Distraction is a kind of obesity of the mind

Yes, I agree with you so much.

I used to beg my parents to order me various forms of an encyclopaedia, I used to devour bookshelves. I remember reading every breakfast food box and piece of junkmail, just because it was something new.

I remember my mom telling me how shocked she was when I was like 6 or something - she didn't believe me that I read one of these young adult books in a day, and so I then rambled the entire story out, and she was proud of that for a while. I told my mom recently that I was watching an anime, and she was surprised and happy that "I watch TV again", because I've pretty much stopped watching TV for the past 10 years or so. The contrast of these worlds is stark.

I remember this stuff and I feel like I've become dumber, because I feel like I can't hold as much information. What is really happening, is I can't hold as much information as a computer can. But then there's some kind of process that seems to run on top of the memorization, that feels more like it's something I'd call a sense of self. Sometimes it is tiny iterations of a swift selection mechanic operating on information that has already been indexed, sorted, qualified, quantified, translated and weighted countless times, other times, it is a way of being intelligent that I don't ever think I could ever program. It is the kind of thing that makes the comparison of AI to actual intelligence laughable and ridiculous to even begin to pose the question.

To me, it's more about being able to find a real signal in a world that is constantly producing enough noise to consume us all.

I grew up with Microsoft Encarta, but still enjoyed encyclopedias and such. So I think these are compatible. Talking about kids in the next generation, I've always wondered about whether Kindle / iPad / etc. encourage discovery of books and information. Information is available if you seek it, but how about discovery? As a kid, I picked up many books because they were either lying around at home or caught my curiosity in the library. Same with music! Because I had some casettes and CDs at home, I picked them up and listened to them. But Kindle, etc. are not designed for this kind of accidental discovery or for igniting your curiosity to pick it up and see what it is. Again, if you seek information, it is available, but if the books or music want to seek you out, (pardon the floral language), Kindle / iPad / etc. are suboptimal.

had the same feeling. dropping Kierkegaard without getting into it. but this could have been the article authors choice. and the quotes from the books author seem very clear... and convinced me maybe there is more in the book than typical american self help.

if someone has the book i would really like to know how well does the book reference prior research... i would prefer a book on these exact topics that is more heavy on research than poetic yarning

I think that may be more or less inevitable. We don't even have a good physiological understanding of obesity. We know some things. Weight gain is determined by caloric intake. Maybe the right way to think of it is caloric intake is necessary for weigh gain. Bringing in psychology, neurology/neurochemistry… puff. There is fascinating science going on, but we're currently far from a working understanding.

But, we have other tools. Many of them are unscientific. We call them pseudo science or whatnot. That may not be incorrect, but it is probably missing something. Is AA pseudoscience? It's a social structure and method for alcohol addiction. We have all sorts of scientific knowledge, but not a science based improvement on AA.

It's increasingly seems like there are similarities between substance addiction, activity (video games, adrenaline sports, sex, procrastination, social media..) addiction and other "pathologies." The science does not contradict this. In fact, the contrary is very likely to be true. I've heard various interesting sounding theories that might be rendered as

"Addiction is something that has hijacked the learning process in your brain." IE, your brain responds and adapts to small doses of frustration or satisfaction when you learn to walk, solve math or ride a Harley Davidson. That adaption is learning. Addiction is that kind of learned behavior.

Yet, taking that theoretical level understanding of super-complicated processes in a super-complicated environment and using it in a non-pseudoscientific way is… we're not there yet. When we get there, we can throw out old wives tales. Until then, lets just agree that not everything is science. Some things are a working theory that approximates reality or utilizes some of our other human faculties to create a working solution to current projects.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=addiction+learning+dopa...

You can read the entire book, minus a couple pages redacted here and there, with Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. I don't know if this is intentional -- you usually only get the first 10 pages or so -- but I've just done it successfully on two different computers with different IP addresses, one logged into an account and one not, so you should be able to.

Having scanned the book for about 15 minutes over my morning coffee I think he has an insightful thesis: things we had to work really hard for and/or make major life sacrifices for a half-century ago are now free and abundant; simultaneously, society has gotten a lot less structured and communities (both in the literal-geographical sense and the activity-based sense) are generally weaker. As such, we've become prisoners of the infinite options available to us, and our lives become diluted as a result; e.g., we'd rather get our sexual gratification by opening up an anonymous browser window and visiting Redtube than put in the work to ask someone out on a date and build an actual physical relationship with another human being.

The author's thesis is that we need to train our self-control by doing things that require self-discipline and focus. What I find interesting about it is it really flies in the face of other pop-psych books (e.g., Tierney's Willpower) that suggest that we have a finite reservoir of self-control that we should expend wisely.

But that App just adds redirects to your /etc/hosts file... Its pretty easy to replicate that behavior on Linux. I like OS X as much as the next guy, but that particular feature isn't really unique.

There's also a Linux version https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol/wiki/FAQ

I've just switched the LeechBlock Firefox extension because you can delay the page loading (thus making you think why you went there in the first place).

I made a similar Chrome plugin. It would allow you to go to a site, but would ask you if you're sure you need to see it.

1. How long do you meditate? 2. What's your pre-meditation trigger? 3. How many times a day? 4. How often do you miss a day (like when travelling), and do you have any technique for getting back into the habit?

I haven't meditated regularly in over ten years. I really am planning to pick it up again because it works. I find myself constantly engaged in thought. I'll wake up in the middle of the night not sure if I've even slept because I still have thoughts racing in my mind. I think I need a vacation, but short of that meditation would probably really help me once again.

I found one of his best insights to be that the factory model has been shifting out of blue-collar work, where factories are automated and many people now work essentially as craftsman, into white-collar work, where much office work has become rote. (I would put programmers into the craftsman category.)

"Yet there is evidence to suggest that the new frontier of capitalism lies in doing to office work what was previously done to factory work: draining it of its cognitive elements. Paradoxically, educators who would steer students toward cognitively rich work might do this best by rehabilitating the manual trades, based on a firmer grasp of what such work is really like."

On the office environment: "Either you can bend conduit or you can’t, and this is plain. So there is less reason to manage appearances. There is a real freedom of speech on a job site, which reverberates outward and sustains a wider liberality. You can tell dirty jokes. Where there is real work being done, the order of things isn’t quite so fragile."

On learning a hands-on trade: "Occupations based on universal, propositional knowledge are more prestigious, but they are also the kind that face competition from the whole world as book learning becomes more widely disseminated in the global economy. Practical know-how, on the other hand, is always tied to the experience of a particular person. It can’t be downloaded, it can only be lived."

I haven't read it, but I'm thinking to buy it. I read few months ago other book (The shadows, what the internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr) and it's a very interesting topic (more in current times).

When I was growing up, I was always taught to do my chores, then I could play. But rather than simply enforcing the rule, I remember my dad actually explaining the logic to me while I was young -- basically, if you start to play first, the whole time you're having fun, you've got your responsibilities in the back of your mind (unless you're just a total slacker).

By getting the work done first, you actually enjoy playing more.

(Plus, if you play first then try to force yourself to work, it gets harder to switch context into a "work mode" and you end up not getting around to it a lot of the time)

I definitely notice that in my life now.

A luxury product created by gratuitous cruelty? Seems a bit harsh.