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Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit much. Attention is not that hard to control if you want to. It's sad if people allow their attention to be captured by doomscrolling/notification-clearing/etc but no more so than if they did so playing Solitaire or reading trashy magazines.

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Attention really is hard to control, and most people can't do it. In fact, the only way I've learned to exert real control over attention is by practicing meditation. Regardless, the GP's point stands: we ARE the sum of our inputs.

> Regardless, the GP's point stands: we ARE the sum of our inputs

This seems too nonspecific. Influence is graded on a curve: early life experiences and childhood are formative, and the job of parents is to raise their children well. I don't think we should be equating the influence of internet ads with big experiences.

I agree, but we also shouldn't discount the thousands of little influences that affect us everyday, either. It's a bit like deflecting an asteroid: a big push early on will have the greatest effect, but thousands of little pushes later on will also deflect it. The key quality is the coherence of the impact - if they push in all directions, it may NOT have an impact. Arguably advertising is coherent in that it all seeks to increase your appetite for consumer behavior. And I would argue our parents do that to us, too, with gifts of toys and other trifles.

I agree, but I think being aware of that is how we self-determine a bit better. Facebook sucks you in with notifications, and if you notice that you can disable notifications, or (as I did) uninstall the app and just use the website.

Do you see ads to play solitaire on a regular basis but "control yourself" to not play it? I also don't see ads for magazines like I see ads for cars, food, gambling, etc. The magazines themselves contain ads, sure, but I have to have the desire to read a magazine first in order for my attention to be hijacked by an ad within.

That's naive. We all feel like we're the master of our story, but our history books show us that people are products of their time--their physical, social, and cultural environment. With determined effort, one person can fight the tide, but one person is a rounding error.

Trashy magazines are also a mechanism for auctioning off your attention to advertisers.

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