Posted by articsputnik 1 day ago
Some of my relatives in the 90s, things weren't much better without smartphones. You had long distance calling and TV, or otherwise you were alone. One of my relatives attempted suicide when she was very young, you can guess why.
But yes, it obviously makes sense to use smartphones intelligently. Meta products and Tik Tok are poison for the mind. And unless you're at home it's a good idea to just shut the smartphone off.
I agree. Tech-minimalists seem to forget that not everybody lives in some heavenly small mountain-side commune.
The article says a lot of things about being 'present', 'mindful', 'nurturing relationships' and 'enjoying the world'.
I don't want to be present. In fact, I want the complete opposite. I want to be literally anywhere else 99.99% of the time.
If I look at my phone and get to look at nice things, talk to incredible people and imagine lots of wish-fulfillment scenarios, I can pretend for a while that not everything is absolute dogshit 24/7.
What am I supposed to enjoy, exactly?
I think what is meant is that if the phone is acting not only as an "escape" but also as a way of avoiding dealing with things or even changing them, then it is, in fact, harming you from the possibility of improving your condition.
Not for me to judge who is in that position or not, but I would definitely say many people use it as an avoidance rather than having to deal with hard stuff. Change is hard, always was, even before phones.
Playing the victim card is always easier: my life sucks, there's nothing I can do, at least my phone keeps me happier. In many cases, there is always something you can do if you are willing to put the effort. But then again, not for me to judge. Some people are in really tough places.
Its easier than ever before to move away regardless where you are, change jobs, reinvent yourself, to form relationships (I know this is much deeper topic but tools for meeting people are really ubiquous, and the rest is just a number game and some self-improvement effort), and at least do your damnest to (re)define rest of your life. Yesterday was the best time, today is second best.
> What am I supposed to enjoy, exactly?
I've spent recently 2 weeks backpacking around some pretty remote parts of Indonesia. Cheap trip, most of the cost were tickets, the rest were just coral/wreck dives. The only westerners I've met (and there were relatively many) have all exactly same bug as me - its absolutely stunning and life-redefining experience. Its not easy or pleasant some times (since you go deep into 3rd world countries with only basic infrastructure, even phone signal can be rare, internet much more so), and properly amazing at others, and the only thing you think of when coming back is how and when to do it again, more, more remote.
One of many suggestions how to make one's life much better and give it some proper motivation. Plus as said it changes you for the better, this I can guarantee 100%. There is tons of beauty in the world, just ignore the noise, politics, and people and companies gaming you for your data making humanity worse off one step at a time.
Especially since I'm not a westerner. It's not great out here.
> There is tons of beauty in the world, just ignore the noise, politics, and people and companies gaming you for your data making humanity worse off one step at a time.
It would be easier if said politics and people didn't want people like me or my (online) friends suffering and/or dead. I avoid going outside as much as possible.
I'm not doing too badly economically, honestly. I'm extremely lucky to be able to gild my cage. Doesn't really make me happy, but I guess this is as good as it gets.
>One of my relatives attempted suicide when she was very young, you can guess why.
This misses that even more young ladies are attempting, today, albeit for entirely different reasons. I'll let you guess why.
Lots of memes/postcards. I also have a part-time secretary (only for scheduling/mailing).
If I need to "sign up" somewhere, I use a burner/temporary email.
Free-est man alive.
Would you consider handwriting a letter and then fax2email it also an option, if not why not? Writing a letter can be much more intentional, but the sending process could be automated.
I remember I bought a german book with bundled talks/essays at the Goetheanum bookshop last year about how to relate to the digital revolution. Distracted by the internet I haven't had time yet to read the book. "Das Ende des Menschen? Wege durch und aus dem Transhumanismus" (The End of Man? Ways Through and Out of Transhumanism), edited by Ariane Eichenberg and Christiane Haid.
There is also something sweet about having a built-in delay for the message to "gestate" — perhaps if politically-related, your point is even further reinforced as "prescient," as the pre-dated postmark attests (upon delayed arrival). Perhaps you're wrong and wasted a stamp.
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Mostly I agree with (I believe) P.G.'s premise that email is nothing more than a to-do list that anybody can add on to. I do not wish to ever be immediately reachable, again, and this is an expensive freedom/lifestyle.
I am simply too angry to have access to a system [email] where I can immediately tell anybody in the world how I feel about something [and did for a quarter-century]. If something really bothers me, it has to be worth a postage stamp (I usually write postcards, but also have thousands of FOREVER Stamps™).
I find most of the debate on smartphone use tends to fall on the extreme. Why not find a happy middle ground and recognize that they do have valid uses?
Most people are simply too weak mentally to resist various self-forming addictions and don't care about these topics at all.
THE biggest impediment for me has been stuff like getting sick. When I am sick, I just cannot lie there and do nothing. And it is TOO difficult to do stuff like read books or go out and talk to people or whatnot, it's too much effort. I HAVE to get back on consumptive screen-time. And then it devolves into something uglier - an ugly spiral, of gluttony & consumption, and I keep at it even beyond getting better.
Then it takes days or weeks of laziness and excuses to get back on track. And not just sickness but anything of that level. Anything that just kinda derails my life for a bit. I really need to find a middle-ground solution for the worst-case scenarios. I'm still working on it. I think I should be able to figure it out. It took me a while to figure out my best-case system as well.
- having a "phone box", the small uncomfortable shoe bench now has a shelf above it for phones, phones shall only be used on that bench
- only my partner knows the "screen time" password on iOS
- putting away my laptop and using a desktop computer instead
My current problem is listening to podcasts, I don't have a convenient way to listen to them without my phone.
The big issue is that I'm not very good at moderating my intake. I'm a crack addict for information and one small dose will turn into a bender.
I've got a somewhat weekly 6 hour round-trip commute where it get a lot of use.
If "necessity" means work-related: On my work-issued iPhone, I call and (briefly) text with people, triage some e-mail, have a look at calendars, take some in-situ photo/video, refer to a few notes, and so on. I don't have the screen time feature turned on but I guess I'm also below 30 minutes on that phone on most days. The exception being traditional voice calls which occasionally can go on for (much) longer than those 30 minutes, depending on what's happening. However, most of my more regular, scheduled conversations happen in real-life or in Zoom, Webex or other such platforms and not on a mobile phone.
The only work-related thing that I can think of OTOH which really required me to use a mobile device is hardware that requires an app to work (which is fortunately still rare).
For those looking to drop a(ny) habit: this seems to be the key
My point is that there is no better software to get acknowledged about the different Xs than yt. My point is to go cold turkey about any other recqmmendation services because they can not serve my interests when I work with my hands, or walking, or driving. I have listened some 3.5 hours podcast about Math and I am sure there is no other way to consume such a podcasts other way than I recommend here.
Check out Channels 1/6/7/25/35/40
Multiple people have clearly explained this to you in several comment threads and you're still insisting it makes no sense. At this point the only question is why you don't want to understand.
do you really find this to be true? i find it’s incredibly wrong like 90+ percent of the time. i am not close to interested in most of its recs. i’ve tried for years to tell it what i like and its just wrong so often. i’ve even tried entirely new accounts.
i mean, sure every once in a while im like “whoa, that’s a great rec” but thats pretty rare. it’s definitely better than spotify and the like etc… they’re wrong almost always, but a miss rate of more than 9 times out of 10 is so bad.
recommendations from people is so much more accurate.
when i get a music recommendation from someone who works at the record store the positive hit rate is so high, same with movies and music recommendations from friends, etc… if it works for you that’s great but my feed is overflowing with video after video where i’m like “why in tf do you think i’d want to watch this?”
That tells me you are a simple person so yt gives you a simple recommendations. Music content in yt is poor, your music taste can be improved in different places. Movies are just a stupid time consuming, if you like to watch them, why to complain about bad recommendations?
> recommendations from people is so much more accurate.
You are happy to have well-educated friends probably.
> a miss rate of more than 9 times out of 10 is so bad.
For me its top 10 slots are 100% about the persons I appreciate, so to get to the point is time when 9 of 10 are bad I need to watch everything what the persons have published for the time I have been offline. 90%/10% is just the usual Pareto, it's ok.
> i’ve tried for years to tell it what i like and its just wrong so often
It doesn't take years. Just open all youtube links featured on HN and start playing those from your account without even seing/listening. You will see the changes immediately. Next step is to just stop watching any channel with 1M subs and any videos with 1M watches. Soon yt will ask you in some modal window: do you want to see the content from the smaller channels? Press the "yes" answer and you will unleash the real power of yt without clickbait headers, with no arrows on previews etc. Join small channels and treat them like Reddit subforums. This totally works for me, I participate in more discussions on yt than on HN.
I just have to be careful, when I watch something I don't want YT to think I liked, to remove it from my watch history.
I spend a lot of time "protecting" my YouTube recommendations (clearing garbage videos from my history, blocking certain channels, opening links from friends separately) but I still try to immensely limit the amount of time I spend on the site, and the recommendations go directly against that.
Negative measures such as clearing history, putting dislikes and using "not recommend" just doesn't work because from my experience the only negative metrics which works is just refusing to watch shite. Youtube actively uses spaced repetition approach so consider any time you are being recommended to shite as active shaping your recommendation engine. Don't even touch that square with the cursor. Try teaching your recommendation blackbox in positive ways - watch some channels when you are not watching and listening, subscribe to small channels, write comments with no less than 8 words and actively use such nouns which you are welcome to be recommended to.
> Negative measures such as clearing history, putting dislikes and using "not recommend" just doesn't work because from my experience the only negative metrics which works is just refusing to watch shite.
Clearing history certainly works, just make sure there is absolutely not a single unwanted video in your history or the algorithm will go on a tirade thinking "I REALLY bet I can get this person interested in Lego videos because they watched one 4 weeks ago and I have a ton of Lego content they've not even touched yet". The instant you clear the final offender the recommendations change like night/day.
I'm not sure dislikes/"Not interested" actually do anything. "Don't recommend channel" also definitely works, though there may be a limit to how long they are saved and it's better to just aim the algorithm.
The only thing the algorithm is really good for is finding videos it thinks will suck up your time. The curation is ultimately down to how much work you put into it, which isn't all that unique to YouTube. Putting similar effort into curating any large body of content will also get you more content than you have time to consume, but still doesn't help you actually gain much from engaging with it anyways.
1. Youtube obviously grabs some info not only from Youtube but it also grabs all history from Google search and most of all some random words from Gmail, cleaning that all just for the sake of experiment might be not handy.
2. If some video has got deleted it obviously disappears from history. But there is a man I really fond of, his channels are regularly get banned after a month of activity, than the man finds a new channel with new author/interviewer. Somehow I am among the first ones to get recommended about new interviews with the man.
> "I REALLY bet I can get this person interested in Lego videos because they watched one 4 weeks ago and I have a ton of Lego content they've not even touched yet"
I can share another anecdote. Ten years ago there were a music video "Wintergatan - Marble Machine". I used to watched it dozens of times almost every day. Now if I scroll the feed to the end (Yt is not a doomscrolling) I have 90% probability of receiving the Marble Machine in the very last line. I have not touched it even once in the last several years but it knows I used to love it earlier. BTW it doesn't remember what I loved 15 years ago when most of the videos required Adobe Flash.
> The only thing the algorithm is really good for is finding videos it thinks will suck up your time.
Isn't that how a really great teachers teach? Forget about the teacher's interest, the teacher exists until the fellow pupil is interested.
> The curation is ultimately down to how much work you put into it, which isn't all that unique to YouTube.
That's a lie because FB and other rivals have nothing except the engine (no useful content). Just consume it responsively. The only reason to not use yt's algo is when you are so fond of your work that you have the chair glued to your arse and every second spent to someone's wise thoughts means a lost penny. So pity I have typed a lot of text but noone has asked me to share all my hacks to shape the algo towards one's satisfaction.
My recommendation about human interests and yt consuming is not to close yourself in your shell, but actively explore what are there any interesting. I become cold turkey to any other recommendation services since I have unleashed the power of Yt.
I removed every 'fun' app except for a few exceptions:
- ChatGPT, but mostly in voice mode, and with other people - as a party trick.
- Whisper Memos (https://whispermemos.com/), I record voice memos and they end up in my email, so I can continue with that idea when I'm on a computer (whether that is a prompt for AI, or a todo.)
- Bevel (https://www.bevel.health/), to track sleep factors, such as whether I wore a nasal strip
- Overcast (https://overcast.fm/), for playing podcasts.
- Liftosaur (http://liftosaur.com/), for tracking gym
- Basics like Banking, EV charging, Maps, Parking, Messages, Weather, Authenticator, Reminders, etc.
I removed App Store as well as Safari, so these apps is all I can do on my iPhone.
In the beginning, I set up a Screen Time code so I wouldn't be able to cheat. But in a few weeks I got used to it. So App Store and Safari are enabled again, but I never use them. (Maybe Safari is disabled. I have no idea to be honest.)
The biggest downside is I never know where my phone is. However, I'll gladly accept this downside.
It's not perfect, as I still spend a lot of time on Reddit and HN on the tiny screen while commuting, but it's moved the needle for me.
1. it's gotta be bad for the eyes on a screen that small 2. the Pixel camera!
I guess these phones are rebadged?