A Society That Lost Focus | Hacker News Reader

A Society That Lost Focus

ploum.net

23 pointscdme14 comments

Everything online has immediate feedback. not necessarily "reward," but we get some notion of "ok you're done now" even on things that involve a wait.

The real world demands delayed gratification. I planted seeds last week, and then nothing happened for days and days. Now they're beginning to come up. The link between last week's focus on planting and today's seedlings is something that I have to consciously remember, not the immediate feeling of "click muse, see square change color."

That lack of feedback makes the online fantasy worlds so much more tempting than the real.

Well said!

> I planted seeds last week, and then nothing happened for days and days. Now they're beginning to come up. The link between last week's focus on planting and today's seedlings is something that I have to consciously remember, not the immediate feeling of "click muse, see square change color."

I'm not sure if it's sad or not, but reading your comment made me realize I learned the same lesson by ordering from AliExpress.

Fun Fact: Love that they ref Battle Chess, the apocryphal source of "just add a duck" to get around micro-managers who need to make a change to feel like they've done something:

https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/#5

> We replaced documents with PowerPoints because it allowed lack of structure and emptiness to look professional

Boy, that's good.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like these books that expand on the same concept:

* _Hyperculture: The Human Cost of Speed_ by Stephen Bertman

* _How to Do Nothing_ by Jenny Odell

The first book more than the 2nd, but the 2nd book is still a lovely read that may help you figure out for yourself how to practically deal with the pacing of modern life.

"The Soul at Work" by Franco Berardi is excellent also.

Alternative link (source): https://git.sr.ht/~lioploum/ploum.net/blob/6fd54472047de8c2e...

I thought i remembered something about the difficulty levels in some versions of Battle Chess being backwards:

> They fixed the "Novice and Level 1 difficulties are functionally swapped" bug.

https://www.speedrun.com/battle_chess/forums/43ks5

> Funnily enough, it has been proved multiple times than every high-profile CEO is not better than a random decision algorithm.

Does anyone know of a source for this? I don't doubt it's true, but I'd love to see the evidence

I get that focus is important but I could do without the whole "a randomized algorithm could run a company as well as a CEO" rubbish.

Link seems down for me. Anyone else?

Source: https://git.sr.ht/~lioploum/ploum.net/blob/6fd54472047de8c2e...

Facebook owns Whatsapp and I feel compelled to use it.

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