▲ 478 points
back
125 comments
I consider my information addiction as one of the top 2 personal problems that are holding me back in my life.
The only thing that works for me every once in a while is going cold turkey and blocking off as many websites as I can in my hosts file.
I'm surprised there isn't a serious accessible product that helps people manage this addiction, because unlike drugs you can't realistically not use the internet ever again and nowadays it's SO easy to go down the rabbit hole even from innocent and serious sites.
Every once in a while I humor myself with a building such a product, but I really don't know what features would work. Any suggestions?
In my experience the issue isn't so much cutting off the supply but what to do to fill the time. It's not as easy as taking up a new hobby, for me at least. I think information addiction is really tricky because it's compromising a key part of what humans are, information processors. We are always processing some kind of information, all the time.
I can go straight from video gaming to reading a book, but my mind takes a few minutes to adjust, and then once I'm synced up I'll tend to get restless after 15-20 minutes and look for something else to do. If I don't have anything else planned I just go back to gaming. It's pretty tough to escape this loop.
I've been using the StayFocusd [1] extension in Chrome, which gives you a daily allowance on sites you list.
... but then I found myself using Safari to get around that allowance.
There's also Forest [2], which "gamifies" staying away from websites for a certain time. It's the Chrome extension version of the Forest iOS app [3] to stay away from your phone.
I like to think of StayFocusd as the stick, and Forest as the carrot.
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...
[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forest-stay-focuse...
[3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/forest-stay-focused/id86645051...
I second this. At one time, I thought that I was improving myself by getting new information but the reality is that I crave new information just because. It hasn't been until lately that I have concluded that information for the sake of information is useless. Reading a book is just entertainment unless you put the new knowledge into action. Reading news articles is only useful if they help you in some way.
Also, putting knowledge into action does not feel as good as getting a quick hit of news. But over the long run reducing the amount of new information and doing something with what you learn makes you happier and more satisfied with your life.
If you haven't figured this out yet, keep this in mind before you get lost in a sea of information without a goal. Think of a junkie always looking for the next hit. Except that it's news not a drug.
"Attention Hijacking" apps and websites along with FOMO leads to over-consumption of digital information or even digital addiction. It is subtle, micro habit forming that turns into part of daily routine. Overtime, it turns into "learned helplessness."
There are browser extensions like Leechblock for Firefox, they help. You can make the list of sites to edit impossible to reach during the time they are blocked. I'd like a tool like that but more low level, so they work for all browsers simultaneously and can be even harder to circumvent.
There's also a browser extension that limits the number of tabs you can have open.
Maybe another good one would be to slow you down, e.g. at most one page per minute or so.
But the best remedy is to stand up and walk around for a bit, discuss what's vague about your current task with a colleague for a moment, or try to put some thoughts on actual paper. That's not something you get from a product.
If you use technology to break the addiction, you risk obsessing over the tech. If you rely on will power to break the addiction, you may face internal conflict. The stress is just as bad as the addiction [1]
In my experience, mindfulness is the best solution: Clear your mind by experiencing the sensations of your environment.
Practicing mindfulness/mediation and breathing techniques has taught me you can break the cycle of being a slave to whatever your brain is craving at any given moment. Don't knock it until you've tried it for a while...
Meditation helps. When I take even 8 minutes a day to sit quietly and breath (I use the Timeless timer for iPhone), I find I have more willpower to avoid crappy food and trivial time-wasters.
Similarly, making sure you get daily exercise and spend some time in nature if you can. Apparently, according to “The Distracted Mind”, even just looking at pictures of nature can help your brain recharge, allowing you to be more focused.
How would you decide what to block? Wikipedia or Stack Overflow can be extremely useful but you can waste time there as easily as on Facebook, Twitter or Hacker News.
For Macs, there's SelfControl: https://selfcontrolapp.com
It automates editing the hosts file and flushing DNS caches. It can operate as a whitelist or a blacklist.
Read books instead. Every time you want to browse the web, pick up a book. After you have read the book, only visit sites that discuss said books. Books can be garbage but at least they have some peer review. You have to understand that the web is designed to get you to click. It's the ultimate pavlovian step. Places like HN and reddit are actually the worst because you see and read mostly bullshit that lacks context nor substance. If you are an expert in something that comes up on HN, expect to become disillusioned for example. And on reddit.. well good luck.
An honest question: do you think it’s the information-seeking behavior that is the problem, or that the information-seeking is a manifestation of a different behavior (e.g., procrastination)?
I find that with a lot of people it’s procrastination. There’s no information block thorough enough to address procrastination; it finds a way. It has to be addressed directly.
Just out of curiosity, what do you mean when you say "holding me back in my life"?
I'd also say that browsing the web, learning new stuff, posting on forums, reading in general, is one of the things I use the most of my spare time on. And of course it takes time away from doing potential "productive" things, or more ambitious hobbies. On the surface, it seems like this has a lot of similarities with "information addiction". So I'm just trying to gauge whether this is a problem for me or not.
I've sort of made a deliberate choice that this is okay, since I spend 7 hours a day doing "productive" work anyway, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of this, and it would adversely affect my mental health to chase more ambitious things in my spare time.
There is https://freedom.to/ , which seems to be remarkably successful at charging people to cut off (all our some of) their internet access...
I think the first step is to wake up. Really think about what impact the info addiction has on your life. Bucause if you don't it is very hard to see why you should change bad behavior.
The next step is taking babysteps because big steps most of the time don't work.
So for example start by turning off all notifications.
Then allow yourself to YouTube for only 2 hours a day instead of 3.
The Rubin Report has some interviews with Eckhart Tolle on YouTube right now with a lot of insights. And Peter Peterson is also someone who speaks a lot about these subjects.
I built this awhile ago for that exact purpose.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/attention-budget/a...
It hasn't fully solved the issue because sometimes I cheat but it helps.
Addiction is a symptom of something else, usually trauma (which I include forgetting fundamental ways to use the mind as an item, eg. how to be still and not suffer from boredom).
For me, there were several issues. Anxiety was my normal state, though I didn't know it because I'd been cultivating my addiction since around age 8 & was largely disconnected from my emotions. They were also seemingly locked up from denial of the trauma stemming from being molested (saying "That traumatized me" aloud to myself led to a flood of emotions all at once). I grew up in a codependent family and culture. I was born into the psychosocial slavery of capitalism and taught I had to have a job and money to survive. This disconnected me from my need for community support, which I was also shamed from seeking. I was bullied by my best friend growing up, as well as most of the adults in my life. All of these things had a lasting impact on my relationships.
What worked for me was healing from all of that. I use RescueTime to keep an eye on my usage, but have no other controls anymore. Early in recovery, someone else monitored my screen time, I used MManager (I think) for locking down my phone and a boot password for the laptop, with my roommates & therapist knowing the passwords. Basically, setting up accountability systems for myself. But that's just what kept me from lapsing, which isn't as big of a deal as addiction specialists told me, because I started using them as learning opportunities to observe how my mind worked in those situations.
Basically, any app that isn't helping build mindfulness, learn about what life needs to thrive, build a supportive community, and identify/heal from trauma is operating from the current mainstream approach to addiction and is only going to have marginal effects. Don't look to current addiction science...I turned my info addiction inward and healed that way.
If you'd like to talk more about what you're going through and would like to add someone to your support network, I'm available for it.
>because unlike drugs you can't realistically not use the internet ever again and nowadays it's SO easy to go down the rabbit hole even from innocent and serious sites.
I can relate so deeply to this sentiment. Especially lurking on deep web, and other pointless rabit holes.
>Every once in a while I humor myself with a building such a product, but I really don't know what features would work. Any suggestions?
Easy? Blocksite app for Android and there are many for others.
Have you considered adding some meaning to your life?
> Solitude Deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from the input from other minds.
A bit cheeky to marginalize drugs to data, eh? Data won’t cause you to lose 3 days of work.
There is Cold Turkey Blocker.
The problem is that it's not the panaceo you imagine it to be at first. The crux of the problem is the bad habit loop.
> I'm surprised there isn't a serious accessible product
But there is! $5 timer on your wireless router.
i just go outdoors and leave my phone at home.
Check out freedom.to
The original study can be found here: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/06/10/1820145116
Abstract:
> Adaptive information seeking is critical for goal-directed behavior. Growing evidence suggests the importance of intrinsic motives such as curiosity or need for novelty, mediated through dopaminergic valuation systems, in driving information-seeking behavior. However, valuing information for its own sake can be highly suboptimal when agents need to evaluate instrumental benefit of information in a forward-looking manner. Here we show that information-seeking behavior in humans is driven by subjective value that is shaped by both instrumental and noninstrumental motives, and that this subjective value of information (SVOI) shares a common neural code with more basic reward value. Specifically, using a task where subjects could purchase information to reduce uncertainty about outcomes of a monetary lottery, we found information purchase decisions could be captured by a computational model of SVOI incorporating utility of anticipation, a form of noninstrumental motive for information seeking, in addition to instrumental benefits. Neurally, trial-by-trial variation in SVOI was correlated with activity in striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, cross-categorical decoding revealed that, within these regions, SVOI and expected utility of lotteries were represented using a common code. These findings provide support for the common currency hypothesis and shed insight on neurocognitive mechanisms underlying information-seeking behavior.
Is it just me, or is "money" the odd one out here?
Snacks and drugs both have direct, obvious 'value' to the body - food is about the simplest evolutionary case imaginable, and a host of animals will get drunk given the chance. And it's easy to make a case for 'information' as something any reinforcement learner will value and seek out, since it's essentially a prerequisite for all other learning and decision-making.
Money, though, is exclusively a proxy for some other future benefit, and lots of other examples imply we haven't made it into a strong first-order feedback loop. Money v happiness studies both show weak happiness benefits from money (once you're not in dire need), and find that "how you spend it" strongly mediates the effects. Slot machine design is devoted to the idea of intermittent reinforcement and works very hard to create non-monetary, directly limbic rewards to keep players engaged.
Given all that, "food, drugs, and info" actually sounds like a much more natural grouping to me than "food, drugs, and money". I don't know of any research here, though. Could you take a well-known study like prisoner's dilemma or the ultimatum game and get different results with non-monetary rewards, or prime people by discussing certain things they could do with the money?
One could think of money as a proxy for power and prestige. I think for social animals "Food, Drugs, Status" is a pretty decent list of priorities. Honestly, drugs looks like the odd one out there.
Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money. - Obomsawin
Our brain craves dopamine releases, which signals future reward. This rewarding-ness of food, info, drugs can be converted to a monetary value and measured.
The human "plains of Africa" brain treats money as food. And prior to refrigeration in most of the world food will spoil sooner than later so you're always mindful of getting more food, which is why some people just can't stop getting more money. On some level they irrationally still believe the money they have will soon rot in the equatorial sun.
For all but the last instant of our cultural evolution, humans have been information starved. In one generation we have become a culture that has instant access to unbounded quantities‡.
In the same way, over the last century or so, we became a species with ample access to calories‡. With foods containing the evolutionary markers of high calorific content (i.e. sugars, carbs and fats) being the cheapest.
It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that we are similarly primed to overindulge in both. Nor that we lack the innate intuition to determine quality. I very much expect the nascent 'tech detox' movement to develop into a broader healthy thinking movement.
---
‡ #NotAllHumans, obviously.
For those who want more snacks and drugs, here's the preprint of the actual article: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/05/17/324665.full...
“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
- Sherlock Holmes
I, for one, don't care about my phone. I routinely forget where I put it. I use it a total of ~15 minutes a day.
My desktop computer, on the other hand, I check hacker news every 5 minutes. Even if I know there's nothing of interest or I've already read all the comments about things I care about, I check just in case.
Interesting to see this today. Yesterday I was listening to Duncan Trussel on Joe Rogan’s podcast and he was making this exact point. I imagine the information ‘food pyramid’ will evole over time as well.
Is everyone just going to ignore that the "information" they're talking about is information about the odds during gambling for money?
That obviously makes this headline untrue. Gambling for money and learning the rules of gambling is not general information. This is not applicable to click-bait.
Have you ever noticed how some people crave the resolution of simple lack of relevant information?
You can say “Hey, I was goin to tell you... ah nevermind” and they will pester you, “no, tell me!”
I have also found there is also a difference between male and female psychology. Women are much more interested to know the details of something emotionally salient that you’ve indicated you care about. Men let it go and seem to focus more intently on abstract things that may have wide applicability.
Ok this fMRI study is showing something that is not quite unexpected. rewarding behaviour is likely to be mediated by reward pathways, and the authors are careful not to address digital information overload/addiction directly because they did not study that. This finding is expected and thus not very informative (pun intented) . Also the title shouldn't just say "information", but curiosity instead. The participants weren't randomly fed information mindlessly, but were actively seeking actionable information from a stream. That's not quite like how modern media does it - in fact the 99% of digital media consumption is non-goal driven. This may be applicable however to goal-directed information seeking, like search results, dating sites, financial news feeds.
In terms of neural networks that doesn't seem so strange.
Neural networks can "overfit" and behave like a hash table instead of generalizing.
One method of "regularization" is putting in a score that represents network complexity, information content, etc. and then adding it against the reward function.
An aside: we had a pretty interesting discussion about how to remedy scatter brain and information overload (back in Dec 2014): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8710006
Great comments in that thread.
Reminds me of the hippocampus size study from 2006 for people who do repetitive work (bus driving) and people who have to analyze roads for best paths for a living (taxi drivers) in London https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17024677
And from a personal anecdote, learning something new doesn't always feel like a drug or good food. News has always something new and it doesn't feel that great to consume. Learning something new that is applicable feels empowering, sometimes almost to the point of excitement and joy.
Isn't it the over way around ?
Snacks, money, and drugs is like information to the brain ?
;)
Perhaps everthing is just info, it is just that we are used to old patterns of seeing things...
This can easily be channeled into a positive. If you are consuming information that has value I don't see the problem. I binge a little on engineering videos each week that add to my personal and professional life. I love absorbing new information. It is a far cry from going down youtube holes of reality tv highlights, celebrity news, or other modes of cultural decay.
The distractions smart phones are causing in our population is serious and scary. I like information everyone as much as the next person, but whenever I am checking my phone I try to remind myself of Robert Green's concept of "alive time" vs "dead-time"
>"He told me, Ryan while people wait for the right moment, there are two types of time: Dead time—where they are passive and biding and Alive time—where they are learning and acting and leveraging every second towards their intended future. Which will this be for you?"[1]
Social media is mostly dead time (I would say all dead time, but someone will probably give me shit about it), as is reading the short form versions of the news, TMZ, skimming an article instead of reading the whole thing, etc.
If you spend 30 minutes a day studying a new language you can achieve amazing results in less than a year. Instead of wasting time on facebook, bring a kindle and read about something interesting. Compound growth is very real, and more people should take advantage of it.
>"Compound growth gets discussed as a financial concept, but it works in careers as well, and it is magic. A small productivity gain, compounded over 50 years, is worth a lot. So it’s worth figuring out how to optimize productivity. If you get 10% more done and 1% better every day compared to someone else, the compounded difference is massive. " [2]
>"You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode’s office and said, How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does? He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years. I simply slunk out of the office!
What Bode was saying was this: Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works 10% more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don’t want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode’s remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done."[3]
End of rant.
[1] https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2014/09/alive-time-v...
Why do you think I keep coming back here?
I find this informing!
TL;DR clickbait is addictive.
“And just as our brains like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful—what some may call idle curiosity.”
THAT is the point of the article. Crap information is addictive.
I knew there was some sort of angle to this.