roche
1mo ago
I don't use TikTok either; Gave it a shot, but the app felt boring.
why do people who have access to TikTok (ie. are not diligently disciplining themselves to avoid it) and who use modern social media still reading classic novels or long-form, low-stimulus, black-on-white text at all?
Do you know a lot of people that regularly read for fun? Maybe I'm in the wrong places but everyone I've met says, "I want to read more but it's too difficult." Reading is considered a past-tense thing; something we all used to do, but which nobody can really enjoy nowadays except (usually) people into science fiction and fantasy.
roche
1mo ago
even the ‘simplest’ pleasures - a good strawberry, a classic novel, an old black and white movie, a beautiful sunset - will be so much better because we’re not constantly experiencing pleasure.
some people are able to enjoy life more than others, and that this is likely largely biological/genetic.
Both these statements are true. The baseline for pleasure is roughly fixed from person to person -- some people are just happier than others -- and because it's fixed, our brains will adapt to any lifestyle/level of stimulation and balance it out. If you suddenly read nothing but 1800s novels, you'd be bored as hell for a week, but eventually the brain will adjust and the novels will hit harder.
This is intuitive. Reverse it: If things didn't work this way, wouldn't the average person be bored out of their minds 2000 years ago? If we can mindlessly scroll TikTok and only feel moderately entertained/content, wouldn't some European peasant feel an absurd lack of stimulation 24/7 back then? If the brain does not balance stimulation like this, this logically has to be the case. Otherwise, the average TikTok/Twitch user must be absolutely thrilled the whole time, which doesn't pair with experience. They watch streams with a bland expression, apparently not more excited than an old man reading the papers.
roche
1mo ago
You're arguing aesthetics more than anything else.
From experience, more accurately. I've done this myself, I was stuck with a shelf full of Dickens for 2 weeks without internet. The mental effects are real, even for someone who ticks the "ADHD" boxes.
roche
1mo ago
What's your take on dopamine detox?
Everyone's got a story about how they read so much back in the 90's/00's. But they pick up a book now, and... it's just not entertaining. We all know we can dopamine detox and make reading enjoyable again, but the corollary is quitting the hyper-stimulating activities everyone does nowadays. No TikTok, no Twitter, no mindlessly playing games while listening to podcasts. You'll be (roughly) just as stimulated after detoxing, but you'll be disconnected from the root of modern culture. Your opinions on culture will be less accurate because you're simply out of touch, like boomers reading newspapers.
OTOH, dopamine detox has huge benefits. Your mind isn't constantly bombarded with stimulation, so you can perceive subtleties and "flavor" in art more, like when you remove sugar from coffee. You perceive the world in a slower, calmer, more rational, interconnected way. You're around people less, so when you meet people IRL you're much friendlier and happy to see them. There is probably some balance to the dopamine situation, but it's hard to spot, so we mostly stimulate ourselves as hard as possible from FOMO, scared of falling behind the world.
roche
1mo ago
Guess I'm really just projecting from my own experience with art. Whatever the Greeks said about muses feels true; when you can channel that magic inspiration it's like you've made brief contact with the divine and you're just relaying their message. Only when I'm having really strong emotions does my best stuff come out. But everyone's different. I think we just have to find what works for each of us as individuals.
roche
1mo ago
Sure. A short time-frame for arguably the greatest book of all time, though. I don't think Melville can write lines like Ahab having a "crucifixion in his face" without being deeply inspired or passionate. That kinda stuff only comes out when you're truly moved, and the whole book is full of things like that.
In my view, literature is often boring because writers force themselves to write when they're not inspired. Same with musicians, or art in general I guess. Only, the imperative of making money from your work tends to force out less than optimal material. I guess there's an argument to be made that regular practice will keep your base level of skill sharp, though. If an artist only waits for inspiration to strike, then his technical skill will probably decline in that interval. Ideally you'd split that time between raw practice, and just exposure to stuff that inspires you.
roche
1mo ago
That's a good point.
I guess I have in mind writers like Melville or Hemingway, who wrote their masterpieces in a very short window of time. This makes intuitive sense to me, because their work is colored by a specific emotion or intensity that most novels lack. It seems like Hemingway's work flow was to endure a shitty experience, and then rapidly write a story from it as a sort of catharsis. The Sun Also Rises was written over six weeks, immediately after the events which inspired it. And most of his great work lies in his short stories, probably because he could compose them rapidly while he was 100% inspired. On the other hand, a work like A Farewell To Arms has some segments which aren't that interesting, even if the ending is amazing. I think he understood this, which is (part of) why he constantly threw himself into rocky situations and lived 10 lifetimes in a single life. Without emotionally turbulent subject matter, his style sorta falls apart -- the simplicity of his prose only works when it conceals an iceberg of emotion and complex tension.
But unless you're prepared to live a rollercoaster life like Hemingway, you likely need to emphasize some other aspect of literature besides constant pathos. Hence improving in raw technical skill by putting in 1000 words a day, rain or shine. Sometimes you just need to get from A to B and there is no immediately compelling way to do so, you've just got to do it. So yeah, good point.
roche
1mo ago
I predict that for most casual games, there should be an obvious solution: fill the game with bots.
They're already filled with bots. The AI sucks though.
Games like Overwatch 2 are fairly punishing to "toxic" players, and they'll deliver a million slaps on the wrist + an eventual account ban, but this fails to solve the human organization problem here, which is: Assholes deserve to play games too. I don't want to play baseball with someone I hate, but he should still have the freedom to play baseball in his own way -- just with someone who's not me.
Overwatch, League of Legends, CS2, none of these games understand this. They're trying to enforce a universal standard of politeness onto online games, which is ridiculous, because for some people mic spamming and shouting slurs is why it's fun. Society should not be telling us, "If you can't have fun in the exact way I tell you to, you're not allowed to have fun."
CS2 has something called "Trust factor", which is an invisible metric that determines how likely you are to cheat. Matchmaking sorts players by trust factor, so if you have a low trust factor, you're getting a game full of cheaters. The question is -- why don't we do this with "toxic" players? Instead of banning them for using the gamer word, just lower their niceness score and match them into the in-game equivalent of 4chan. We created this problem with algorithms, so let's solve it with them too.
roche
1mo ago
We're in the "blood-sucking leeches" stage of psychiatry. The fact people are surprised whenever ancient chinese medicines or leeches work is funny, because of course they work. The recipes in Bald's Leechbook actually work -- were our ancestors were too dumb to notice patterns? The problem is they didn't know why. All knowledge reduces to probability, and the chance that an antidepressant works is around 10-20%. So our concept of depression is wrong. More accurately, it doesn't make sense. Like the "humors", it fails to explain anything, it's a non-sequitur.
There is a "real" psychiatry buried somewhere under this fake mess, or at least an improved set of models that works more consistently. The good psychs have put effort into this. But I am regularly surprised to see very smart psychs who are content with this system. It's they who should be leading the charge to improve, but they've accepted this paradigm of long-term patients with a 10+ year mental illness being failed by the system, they just shrug. "Tough luck!"
roche
1mo ago
I don't read SF myself but Three-Body Problem is pretty recent and massive, you should check it out.
roche
1mo ago
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That regular guy on the street doesn't read, neither do his friends. You can write a good book but the odds anyone reads it are low. But of course, the odds of success in any creative medium are bad, so do what you enjoy.
Sci-fi and fantasy are very much alive, so if you have any interest in those books, you should try writing one. It's a niche, but a very steady one.
roche
1mo ago
4chan felt that way once, but those times are long gone. 10+ years ago, each board had a community feel, and the centralizing factor is that everyone was just a nerd with an unusually deep interest in the topic of the board. On /v/, you had guys obsessed with Yume Nikki and E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy and Godhand. On /mu/, you had guys digging through labels to find obscure bands. /lit/ helped popularize eccentrics like Nick Land. At some point, the boards lost this exploratory, communal spirit, and modern 4chan just talks about whatever media product is the most advertised. Old 4chan had this sort of 90's mentality where they worshiped authenticity, weirdness, and indulged in old stuff, but on modern 4chan all those values are pretty much gone.
Waxing poetic about some old site is lame, but it really did have a positive influence on a lot of people. It was a sort of special place, nothing with that combination of optimism and passion is really around nowadays.
roche
1mo ago
To the general public, written entertainment is obsolete. Your average person doesn't enjoy reading -- only a great book like Blood Meridian with no adaptation will convince him to read. Dune is basically a better version of Star Wars yet nobody knew that for 50+ years because people just don't want to read.
Books are competing on the same battleground for attention as films, as podcasts, as music, and they're losing. Basically, the only way to approach book writing in 20XX is to write a book so explosive and interesting that it lures you into reading it. This is stuff like Gravity's Rainbow, or Blood Meridian or Infinite Jest. Alternatively, it's totally batshit stuff like Philip K. Dick's work. These books are still read because they offer you experiences other media can't give you.
Does literature have a future? Well, to the extent it can compete. There is absolutely potential for more books like House of Leaves to attract the attention of normal people, to move literature forward in some way. But obviously, it's going to take a lot of talent. You have to be a master writer now to compete with other media. Unfortunately that's just how it is. But it's possible, yeah.
roche
1mo ago
I've noticed an increasing amount of chatter from both sides about dropping out of society -- to build a homestead, or to buy a house in some foreign, isolated part of the planet. Of course, "I want to live rural!" guys have been around for years, and actually living rural in 2024 is a pretty raw deal for most. But it's telling so many have made the leap from, "I want to live small", to "I want to live completely alone (with spouse/kid/dog)". I'm sure much of this springs from a genuine love for sustainable living, the quiet life, the country and all of its joys. But the vibe I get is a subtle rising tide of misanthropy, of decreasing faith in the common man possibly regardless of one's leaning. As someone else put it,
the extremist american patriot dream is to aquire assets that allow them to live independently from the country they "love" away from all society and culture on a metaphorical if not literal island
My question is: Have you noticed this too? Maybe my circle's blowing this out of proportion, but maybe not.
If so, what's going on here?
I've got a personal theory for what's happening. See, I'm not much of a gamer, but I play two games regularly: Fortnite and PUBG. Really they're just for stimulation while I chill out and listen to music/podcasts, but something pretty damn annoying happens almost every time. I'll be relaxing in-game, looking for loot at a calm pace, when some absolute beast of a player flies in out of nowhere and shreds my health before I can blink. Every time it feels like bullshit because I'm not even trying to compete at that level. All multiplayer games have separate queues for "casual" and "ranked", but inescapably there's a handful of sweat lords who've memorized the meta, who know exactly where the best guns and vehicles are, who throw their weight around in casual games and ruin the experience for everyone else.
And when this happens, my natural reaction isn't "This game's matchmaking has failed", it's "I'm tired of these dickheads, I should play single player games instead". In other words, this is an organizational failure. Humans are naturally excellent at organizing themselves into the right groups -- you throw hundreds of kids into the same school, and very quickly the correct circles will form. There's bound to be a lot of kids with nothing in common, but this is obvious to both parties, so they simply avoid interaction. All groups are autonomous and self-organized, and it works really well.
Online groups in 2024 are algorithm-organized. The internet has taken on a kind of 1800s-Manchester-factory-worker housing feel where everyone's crammed into the same tiny spaces despite our differences. We are now constantly aware of how the other half lives, what they are saying. It's like your teacher forcing you to let the annoying kid play kickball with your group, to sit at your lunch table, etc. Going online feels abrasive in a way it really didn't back then. In 2009 you'd hop on some forum and it felt exactly like hanging out with friends, a 100% positive and chill experience. Going online now is like hanging out with everybody. Sometimes it's good, but a lot of the time it sucks. I don't want to know what the guys I hated in high school think of politics, or movies, or anything. But now I'm going to hear it, over and over and over.
Maybe I'm nostalgic, right? 2009 was a long time ago, I was basically a kid...
But probably not. Because I have a solid point of comparison: I understand Japanese, and spend a ton of time on the Japanese web. What inspired this post is actually a single website, which is 5channel. It's the largest anonymous bulletin board on earth, but more accurately it's a collection of around 1000 bulletin boards with virtually zero moderation. You can post wherever you want, say whatever you want, and... it works. Not because the Japanese are polite or something -- they can get wild -- but because if you just let humans organize themselves, things work out. This echoes my own time as an internet moderator, where I first believed that I could shape the board through my actions, but later realized the board's quality was beyond my control, it's an autonomous process that you have little say in.
I pay $4 a month to post on 5channel. I've made hundreds of posts there, and yet no one's realized I'm a white foreigner. Despite the language barrier, I post there because it's sorta like the English web was back in 2009. There's none of the bullshit, it's a site for nerds to make dumb jokes and chat about nerd stuff. When I browse reddit or twitter or 4chan, there's a lingering unpleasant feeling, but when I go to 5ch it's just dumb fun. It's exactly like the net I grew up with. You compare the two, and the English web just feels... sick.
I'm 100% ready to believe this pessimism in the air comes from our inability to self-organize. We are locked in with people we do not like 24/7, reading their crappy opinions, we can't just splinter off and make a new community and so we live with a slight psychological chip on our shoulder but we're not sure why. What's funny is my narcissistic tendencies fade the more I use 5channel. When you're stuck around people that challenge your identity all the time, you get defensive and sorta retreat back into yourself. But when you're around people who aren't going to constantly irritate you or challenge who you are, you start to relax and open up. You may even turn into a bit of an optimist. Conversely, it's this constant feeling of "Someone's gonna try and screw with me" that sorta defines how English web feels now, why everyone's so antsy and defensive and unwilling to let their irony shield down.
Human groups are naturally pretty small. In nature, whenever any major divide happens, tribes just split off and go separate ways. Being forced into a semi-permanent state of clash really can't be good for us, despite how "normal" this has become.
roche
1mo ago
The DXM extends the Buproprion's action, but the tradeoff is you're effectively high on cough syrup anywhere from a couple days to indefinitely on this drug.
It's possible that the brain chemistry changes that cause a lot of the (let's call it what it is) withdrawal syndrome are slow to manifest. So you may yet encounter the symptoms.
Maybe. My gut instinct is that there'll be zero withdrawal symptoms. Honestly, I've never had them before with anything (a mild headache when I quit caffeine cold turkey a couple years ago though). If ADs produce any effect at all, it'll be 1-2 mild symptoms in the first couple days, then nothing. Hell, even the Paliperidone felt like I was on nothing after week 1.
anhedonia is the one thing that's worse: there is genuinely nothing as confusing and soul-destroying as not just feeling a lack of pleasure but a lack of any ability to understand what would give you pleasure.
The upside is you get used to it. There's only about 2 things I can physically enjoy and I've optimized my life around it. If a recovery happens, the experience would be so powerful it'd be like having a second childhood. I don't remember what it's like enjoying a film, or forming a connection with friends, or having those mysterious and grand feelings as you watch the sunset, but I remember that these experiences exist and that they're amazing. This sounds depressing, but I do believe I'll figure it out soon (no thanks to the medical system). Has to be right around the corner.
roche
1mo ago
I haven't been writing because I think our current literary forms aren't doing the job, and I've been daydreaming a lot about how to fix that. That probably sounds like a waste of time, but I do think I'm getting close(r) to some answer.
roche
2mo ago
Not much has changed. I tried yet another antidepressant (Auvelity == Buproprion+DXM), and after 10 days I went cold turkey on it to see what would happen. Supposedly, going cold turkey on Auvelity is a nightmare and you'll get anything from brain zaps to headaches, nausea, fatigue, insomnia...
I felt nothing. This is one of the strongest antidepressants on the market, but after around 3 days it's like I'm on nothing. Same applies to Paliperidone which I tried earlier this year. And I've done the whole, "8 weeks and change" song and dance before, it never works. However my body's set up, the overall mechanism of psychiatric meds is apparently subverted.
Anyway, no progress. Interestingly, sleeping in front of a fan produces very little effect, maybe due to a lack of stimulants like sugar/caffeine (which I'm usually hopped up on) to magnify the effect. But another angle is, perhaps my breathing is shallow during sleep. The fan stuff doesn't work without deep breaths. I should really do deep breaths for an entire day and see what happens.
roche
2mo ago
For most people, the question "What would fulfill me?" is simple; only the "how" is the challenge. Most men just want a woman, while a smaller contingent want wealth, fame, power, community, faith, or some mix of these. For virtually everyone, the template is already there for what to do, and life is simply a matter of meeting the standard. You like engineering, so you become an engineer, etc.
Currently I'm in my mid-20s, and I've stagnated heavily because none of the paths feel right. There is no person, past or present, who inspires me to follow in his footsteps and to do the same actions. Instead it's like I'm pulled far away toward some distant star, to something particular no one has done before. And no matter how confusing or inconvenient this is, it's the only way I can find fulfillment.
Oddly, this seems common with people interested in the Classics (they're also always misanthropes). Not just guys like Montaigne or Nietzsche, but even the blogger TLP who produced shockingly original work at the height of his powers. Their styles are so unique that we can't imagine their work emerged from anything other than a deeply felt, internally consistent drive. They're also all writers. At 6 years old, I decided I'd become a writer, but this dream died years later when I found all existing styles unsatisfying. Now I think I'm coming around to it. When drunk, I pace around in circles rapidly and then sit at my PC and type up a storm. Overall I'm a mediocre writer, but in rare moods everything flows out beautifully. Perhaps I'll find that star soon. I sure hope so.
roche
2mo ago
A more interesting theoretical question would be: are people always lazy and incompetent at the same rate, across all times and places? Or is it possible to organize society and culture in such a way that people are less likely to reach for the lazy option of copy and pasting ChatGPT output into their peer-reviewed journal articles; either because structural incentives are no longer aligned that way, or because it offends their own internal sense of moral decency.
As a teenager, I was a massive unkempt slob with zero shame until I took an interest in girls. Once I developed a crush on some girl, I'd look back in horror at my habits (wearing the same sweat pants every day, having a shitty diet), and tried to clean up my act 100% even in private where my actions are invisible. By nature, humans are highly-efficient pleasure seeking machines, and the only thing that meaningfully interrupts this behavior is some kind of ideal. We can gloat that American scientists probably engage in LLM bullshit less than Chinese scientists, but the Americans aren't far from doing it either. If Americans aren't forming cheating circles like the Chinese, it's not because we're above it so much as we're amateurs at cheating while the Chinese are masters at it.
That seems like the sort of thing that could only be explained if the population had vastly different genetics compared to contemporary America, or a vastly different culture; unless there are "material conditions" that I'm simply not appreciating here.
Like most conflicts, it was framed in terms of ideals. Secular moderners don't really have ideals, so we struggle to imagine going to war over anything, really. Conversely if you've got a heightened sense of morality, anything is worth fighting over, and some men like Cicero or Boethius stick to their guns for an entire lifetime and pay the price. The founding fathers modeled themselves after these men, "Give me liberty or give me death", and it worked. Ideals are the only thing that fully override the comfort-seeking monkey brain, so if you want a nation of honest men, you have to make them genuinely value honesty.
roche
2mo ago
From my experience, the higher the IQ, the more likely someone is to build up abstract concepts in their thinking. These can be scientific models, but also psychological models, historical models, etc. Lower IQ people struggle to pick up mental models, so when you talk to them, you'll notice they generally only think or speak about what's right in front of them. They don't really wonder or daydream much, unless you suggest something for them to think about. So their faces are always a product of their surroundings, typically relaxed, while intelligent people are often lost in thought and gain a poised/intense look to their face as they age.
roche
2mo ago
Literature is humanity dreaming — making sense of the facts of the world.
Yeah, this was the original point of literature. Somehow everyone forgot this. Old literature is still helpful, but new stories to fill the same purpose would be amazing.
roche
2mo ago
roche
2mo ago
This place is still a paradise compared to /r/ssc which has become Quora. ACX comments are looking rough too. I looked up to these people? Yeah, it's bad.
But another thing: You've grown. Communities don't grow, but individuals can. There's a chance you've absorbed whatever lessons TheMotte had to teach, and you're in a class full of students waiting for a new teacher. Stagnation is the fate of all adults, and like illness the best we can do is delay it. We are all destined to become boring, vegetative adults unless we have some process of continuous, lifelong self-transformation. Don't ask why TheMotte is failing to meet your needs. Ask how you're failing to meet your own needs, and then find a new teacher.
roche
2mo ago
Do we have any humanities-brained fellows here?
In Rationalist groups, I feel like an odd duck. My passions are philosophy and the arts -- especially moral philosophy -- but I see them coexisting side-by-side with the intellectual world in a sort-of symbiotic, 19th century German way. This is a rare attitude among humanities-brains though. There's a weird, depressing tendency of the humanities towards absolute self-exile now. As if studying the humanities means adopting a milquetoast belief in "human nature" divorced from any serious biological or psychological context. You must accept as axiom that literature is important, even though this literature has no tangible message to give, no way to prove its importance; the Western Canon matters but no one knows why. Undeniably, books would be an amazing way to make sense of this confusing age we live in, but that requires admitting the sciences actually matter, which is an awful blow to the ego.
Okay, I didn't mean to rant. This is my way of saying, damn I wish I'd gotten into the sciences sooner. This is a topic that has 0 exposure, but the way we segregate our intellectual disciplines is, IMO, very damaging. When everyone engaged with a thing has the same thinking style, and interacts with it in the same way, blind spots form. Maybe we need some organic amount of cross-pollination to keep things healthy.
Is there a reading of this that doesn't involve intentional spite on some level? Someone involved here surely knew what they were doing
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