantity of pepper which would cause anyone else to choke. There is an element of boredom which is inseparable from the avoidance of too much excitement, and too much excitement not only undermines the health, but dulls the palate for every kind of pleasure, substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty... A certain power of enduring boredom is therefore essential to a happy life, and is one of the things that ought to be taught to the young.

>substituting titillations for profound organic satisfactions, cleverness for wisdom, and jagged surprises for beauty...

...And porn for relationships and intimacy. If there's any modern ill that has exacerbated our inability to be comfortable with boredom (which is essentially inner loneliness) it's porn. It's an escape for loneliness and a terrible salve that leaves the intrinsic desires for intimacy and connection unfulfilled, akin to drinking salt water to cure thirst.

A psychological pandemic in its own right, and you can't escape its ubiquity and influence.

Using porn to fix loneliness is like using a screwdriver as a hammer. It's not the intent of the tool, nor can you be upset with the screwdriver for being a poor hammer. The issue lies with the maker, not the tool.

Many things are clearly harmful because they exploit weaknesses in the human psyche and the average person. There is a reason why obesity is high and rising, for example.

You can take two views of humans.

One is that they are to be managed - their food choices kept narrow to safe ones, dangerous things removed from their environment, and only safe and allowable futures enabled. Give them little locked down tablets that don't view porn, keep their food limited to acceptable options, don't let them read dangerous books.

The other view is that humans are free agents, and to treat them as less than an agent is to fundamentally deny their identity as such. That means giving them information but letting them make "bad choices" or "the wrong choice".

Freedom means being able to make bad choices.

There’s a road between those views: people are sometimes free agents, but often do not actively choose their own path. So while we should allow people to make their own choices when they’re actively choosing them, we can do a lot to make the default choice one that is relatively beneficial over the long term.

So things like requiring sugary drinks to carry a label that makes it obvious when a juice is as sugary as a soda. Or modifying sidewalks and parking to make walking or biking short distances more pleasurable than driving. Some of how you do this is by removing dangers from their environment, for instance by separating bike lanes from roads. And by allowing people to break from a habit cycle, for instance by establishing rules for gambling like enforcing periodic breaks in play to give people opportunities to reassess their actions.

> You can take two views of humans.

Nothing in life is black or white. Life has many shades of gray (more than 50).

> Freedom means being able to make bad choices.

Yet here we are, where you're fined for drunk driving or for not wearing a seat belt.

* * *

There are no penalties for making bad choices that only affect <<you>>. But almost every choice you make, good or bad, affects someone else.

For an example of a very personal and selfish choice that actually impacts <<others>>, if you don't wear a seat belt and die, your family will greatly mourn your loss, but they might also not be able to make it without your financial support and have to get help from social services or from others, which others have to pay for. You'll probably turn a small accident into a big accident, and if you're not the only person in the car, you'll traumatize those with you for life (again, maybe needing help which others will pay for!) plus you're probably going to total the car (which the owner will have to pay for).

Humans aren't trees falling in a forest, trees that no one can hear falling.

* * *

Simple rule of thumb: if a restriction has been agreed to by diverse societies across the world, across tens and hundreds of countries, maybe it's there for a good reason and you're statistically not smarter than billions of people. I hope you are, but I'm willing to bet you aren't.

Approach these things more humbly, please.

> There are no penalties for making bad choices that only affect <<you>>. But almost every choice you make, good or bad, affects someone else.

Sure there are, easiest one to reach for is the consumption (or even ownership) of various drugs.

Beyond that there's prostitution in many jurisdictions, and no doubt there are other "victimless" crimes still on the books (basically those formed around morality - and therefore moral harm - rather than an otherwise identifiable harm or loss).

The problem with reaching for the "almost every choice you make affects someone" trope is that it's very easy to use it to justify any moral panic you choose. Sodomy (and by that I mean non-procreative sexual activity) is an excellent example whose laws were still active in some states up to 2014* (and maybe still).

* https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/21/12-stat...

> Sure there are, easiest one to reach for is the consumption (or even ownership) of various drugs.

Drug consumption is far from victimless. Even light drugs such as marijuana have negative effects on your cognitive abilities. That has an impact on others (the archetypal example being parents distraught by their children becoming drug users).

Stuff such as heroin, cocaine, meth, definitely have serious side effects for others.

If anything, your argument backfires spectacularly, since in a world where this would be possible alcohol, tobacco and possibly coffee would also be banned, for their disastrous consequences (coffee isn't really disastrous, but it's not that good, either).

I remember reading somewhere that the mortality rate on others (i.e. someone drinks alcohol and someone else dies due to that) of alcohol, for example, is second only to heroin (maybe meth, too?). It beats out stuff like cocaine or marijuana, for example.

> Beyond that there's prostitution in many jurisdictions, and no doubt there are other "victimless" crimes still on the books (basically those formed around morality - and therefore moral harm - rather than an otherwise identifiable harm or loss).

Prostitution is not victimless. It's mostly a female occupation (male prostitutes are a very small minority) and a good chunk of female prostitutes are abused and practically forced into it. I mean, it could be victimless, but in practice coercion is so present that it's almost impossible to separate the two.

> The problem with reaching for the "almost every choice you make affects someone" trope is that it's very easy to use it to justify any moral panic you choose.

That's why I said that only stuff where there's general agreement, including both liberal and conservative countries should be considered. For example murder would fit, since there really isn't any jurisdiction where murder is not a serious crime.

> Sodomy (and by that I mean non-procreative sexual activity) is an excellent example whose laws were still active in some states up to 2014* (and maybe still).

I agree. For your example, I'm having a really hard time to come up with real life, scientific, documented, negative side effects of sodomy on others. So it's much easier to distinguish between moral panic/aesthetic (let's be honest here, it's mostly an aesthetic thing, many people are just disgusted by it).

Both of the issues you cited with drugs (harm caused by action performed whilst on drug) and prostitution (coercion) are the crimes rather than the drug or prostitution itself.

Driving while intoxicated should certainly be a crime, as should rape, or forms of coercion like intimidation. These are one step removed from the acts themselves though.

With prostitution we should be acting to separate the violence etc from the act, and one way to do that is to not punish the victim. Provide support, reduce moral judgement.

Regarding sodomy (not just buggery, but onanism, buggery, oral sex, anything non procreative), I suspect the reason provided initially would be that it's preventing conception. This limits the expansion of a culture. The aspect of disgust came later (see ancient Greek consideration of the topic vs Abrahamic faith).

> [porn is] akin to drinking salt water to cure thirst.

That's an exceptionally beautiful analogy.

There's a professor somewhere trying to prove that you can extend how long your pure water lasts by also drinking sea water; or something like that. Having trouble finding it right now.

Hmm, but drinking water with electrolytes (including moderate salt) is more refreshing than filtered water.

I think it’s a mistake to blame porn, rather than realizing porn is a self-medication for people targeted by institutional and pervasive misandry.

I understand even after several generations of men being abused, people aren’t ready to admit man-hating is a real problem in modern US society. I would encourage people to view education statistics where men have trailed women for forty years — yet receive no institutional support, while female-focused programs are lauded by the press. Or sentencing statistics, where the gap between men and women for the same crime is three times the sentencing gap between whites and blacks — something most of us recognize as a problem.

It’s the same thought process that blames video games for men staying home rather than assessing why they might rationally choose to isolate in a fictional world instead of embrace broader society.

Meh. I've been watching porn since forever. My taste in porn has informed my real-life taste, and vice versa (in particular, I detest make-up / fakeness, both in porn and in real life).

Still, I find real people infinitely more fulfilling and have always put effort into seeking real relationships, sexual and romantic.

(I estimate porn is similar to gambling - some people's psychology makes them more susceptible to addiction of any kind.)

Yes I think what is not a problem for some can be a massive problem for others.

Meh. I've been going to bars since forever. I'm not like that guy over there who pounds a 12 pack every night and has no standards for what he funnels down his gullet. Despite my habitual usage and inability to refrain from the activity for any extended period of time, I estimate his psychology must make him the addict. For me it's a matter of refinement and my consciously-engaged frontal-lobe awareness of the fine hops and spirits that elevates me to a connoisseur of the boozy arts.

If you hadn't inserted "inability to refrain" out of nowhere, you could have been describing a perfectly ordinary (though pretentious) non-alcoholic. And you inserted that based on absolutely nothing, so good work.

Porn only "fixes" loneliness if you have the feeling unconditionally linked to sex, which in a way is quite sad.

I'm sorry if that's been your experience but this generalisation is a bit much.

I probably watch about as much porn as I do Netflix - around 30 minutes per day on average. I enjoy it, it's very relaxing and pleasureful. I'm in a committed long-term relationship of 3 years and have had the same habits through other 3 relationships of about the same length. They've all had a full sex life and I enjoy both separately. I'm sure many people have the same experience.

There's been a bit of research into the destructive aspects of porn watching. Porn has normalized a number of sexual behaviors that were not common in the past. This is especially so for behaviors that are degrading to the woman.

What's interesting about your comment though is that you accuse OP of over generalization whilst using your singular anecdotal experience in what I think can best be described as a example of under generalization.

To be fair, some people of all genders get their kicks from being sexually dominated. The issue is knowing where the other person’s limits are and having good communication. This becomes a problem when people find discussing their sexual preferences embarrassing, even with their partners. My sex life improved greatly when I started asking my partners if they have any fantasies and exploring them together. Sometimes porn can help people discover things that they otherwise would have been too shy to bring up. However, If you’re watching porn five times per day and find yourself less and less stimulated by IRL sex, you need a detox.

Of course there are such people. I submit though that the number of women who consent to anal and like it is much less than the number who consent and don't like it. The same for various other sex acts. I believe the research supports my position.

I didn't downvote you, but "I believe the research supports my position" is functionally equivalent to "that's my gut feeling". I'd be interested in seeing any research you've encountered that caused you to arrive at this conclusion.

It’s possible though as a society we’ve lost the idea of a disordered desire. If you’ve got an authentic desire to be sexually dominated or to humiliate and dominate others, we now say “That’s ok, that’s your authentic self. It’s cool as long as everything is consensual.”

But maybe it’s not OK. Maybe it’s behavior that if indulged keeps us from living and thriving and keeps us from being our best selves.

I’m not making a moral argument here — at least I don’t think I am. Just that it might not be healthy to indulge every desire we may have. And when desires are far outside the norm, it’s worth it to be circumspect about them.

You definitely are making a moral argument, even if that isn't your intention. There is no meaningful way to define "outside the norm", so it becomes a synonym for "unnatural" and a proxy for individual prejudices. Homosexuality is statistically "outside the norm", and conservative heterosexuals use this logic to support gay conversion therapy and other bigotry. You can overindulge in any dopamine-producing activity, so the same can be said for sex, eating, drinking, smoking, etc. The particular type of sex you enjoy is as irrelevant as the brand of whiskey you prefer.

My experience has been that women are often also into the degrading behaviors/activities. If there is consent, where is the problem?

I think there are a lot of people like you, just as there are a lot of alcohol drinkers who are not alcoholics, and a lot of people who can smoke one cigarette a day and not become chain smokers.

There are also a lot of people with a vastly different experience with internet porn. Since we’re sharing personal anecdotes, allow me to describe my experience. I’ve first encountered internet porn in my teenage years. A harmless habit eventually escalated to daily 1-2 hour sessions, with maybe a hundred tabs open searching for that “perfect” video or picture. I would download terabytes of torrented porn to find that one specific video. Looking at porn on my phone would be the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did before falling asleep at night. It has poisoned my intimate relationships and my views of women in general (when 90% of ones experience of the opposite sex is from online porn, it warps ones real world perceptions). The sessions would eventually start leaving me drained and depressed for a few days after, to the point where I had to time them around important events (like work presentations, etc.) so that I would feel up to the task. I strongly suspect it caused some dysfunction with the real thing, ranging from never quite being satisfied (I would be back looking at porn an hour after sex) to some psychological and physical issues like premature ejaculation and not being able to get aroused for days at a time.

Like many addicts, I tried quitting a few times. The first time was after a week long vacation where I didn’t have easy access to internet. I felt better and got interested in the topic (despite the above I never considered my porn usage “a problem” until then). Turns out there’s an evolving community of people sharing these issues. I abstained for maybe half a year after relapsing. Similarly how smokers who quit talk about being able to experience smell and taste in a new way, this was a revelation. What attracted me in women started to change. Things became more subtle and interesting. I also felt like I no longer needed to have sex all the time and it greatly improved the quality of my relationships. Most recently, I quit using https://easypeasymethod.org/ (a rewrite of the classic “Easy Way to Stop Smoking” but for porn) and I hope this time for good! If anyone recognizes themselves in this story please do yourself a favor and read through that website - if there’s a 1% chance of it working for you it’s worth it.

I think you can agree that my experience is not “normal” or “healthy”. I also believe a lot of people are in the same boat, as the availability of online porn is only becoming easier with time.

Knowing what I know now I wish I’ve never came across it back then and I’m dreading figuring out how to educate my children about this. The easily available, effectively infinite internet porn is the problem, not just porn in general. I don’t see getting hooked in the same way on magazines or dvds, as repetitiveness gets boring pretty quickly.

yeah porn is a pandemic, NOT.

here is a secret: we are hardwired to reproduce. you may think you have a choice but you are wired to fsck everything that has even a remote chance of resulting into you passing your genes forward.

porn is a way to release some of the tension that comes with this wiring. nothing more, nothing less.

While many functioning porn users will dismiss your comment as nonsense, I believe it really is a massive problem in society.

Porn in its current iteration, is similar to social media in that it literally programs your brain. We program computers but are ignorant to the fact that computers can program our behaviour if we are not careful. Yes, it is a poor substitute for intimacy but it also creates dangerous thought patterns and belief systems. These so called kinks have little to do with healthy sexual biological functioning. The perversions can become so ingrained that one will see it in real life instead of what is actually there.

Remember, that a human being is programmed through our beliefs and habits, which are formed through repetitions. So be extremely careful of what you consume in this age of the Internet.

Preaching posts like yours are more dangerous than whatever excess porn consumption may do to people's brains.

I don't expect everyone to get it but if my insight helps a few people then it's worth sharing.

I suspect that many of the people responding haven't read any research into the topic.

What insight, specifically? You make big claims with no citation, and when asked for more info, you dismiss those questions. If you’re interested in helping others understand the insights you claim to have, bring some details to the table!

I’m pretty curious about the topic, and this is an inquisitive community in general. Unfortunately, the way you’ve presented your position is not helpful, especially for a group that tends to demand scientific proof or at least a well formed hypothesis.

Forget about the porn for a moment. Read it first as online habits programming the mind. When you visit certain websites, the content and algorithms tend to program the user's mind. You can see it with Facebook influencing politics and such. TikTok, etc.

Now bring in the porn websites and you will realise how it programs the user's mind in a similar way. Eg. After some time, some people will exhibit cuckold, submission/domination, incest behaviour in real life. Some will look at an older woman and not see a mother but a milf. Hope you get the point. I don't have any scientific proof but I used to be a porn user myself. You are welcome to research the subject further if you are interested.

Referring back to the parent comment, as the stimulation of vanilla porn becomes boring, the user will need to watch more and more hyper stimulating material. Not dissimilar from a drug user. Some lose the interest in regular real life sex altogether or need to incorporate their porn habits into it.

I don't mean to generalize so if you don't think it applies to you then move on, but if you are interested in self improvement then tread these waters carefully.

True.

While I think that the porn industry has inherent problems and some people get addicted to it. For me its preachers like GP that are doing our society a great disservice by moralizing and putting perfectly normal humam behaviors down as "perversion".

Exactly. People shouldn't be free to do things rusty cans don't approve because our society is at stake here!

There's only one solution to each problem and it's what this wise, moral person is selling because if it works for them, then it's the only possible truth.

It’s acceptable to have a position or opinion, civilly stated.

Any of the common “vices” like gambling, porn, Skinner box games, some drugs are difficult for people to manage. That dopamine hit burns behavioral pathways into the brain and is tough to undo.

Apparently everyone is exactly the same and the only people whose lives haven't been ruined buy these vices, as you call them, are the ones who haven't tried them. I am done here

Not sure why you have a hang up about this.

I enjoy drinking alcohol and have no issues with it, but that doesn’t mean acknowledging that alcoholism is a thing is a problem or some judgemental act.

The potential downsides associated alcohol consumption are well understood, and this understanding has permeated most societies.

The same cannot be said for porn consumption. While studies exist, this is not a well understood topic, and big claims are going to be met with skepticism and demands for evidence.

That makes sense, as alcohol use and abuse has been with us for a millennia or more. The internet is a tad bit newer.

If you look, you will find plenty of inquiry, debate and research into the topic.

Why are you (and others in this thread) grouping porn with drugs and gambling? To me, this does not make any sense.

Watching porn is not a bad thing. Obviously, if you're talking about addiction then perhaps, but do you think people are addicted to porn (on average) to the extent others are to those other vices?

Likewise, gambling and drugs impact you both physically and mentally, whereas the evidence for porn's impact on either is questionable at best.

Watching porn in of itself is no more a bad thing than playing poker or a video game. I’m not making a moral judgment.

Like gambling, it’s easy to fall into a behavior pattern that is similar to gambling. ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600144/ ) I’m not sure of the pervasiveness of gambling or porn addiction, it isn’t my field.

There’s a reason why online porn pivoted to a model similar to YouTube — it’s a model that drives engagement, and you very commonly hear evidence that YouTube has a very significant addiction, even for toddlers.

I see, good point about falling into similar patterns regarding gambling.

Although I disagree. I'm not sure if porn has a model that drives engagement?

Let's be honest, are most people really watching porn, having a wank, then watching the rest of the porn? Probably not, so I am not sure how the engagement model of porn is similar to YouTube.

Having said that, with OnlyFans and other such sites, the porn landscape is certainly evolving, and perhaps it is that landscape (than porn hub) that is more engaging because there's the human element, e.g., you can ask an only fans person to say your name whereas you cannot when watching videos.

Anything artificial that directly affects the brain's reward pathways is bound to cause addiction. We can't, in good faith, argue that artificial food is addictive, or that artificial opium is more addictive than regular opium, and then, in the same breath, consider preposterous the idea that artificial sex is. (And let's not argue over semantics here, to pre-empt any argument about what constitutes artificial sex: a restaurant doesn't necessarily serve artificial food any more than a prostitute serves artificial sex)

>Let's be honest, are most people really watching porn, having a wank, then watching the rest of the porn? I'm not sure if porn has a model that drives engagement?

It's very easy, incentivized even, to open 10 tabs and switch through each to "optimize" the orgasm, finding the exact clip to reach orgasm. And much like social media influencers take many different photos and pick the ones that are the best, the same is done with the creation of porn. People don't finish the porn videos, you're right, but a lot of people also don't finish Youtube videos either. I think it's irrelevant whether they're finishing them - what drives engagement here is discovery of novel pornographic content. There are almost infinite possibilities for what one can watch. The problem with porn today is it's artificial and plentiful. So the model is to abuse our psychology to seek novelty as well as our desire to have many sexual partners. The engagement is in the desire to see many new and novel scenes at each session and the user's anticipation of another "porn session".

What kinks do you think are unhealthy? I’d wager that truly unhealthy kinks are uncommon.

Virtually all sex acts can be done in a healthy way provided both parties are truly into it. Porn has created expectations in men as to what women normally want and as a result a lot of women do sex acts that they don't truly like. Porn has distorted the view of what is 'normal' and the expectations of what a woman should consent to.

The parent comment asks for specifics, but you go back to generalizing porn in response.

> Porn has distorted the view of what is ‘normal’

Surely you mean some porn, but you have not clarified which types. What do you say to plain, “vanilla” porn that pushes no boundaries? As with so many things, this is not a black or white issue, and statements like your final sentence do nothing to advance a nuanced conversation about the subject.

It's easy to find research on the topic. The research supports my view.

So share the research that supports your view…

As the person making claims without evidence, the onus is on you at this point. You’re not going to change minds if you’re not willing to share where you’re coming from.

A person sufficiently interested in exploring whether or not I'm right can easily use a search engine and find the research. If a person can't be bothered to do that on their own then I think nothing I post will change their mind. An intellectually curious person will delve into the issue once they see dissenting opinions being expressed.

Someone else in the thread was kind enough to share what they felt are good sources, so I’ll take a look at those.

I can only conclude that you have nothing to back your position, and you are postulating based on 2nd hand information. Of course I can go google something, but the value of a community like HN is that the sources shared by members here tend to be good ones (or at least better than average). Your refusal to contribute followed by a No True Scotsman argument are pretty disappointing.

There is another possible conclusion. Namely, that what I wrote is indeed true as to why I didn't post links. This topic is sort of like an anti-vax topic. I can post lots of links that vaccines are safe and worth taking but if someone is too obtuse to even bother to look up the relevant information themself then nothing I post/say will sway them. Hence, posting links to scientific research to an anti-vaxxer is meaningless. It's not a "no true Scotsman" argument because I'm not making an argument. I'm simply stating why I didn't post links. That isn't an argument it's just a rationalization for why I didn't post links to the research.

It's really quite easy to find stuff written about the destructive aspects to porn.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/201...

It's kind of like how social media warps our perception of what people (should) look like. Or how many vacations we should be going on [0,1]. Porn can affect how long we think sex should last and the positions we think we should be in [2]. Yes, even vanilla porn. While I think the anti-porn movement started with a religious-purity undertone, the secular explanations for why porn isn't such a great idea are convincing [3].

I would also ask anyone engaging in this discussion to replace the word "porn" with "alcohol" and see if it makes sense. Examine if it is useful to respond "well not everyone gets addicted to alcohol" when discussing the problems with alcohol. At least with me, there is an implied understanding that it's possible to use porn without getting addicted (even if I am becoming more skeptical of this assumption).

[0]: https://www.travelpulse.com/news/features/how-the-decades-ri...

[1]: https://www.travelpulse.com/news/features/traveling-for-soci...

[2]: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/25/723192364/what-we-dont-talk-a... (Consider whether the violence argument is useful in this discussion. I personally don't believe violence activates as many neural pathways as arousing images and orgasm.)

[3]: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/research/

expectations is perhaps a personality problem and lack of honest communication. normal is subjective even if it is inherited from societal norms. communication and being able to talk freely is key.

Humans have trouble communicating freely and honestly. They do better when they have fewer misleading assumptions to work through.

>I’d wager that truly unhealthy kinks are uncommon.

The algorithm on PornHub promotes incest videos so heavily that creators of regular porn have started putting words like "stepmom", "step-sister" and "step-daughter" in the title of their videos even when the actual content has nothing to do with that.

It's one of the reasons I stopped using the site and went over to Reddit.

Not just the Algorithm. Each major company has a family-xxx studio for their content. They have significant production value & popular performers, which feeds the optimization cycle. God only know's what societal effect it has when you fetish step children like that at scale.

Beyond that there are categories that I believe normalize behaviors such as transgenders, where the reasons for their increased visibility in wider society cannot be uncoupled. So it muddies the waters whether the porn, is playing any role, and prevents critical questioning of root causes. which in this case “sissy hypno genre” within trans porn directly tells viewers they want to be a girl and get fucked over and over. This is a large portion of transgender porn genre that viewers will eventually rabbithole to w the algorithm.

Personally I’d be very skeptical of supporting my child transitioning if it was rooted in blatant porn brainwashing such as this.

I would be beyond surprised if trans porn was a significant factor in peoples' decision to transition.

There are a few, but what about sexualization of teenagers and children. Do you think it's uncommon?

You don't need to wager, just look at the amount of content available for a kink and you can establish demand.

Porn is the fastfood of relationships. The proper food is just out of reach for most of the people.

> porn for relationships and intimacy

Never heard of anyone giving up dating or intimate relationships for Porn. Is this a thing?

If you think pornography is somehow uniquely modern...well, you're ignoring a millennia-long history of erotic depictions there, on top of presenting absolutely no evidence to support your rather Puritanical claims.

But contrast, dynamic range, is not just about chasing intensity.

This seems to be written from the perspective that avoiding any thrill is necessary so that boredom may be endured.

As if you should avoid fun so that you don't ever have to fear the lack of fun.

No. Absoluty not. You can listen to loud music and still enjoy the quiet parts. You can have intensity & quiet, and find beauty in both.

Severing yourself from anything exciting out of fear of missing the very things you're depriving yourself out of, that seems to me entirely misguided.

I agree, and yet I think it's important not to focus too much on pleasure. Not just for the sake of productivity, but for the sake of one's own happiness. Caring about more than pleasure makes it easier to be happy. The Buddha had a lot to say about that.

Then again maybe that boils down to a mere alternate definition of pleasure. Newcomers to exercise find it painful, and that feeling never really goes away, but some learn to enjoy it.

That's interesting, I can't claim to entirely understand your comment, but I'd like to read more about this :)

Your reading of this is rather extreme, and I feel you've missed the point by thinking that Russell is advocating to avoid fun intentionally at times so as to preserve a happy life. I read it as more an observation that the boring times, those in which there's a lack of stimulation, are an important part of a balanced, healthy life.

A more modern take on his advice would be to avoid mindlessly surfing the internet every dull moment in which we are waiting a few minutes for some time to pass. If you haven't taken an extended, conscious break from the internet outside of your work needs (no social media, no news, etc), I recommend it. It was very enlightening for me to feel this lack of stimulation. I certainly enjoy my time on the internet when I'm there because I want to be there, not because I'm just looking for something to kill the time.

Similarly, I've stopped listening to music while coding because I realized that the listening without mindfulness was killing my passion. After doing so, the passion has been restored.

His words, too, remind me of the drug user's plight. My sister works in drug rehabilitation and has told me about the struggles many go through known as Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome. From my naive understanding, these people have adapted to the constant, unnatural amount of dopamine flowing through the brains during addiction by producing more dopamine receptors. When the drug is gone, those receptors are still there. But, the body is not capable of naturally releasing the dopamine required to fill these receptors even during the highest of natural moments, leading these people to experience serious anhedonia -- an intense lack of pleasure from everyday life. It takes a long time for these receptors to downregulate, which is the reason for such a high rate of relapse for certain drug types.

I think of Emerson's words a bit: "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!"

Exactly this. My #1 advice for new parents is that the most important thing for a parent in the long run is to make sure their children are bored out of their gourds regularly.

Kids need to have times when screen time has run out, there's nothing on TV and they have no hobbies on engagements to run to. Just time alone without any external inputs.

This is the point where creativity usually pops up. Kids should be able to play with anything around them.

Yeah, boredom is a key, one I remember unlocking creativity when I was younger, and one I rarely can find anymore without effort (like John Cleese of Monty Python sitting in a barren room for four hours, 3.5 hours of boredom followed by a half-hour of inspired writingj[0][1].

[0] Create a space to play (2min clip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWEXQ9E4QiI

[1] Make time for boredom (36min, Swedish subtitles?): https://vimeo.com/176474304

I wish someone made the opposite lecture to John Cleese on creativity; I'm stuck in open mode, an endless supply of ideas, struggling to turn off the faucet and actually make something.

This is a profound realisation that is usually preceded by experiencing the sickness and suffering that comes with unrestrained desire. How it takes over one's discriminating faculties until one becomes blind to everyday beauty.

I cannot recommend meditation enough to train the mind to stay calm when desires want to run rampant. No mantras or music, just sit in silence and boredom. Thoughts will come and go and eventually you will learn to cope with yourself.

> I cannot recommend meditation enough to train the mind to stay calm...

Actually came here to just say that. After reading the piece and just trying to sit tight, I was pleasantly surprised how meditation changed me over the years, in a good way.

My path also has no mantras or music. Just inner reflection. Sometimes things got tough, but it transformed me dearly.

The subject of meditation is what cropped up first in my mind too.

That dimension of exploration addresses this quite directly.

How long did it take you to notice that meditation made a difference?

Now that I know how to do it, I personally notice improvement after 15 minutes or so, lasting for about two days.

Embarrassingly, even that’s often still not enough to get me doing it regularly. Habits are hard to build.

Mindfulness came to mind for me specifically. I used to jump from work to coffee meetings to fancy restaurant dinners out with both clients and friends to meet-ups at NY's Meatpacking District...to deeply enjoying the feeling of just sitting in a nature preserve, smelling sap, listening to birds, and breathing in the entire environment. (a benefit of taking a job in the burbs.)

Before the lockdown, I did an experiment where I either walked (through a forest path) to work everyday or biked leisurely to work (also thru a forest path.) [I realize having the ability to do that is itself a blessing.] In winters, the walk was difficult (ice, elements, frozen mud) but it came to a point where the morning and evening "commutes" were the best part of my day. I would even take detours to more remote benches to clear my mind.

I was incredibly productive at work throughout this 18month experiment, until lockdown.

I captured some of this on Strava if anyone is curious: https://www.strava.com/activities/3211639111

Not to be facetious but the juxtaposition of the romantic description of the value of personal time you made against the last line link to some kind of walk-sharing social media app did give me a laugh. Completely agreed on every word though.

Invoking Alan Watts here, how else would one be able to broadcast one's spiritual superiority? /s

I do get your comment :-) But I'm also an Engineer, Data Scientist, and thus I feel obliged to measure efficacy.

The app is part of the efficacy measurement. I try to evaluate everything I do. I've been measuring everything I can from number of code commits to lines of code committed to sprint points, to weight/bodycomp, to time wearables' meta scores.

This is basically why I prefer living in a location with seasons. Yes, CaliFlorida weather is nice. But I appreciate what all of the seasons have to offer so much more for the variation. I could do with a 25% shorter winter and summer, though ;)

> I could do with a 25% shorter winter and summer, though ;)

I also love spring and fall, spring the most. On the other hand, after reading a piece about how euphoric is spring for nature and it's actually very tiresome for living things, I learned to appreciate other seasons.

I'm a cool weather guy and more resistant to cold than hot weather, I don't dislike winter too.

Same here. Give me cloudy and cool over sunny and hot every day of the year.

Perhaps as you age this advice is great, and I find myself naturally trending towards it, but I wouldn't give up my past life full of titillations and jagged surprises for anything. It's been amazing so far.

I read that book also. I believe in both modalities.

I can go for days without human contact, code, "ideate" (sensory deprivation that leads to daydreaming, new product designs, and new writing ideas)... but I can't go indefinitely.

I also have ADHD and need lots of stimuli to get a rush. I don't "party hard," but I engage in copious adult activities, decadent cooking, have people over to listen to blast vinyl at annoy-the-neighbors volume and let loose like it's the last day on Earth, and extreme sports.

Your body may age, but never give up the joy of life. YOLADO (you only live and die once).

Sometimes I think everyone has a set average level of happiness and as we get better at avoiding being unhappy we lose the highs as well. The only adults I know who scream in joy at Christmas presents also all have chronic depression.

The funniest part:

"[The researchers] then asked, “Would they rather do an unpleasant activity than no activity at all?” ... Participants were given the same circumstances as most of the previous studies, with the added option of also administering a mild electric shock to themselves by pressing a button.

Twelve of 18 men in the study gave themselves at least one electric shock during the study’s 15-minute “thinking” period. By comparison, six of 24 females shocked themselves. All of these participants had received a sample of the shock and reported that they would pay to avoid being shocked again."

It's really fascinating to me as well that a lot of men would be that way. I understand "why" but for myself personally I can entertain my own thoughts alone for an extended period time. I've always been that way since I was young so the thought of shocking yourself because you're bored with your own thoughts still is an odd concept to me. How can you despise your own inner monologue that much? Is introspection really that unmasculine of a task to some men? Many people to me seem so focused on the present and engaging without considering possible outcomes before acting. It's one facet of humanity I still don't understand outside of justifying that it's another irrational thing humans do for the sake of irrationality.

Novelty. How often are you part of a study where you get to shock yourself? It makes a good story, and this kind of makes the study less useful. The "shock value" of shocking oneself is its own entertainment. Would not be surprised if some of the people who didn't shock themselves were spending the time trying to amp themselves up to take the shock, but just never did.

All the participants had received a "sample" shock and decided they didn't like it. They already had their good story.

- The shock was considered "mild".

- "didn't like" was based on paying some part of an imaginary $5, not their money and not big money. I couldn't find how much of the imaginary money people would spend. $1 or $5, seems both were counted as "negative", despite a potential gradient in just how much someone disliked it.

- There could be peer pressure to have a negative opinion of the shock because people would assume you would want to avoid being shocked, that's what a "normal" person would do.

- People have different levels of pain tolerance. Those with higher tolerance may find the shock more interesting than painful.

- The recollection of an event can diminish quickly, especially when being questioned about other things, while being left in a room with only the shock button would expectedly narrow their focus back to the shock they had received earlier, likely triggering further curiosity about their shock tolerance.

- While being shocked as prep for the "test" is part of the story, the other half of the story is being left in a room with the shock button, and people are going to want to know if you shocked yourself or not.

I would also be really interested in a repeat of the experiment but with differing age groups. My hypothesis is that younger men would perhaps find it "manly" to suffer electric shocks (perhaps even if just as a bar story for later) while older people would not feel the need for such activities anymore.

Also, erotic electro-stimulation (e-stim) is a thing. It doesn't surprise me at all that some people just be curious about shocks in general, considering there are people out there that do it for fun/pleasure.

As I read this, I was thinking how much I would enjoy participating in such a study and seeing how many times I could shock myself before I couldn’t take it anymore. My very first thought was how much I would like to have the ability to test myself.

Another thing this misses is that experiencing pain when you have complete control over it is totally different than experiencing pain when you have no control over it.

In one book I read about childhood trauma, it related an experiment they did where they put two rats in side-by-side cages, but they couldn't see each other. One rat had a lever; when they pushed the lever, both rats would get an electric shock, and both rats would receive a pellet of food. The rat with the lever quickly figured out the deal: Whenever I push the lever, I get shocked, but I get food: painful, but predictable and under its control. It adapted to the situation completely fine.

The other rat's physical sensations were exactly the same: it was shocked at exactly the same painfulness and degree as the rat with the lever, and received the same amount of food. But its psychological sensations were very different: It had no control over when the shocks would happen, nor any way to predict them. It basically withdrew and became a nervous wreck.

The point was: We can actually endure an awful lot of suffering if we can predict when it's going to happen, and particularly if we have some control over when it happens.

The author described the experiment to explain the behavior of one of the children in the book. A girl's mother started dating a man who began, occasionally, to get very drunk and then sexually molest the girl; after which he would be very apologetic and remoreseful, until the next time he got drunk. In response, the girl started getting the boyfriend drunk on purpose. The idea (surmised the psychologist author) was: I can't stop it from happening, but at least this way I can control when it happens, which makes it much more tolerable.

If they'd given people the option to either sit in a chair and be randomly shocked without warning, or to stand, I'm willing to bet that far fewer of the men would have sat in the chair.

Growing up in the boonies... lots of electric fences and lots of pre-teen and teenage boys thinking it is hilarious to grab the fence then grab your friends. I'd still do it once - wouldn't be entertaining for too long but another post mentioning the novelty of it resonates with me.

The face slapping world championships is also a thing so really no surprises here hah.

Even more amusing to me: the number of shocks men chose to give themselves had a mean value of 1.47 and a standard deviation of 1.46. This is after excluding one outlier who shocked himself 190 times [1].

[1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/75

> This is after excluding one outlier who shocked himself 190 times

Someone really, really hates being bored.

Or some really, really likes electrostimulation.

Our society isn't exactly set up for "doing nothing", either. If you're just sitting somewhere without doing anything, you might be loitering, you'll start getting funny looks if this goes on for extended periods of time.

On the other hand, if you're sitting somewhere and you're smoking, or reading, none of that seems to happen. I wonder if we're uncomfortable with other people's ability to do nothing.

>“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

From a philosopher writing in the 1600s. I don't think it's an issue with any particular society. It just seems part of human nature to be inable to sit and do nothing for a significant period of time.

I for one would love to be a bohemian layabout all day doing nothing. Like a cat staring out a window listlessly wasting the clock.

There's a reason humans have conquered the world and cats are our pets.

In their wisdom, they decided to leave the conquest to these curious bipeds, so they could relax in the sun and watch time drift by…

This is why egyptians worshipped cats. They knew that at the end of the day, the won and ourselves now have to work hard.

It is not part of human nature. It does happen when a person has a restless mind, however.

How would you test this? The first way is direct: learn to quiet your own mind. The second way is through inference: observe a newborn baby who doesn't need food and when there isn't excessive stimulation (light sound, smell, pain, etc.) - they simply observe what is around them.

Because that's all a new born baby can do (and often they're not happy about it). As soon as they're mobile they will interact with their environment whenever they can.

When a baby isn't happy, they will let you know that, regardless of whether some adults believe that most babies are unhappy.

Wouldn't it happen more without a restless mind? I have an extremely restless mind and can do this just fine.

In 2002, on my way to work in I think Berkeley (definitely somewhere in the Bay Area), I noticed some beautiful echoes in the subway station, and I stopped walking, stood still, and listened. A staff member walked up and asked if I was okay. I said yes. Maybe I explained what I was doing, I don't remember. A few minutes later three paramedics appeared, forcibly strapped me to a gurney, and took me to a hospital.

I protested, of course. They were clearly not being paid to listen to me.

How long were you in the subway station listening? What happened at the hospital? And did you get a bill?

Good questions. I imagine listened somewhere between one and ten minutes. At the hospital I remember nothing except that my arm was tied to a bar above my head for long enough that it hurt, and I had to plead to get them to restrain me some other way. I don't know whether I received a bill. Neither does my mom, who probably would have paid for it, as I was making peanuts.

I wish I'd kept a diary. (I actually did a lot of writing that year, but it was of the creative sort. I held onto a box full of it for years. I went through it once and thought it was dumb, but kept it still. The second time I did that, years later, I confirmed my earlier judgment and decided it wasn't worth keeping.)

That's exactly what people about to commit suicide do.

That's interesting. In any old place? I wasn't anywhere near the tracks; I was in a big underground space on my way out.

I wasn't suicidal, but I was definitely unhappy that year. I don't know to what extent that showed. It may have been later in life that I developed my habitual friendliness with strangers.

I do remember deciding shortly after that to learn to fear other peoples' potential fears. It's a pain in the ass, but optimal, I think.

...so, you're telling me that in these united states of america a bunch of goons took you by force and detained you from continuing your day for the crime of ... standing and listening to the sounds around you?

I would burn half the city to the ground after getting out for that bullshit, at least they'd have a valid reason to commit me then.

The idea that you could be hurting no one and be snatched up and taken somewhere against your will is extremely upsetting to me.

I was quite upset. Looking back I'm surprised I didn't seek damages in court. But that was before cell phones were ubiquitous, and I was in a new town where I didn't know basically anyone but my mom, and I don't have a photographic memory for faces. I felt powerless. Indeed, I believe I was.

Is this a joke or did it happen?

It happened.

(BTW you know you can look through a commenter's history on HN to see if an interpretation of something they wrote is consistent with their character.)

Without more context and the ability to verify this I have to assume that you made it up. The event is too extreme to stand without corroboration; at least it would be where I live.

I was once crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on foot and about halfway across the view of the bay was so beautiful that I had to stop and drink it in. (Have you heard the phrase "arresting beauty" or "arrested by beauty"? That's how it was: I was captivated. It was just so beautiful!)

Anyway, after maybe ten minutes a bicycle police officer came up and started talking to me. It took me a moment to realize that he was sounding me out for emotional distress, checking to see if I was suicidal. I gave him my best smile (easy enough as I was still in the thrall of beauty) and reassured him emphatically that I was okay, and thanked him for doing his (IMO very important) job and apologized for making him come out and check on me (no good reason not to be extra nice in the circs, eh?) and went on my way.

I'm not blaming the OP for getting, uh, overbearing and unneeded help. I'm pointing out that our society has developed mechanisms to try to prevent suicide in the obvious places: GGB and BART (the "subway" in Berkeley.)

> The Golden Gate Bridge is the most used suicide site in the world.

> After years of debate and an estimated more than 1,500 deaths, suicide barriers, consisting of a stainless steel net extending 20 feet from the bridge and supported by structural steel 20 feet under the walkway, began to be installed in April 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Bridge#Suicides

Funny looks don't bother me too much, but someone is bound to ask if you're okay. Depending on the level of foot traffic, possibly several someones.

I think the headline 'doing something is better than doing nothing' is a bit misleading. Based on my reading on the article, maybe it should be 'people would rather do something than not' because the researchers studied preferences, not utilities.

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone." - Blaise Pascal

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/blaise_pascal_133380

"There are two types of quotable quotes, those that deal in absolutes, and those that divide people into two groups."

is that even a real quote? couldn't find a source in a google, except for quoting sites without sources. doesn't sound like the pascal I've read on the Pensées at all, but maybe I'm wrong I know for sure Shakespeare and Einstein have a lot of fake quotes atributed to them, and also Chaplin

It's adapted from Pensées II.139, which begins:

139. Diversion.--When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.

http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/pensees/pensees-SECTION-2...

Curious if the study would have the same results today with the prevalence of Mindfulness meditation. Perhaps it's my predisposition since I've googled for it. But I see advertisements for Calm and Headspace. I think even on TV. I see "Mindfulness" centers, physical places to take classes and meditate. A whole commercial market has taken hold of this new interest of fighting back the confusion of modern life.

My trouble with advertising these aids, is that perhaps people will be attached to them. For me the main thing that makes me enjoy meditation is that no matter what if I have the discipline I can do it. If I lose my limbs, if I have constant pain, if I'm unhappy, if I lose my family. All the awfulness of life can at the very least while I'm living not take away my inner peace. I can feel and observe the river of life without being swept away by it. I have a "comfortable" sense of security in my existence.

Coming back to the article. Having been through those experiences I would very much choose to be alone with my thoughts. I am literally trying to find time every day. Especially over electric shock haha.

As someone that has regularly meditated for years now, I still wouldn’t say sitting alone with nothing to do is an enjoyable experience. You can turn it into an opportunity for meditation or other types of deep thinking, but that’s more like “work” than anything else.

Meditation can occupy a unique space between work and play. One of the goals of meditation can be an experience beyond, or at least parallel to, goal-awareness.

I say "can be" because there are multiple kinds of meditation. A famous meditation researcher whose name I've forgotten lists three: focused, wandering, and empathic. (I'm not sure those are the canonical terms for them.) Wandering is my favorite.

Yeah that "enjoyable" state is kind of difficult to describe. My experience may be different than yours but for me it's an emptiness of being in tranquility with the chaos of my own thoughts. Only with deliberate practice. To me "work" does not mean suffering but directed concentration and discipline. If I accept my mistakes and imperfectness of that "work" the process to me is "enjoyable". But the "joy" is difficult here because it's not really that exact emotion.

Perhaps satisfaction and contentment are more accurate?

Aim to get into a jhana, it’s a real state of being and quite wonderful.

I think the headline is misleading. This study is about people's preferences and comfort, not what's "better" for them.

(In my personal experience, breaking through the discomfort of "doing nothing" has been subjectively better and rewarding.)

This reminds me of a clip of Louis CK talking about losing the ability to just sit with your own thoughts and be really sad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c&t=53s

Shame he turned out to be a sexual deviant because he said some interesting things.

"One bad thought ruins entirety of humans other thoughts, they are now null and void. News at eleven!"

What’s that quote from?

GP is making a statement in jest

Poor use of sarcasm (as most sarcasm is).

How come? I'd argue that he made a decent point - one bad action of an individual doesn't invalidate everything else they've done. Using sarcasm can turn a bland, potentially combative statement like that into a joke.

Tho, he did nor had one bad thought.

Issue is, he had multiple bad actions that actually harmed people. And he had worldview that rationalized those actions as something ok to do.

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss his entire act because of what he did. Watch his latest special to see his perspective. He’s not exactly Bill Cosby.

Bill Cosby is rather low bar.

Two sides of a coin. "Deviant" and "interesting" are the same kinds behaviors but with different value judgements.

I don’t think “deviant” is the right word to describe CK’s abhorrent behavior at all. Being different isn’t a bad thing. Rex Ryan is a “deviant”. Sure, some people may judge him but there’s nothing inherently harmful or unethical about what he chooses to do for sexual gratification. CK might be a deviant in that others don’t find gratification the way he apparently does but his deviance isn’t the issue. This issue is that he’s sexually exploitative of others.

I’m unsure if you’re saying I shouldn’t be criticising him or should be more critical?

If he’d just been doing something sexually odd on his own I have no issue with almost anything that might be - but what he was doing abused his power and hurt other people.

The principal author of this paper, Timothy D. Wilson has done some awesome research. I can highly recommend his book Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. I found it it be very illuminating and even useful for understanding others and myself better.

https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-to-Ourselves-audiobook/dp/B...

I'm 27 years old and I don't have much purpose in life. am I'm kind of becoming desperate, to be honest. I have always thought about becoming a programmer but I don't know where to start.

What programming language do you learn first? What languages and skills do you need to learn to become hire-able by a company?

It doesn't really matter what you learn, as long as you actually start, and keep up with it.

Doing something is better than doing nothing

1) what an odd place to ask this question

2) this is not a bad first place: https://www.w3schools.com/

It's never too late to start. At the beginning you should really focus on trying some things that keep your attention.

(For me that was programming games - incredibly crufty ones, but seeing thing move on my screen got me really excited and got me to understand)

Personally, that was javascript for me - mostly because you can do stuff with it in any browser you want. Lua[0] is also a great language for beginners, and I'm still using it for game development[1] and general scripting/fun stuff.

I just don't want to turn this into a hella long comment, so I'll wrap it up; but I could talk about the first steps you could take for hours :)

If you want to ask me anything on how to get started, just shoot me a mail under info@(my username here).com I'd be super happy to help :)

[0]https://www.lua.org/ [1]https://love2d.org/

Thank you

To a small minority, programming is an interest in itself. To most programmers, programming is a tool for achieving something they want. I learned to program mainly to make video games and websites.

For a general purpose programming language, I might suggest Lua. It's much less cryptic than most.

Do you need an income? If you do then you should probably think about what you can do that would generate an income rather than going for programming.

While programmers can earn good money it isn't necessarily that easy. Another comment recommended Lua, I would say that the language you should learn is the one that fits the problems you want to solve. In other words, the language is a tool, programming itself is a tool, Lua is one specific type of tool and it might or might not be the tool for the job.

My advice, assuming that you insist on learning to program, is to first find a problem that you would like to solve that might be amenable to a programming solution; then pick the language that everyone else thinks is appropriate for that field.

Thank you

Dude honestly I don't care much about programming but its just a way to build stuff and be useful. Grind out all the CS data structures stuff and learn Java. Get a job at a big corp.

Or learn Node and JS and stuff and be a web dev.

Agree with everything you said, although "Get a job" is harder* than it sounds. Learning programming is straightforward, getting a job is non trivial.

Assuming you mean harder than it sounds. Or, easier said than done.

You are right, I conflated both by mistake

Yeah 100%. But if you give off the vibe that you work hard to get stuff done, and you are humble as to what you don't know (shows you will take your time and learn right)... I think you can get an entry job.

Credentials do help though to get your foot in the door, I will say. I was a terrible programmer but had a college degree. Foot was in teh door and now I think i'm a pretty solid distributed java dev (and enough fullstack etc).

Hope its not too late, but due warning: programming will mostly likely not give you "purpose". Its alright, the work is nice sometimes and you can learn a bit, but amongst my friends group and peers I have yet to find anyone who got "purpose" with programming.

About the actual programming language: trust me, it just doesn't matter that much. Just choose Java or Python and you can't go wrong. Pick up an algorithm's course/book and try and solve some problems. Becoming hire-able is a whole other ball game where you need to play with your social networks, make own projects or use your college credentials.

If the "lack of purpose" is making you uncomfortable, you could try sitting with that feeling and listening to it, trying to understand what's going on underneath; it's unlikely to be exactly what it appears. There might be professionals who can guide you in that effort, but I'm not sure what they'd be called exactly.

As for programming, I'd suggest building a few programs by following some tutorials on YouTube. In particular, programs that automate your browser or computer can be really satisfying: "open this page/program, click here, take a screenshot of this area." There should be plenty of tutorials out there that will do a basic setup for those. And if you know any programmers, ask them to help you get started. Almost without fail, I've found the hardest part of programming tutorials is installing things before you start coding. Followed closely by tutorials being out of date. So expect to try a few that don't work before you find a good one. Language does and doesn't matter: again, ask any programmers you know what they'd suggest if you only learned one language (I'd say JS).

Good luck! It's fun building castles in the air. https://commandlinezen.com/explaining-the-joy-of-programming...

Not related to the content of the article, but am I the only one bothered with the way the article spell ranges: "six to 15 minutes", "Twelve of 18 men", "six of 24 females" ...

It is in the APA style guide: "In addition to using words to express numbers below 10, use words to also express:

Numbers beginning a sentence, title, or text heading"

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa6_style/...

That is in tension with using numerals for "Numbers that represent statistical or mathematical functions, fractional or decimal quantities, percentages, ratios..." And the tie-breaker is below:

If you’re unsure which modifier to write and which to express numerically, try it both ways. Be sure the way you express the numbers is in the clearest way possible.

Yes but at least they are consistent with the pattern word of numeral, which is often a good rule to use if not employing a specific styleguide.

For example, using the APA guide[1] for numbers (thanks @OJFord for pointing out my error): “Six to 15”, “12 of 18”, Six of 24”.

Edit: As @temp8964 correctly pointed out, there are situations where words are recommended[2].

–

[1]: https://apastyle.apa.org/

[2]: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/numbers/wo...

Don't you have that backwards? I'm not familiar with APA style guide but I was taught at school (UK) to use words below ten (at least, and to be consistent, i.e. saying 'ten' just then is fine as long as I don't now start saying '10' or '11') - I'd be surprised if APA advocated exactly the opposite, based on your example.

Hah! You're right, of course. My mind must have been elsewhere when writing the example, considering that I was literally reading the APA guide and thinking of the rule you laid out while at it.

Switching within a phrase, like “six to 15”, strikes me as pointless hobgobblin-ey consistency, especially when the numbers are close to the cutoff.

I find it so much more jarring than either “six to fifteen” or “6–15.”

The paper: https://wjh-www.harvard.edu/~dtg/WILSON%20ET%20AL%202014.pdf

> The investigation found that most would rather be doing something – possibly even hurting themselves – than doing nothing or sitting alone with their thoughts

This brings up an old saying I learned years ago:

    If you're going to do nothing, don't do it here

Meditation is being active doing nothing. It's paradoxical, just like Zen koans are paradoxical. I don't meditate in the cross legged position however, and drift in and out of meditation doing everyday humdrum things like waiting for a bus to arrive, or my favorite: pretending to sleep, so I can actually fall asleep. Each preamble before sleep is itself meditation, and we can find ourselves meditating doing humdrum things like washing the dishes. You don't need to go to a monastery or wellness center to meditate. We are natural meditators!

Switching on a podcast comes even more naturally to me. It's like I've outsourced a big fraction of my thinking. It's simultaneously delicious and repulsive.

Maybe. But I've also just gone deep into what most people would call a forest and just sit there for more than 2 hours. No music. No notebook. Nothing to read. Just sit there. Close your eyes. Sit.

Does that qualify as doing nothing? Or is that classed as some kind of meditation?

I think what that means is, most people don't (and wouldn't want to) do something that you choose to do, at least occasionally. I also meditate, on occasion. But I note that many methods of meditation involve giving you something to do (slow walking meditation, for example), perhaps precisely for this reason?

A good illustration of this is riding the NYC subway. I think most people would choose a slower-moving local line if it shows up before the more efficient express line, even if the express would get you to your destination sooner.

I used to do that with bus lines, provided I could get a seat. Between 20 mins standing + 20 mins crowded fast bus line (standing) and 60 minutes comfortably seated with no wait, I always choose the later. But, I may be the exception, as I find riding the bus a pleasurable activity.

It is supremely uncomfortable inside some people's heads.

More generally, it is supremely uncomfortable inside some people's bodies. I don't just mean someone with physical pain. Anxiety, depression and other disorders are a whole-body experience.

I believe this is a wildly underappreciated fact: Most folks are miserable, and most of us don't realize it due to a kind of "fish don't notice water" effect.

> Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being.

~Robert Anton Wilson

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/22/stand-there/

If you have a habit and you cease that constant, habitual action. It looks a bit like doing and and it also looks a bit like not-doing.

And habits are often completely invisible.

So that's something to consider.

I treat "doing nothing" as failure. It's normal to be bored, confused, tired sometimes, but you should have a goal & move forward, always.

I treat doing nothing as success. I opted out of the working world for 3 years in my 20s (lived cheaply off savings) and did little more than watch movies/tv, read, and walk/exercise.

Had no goals and no ambitions and loved every moment of it.

What if your goal is to do nothing?

This study doesn't make much sense. If the question is whether people would rather study and interact with the world or just ruminate and narcissisticly contemplate their own thoughts, the answer should be obvious, unless you've met anyone who enjoys the idea of being buried alive. I bet fitness people would be fine with this short-term solitary confinement, because they're at least entertained by their own bodies.

Do you find meditation “narcissistic”?

Several people mentioned meditation. Are there good books on how to meditate that you can recommend?

I can recommend "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa. It presents a path for meditation in ten stages, describing in simple and clear language goals and techniques for each. There are both directly actionable advice for many different circumstances, challenges, etc., and more theoretical / philosophical discussions for context and understanding.

I have followed the system described in the book for about 15 months, and think it had a positive impact on my life and my well-being in general.

What does it mean regarding depression and laying in bed all day doing nothing “with ease” ?

Now if only I could bring myself to actually do something.

Isn't this just confirmation bias? The sort of journalist who would publish work on this sort of scientist's publications, they both seem like the types of people who rather publish than do nothing.

Is that even a question?

Idleness is rust.

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