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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

There’s still nothing stopping anyone from turning their phone off or leaving it at home.

There is nothing stopping anyone from quit gambling or smoking or drinking and yet there are enormous number of people struggling with it.

Arguably a better comparison would be food: Many people struggle with obesity, but limiting access to food is not really the way to help with that.

A counter example is alcohol prohibition in Islam: It worked and to this day to to a great extent still works, unlike failed American Prohibition.

There is abundant food in places without obesity epidemics. The problem is food policy in the US, not abundance.

Exactly, and likely the availability/affordability of nutritious food as well.

And to loop the analogy back – I don't think ubiquitous network reachability is ultimately a big problem; it's what we do with it: Social expectations around constant availability to respond, addictive/heavily gamified applications, etc.

Good analogy.

But there was something special about everyone being disconnected on the summit at the end of a long hike.

There isn't, but most won't nor will they fight the urge of "i wonder what's happening on XYZ, I better turn it back on!"

This is for texting, calls and 56k browsing at most. X wont load.

Well, Twitter did start out as a (at least partially) text/SMS-based service, and it and Starlink do have the same owner now :)

Yes there is, it's lack of willpower. The source of all personal failings in the world.

>The source of all personal failings in the world.

Oh yea, my kidney definitely died because of a lack of willpower. Indubitably.

"Personal failing" has idiomatic meaning, it specifically refers to things which are that person's fault. Medical issues generally don't count as "personal failings". If you did something wrong that caused a medical problem, that could be a personal failing. For instance if your organ failed because you drove your motorcycle too fast and crashed, that could be described as a personal failing.

How is a dead kidney a "personal" failure?

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