The New Smoking (2021)
conorbroderick.net
conorbroderick.net
Weed makes driving more dangerous, lowers motivation and focus, etc. You want to do that to unwind, fine. But do it at home or in a designated smoking area I can know to avoid.
Marijuana, on the other hand, slows your reaction time and hampers decision making, as well as (in a small percentage of people, but including me) triggers depression, paranoia, and psychosis. Although it is legal to have and to smoke where I live, you still can't do it while driving a car or in public spaces. Doesn't seem to stop people though :\
On the other hand. The impairment you are talking about has been shown to affect non regular users more.[0] and to be negligible to regular users.
I wouldn’t want to be driving on the road with someone after they smoked their very first cigarette. I remember what that was like the first time I inhaled. It’s all relative. Marijuana can be less psychoactive than nicotine depending on the person and their tolerances. Just anecdata but people also report some cultivars of marijuana calms nerves while improving focus.
[0] https://norml.org/news/2022/06/16/study-regular-cannabis-con...
I agree, in either tobacco or Marijuana, your not going to accidentally get high just existing in a smoking area. Marijuana however smells gross from a distance, I would be polite where you light up. Thats just common sense.
> I wouldn’t want to be driving on the road with someone after they smoked their very first cigarette. I remember...
As someone who had regularly done both, this is very wrong. First time smoking tobacco, yes I'd never want to drive in that state, but nicotine I would argue helps me pay attention, especially when driving for hours in a straight line. (Guess where I live) Marijuana however impaired me every time, and similar to alcohol I would never drive in that state.
I do think we can agree that the weed <-> tobacco comparison is not very useful, as weed is more closely comparable to alcohol.
You lost me there.
There is no reason to believe that weed smoke is any better or worse than cigarette smoke. Burnt plant matter is burnt plant matter and contains lots of garbage--most of which isn't good for anybody.
The only difference nowadays is that a lot of people consume both nicotine and THC using vaping and concentrated liquid. This is probably less damaging in terms of secondhand smoke as the temperature is lower and the goal is vaporization rather than oxidation.
It is impossible to say one way or another as the internet is full of both sides of opinions. It is easy to find articles that say that weed smoking isn't as bad as cigarette smoke. I personally don't trust either side though.
But, from a logical point of view, they have very different compounds in them, so there must be some sort of difference.
I haven't paid much attention, but there was a pretty big JAMA paper a decade or so ago that didn't demonstrate much risk at something like "a joint per day for 40 years" level consumption.
Vaping may well have its own -- perhaps even greater -- risks, but I hadn't assumed propylene glycol to be particularly carcinogenic. Is it? CDC says doesn't seem to be raising major red flags: https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/ToxFAQs/ToxFAQsDetails.aspx?faqid=1...
Certainly not an area of expertise for me, I'd always thought of it as closer to a fog machine at a Halloween party than inhaling burning pieces of ash. Other than the vitamin e (?) associated illnesses a few years ago, is there good reason to think otherwise?
For some reason people think it is tobacco that causes lung cancer, and therefore joints are safe/healthy. Ridiculous. It is inhaling all that ash that gives you lung and throat cancer.
Vaping avoids the carcinogens of cigarette smoke, but likely carries its own risks. As you mention it's like breathing in a Halloween/stage smoke. But why do you think that is safe to do?
Ultimately if the air is smokey, it contains particulate matter. That particulate matter is not good for your lungs, no matter what it is.
I imagine that this is orders of magnitude lower for marijuana smokers than tobacco smokers, especially in this era with most flower being >20% THC by mass.
There are also vaporizers that just pass hot air over marijuana flower.
This reads like medieval miasmatic theory.
In other news, breathing and living is the #1 cause of death.
The quality of the air you breathe is what affects your risk of developing cancer. Burning tobacco releases the most amount of harmful particles, and even then, many people spend years inhaling it without ever developing cancer.
Vaporizing marijuana is done by exposing it to much lower temperatures, which doesn't release the same particles as burning. Thus, it's not the same kind of smoke.
Additionally, marijuana doesn't have the chemicals linked to cancer to begin with. Tobacco even if ingested can increase the risk of cancer.
But ultimately, everything you do, from the city you live in, to your household environment, to your genetic predisposition and lifestyle choices, affects your risk of developing cancer. Living is a balance act between these risk sources and actually enjoying your life.
Vaping marijuana is probably not great for you, but many people do so for many years without negative consequences, and the risks compared to smoking tobacco are much, much lower. All of this is handwavy, of course, since the effects of marijuana have been historically poorly researched.
But making a blanket statement that all smoke causes cancer is fearmongering at best, and objectively wrong at worst.
No, smoke doesn't _cause_ cancer. Breathing in anything other than clean air _may increase_ the risk of developing cancer, but there's no certainty that if you e.g. suck on a tailpipe you'll catch the cancer.
There's a substantial difference from inhaling the smoke from combusting tobacco laced with hundreds of harmful chemicals, and inhaling the vapor from exposing the cannabis flower to much lower temperatures. How much difference exactly? I'll wait for more research to be done to draw my conclusions, but you go ahead and think it's the same thing.
> Accumulation of mutations over time causes cancer.
Again, the keyword you're ignoring is "risk". Our cells go through millions of mutations throughout our lifetime, and there are many factors that determine each person's propensity towards cancer. The best way of minimizing that risk is by living in a bubble, but some people choose to live in polluted cities, drive ICE cars, enjoy eating grilled meat, and inhaling marijuana and even cigarette smoke. Just because you might be risk-averse to partake in any of this, doesn't mean that we should dump all of it under the same "causes cancer" category.
You seem to be conflating "looks smokey" with particulate matter, which I suspect is generally reasonable but perhaps not in all contexts. Water vapor can cause the air to look "smokey." If you go outside an a 5º day and exhale, does your exhaled breath contain more particulate matter than if you did so on a 50º day?
That is where most weed smokers end up or plan to end up.
God bless humanity, almost got rid of the vice completely only to have a reincarnation absolutely plunge a new generation into addiction.
Also “vice” in the meaning of a bad habit, not the drug squad.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eric-garner-dies...
But meh, awareness of those topics could probably stand to be higher anyway
At the end of the day this is the kind of random violence that backs up every mundane law.
Vaping nicotine has indeed replaced a lot of the consumption of old fashioned cigarettes. But that has nothing to do with weed.
Agree.
> Without added flavors you can argue it is completely harmless
No, it's not. Filling your lungs with fine particulate matter/grease is stupid. You can still get COPD, some do. That's pretty shitty way to go.
I've thought about the apparent paradox that I keep distracting myself with a phone/computer while also not getting any fulfillment out of it. Right now I think it is about self-loathing and hating my own company. I hated being undistracted since that meant more attention for my thoughts. Those nagging, awful thoughts.
I've also had some experience with meditation. I was never succesful. But I did manage to have the mini-insight that I am not my thoughts. So I didn't pick up meditation again but I did try to carve out some 10 minutes here and there where I just sat with myself, focused on the moment, and didn't look at my phone. I used to get super-annoyed at myself when I did this because my mind would always start to wander. But that mini-insight might have actually had some lasting effect, since now I was able to not get annoyed when I noticed myself -- um, I mean my thoughts -- just blahblahblahing. Because chatty mind is fine as long as you can observe it with detachment. At least at my level.
I don't know if it did anything, but it has correlated with a change in attitude towards these distractions. I now have better impulse control, am more optimistic, have more initiative, less irritable. And I have a better attitude and partial control over those nagging thoughts—I can either let them play out in the background or pivot them. Sometime. Total mastery of the chatty mind is a long ways off.
So how do I resolve this paradox? Before I hated myself and my mind—which I identified with myself—so much that I instantly reached for distractions whenever nothing was happening. Was past me an idiot for doing that? No. He simply didn't know any better; he was knee-deep in the ramblings of the chatty mind, either reacting to it or arguing with it.
Writing periods like this down feels like I am a leaving a note to my future, possibly confused self. From my now-lucid self.
You say you didn't pick up meditation again but what you describe sounds like meditation to me :p
The meditation guide I use always assumes that my mind will be wondering off and gently reminds me to come back to focus, just like you've been doing by yourself!
The goal though is of course to practice meditation all the time. And I guess I didn’t do much of that back when I meditated more formally. Maybe that was my biggest mistake? Refer back to my frustration with mind-wandering. My more gentle approach now feels much better. :)
I Don’t Want to Be an Internet Person: https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/11/04/i-dont-want-to-be-an...
The Internet is Made of Demons: https://www.damagemag.com/2022/04/21/the-internet-is-made-of...
When traveling, I carry a dumb phone, specifically a Nokia feature phone that doesn't even connect to The Internet. The only distraction on it is the Tetris app which kills time waiting for the bus, or waiting to be seen by a doctor, etc
I dedicate a small window of time (1 hour at most) to social media, and trained all my feeds to be high signal, so I come out of scrolling educated and informed.
I don't engage in phubbing[0] which is a portmanteau of 'phone snubbing'.
Just for the record, karma is a useless metric to me. It gives visibility into how one of my submissions performs, but that's it. I don't chase karma.
> It looks like it falls in addictive experiences
Addiction is when a thing controls you, and you don't control it. I am in charge of my experience here on HN, and as I said, I don't chase upvotes & karma.
I personally think I don’t want to masquerade my participation as something else than an excitement to be part of an interesting online community, an interest in being up to date with trends, but nonetheless, an addiction, since it takes time and doesn’t create that much value in my life, and if I had to quit it, I would be doomed by being unoccupied.
As an alcoholic I too feel in control of my alcohol intake.
When you limit, articles like this pique your interests (my thinking: "New smoking? I would say it's internet/smartphone addiction, I wonder if I'm right"). So I believe it's not unusual that you find a lot of quitters/limiters in threads like this. Is it still addiction?
Also it's very hard to talk about experiences of quitting Internet. 99% of my friends don't want to quit, don't see anything wrong with Internet. I am alone and can talk about that only through Internet. Ironic I know, but what gives? Internet is not 100% toxic like alcohol, limiting totally would be not only very hard but also probably too strict.
At least with iPhone I can load up hundreds of ebooks to read and choose how I spend my time.
As a non-smoker I was at a conversational disadvantage. As a nerd, this didn't bother me much.
(Oddly enough this might actually work. My understanding is that nicotine is not actually that unhealthy; it's mostly the other stuff in cigarette's that's bad for you. Additionally, based on an old coworker of mine who quite smoking successfully, a big part of the addiction is just having something to put in your mouth.)
it doesn't replicate the social ritual of a "smoke break" though. a single cigarette burns for about as long as you'd usually want to have a light conversation with a stranger. a vape "lasts" indefinitely long, and you never need to ask someone for a light. you can also probably get away with just doing it inside if you're discreet.
The only inhaled drug delivery system I know of was an insulin delivery system (Exubera) which AFAIK failed in the market for some reason.
I pop out at least once a day for a coffee break away from our work building, often with a coworker or two. I try to basically never get a takeaway, it’s so much better to pause and have a real worm break sitting at the cafe.
Essentially, the language has changed!
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/tiktok-in-china-versus-the-uni...
It's a bit weird to find myself in a position of defending a social media app. There are a lot of people in the US who have a reason to be upset with its existence. I think it played a key role in the last election, because that's where Gen-Z spends their time. Similarly the execs at Google and Facebook have a reason to want it gone, but you don't see them publicly lamenting how they don't make as much ad revenue as they used to. The negative comments here on HN at least are always some version of "national security" and "think of the children".
I guess CCP involvment is guaranteed in some form, but I would expect rather light touch and strong monitoring. To spot dissent early and weed it out in the roots. And to have something for blackmails on everybody in future.
This is true, and even more fine grained. All content driven industries optimize their delivery to target audiences.
Part of the problem is so many people don't have free time and/or money to do anything more than scroll on their phones. That goes for people with good career jobs with long hours, and those scrolling on the bus as they go from one of their low paid part time jobs to another.
https://medium.com/@the_jennitaur/how-to-do-nothing-57e100f5...
I know you'll still need to offer people cell service so they can call 911 in emergencies, but why not block everything else, as an experiment? Put a big sign at all entrances to that park so people know what they're getting into.
And then the big question would be... would taking this step increase park usage, or decrease it? I honestly have no idea, but I'm incredibly curious to find out.
It's better that some next generation folks are out enjoying nature and building up some care and appreciation for it than not, right?
Wikipedia clinically describes the field as "The goal of the field is to find neural explanations for consumer behaviors in individuals both with or without disease." Personally I have a less favourable description of it. How to make people addicted to your product, and spend more money than they should.
ETA Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr, 2008
I think there may be a balance, but whatever is happening today is totally exploitative and should be regulated in some way, at least up until a certain age.
Its called proper parenting. As a father of little 2 miracles, I can clearly see how easily they get addicted to basically everything-screen, and many more things like junk food. And its 1-way road.
The hard part is going into full relentless battle with your own children who will use various psychological tricks, just like adult addicts, to get their kicks. Almost nothing is off the table. So you often end up with verbal contracts like you are buying next twitter to have some rule of sanity, but kids tend to ignore it anyway.
We personally are +- not there yet, so its relatively easy to manage 1 and 3 year olds for screens. But we see lost battles all around us, kids small and big glued to phones, tablets, tvs, just that parents can have some time off. Not everybody fails, but we see success mostly with parents that simply dont have tv at home and use (rarely) phones more like old nokias (with attached camera) rather than smart phones. You can't expect kids to respect prohobition when parents are clearly ignoring it.
Proper parenting these days is hard, I guess also due to higher bar for parenting success than just 'kids are alive when entering adulthood'.
On the other hand, it's probably just the, albeit sad, natural order.
I've met parents who were saying 'we have digital kids' when their kids were acting like heroin addicts on withdrawal just to play on phone another 30 mins, and they were saying this as something normal. I get it why, admitting you are raising hard addicts and it was you who failed to prevent that must be outright unacceptable for many. People have this innermost desire to feel good about their actions and decisions and this would be properly undefendable if hard truths were told.
But it comes back to parents too - spending more time with kids instead of chasing career and money kids have 0 interest in (which is smart!), more meaningfully, be an example in ie activities, sports and hobbies. In an age when obesity jumps through the roof, people are seriously messed up after 2 years of covid lockdowns and all news are about doom and gloom. Tough.
Never heard this. Very interesting.
To your point, I agree. I am curious if there's been an official term coined for this... is it actually "digital kid?" I am curious if there will end up being a stigma applied to whatever it is as a sort of natural course-correction, or if it becomes the "norm." Humans love labels and their connotation.
PS: Hats off to you and the other parents in this thread with similar understanding.
I genuinely hate the ads-tech, ad-ridden web, and ads in general, but I cannot help but to admire it for starting from a very simple 'this is how things really are'.
Free games are mostly hot garbage, with a couple of rare exceptions. Many of these are also pay-to-win games which strike me as the most preposterous use of time imaginable.
the other added benefit is no "micro-transactions" or other ways of "monetizing the user".
With the 3DS you pay for the game upfront, and for the most part that is the end of things.
Features that require you to play a game n days in a row or that require you to play a game at certain times of the day or that require you to stop playing the game and come back the next day are red flags in terms of the game being low quality because there's no need to exploit people's FOMO if you've actually created a good work of art that stands on its own merits.
I also more or less completely ignore phones as gaming platforms. Those platforms have such bad reputations that a game (that isn't a port of a retro classic like the early Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy or Grand Theft Auto games) even being available on them tends to be a red flag that it is a low quality game. There's no reason why good games can't be released on iOS or Android but generally speaking they aren't because of the stigma that those platforms have due to all of the "free-to-play" garbage that has been released on them over the years.
People used to walk about World of Warcraft being incredible addictive and that's not free.
Part of what makes it so addictive is that it's a social activity. With smoking having been marginalized to zones ever further away from buildings - for example, not even on hospital grounds any more, never mind the buildings - the smoker areas tend to be little social hubs. Quit, and you lose that cameraderie. You can get over the nicotine dependency in less than one (unpleasant) week but what is harder to quit is the ritual.
If you don't count the smartphone interaction itself as cameraderie, then the problem with these things is actually the opposite! Instead of marginalized people engaging in real social interaction, you now have social interaction banished e.g. even from restaurant tables as everyone is busy with their little addicto-gadget.
And their parents generation had over serialized plays on the radio.
And several generations removed, the panic over the printing press.
Far worse, there are many, many, many public spaces --- waiting rooms, bars, restaurants, cafes --- in which televisions are ominipresent and, again, always on.
This has become far worse, rather than better, with thinner and cheaper displays.
We didn’t get our first color + solid-state set (a huge marketing term back then) until 1978. That was probably about 5 years later than typical. It was a Zenith Space Command, also our first with a remote control. It used no batteries, pressing a button struck a metal tuning fork set for an “ultrasonic” frequency that a microphone in the set listened for. I quoted “ultrasonic”, because as a child I could definitely hear it.
It won several oscars, and is still referenced today.
The printing press (~1440), and subsequently cheap pulp-based paper (despite its rapid decay due to high-acid content), and increasingly-capable powered presses, and greatly-expanded literacy (19th century) did revolutionise the world, splitting the Christian faith, launching first the 100 Years War then the Long 19th Century (1789--1914 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century), including the Revolutions of 1848 in which over 50 nations saw some form of political ferment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848).
Radio played a huge role in the rise of fascism in Italy (Mussolini), Germany (Hitler), and the US (Father Coughlan, McCarthyism). Television revolutionised US politics, particularly at the presidential level (Kennedy-Nixon debates), as did cable television, talk radio, and the nascent Internet.
In The Matrix (1990), John S. Quartermann's introduction details the influence of then-nascent computer and fax networks on the Tienanmen Square protests in China. Even early in the 1990s, the role of Usenet and BBSes in conflicts in Yugoslavia and Turkey was noted (see especially Serdar Argic: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdar_Argic>).
McLuhan (who influenced Eisenstein), Harold Innis (who influenced McLuhan), Neil Postman (another McLuhan protege) Edward S. Herman, Jerry Mander, Noam Chomsky, Robert W. McChesney, Andrew Shapiro, and many others have made similar observations (bibliography here: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...).
If you change how information flows through a system, you change that system. This applies directly to media and its influence on culture, politics, business, and more.
The reason that the fears seem so quaint is because we live in the landscape that emerged. We are the consequence. The Time Before seems so difficult to conceive of and understand because it was all but entirely supersceded.
We face a similar situation in all likelihood with further algorithmic-driven media and GD ML AI ourselves.
People really need to learn to just live their fucking lives. Or at least shut the fuck up and let other people live theirs.
I’ve been given dramatic lectures in college parties by people who were 6-7 drinks in on how bad that cigarette im smoking right now is.
Media hypnotization is indeed a thing. I grew up in a very very low trust society. I wonder if that’s related.
None of the kids actually want to waste time on social media… but we all still struggle with it. I ran across an (iOS) app that they've come to accept and even appreciate. Rather than blocking apps completely, it adds a pause of maybe 8 seconds; enough time to take a breath and maybe your higher self gets a word in edgewise. It’s free (though I think you pay for more apps) and it’s called “One Sec”. Installing it requires a few steps, but I found myself opening Youtube much less so the next day was “ok kids, bring me your phone.”
Social media and its consequences (adtech) have been a disaster for the human race. We're still largely oblivious to it though, and mostly see the benefits. Similar to smoking and before that, fossil fuels, we just see it as something that improves our lives at little cost. In 50 years we will wonder how we were so naive.
I finished the audiobook yesterday, and highly recommend it. When framed against the active, intentional social media strategies suggested in the book, the argument that "normal, every-day" social media usage is just like smoking becomes very persuasive.
EDIT: Also recommend "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. It's about television, but every salient point applies directly to modern social media as well.
I’ve been spending too much time on my phone and it’s been affecting my mental health. The more I use social media, the more I get sucked into the algorithm and the more I get depressed. Social media is designed to keep you hooked, and it’s been affecting my mental health. That is why I’m quitting social media. I’m not saying you should never use social media, but be aware of how much time you spend on it and whether it’s really worth your time. If you’re not careful, social media will take over your life.
The way social media platforms were designed is a big part of the problem. I’ve been on social media for a long time and I’ve seen how social media has changed in the past few years. Social media used to be fun, but now it’s a lot more serious. It’s become a place where people are constantly arguing with each other and it’s become stressful.
The way social media companies have changed their algorithms is the main reason why social media has become so toxic. The new algorithms reward you for posting controversial things that get a lot of engagement. The more engagement you get, the more the algorithms will show you content that’s similar to yours. That’s why people are constantly posting things that are controversial and the algorithms keep showing you more of the same. It’s a vicious cycle.
Social media companies are using the same techniques that casinos use to keep people hooked on gambling. They’re using the same techniques that slot machines use to keep people hooked on gambling.
Every time you open your phone, you are opening a slot machine. You don’t know what you’re going to get. You could get a like, a comment, a message, or nothing at all. That’s what keeps you hooked. The more we understand how these products are designed to keep us hooked, the better we can manage our own use of them.
(gpt-3 on the same topic as the OP)
I thought it was a rather vapid comment but it just slid right past my relevance filter, easily ignored in a stream of people sharing their opinions as a weak form of anecdata.
Until that last footnote. And the dawning realization that this is my opinion of 98%+ of comments and yet I read them anyway.
And even here now as I respond with yet more drivel and unsolicited anecdotal opinion vaguely attempting to contribute to an already obsolete comment thread. I question everything.
I play video games with acquaintances and friends who I've known for years. They're fulfilling in the same way a zoom chat or phone call is, and they're much better than watching alone. Video games aren't a substitute for in-person contact, but what is? Some of the malaise from games seems to come from the ephemeral nature of matchmaking, where you're not playing with or against people you know and there's no community, but this is a solvable problem.
When I'm head-down on a train staring at my phone, I'm either messaging the people I'm about to meet up with, or I'm reading a book. Conor's problem seems as much aesthetic as behavioural: he doesn't like the cold sterile white rectangle, but at a guess he'd be happier if I was holding a warm off-yellow-beige paper slab and turning the pages.
Reduce work and living expenses to give people back some time and energy to actually pick up something more complicated than social feeds or digital entertainment.
This is how https://linklonk.com works: you upvote content that you found useful and the system gives more priority to users and RSS feeds that posted this content in your future content recommendations. As a result you see content from those who have brought to you useful information in the past - a feedback loop that is better aligned with your needs.
Prior to the 1830s, Britain had exorbitantly high tax rates on advertising, I'm given to understand. (I've found relatively little material on this fact, and forget where I picked up the information.)
Who is "us" here? The users of the technology? Absolutely, it's terrible for your mental health. Or so you mean the owners of the technology who deploy it? In which case it's great, it super profitable and barely regulated.
But I expect you mean society as a whole where we have to integrate the above. Good question.
I don't think free to play has anything to do with it. People used to say that World of Warcraft was way too addictive and that's pay to play.
I think I have a unique perspective on the topic as CEO of a games company (Six to Start), designer of a fitness game with 10 million players (Zombies, Run!), and being a former neuroscientist.
EDIT: Mention of Lewis Mumford is already bodes well.
Yes the thing which China does well is regulated capitalism, they permit capitalism, they allow billionaires and so on, but only if it's in the interest of the state, which still reigns supreme. In the US and the West, the corporations give orders to the governments.
If all parents forbid their children to touch the phone, problem solved.
Edit: Yeah go ahead, down vote, but this is intended to be a humorous take on a systemic problem, as other have mentioned.
I also don't think it's particularly helpful to blame individual parents (most of whom are doing the best they can at a very difficult job!) for what is ultimately a social issue that all of us contribute to.
This is unlikely a result of bad parenting brought about by an extant technological environment in their own youth:
"Baby boomers can’t stop staring at their phones" November 12, 2022
But there is another demographic that is struggling with putting down their devices: Baby boomers. Smartphones came into their lives late, but they were quickly won over. Now some of their children say they are hooked, staring at their screens constantly, even when they should be paying attention to their own grandchildren. Two-thirds of boomers own a smartphone and about 6 in 10 are on social media, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/12/boomers...>
Archive/paywall: <https://archive.ph/Tz5Lj>
The Pew study on which that article is based: <https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/09/us-generati...>