With all due respect, I don't think you understand what the "worst case" scenario looks like for global warming, and how close we are to that scenario. For reference, check out figure 1 in this nature article [1].
That has warming by 2300 as 8C in an "emissions continue current trends" path.
Here's chatgpt giving a picture of what 8C warming looks like. Speculative, hallucinations, caveat emptor, etc...but to give a sense of proportion this, last time the earth was 8C *cooler* than now, ice covered 25% of the planet:
> At +8°C, Earth is fundamentally transformed. Large parts of today’s populated zones—South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, southern Europe, the southern U.S.—are functionally uninhabitable for humans outdoors. Wet-bulb temperatures regularly exceed survivable limits. Agriculture collapses across the subtropics; even mechanized, climate-controlled farming is marginal. Most of the world’s food comes from high-latitude regions: a narrow band across northern Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia. Sea levels are dozens of meters higher, drowning coastal megacities; Miami, New York, Shanghai, and London are gone. Phoenix is lifeless desert. Seattle is coastal tundra, wetter but still survivable.
> Civilization persists only in fragments. Mass migration and resource wars have rewritten borders. Population is a fraction of 21st-century levels. Global trade, universities, and modern governance are mostly memories. Local, self-sufficient polities dominate. The United States as an institution likely dissolves or transforms beyond recognition—2 out of 10 chance of recognizable survival. Harvard or MIT survive, if at all, as digital archives or autonomous AI-driven knowledge systems—3 out of 10. The world would still have people and culture, but not civilization as we know it.
Edit: I would appreciate knowing why I'm getting downvoted when I added citations for *possible* warming paths (from nature!). Yes, the chatgpt explanation is speculative but I mean, look at the thread we're discussing.
Part of the problem of getting +/- 8C of different global temperature is the speed of it. https://xkcd.com/1732/ shows a timeline that goes back to 20000 AC, where global average temperature was like 5ºC less. There has been changes, but also adaptation. Now in less than 200 years we increased 2ºC, and the speed of change has increased, it was around 10 years ago when we reached 1ºC over preindustrial times, and now we are at 1.5ºC.
And without adaptation you get mass extinction. And the human system may be pretty fragile against the disappearance or deep change of key components of the global system.
I appreciated your comment. I’ll also note that the path to that future will not be fun - you/chatgpt describe a kind of end state 275 years away, but things will evolve to that state over time. I suspect the downvotes may reflect people’s desire not to face the likely reality.
About 40% of AI infrastructure spending is the physical datacenter itself and the associated energy production. 60% is the chips.
That 40% has a very long shelf life.
Unfortunately, the energy component is almost entirely fossil fuels, so the global warming impact is pretty significant.
At this point, geoengineering is the only thing that can earn us a bit of time to figure...idk, something out, and we can only hope the oceans don't acidify too much in the meantime.
Interesting. Do you have any sources for this 60/40 split?
And while I agree that the infrastructure has a long shelf life, it seems to me like an AI bubble burst would greatly depreciate the value of this infrastructure as the demand for it plummets, no?
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I work in the datacenter space. The power consumption of a data center is the "canonical" way to describe their size.
Almost every component in a datacenter is upgradeable—in fact, the compute itself only has a lifespan of ~5 years—but the power requirements are basically locked-in. A 200MW data center will always be a 200MW data center, even though the flops it computes will increase.
The fact that we use this unit really nails the fact that AI is basically refining energy.
A 200MW data center will always be a 200MW data center, even though the flops it computes will increase.
This here underscores how important TSMC's upcoming N2 node is. It only increases chip density by ~1.15x (very small relative to previous nodes advancements) but it uses 36% less energy at the same speed as N3 or 18% faster than N3 at the same energy. It's coming at the right time for AI chips used by consumers and energy starved data centers.
N2 is shaping up to be TSMC's most important node since N7.
I think it is really just the difference between chemically refining something and electrically refining something.
Raw AC comes in, then gets stepped down, filtered, converted into DC rails, gated, timed, and pulsed. That’s already an industrial refinement process. The "crude" incoming power is shaped into the precise, stable forms that CPUs, GPUs, RAM, storage, and networking can actually use.
Then those stable voltages get flipped billions of times per second into ordered states, which become instructions, models, inferences, and other high-value "product."
It sure seems like series of processes for refining something.
It is the opposite of refining energy. Electrical energy is steak, what leaves the datacenter is heat, the lowest form of energy that we might still have a use for in that concentration (but most likely we are just dumping it in the atmosphere).
Refining is taking a lower quality energy source and turning it into a higher quality one.
What you could argue is that it adds value to bits. But the bits themselves, their state is what matters, not the energy that transports them.
I think you're pushing the metaphor a bit far, but the parallel was to something like ore.
A power plant "mines" electron, which the data center then refines into words. or whatever. The point is that energy is the raw material that flows into data centers.
Where do the cards go after 5 years? I don't see a large surplus of mid sized cloud providers coming to buy them (cause AI isn't profitable), Maybe other countries (possibly illegally)? Flood the consumer market with cards they can't use? TSMCs' more than doubled packaging and they are planning on doubling again
Yeah, it was the companies pilot site, and everything about it is tiny.
But it very quickly became the best place in town for carrier interconnection. So every carrier wanted in.
Even when bigger local DC's went in, a lot of what they were doing was just landing virtual cross connects to the tiny one, because thats where everyone was.
Basically, yes. When you stand up something that big, you need to work with the local utilities to ensure they have the capacity for what you're doing. While you can ask for more power later on, if the utilities can't supply it or the grid can't transport it, you're SOL.
You could in theory supplement it with rooftop solar and batteries, especially if you can get customers who can curtail their energy use easily. Datacentres have a lot of roof space, they could at least reduce their daytime energy costs a bit. I wonder why you don't see many doing solar, do the economics not work out yet?
I'd have to do the math, but I doubt that makes sense given the amount of power these things are drawing. I've heard of DCs having on-site power generation, but it's usually in the form of diesel generators used for supplemental or emergency power. In one weird case, I heard about a DC that used on-site diesel as primary power and used the grid as backup.
Compared to their volume they absolutely do not: you get about ~1kW / m^2 of solar. Some quick googling suggests a typical DC workload would be about 50 kW / m^2, rising too 100 for AI workloads.
That's pretty interesting. Is it just because the power channels are the most fundamental aspect of the building? I'm sorta surprised you can't rip out old cables and drop in new ones, or something to that effect, but I also know NOTHING about electricity.
Not an expert, but it’s probably related to cooling. Every joule of that electricity that goes in must also leave the datacenter as heat. And the whole design of a datacenter is centered around cooling requirements.
Exactly. To add to that, I'd like to point out that when this person says every joule, he is not exaggerating (only a teeny tiny bit). The actual computation itself barely uses any energy at all.
It's not some "magical way"--the ways in which a human thinks that an LLM doesn't are pretty obvious, and I dare say self-evidently part of what we think constitutes human intelligence:
- We have a sense of time (ie, ask an LLM to follow up in 2 minutes)
- We can follow negative instructions ("don't hallucinate, if you don't know the answer, say so")
We only have a sense of time in the presence of inputs. Stick a human into a sensory deprivation tank for a few hours and then ask them how much time has passed afterwards. They wouldn't know unless they managed to maintain a running count throughout, but that's a trick an LLM can also do (so long as it knows generation speed).
The general notion of passage of time (i.e. time arrow) is the only thing that appears to be intrinsic, but it is also intrinsic for LLMs in a sense that there are "earlier" and "later" tokens in its input.
Sometimes LLMs hallucinate or bullshit, sometimes they don't, sometimes humans hallucinate or bullshit, sometimes they don't. It's not like you can tell a human to stop being delusional on command either. I'm not really seeing the argument.
If a human hallucinates or bullshits in a way that harms you or your company you can take action against them
That's the difference. AI cannot be held responsible for hallucinations that cause harm, therefore it cannot be incentivized to avoid that behavior, therefore it cannot be trusted
The steel/al content is taxed only for some products. Veterinary vaccines have tariff code `3002.42.00` which is not subject to these Section 232 tariffs :)
I manufacture steel/aluminum goods for the US and I have direct experience with these tariffs. Let me explain why it must be this way and how it's actually supposed to work. This is not a defense of the tariffs, just an explanation.
First of all, if you want to use tariffs to boost domestic manufacturing, you must also tax the steel/al content of finished (or intermediate) goods. Otherwise, you put your local producers at a disadvantage, making the tariffs worse.
If you only tariff raw materials, then an american manufacturer has to pay either US steel prices or imported steel + tariff to manufacture, but a company overseas can use the cheaper foreign steel.
So if you want to tax raw materials, then you also want to tax those goods where raw materials are an important part of the cost.
The US has a catalog called the "Harmonized Tariff Schedule" (HTS) which is a catalog of basically everything under the sun [0]. When the steel & AL tariffs were announced, they also published a list of all the HTS codes where the steel/al content would also be taxed.
Last week the US published a revised list of HTS codes to which these tariffs apply, and they added about 400 items to them. For example, the aluminum content of cans is now taxed when it wasn't before.
Flexport has a very cool (and useful!) tariff simulator where you can look up any item and it will tell you if the steel/al content will be subject to these tariffs: https://tariffs.flexport.com
> Otherwise, you put your local producers at a disadvantage, making the tariffs worse.
Disadvantaging local producers is how tariffs work! Local producers would then turn to local suppliers who don't have any additional taxes applied. Tariffs are a very blunt instrument, and clumsily attempting to assuage 2nd order pain points will only give rise to 3rd (and higher) order effects.
The lesson here is: don't fuck around with multivariate dynamic systems that have achieved stability: there won't be any one knob you can twist to get a result you want on a single parameter. It'll be worse if you pick one knob and turn it all the way to 11.
Yes, but it's not how the US government wants them to work. So they legislate more to close the bugs and make it work the way they want.
It's a known flawless way to evolve code... Never revise, never delete, add enough so the tests pass.
But I don't think your lesson is reasonable. Fucking with multivariate dynamic systems is what governments do. And it's well settled that in the absence of the government doing that, everything goes to hell quite quickly.
Great point - I've edited my initial comment to convey the meaning I intended, "don't fuck around with ...", and this administration is fucking around with tariffs.
I'm with you in expecting government to tweak, adjust and modify policy, but it's usually the experts advising and implementing, but we're in the "My ignorance is as valid as your experience era", and we will witness where that will take us.
Tangential, but it seems this will also accelerate the move to even more flimsy plastics in everything from appliances to construction materials to cars.
I have the problem since weeks. An electric device made for me with billing isnt in the catallog of regular stuff or whatever and now they need to figure out what it could be because my description is not enough -.-
You mean this fixes the first order effect that penalizes domestic manufacturers, assuming correct information. It does not solve it, there's second, third, fourth, ... order effects. And there's no rule those are smaller than first order, in fact, they're almost universally more.
Domestic manufacturers are still disadvantaged by having to pay tariffs for materials used for the product, but not present in the final product. And foreign manufacturers still don't. If used in machines (and used up), used in mining (and used up), used in transport, used in energy production, ...
These costs are very large, especially because specific materials are often not available worldwide, or have large differences in quality due to availability of tiny amounts of additives for alloys or compounds. These things do lead to very large differences in quality, and thus in value. You can't model that as a government, it's just not going to happen.
There's no way to fully analyze an entire economic chain (especially when almost everyone involved has a financial incentive to sabotage you doing that correctly, and that includes foreign governments). You'd think this wouldn't have to be explained to either Americans or especially a supposed "defender of capitalism", but here we are.
>But wow, are tariffs (and other micro taxes) disruptive on getting things done efficiently.
Well, that depends on what you are getting done.
If your objective is solely to get a product done, the most efficient way is probably going to involve terrible salaries plus ample disregard for the environment and human life. Anything else is going to be disruptive to that end.
Aluminum in beer cans has been subject to aluminum tariffs since April (was 25% initially and was upped to 50%).[^1]
Because they didn't use the right specificity in the announcement (used an 8 digit HTS vs 10 digit), there was some confusion for a few weeks if Beer in glass bottles was subject to it as well.
There is now an FAQ on CBP's website clarifying it is not [^2]. And they've updated to the right specificity in the new lists.
> Is HTS 2203.00.0030, Beer made from malt, In containers each holding not over 4 liters, In glass containers; subject to Section 232 duties?
> No.
But yes, effective 18 August, they broadened the list a whole lot more and added things from condensed milk to deodorant to both steel and aluminum lists. An absolute nightmare for FMCG supply chain to have to figure this out.
You can agree or disagree with the current administration's trade policy but hopefully, even the staunchest proponents will admit that the execution has been sub-par. With u-turns (sometimes leaving partner countries fuming because the final published tariffs were not what were negotiated[^3]), lack of clarity and changes that land on Friday night after work hours and go into effect on Monday midnight.
It really isn't. It's destructive and short sighted behavior based on incoherent dogmatism over any motivations for thoughtful and more restrained policy decision making. His motivations for any action is based on flattery and ego that stretch the boundaries of multiple universes. It's so crazy how much blatantly unconstitutional stuff he's gotten away with.
Is there a reason they can’t offer a flat fee? So, customs could say that since CPUs typically contain X% steel, they’ll charge that much plus Y extra; if you don’t want to pay Y you can still give the exact amount instead.
I don't think Olimex understands tariffs. Maybe they shouldn't have to. But you don't have to specify the breakdown of your PCB by mineral content. That's what the harmonized tariffs schedules are all about, to account for this very issue.
But then why are CBP (via the shippers) demanding a certificate of analysis rather than just referring people to the HTS? I know a lot of people in the synthesizer industry, and where previously they would just refer to the HTS classification for musical instruments there's a lot confusion about the recently announced 100% tariff on foreign made semiconductors. Since virtually every synth uses semiconductors and a great deal of the trade is in boutique products with relatively low manufacturing volumes, the uncertainty is creating major headaches on top of the headaches caused by the shipping puases.
> Otherwise, you put your local producers at a disadvantage, making the tariffs worse.
Don't some tariffs motivate people to do processing offshore?
If I import 1kg of copper and machine/etch/whatever it down into products, with some wastage, maybe I should just do everything offshore and only import the final articles with 500g of copper in it.
At some point, higher tariffs on input materials will overtake the higher value of finished goods and you might as well just manufacture the whole thing offshore anyway.
That's one of the primary problems with tarrifs especially broad untargeted ones: the first thing they encourage is offshoring everything because it becomes cheaper to only be hit once on import, rather then multiple times by your suppliers and compliance costs, who in turn are also getting tarrifed on their supplies and tools.
Short term yes. But (this isn’t a defense of tariffs), the concept is that this will spur on domestic production in raw materials. So with this example, if there is a domestic source of copper it wouldn’t be subject to tariffs at all. In theory only, well balanced tariffs would make it cheaper to import US sourced raw materials for use in US bound products. In practice, I don’t think anyone knows what’s involved in doing that.
Yes, I am seriously looking at either splitting my production between internal and external uses to avoid passing tariff costs on to the majority of my customers who are foreign. I've worked at using US companies for many components but that is becoming less attractive. I wish it weren't this way but that is how it goes.
The capricious implementation of the tariffs is another issue. Biden raised tariffs but the implementation involved a months long comment period, then a notice months in advance, and finally implementation. It wasn't ideal in my mind (the specific tariffs) but there was a way to work through the consequences and plan accordingly. This administration does not believe in that. Maybe congress would if they took back responsibility for tariff policy but I don't see that happening right now.
This all makes a lot of sense and is also a great reason why sudden tariffs like these are absolutely bat shit insane. It's exactly what an incompetent PHB would do.
Create a bullshit system, deserve bullshit results. Everyone should be making random guesses at the content percentages and wait and see if they even spend time opening a single package let alone melting it down into constituent parts or doing spectral analysis vs a $100 item
In fact this should be a sales tactic for fedex or whomever "we bullshit the numbers for ya!"
That's because it's obvious due to effects other than the one you're trying to observe. Which is of course the case when you're dealing with psychedelics (and of course many other drugs).
Last year I took a smartphone holiday for 4 months (switched to a dumbphone). It was a fantastic time and I regret "falling off the wagon" and getting a smartphone again.
I noticed a huge number of benefits, but one of the most surprising was that it forced me to confront a number of difficult decisions.
There were a few times in which I was bored (waiting at the passport office, sitting on a plane) in which I started to think about decisions I had to make that were very difficult in ways that caused me anxiety: firing a person I'm good friends with, shutting down a company, stuff like that.
I realized that ordinarily I would simply refuse to engage with the decision: I'd get on my phone or "get busy" somehow and so simply postpone thinking about the issue indefinitely.
But when you're stuck at the passport office for 2 hours with nothing to do, you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.
For someone that is prone to anxiety around certain topics (conflict avoidance, "disappointing" people, etc) having times in which I was forced to engage with the topic had truly enormous benefits.
> you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.
This really captures what I think is the main problem with our state of being constantly distracted: it feels at first like a relief from anxiety, but ultimately results in even small anxieties never properly being dealt with. The end result is a vicious cycle (or I guess virtuous if you sell online ads) of becoming more and more anxious causing us to rely more and more on the screen to distract us, which in turn only increases that backlog of anxiety.
I see this happen in a lot of younger people that are constantly on screens: they frequently mention their need to "chill for a bit" and yet spend most of their time doing nothing but staring at a screen. It's clear that they are living in a lukewarm vat of anxiety that they can't face while staring at a screen, but also one which causes them immediate stress when they do look away.
The anxiety does hit you back when in bed trying to sleep. I notice a vast difference in my ability to fall asleep if I've gone on a walk with a podcast in my ear vs just silently walking with my thoughts.
Wow, thank you for saying exactly this, this "deferred anxiety" probably does partly explain sleep issues I've had the last 3-4 years. I agreed with GP's comment and have more issues with screens, but didn't even notice this difference in how I take my walks now.
Sometimes my inner thoughts can crowd aside the podcast and I'll get home and realize I didn't hear anything from the podcast, but more often it keeps me distracted the whole time. I think unplugging from podcasts on walks and in the car is definitely worth a try.
Walking and movement is supposed to be a massive help for sleep, but in periods where I have more anxiety, this effect is stronger than the benefits of the walk itself. I manage a quite decent hygiene around my phone use, but buying in-ear headphones was quite a mistake on my part, as I found this difference quite soon after.
at least according to "irresistible" by adam alter, it's also close to the definition of behavioral addiction, more broadly when we routinely maladapt to engage with a certain behavior to avoid emotionally uncomfortable that gets worse due to the avoidance.
>"It's clear that they are living in a lukewarm vat of anxiety that they can't face while staring at a screen, but also one which causes them immediate stress when they do look away."
which sounds a whole lot like a word that starts with "a" and ends with "ddiction"
> it feels at first like a relief from anxiety, […] which in turn only increases that backlog of anxiety.
That’s exactly what’s describe in a book [0] I finished last week about addiction to nicotine. That book made the quit process easy by making you believe there’s nothing good about smoking, even the social aspect. They circle through every supposed advantages and disassemble one by one. There’s a few official rewrites for quitting "bad" sugars and taking good habits, not sure how they perform.
This exact same book has been modified to also help effortlessly quit porn. I say quit because its what will be understood the most easily by majority of people but it is in fact not quitting since quitting implies there's something valuable in porn. there isn't. its escaping the addiction.
Honestly its hands down one of the best methods to escape the addiction and besides you don't have anything to lose! either you successfully break free from the addiction or you stay the same (which doesn't happen from experience but its written to convince you to read it.)
https://read.easypeasymethod.org
This comes off as projective judgement. I don't think everyone agrees with you, holds the same moral values, or has the same negative relationship with sex, porn or other "vices". Some people are able to integrate things like alcohol, porn or whatever other moral sin of the week without negative effects on their life or relationships. These things aren't addictions for many people and there is also no value in making sweeping generalizations.
> Some people are able to integrate things like alcohol, porn or whatever other moral sin of the week without negative effects on their life or relationships. These things aren't addictions for many people and there is also no value in making sweeping generalizations.
A generalisation in itself. And I find your username interesting, given your comment.
Banter aside, there is A LOT of scientific literature about how porn is literally a damaging drug-like addiction.
It's like saying smoking is not bad for some people because they can quit whenever they want. Well, lucky them, but maybe they should, because having that capacity doesn't mean their lungs aren't getting irreversibly vandalised.
I agree that porn, as with any other source of dopamine, can be extremely addicting, and porn addiction in particular can destroy lives and relationships. But I wholly disagree that we can just go around pointing at things and essentially saying, "that objectively has no value to anyone and if you think it does for you, you're wrong.".
OP specifically says, "quitting since quitting implies there's something valuable in porn. there isn't." That's an insanely broad claim to make, and it ostracizes all non-addicts with healthy sexual proclivities and boundaries, and again we can replace porn here with a multitude of other things. In a general sense, OP's argument is flawed.
I agree with that and your responses to other siblings comments, generalizations are often wrong.
In the meantime I see how GP post was ambiguous and led to your rectification: he was writing as it's his own words, but in fact was paraphrasing the book series we're talking about [0]. But whatever it's GP or book authors' viewpoint, you are right to point out the logical fallacy. However I mostly disagree with this:
> there is also no value in making sweeping generalizations.
Those book series use this kind of generalization everywhere. You may argue those sentences are false - ok, but they still have a tremendous value: help the reader with their goal! One of the fondation of that method is the use of those sentence and in a sense (with extreme words) it's a brainwashing with false informations. But a very useful brainwashing that readers engage themselves consciously.
Also on a more linguistic side: people make generalizations everywhere to simplify the communication (Dogs are nice - Python versions management is always a pain - The internet has made everyone more connected...) and it often don't bother readers. But that's not the point here I guess.
0: just one exemple but there's plenty in every chapters, but I like this one because it's very factually debatable : > porn provides no genuine pleasure or crutch and you aren’t making a sacrifice. There’s nothing to give up[...]
You're correct, thanks for pointing that out, my snark was bleeding through there. Of course that statement itself is an absolutism, it was tongue-in-cheek but I certainly agree that generalizations can be valuable; however, sweeping generalizations can also be dangerous and require knowledge to wield effectively. When taken as a rule, they can do damage.
I don't think your excerpt is very factually debatable though, as "genuine" and "pleasure" are both vague and subjective words which reduces the discussion to one of semantics.
I rarely drink alcohol, I had my first drink yesterday in a year and a half and it was a small one. But I certainly won't preach that it has no value or provides no genuine pleasure. Or that everyone uses it as a crutch. I have a healthy relationship with it. It's not hard to imagine someone having a similarly healthy relationship with pornography. We can certainly speak on the toxic environment in the industry, and even on capitalism in general and how it subverts consent, which complicates ethical consumption. But as far as the consumption of porn, it's just like any other source of pleasure: stay away if you have trouble with moderation or compartmentalization. And in general, don't succumb to vices, keep a clear head and spend your limited time on this earth wisely. But we cannot be making proclamations about the objective value of subjective experiences.
To expend on sibling comment, sweeping generation has never been the goal neither most Muslims, sports enthusiasts or vegans want to force everyone live like they do. However when someone finds something incredibly valuable ( > projective judgement) they’ll try to share that with everyone else. It’s a generosity act!
The reasons themselves can be anything. Ethic is a powerful one, we often see life changes for psychic and/or physic health, time gain (time/benefit of an activity), money, whatever. Those methods are tools to self-help achieve your own goal. When it worked, we’re proud and keen to share it with friends and the world.
The issue is the absolutist claim of a lack of objective value. From a purely philosophical standpoint, you really can't make that claim about almost anything (within reason).
I responded in a sibling thread. Just note that your usage of "almost anything" here is probably the objectively right way to use absolute quantifiers, however it doesn't seems to me you're trying to be pedantic but instead want to discuss the meaning itself. In that sense we could say something like:
"You really can't say 'anything' about almost everything without a proximity quantifier like 'almost'".
of course. I wasn't trying to be "correct" or trying to be nuanced here. My goal was to make the lazier people reading the comment to be more intrigued by the line (which itself i did not invent by myself just paraphrasing the book as seen above), in order to be pushed towards opening the link and reading it.
(i apologize in advance but this really feels like an "uhm akshually" on your part )
The part when they declare it has no value comes off as quite an absolutism, moral judgement and sweeping generalization. You could replace porn with almost any other thing and the claim is still hard to defend.
That is basically what psychiatrists have been saying about the topic.
Humans need downtime to process emotions - in the olden days there was a lot of menial work which served this purpose, but we automated most of it since, freeing time for more productive, but stressful activities.
Meanwhile looking at screens allows one to leave all that for later. Unfortunately unprocessed emotions don't go away - they pile up.
I've been using this to gauge how well I'm doing mentally and address whatever issues there might be. My ideal state is that of a chimpanzee who was finally let outside after years in captivity which, upon leaving the building where it was kept, just stares at the sky.
That's a good insight, tech work is brain work, leaving little room for your own thoughts or processing stuff.
I had a summer job once at a production line, pick up foam piece, place on plastic piece, repeat for two hours, then a break. I did have a CD player at the time and earbuds, but other than that it was completely devoid of mental effort or stimulation. There was something weirdly meditative about it. Not something I'd want to do as a day job but I wouldn't mind for a bit.
I came to the very same conclusion - I need "empty time" to reflect, and prepare myself for my own life. For me, it was not smartphones, it started with books when I was a child, and continued with music players and alcohol later. Everything to keep the unwanted thoughts and feelings at bay. I am an excellent daydreamer as well, at times of stillness, I find something to "work on" in my mind.
What I ended up with is literally a time of day where I "sit with myself" and just think about things. I just sit down for some minutes and try to get my bearings on where I am in life right now. Also, I eliminated a lot of background noise and music - I often do menial things without any other distractions for example. Good opportunities to think about something deep.
For me that's when I take a shower. I think I take showers way too long, but it's just a thing I enjoy and I think through many topics then. Sometimes I am sad that I cannot take notes during the shower, but if I could, maybe I would be back to square one.
Alternatively... just let the thoughts be. I think writing them down, or even the compulsion of writing them down, sounds like a kind of anxiety in itself - "this is Important, I Must Remember it and Do Something with it as soon as I'm out!"
But if it's important enough you'll remember or it'll come back to you next time you shower. Or not. Either way is fine.
Same for me. The thoughts came when I was taking a shower, or trying to fall asleep. For me, these times did not work for thinking at all, and I just ended up hating and avoiding both, to tell you the truth. The specific "sitting down with myself" time actually helped me to de-stress these other two, so now I'm much calmer when taking a shower, or trying to fall asleep.
But you can (take notes in the shower). I do and it helps me offload the burden of forgetting those shower thoughts.
It has also made me realize that these fleeting thoughts are not as smart as I thought they were.
I believe one of the side effects of the loss of “empty” time to reflect is that people tend to rush decisions even when there’s time enough to think it through, as it were more important to take a quick decision rather than a good one.
Meditation is such a superpower. It costs nothing - not even time when you realize through meditation that there is no such thing as time, and emptying your mind is a great way to be in the now - it's "easy" in the sense that you don't really need to know anything, just let go of things. Letting go is tricky because we tend do engage with it in an active way and that's already grabbing on to something. Letting go is the opposite of doing anything.
Learning to just sit still and let the universe (including whatever your mind does) flow around you... It makes a huge difference in mental health. It really cannot be overstated how beneficial for humans it is to just have downtime and do literally nothing but breathing.
But I know it's hard. Our whole culture is predicated upon being busy. But we can just put everything down and be empty for a bit every once in a while and it is so beneficial.
I absolutely hate running, my cardio sucks and I like to lift heavy multiple times per week.
But when I run I don’t bring anything, no music no phone just a watch to track speed and time.
I get all my best thinking done during those runs. I run slow and it hurts and it never improves but I go for 1-2 hours just so I can get more disconnected thinking done
Same. Running or walking. Sometimes I make a point of thinking/feeling through recent times and processing those thoughts and emotions. Other times, I treat it as a moving meditation, and try to clear my mind when thoughts enter.
Either way, I find I feel much better when I take a break from screens, news, and podcasts, and give my mind time to do its thing.
A couple of times recently when I've not pulled out the phone, I've ended up having an interesting chat with somebody nearby.
Be open to having others talk with you by having an inviting look. And perhaps recognize when others are being inviting and feel out if they seem keen on yakking.
Imagine a subculture developing where some people just recognize other sociables. Maybe we need masonic-like rings or something else to identify us as welcoming random conversion.
Concentrating on your phone is as much of a conversation stopper as headphones.
I think it also encourages socialization. Chatting with someone instead of being engrossed in your phone.
I did a screen time detox a few years back. After hearing a similar idea about needing to get to boredom sometimes and not just escaping to a device. Only used a computer for work and exclusively worked on it, then no screen time whatsoever. Maybe lasted 3 weeks or so and made me more interested in stuff like reading, drawing, etc.
From time to time I follow a policy of 'no idle screen time'. Essentially this means if I am using a screen I must have a definite purpose in mind. It really cuts down on how much time I spend on my phone or computer in general, but ironically increases the amount of work I get done (I work almost exclusively on a computer).
Some benefits I noticed after a short while include feeling much calmer (low level feeling of anxiety largely absent), actually actively listening to music again (instead of just using it for background noise), reading books again (even renewed my library card after 10+ years), keeping a more organised home, eating better, getting more exercise, and organising more time to spend with friends and family.
I've tried this a couple of times, and the only things I miss are:
- Navigation (can be solved with a dedicated device, but it's a lot less convenient)
- A good camera at all times (I used to not care about this, but it's become more important now I have kids)
- Mobile payments (pretty essential in my country, not all places accept cards or cash)
In every other aspect, it was a net positive in my life to get rid of my phone.
This is what's held me back as well, but I recently discovered the Minimal phone which is an android phone with all the things you mentioned, but with a less distracting e-ink display.
I "pre-ordered" one, and it has not yet arrived. I have given up on ever receiving my phone, and just consider it a lesson learned. If I receive it, that will be a happy occurrence. It should have arrived 4 months ago (at least that's what they said when I ordered it). They tell me it will arrive in the next month (depending on customs clearance times). They have said it will arrive in the next month multiple times. Those statements have all been inaccurate so far. Maybe it will show up one day.
Reviews seem good, thanks for the hint. I guess I'll go order it because the grayscale mode on my Pixel 8 had zero effect, videos are just as good apparently.
Curiously Mininal Phone didn't show up when I did research half a year ago, it seems new.
For a camera, I suggest buying a real, standalone camera (I have a fuji x100). The photos it takes are VASTLY better than an iphone. For something smaller that fits in a pocket, people say great things about the Ricoh GR III.
Unfortunately, I found that being out without a smartphone did cause certain anxieties for me: What if I forgot about an appointment? What if I get an urgent email or whatsapp?
The answer would be having an actual assistant (ie, a secretary). Someone I could call to order me an uber or look up a restaurant, and someone who could call me to say "hey, X just sent you a whatsapp message that seems pretty urgent."
I that an AI powered assistant that communicates via phone or text could be a great use for AI and something I hope to code up whenever I have some spare time.
I don't know... I'm of the opinion that there's no such thing as an "urgent email" or similar. Urgent things should be handled via synchronous technology--like a phone call.
That reminds me of Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture, discussing how he handled his boss demanding a way to contact him in his honeymoon in case of a work emergency.
Pausch gave his boss the number of his new mother in law. In case of an emergency, the boss could explain to the mother in law why it was worth interrupting her daughter’s honeymoon, in which case the mother in law would relay the message.
This is cool. AI assistant which operates the real smartphone hidden somewhere in a drawer, and the only interface would be voice chat or text via dumbphone! I am in.
The big LLM companies should have employees using only a dumb phone connected only to their LLM as a way to accomplish tasks or get information. Would rapidly improve the UX of their chat programs I’m sure.
The main things I needed to remove are the web browser and email client to make it ~ a dumbphone. I don't find myself wasting time staring at maps, or a weather app, or a calorie tracker, or camera/photos so I don't feel there's any reason to forgo those. (YMMV of course!)
I have a smartphone that runs signal, the phone app, the camera app, and a mapping app. Why not do the same?
I have never logged into anything except signal on a phone. I haven't removed the browser but I don't have any interest in using it and have only used it to look up wikipedia stuff while traveling and what not. If I did feel some temptation to web browse on it I could remove the browser.
I find it surprising that anyone wants to browse on their phone, I find the tiny screen infuriating.
Like you mention, they are still decent for reading : HN, Slashdot before that, Wikipedia, various RSS feeds : I was already doing it before smartphones got touchscreens, WiFi, and dirt cheap cellular data : by using Opera mini on a Nokia.
I’d like to inform you that I share your same anxieties. I read a book called “Difficult Conversations” (Patron, stone, heen). It didn’t remove all the anxiety, but it gave me A framework to lean on to get started, which was half of the stress. I think it will always suck having to fire people you like.
I just had a day "off" because of some work on the 5G tower nearby. I can feel my brain chemistry change when the line is off. I don't feel the need to constantly check. There was a limited service bandwidth but it was too unreliable for my brain to want to wait for its dose of webpage refreshing. It sucks the long term / in-depth brain states .. it's so weird.
Do you ever have trouble falling into past decisions, and over analyzing them, and doubling down on your anxiety?
I would love to get rid of my smart phone, but the problems I dwell on are very rarely present or future decisions, and realistically what is top of my mind anxiety be damned is useless energy, it's like running a wind turbine off the grid, and forcing it to spin as if it were a big fan instead of running the grid off wind turbines. The thoughts are more like did I disappoint that friend last weekend, or did I dissapoint that coworker at the Christmas party 6 months ago, or did I do <x> that definitely didn't create <y>, but did I do <x> that made <y> happen?
I use chess apps on my phone to at least put my brain off those thoughts entirely because I have a different problem to solve, and that is magnificent, and if If I didn't have that I don't know what I would do. I know there's something probably not quite right, but I'm wondering how much time you end up spending on problems that "can't be solved," and how much is time spent actually solving problems in your life. If that makes any sense.
What you are describing sounds precisely like your brain trying to do some emotional processing and you are shutting it down because you think it's not useful. If you are looking for the productive spin, then I would suggest trying some metathinking. Try to discover why your brain decides to bring this up to your attention. The specific story might seem banal, but uncovering the underlying pattern will teach you things about yourself that you might not be aware of yet, like what you are afraid in life.
Don’t worry about the past, what’s done is done. Learn from it to do better next time and move on. Most people won’t remember the thing you’re freaking out about because it was something minor in their lives.
Ah. Well I didn't mention all the benefits, but what I was referring to here were future decisions, not past ones. Decisions I had put off taking because they caused me great anxiety but that nonetheless had to be done, and the sooner the better.
Other benefits:
- Vastly improved mood
- Renewed interest in creative endeavors, specifically writing
- A sense of well-being
- A "the scales have fallen from my eyes" realization/epiphany/gnosis around the nature of reality and the effect "weaponized language delivery mechanisms" (ie, social media) have on our perception of it.
Pretty fucking worth it, if you asked me. And yet I fell off the wagon and have a smartphone again.
You are clearly better for your temporary retreat. It is still with you. Reducing contact with the world is not the only way to deal with its less helpful siren calls.
Distraction free can also mean, “free despite distraction”.
You created some very positive grooves in your thought patterns, that you can keep using, to recall and reset awareness of what matters at any moment.
10 seconds meditating on what you experienced and learned can reset a day.
Knowing and remembering the contrast is a great way to wade through the complications of life, but avoid drowning again.
A another superpower is to have clearly defined personal missions. Then continually asking “is this helping?” quickly exposes and resolves both mundane and profound derailments. Vast time can be wasted by things that are healthy, but just not the optimal path, too!
For me, the only extreme measures I take are to avoid any exposure or giving attention to advertising. And zero exposure to opinion media (whether views “lean” in a way I sympathize with or not). That stuff just constantly models a norm of sleepwalking into a flattened reality.
After that, I just pay attention unintended wasted time and course correct whenever healthy exposure to novelty flips to low quality or extended hit seeking. We do benefit from some of the former.
I was lucky to grow up without television. Nobody had to teach me the difference between influence and inspiration and I won’t ever let that get watered down.
It scares me how most people’s world views get smashed into low artificially discrete dimensions, down selected empathy and synthetically narrowed concerns, when the if, buts, mostly, sometimes, in general but often not in particular, …, nature of reality and people seems to become invisible to so many even though it isn’t hidden at all.
And I am talking about the smart high intentioned people!
It is important to remind each other to think, each for ourselves. Don’t ever categorize one’s world view as an allegiance to any school of thought, or take any of the other common steps that subtly channel our awareness away from unfiltered reality, hand us menus of default views, or numb our ability to spy the omnipresent gems of value in the most alternate views.
So thanks for posting your experience!
We can live a high contact life and benefit from the roughness and stickiness of untamed social reality, instead of being sanded down by it.
Is it good to have anxiety over things you have to do where there really aren’t options. Unless you’re saying you figured out better decisions due to the additional thinking. But if the end result was simply more anxiety — mine being distracted on the phone.
This is a self-reinforcing concept as well; I haven't read the other book mentioned (The Anxious Generation, I put it on my wishlist) but I'm convinced that it makes mention of this as well, that is, not being on your phone in these interstitial moments is in itself a cause of anxiety, not so much because of the places your mind wanders but because of its constant presence and repeated mini dopamine hits. Addiction, basically.
I've got a vacation planned, I should make a point of it to leave my phone alone for distraction / entertainment / interstitial moments.
Why didn't you list the downsides, what you missed from not having a smart phone? Was it because there weren't any or because you thought they were obvious?
Having a mobile, networked computer with us at all times has been a huge benefit in many ways and I find it hard to believe people would chuck it all due forming habits they don't like. Habits can be molded pretty easily if approached in a conscious way.
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