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Comment by JohnCurran | Hacker News Reader

> the longest regular conversations I’ve had in the last week have been with an AI-powered rubber duck

I think, and am basing this off of nothing objective, but it feels like the vast majority of content today is written by people who spend, frankly, too much time online. I think the fact I’m writing a comment about this says that I, too, spend too much time online.

The bubble that the tech world and this website in particular differs so much so from reality that I don’t know what to make of the articles that front page here.

All the twitter doomsaying, trump will never be president, all entirely wrong. I don’t know what to make of it - maybe I should log off for a while

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Just go out, do some sports and enjoy life :) I stopped spending too much time in front of the computer and started doing more outdoor activities. Best decision ever.

“Go touch grass” is used derisively, but it’s something I tell myself more and more. We overvalue the online world and all its drama. Go outside, meet people, make your own organic, locally grown drama.

These days I schedule my work around the weather. Few things bring me as much happiness as a day in the sun. I know it has been a good day when I have not touched my laptop once.

"Go touch grass" barefeet, if you want even more body sensations ...

And actually you can combine both. Sitting with your laptop on the grass (in the shade), to get the outside feel, but still work done.

As with many things in life, "go touch grass" isn't actually about touching grass.

> As with many things in life, "go touch grass" isn't actually about touching grass.

As with many things in life, though "go touch grass" isn't actually about touching grass, touching grass really is a good thing. (Well, except that it makes me itch all over the area of contact. Still worth it.)

For me it is complementary. While I consciously touch grass, I ground what I am doing with reality. Is the problem I am stuck coding on really that important? Is there a simpler solution, or is something else more important right now?

At least, that's what works for me, sometimes metaphors are to be also taken literal.

I recently made a small webapp to make me "touch grass". The idea behind it is that you enter some activities (or keep the random defaults), and when you are bored or doom scrolling, it call tell you what to do.

It's a bit silly, and still very bare bones, but I just like the phrase "touch grass", and this is my effort to reclaim it from the depths of derisiveness.

https://makemetouchgrass.com

You're being ironic right?

I don't like sports, and I live in an endless suburban wasteland where there's nothing to do but go to bars, restaurants or the mall.

I can't afford to go to restaurants all the time, and I don't like bars or the mall.

I'm shy and I don't do well around strangers, and even when I do meet new people 99% of the time we don't have much in common, so it feels like a waste of time.

I'd much rather surf the web... at least there I'm learning stuff, and I can communicate with people who I actually have something in common with.

The curse of the high IQ is that statistically you wont find a lot in common with the average Joe. Too bad just deal with it. Get married and raise children. Go to church. Spend time in your local library. Volunteer at a local CSA (community supported agriculture). Take long walks. Go hiking. Ride a mountain bike in the woods. Go to the gym and lift weights. But dont spend your life online and staring at computer screens.

Why not? This is a very dogmatic take on how to spend ones time. People enjoy different things, if you enjoy spending time behind a screen, go for it.

I don't enjoy my time online, I just dread change more than I dread living a dull life

I don't see a problem with spending time in front of a screen, and would much rather do that than do pretty much anything you mentioned.

Some things, like spending time in nature are nice once in a while, but there's no nature near where I live, and even if there was I'm often not in the mood to go.

Personally I wouldn't survive in a suburban environment without nature being near by.

Going to restaurants, bars or meeting strangers isn't what I meant. It's still the artificial human made world. Spend time outside the city, hiking, boarding, climbing, running or just enjoying nature... That's it. Finding like-minded people will come by itself.

Oh, and beeing active is just awesome. Pushing the body to certain limits is just so important for my mental health. I am a complete different person, if I don't do sports for a certain time.

This reminds me of that reddit post from a couple of years ago, "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People"[1]. I mean, to utter these kinds of predictions out loud really reveals your power level. That said, I think the author is right in the premise, that human-to-human communication will be affected by whatever it is that is coming our way. The predictions they end up at, however, are regressions that go a bit too far.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

World outside this tech bubble is so different.

I worked in conventional ELV systems related engineering before getting into tech. I feel like people outside high-tech life are so much behind in many aspects of life - the progress made by tech on the lives of high-tech people are yet to reach the ordinary person.

There are so many non-tech people out there we look down but in fact they are the probably 98% of humanity and their reality define how we as humanity evolve.

On the other hand I feel like non-tech people are underrated in their understanding of what what tech is doing, they just have a way more relaxed attitude towards it.

Like finding out your 55 year old Aunty has secretly been using LLMs to automate part of her job is real.

“High tech” people are like trekkies, they’re just more into it.

I think it's a result of how the media relegates different sectors of people into different "propaganda" zones. A lot of people like to watch TV. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for them to spend more time with the TV than with another human being. Others probably don't have the time to watch any TV. The people online on the internet clearly fall into a niche of "wanting", where they're asking for entertainment but none can give them any, so they invent some for their own selves. Now that there's a proper contender for TV in this space, this will become a regular occurrence.

Note: I'm not stating that people online don't watch TV at all -- just that they don't derive the same sort of enjoyment from it that normal people do.

The online world is often much more interesting to me than the offline world... at least around where I live.

It'd be great if I could afford to travel, but I can't... and, anyway, traveling itself has many downsides, and you can burn out on that after a while.

Ain't that the truth. 99% of what people do socially around my area is drink, talk about work, talk about the most recent sporting event, and talk about their kids if they have them.

After the first 5 times you have those conversations, you can predict the entire night's conversation before they begin. I'd love to have offline conversation that was almost anything else.

It’s that way most places I’ve lived. Sports, beer, motorcycles, tv, shopping…

The online world brings one useful thing to the meat world: organization of meetups for folks interested in a bit more… take Jazz, for example… thoroughly possible to organize a jazz jam in a suburban area thanks to the net.

"Trump will never be president" is an excellent support of TFA's thesis: it was said by people who were not so much terminally online as terminally reading, and who were therefore convinced that no one who is demonstrably illiterate (having a command of the oral register but not the written) in his mother tongue could become president*. In 2016, some large percentage of the US electorate was already post-language (or at least post-literacy), as they agreed the lack of literacy(/language) was no impediment.

* despite having been indoctrinated for years that the genius of the States is that "anyone can become president"?

The genius of the US is that, no matter who becomes president, the country still functions pretty well.

After watching the first head-to-head debate it was apparent that Trump could win - whereas Trump was clearly a deeply flawed human being, Clinton came across as a smiley robot.

Can you tell me what's the biggest flaw you see in Trump as a human?

Genuinely curious.

Find the biggest flaw in the infinite fractal of flaws — fun game.

Personally, I never liked his hotels much.

Take your pick between 1) He's nakedly selfish and narcissistic and 2) He attempted to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, one of the bedrocks of our democracy.

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