An insightful podcast from Andrew Huberman: "Controlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction | Huberman Lab Podcast #39" — <a href="https://youtu.be/QmOF0crdyRU" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/QmOF0crdyRU</a><p>And a clip: "Andrew Huberman - What Overusing Social Media Does To Your Brain" — <a href="https://youtu.be/Zh-AcF_4Hao" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/Zh-AcF_4Hao</a>
I find Cal Newport and the world around him very interesting. He's a CS computer geek that plays arm-chair psychologist in all his popular work. I've often wondered where his abilities breakdown and I think the article nails it:<p>"While there are many opinions and resources on how to best regulate overstimulation and overcome digital addictions, Newport’s directive is refreshingly simple: get rid of those things that are overstimulating you."<p>Really what this is saying is that there are many opinions and resources backed by research and psychological study that has complicated answers. And that Newport's solution is so simple is that it almost equates to "feeling depressed? Don't!"<p>So yeah, while Newport has interesting ideas and can boil things down for us techies to get behind (sometimes), he doesn't fully know what he's talking about. He's not really a trained psychologist and clearly doesn't understand things at a deep level. He's basically talking to people that are like him rather than people at large.
I'm skeptical of the 'dopamine detox' idea. It sounds too good to be true. I'm not sure how to explain other than writing out what I think it boils down to: "Here's your problem in an easy-to-understand way, and here's a simple-sounding thing you can do to fix it". The over-simplifications and implied promise of happiness and self-improvement sets off the same doubt for me as a lot of advertising and dark patterns.
'mindmatters.ai' being associated Discovery Institute, founded entirely to push creationism in US public education, is not a great sign for the credibility of this article.
Whether it's universally true or not, I personally found an unexpected week with sketchy-to-no internet made a huge difference to my ability to focus.<p>I realised that my ability to think about things for an extended period of time is derailed by social scrolling. Reading a book (for example) doesn't have the same effect.<p>So now I'm careful about what I look at online - HN, a mainstream news site, Matt Levine are my only 'entertainment' content.
Perspective in video feel shallow, and reminds kind of content with a lot of, "you just gotta, like, do, man." (hustle porn) [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36766509">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36766509</a><p>On consumerism, screens there is sci-fi perspective in Victor Pelevin's book Homo Zapiens[1]. I recommend to read thru original text. But here I tried to interpret it's reasoning through gpt4 [2] and gpt3[3] with perspective from other works.<p><pre><code> Homo Zapiens term describes individuals in this state of being controlled by TV. It highlights that modern humans spend a significant part of their lives in this condition, leading to a loss of true consciousness and self-identity.
Wow-factors emerge as powerful forces that capture and monopolize attention.
Overstimulation, driven by the constant bombardment of visual and psychological stimuli through screens and media, can lead to a range of detrimental effects on individuals' lives, loss of individuality, manipulation of desires, strain on relationships, mood disturbances, and cognitive impairments.
</code></pre>
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_"П"" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_"П"</a>
[2] gpt4 <a href="https://chat.openai.com/share/863d4a3f-330f-4f88-b53a-d95d909ae2a3" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://chat.openai.com/share/863d4a3f-330f-4f88-b53a-d95d90...</a>
[3] gpt3 <a href="https://chat.openai.com/share/af674cf0-a163-4190-a290-638a0e004462" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://chat.openai.com/share/af674cf0-a163-4190-a290-638a0e...</a>
Being connected to the #noosphere does possess a real danger to out-shadow the local world & what one & those around them can and are doing.<p>I dislike the idea as it's phrased because it's all stick & not carrot. It has "over" in the name which by definition is bad but I feel like people have some really great modes when they are super heavily stimulated, but they need conduits for it to matter, for it to feed into things one can do or learn from or expand from. The danger to me is so much of the stimulation is parasocial, that it doesn't really intersect with our own agencies or agencies we really brush up against, except very very indirectly.<p>Curating a local locus if high control can be hard when also staying plugged into the firehouse. But I still recommend trying it!!
> Newport also suggested cutting out online news scrolling in favor of a few curated weekly newsletters<p>As somebody currently trying to find this for US news, I've found that it's much harder than I thought: A lot of focus on summarizing a bunch of things that don't matter, instead of focusing on the things that do. Does anybody have any suggestions?
Anecdotal, but I removed every social media application from my phone, keeping only the essentials such as email, banking, maps, messaging and RSS. I don't check it anymore. I forget where it is, I feel free.
So something triggers more dopamine in our brain, and that gives us a desired to catch the thing that triggered the dopamine? Is that it?<p>Could we say that dopamine is what causes us to experience "lust"?<p>Do we crave for dopamine, or is experiencing dopamine the same thing as experiencing a graving?<p>Do nicotine addicts have a lot of dopamine in their brain when they crave the next cigarette? Then when they get the cigarette, does that remove the dopamine (-activity) from their brain?
The world doesnt need another twitter<p>Overstimulation is ruining your life<p>This guy can only write headlines if he's telling the entire population what is best for them. I couldn't be happier that I give zero fucks about what "cal newport" thinks is best
"Just delete tiktok" is like the diet advice "just eat less." Demonstrably impractical and debatably harmful.<p>Perhaps better advice is to find things that are immediately stimulating but also long-term rewarding (akin to finding food that tastes delicious and is filling but also is healthy).