Attention is a luxury good

The article probably could just have been that statement, but I agree.

Every experience now just seems like people (companies) fighting over who can most obnoxiously distract you.

I bought a new phone recently for the first time in 8 years, and (a) had to set everything up all at once (ad blocking, no notifications, etc) which left me briefly exposed to how bad things are but (b) had to experience all the annoyingness of a modern phone trying to suggest things and sync things and bother me with stuff I don’t want.

No product is even remotely for the consumer anymore, they’re all just minimal pretenses to try and advertise you and extract more of your attention and money.

So yeah, outside some sheltered life of luxury, it’s a constant fight to preserve focus against people wanting to steal it.

The payoff is the last line: “ If you’ve signed up to offer an attention-luxury good, you undermine it when you also try to make it quick and convenient.”

Culture is also a luxury good, by this definition. If you read the Wikipedia summary of a Shakespeare play, you can fake a basic understanding of the plot. But you’ve gotten the social proof (e.g. dinner-party survival) without the deeper appreciation of the characters and their motivations.

As far as that goes, empathy seems to be a borderline luxury good at this point.

I know that words are largely arbitrary and arguing terms isn't very valuable but these phenomenons already have fairly commonly used names.

OP writes about conspicuous consumption/leisure, not really luxury. Similarly, while a Birkin bag could be considered a luxury good, its defining feature is being something more, the artificial scarcity and increased demand with price amke it a Veblen good.

Also, things you can buy with attention aren't really expensive, they're just constantly priced. That is you have 10-14 hours of attention a day, and you use it or lose it, every minute of attention is largely the same, with a little ADHD you can switch quickly. Listening to a concert online and going to the philharmonics costs about the same in attention.

> A Birkin bag is a luxury good, and so is reading an entire non-fiction book, listening to a public radio broadcast

The latter two items statement make this more of a self-report* than anything else. I have never read more more books nor listened to more podcasts than the year when I was homeless.

* the author doesn't actually enjoy those two things and considers their value to lie in signaling ("sending a message")

Can't tell if it should be upvoted or not because attention is devoted to many addictive behaviours which I'd argue are not a luxury but the desperation of people who have been exploited or attempting to escape.

You don't become addicted because of luxury. Attention is not a luxury. It's our time. It's our most precious resource and when it's "wasted" it's often because something is going terribly wrong.

I had to re-read the brief article 3 times to understand it, I find the wording particularly difficult to parse for some reason. I admit, I am not the brightest, but there is something very off with how it is put together to me.

You can tell people that they should take the time to read books, watch documentaries, play long strategy board games, watch C-SPAN, go on long walks or hikes, etc.

But It’s baked into our brains to want to eliminate additional work when it comes to getting information and feeling validated, and this won’t get any better as long as there are devices and substances that keep making the dopamine hits coming faster.

Im not sending the rest of the world signals to because of how I choose to spend my time. Nor is the alternative optimized adaptive survival. I can’t figure out if I’m the one with the alien mind or he is. I go to music events because the experience is qualitatively different than listening to music at home, when I choose to do things, it’s because I want to, not because I have any interest in what other people think of me for engaging in those activities.

Adam Grant had recently Daniel Immerwahr on attention span and how it really has not shortened despite popular beliefs.

In the age of social media and short-form content, many people insist that our attention spans are getting shorter. But historian Daniel Immerwahr reminds us that people have cried wolf for centuries about technology hijacking our attention. In this episode, Adam and Daniel dive into evidence that what’s changing is not our attention spans, but the objects of our focus. They also discuss moral panics of the past, compare the cognitive benefits of video games and the opera, and debate whether or not Marvel movies are a waste of time.

https://podcastaddict.com/worklife-with-adam-grant/episode/2...

It's worse. Attention is all we have.

I was listening to Curt Jaimungal's recent interview with Stephen Wolfram. Wolfram dropped an interesting tidbit of an idea about the underlying foundation of "value" in economics. Because the one absolute limiting resource on every human being is time, things that are computationally reducible are valuable.

He gave an example. Given infinite time, we could make our own mobile phone. But they are valuable precisely because rather than gather all the raw materials, make all of the higher-order components, and assemble the phone ourselves, we can walk into a store and exchange currency for that finished good. This pattern recurs over and over.

So value comes from our ability do or get things that we would otherwise spend significant portions of our lives doing or making for ourselves.

Attention it time.

I dunno, it sounds like novels and operas and whatnot are the luxury goods paid for with attention. In this case attention (or time, more simply) is the thing that is spent, taking the place of money.

For those interested in that topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy

I like the parallels to time more - everyone has a finite amount & spend it wisely. Handbag..idk the metaphor doesn't really work for me

It fits the "attention is a precious resource" metaphor (in the sense of Johnson and Lakoff metaphors.

Alike overfishing, alike taking most of land from nature to cities, mining and agriculture, we can look at attention as a resource than once was ubiquotious, now is scarce... and luxury.

POV you are reading my drafts folder when I just got violently stoned off the penjamin.

Taylor Swift in a recent podcast said “You should think of your energy as if it's expensive; as if it's a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it”

The author seemed to have taken it and made it into an article.

Attention is worth money. It is about time society acknowledges this obvious fact. If you want my attention you must follow a protocol, like with regular payments where you don't put your hand in my pocket.

I think we can go further.

Human attention is the determinant of monetary value.

Gold is expensive because it takes a lot of human attention to find and refine it.

Food became cheaper when it required less human attention to make it.

Not really a fan of this econ 101 language given that it if anything drastically understates the importance of attention. I prefer Ian McGilchrist's framing of attention as a moral act:

"Attention is a moral act: it creates, brings aspects of things into being, but in doing so makes others recede. What a thing is depends on who is attending to it, and in what way. The fact that a place is special to some because of its great peace and beauty may, by that very fact, make it for another a resource to exploit, in such a way that its peace and beauty are destroyed. Attention has consequences"

A good friend of mine is an Imam and he explained to me that in Islam heedlessness is even described as a sin(Al-Ghaflah). Attention is not just a luxury good, and forgetfulness just some waste of time or money, it destroys a person's ability to distinguish between what's real and what isn't.

One of the reasons why we seem to be so ineffective at combating distraction is I think because we've even lost that kind of language that makes clear how consequential lack of attention is.

Couldn't afford the luxury of reading...

> Luxury is a marker that we can afford to do something others might consider wasteful.

the most interesting luxury thing i saw was palmer luckey showing his modretro chromatic game boy in his interview with rogan this week. sapphire crystal screen, special alloy from the weapons factory, offline, 90s aesthetic, exists for the pleasure of it, etc. what luxury really is is an expression of value, or values. the most coarse version of that is "status," but what about religious garb, artifacts and symbols? to an atheist, a hijab or a cross is a luxury item, but to the wearer, they are the literal, existential point of being. it's pretty crass and unserious to suggest these are just status symbols in a materialist power struggle. things that express values that bring you joy or pleasure are not a "luxury," as this presumes you are nothing but an undifferentiated clump of cells with the same material needs as any other one, and any distinction in satisfying those needs is superfluous. and to what? your meaningless existence as grist for an eternal struggle? surely.

we need a new model of luxury. in economics, there are normal and inferior goods, then giffen goods whose demand becomes higher when the price rises, veblen goods whose price is inverse to utility, and some other ones, but they are all names for the shapes of price and demand curves, but they're all just curves.

materialist ideas about luxury are dumb thought terminating cliches that deprive others of the opportunity to contemplate or appreciate them. we need new thinking, imo

I interpret the post as the author trying to convey a message of self-worth.

From where I am, I can't possibly know if that's a genuine message with valuable advice, or some self-justification he's making about himself, or some trick (of which there are many related to messages of self-worth).

He acknowledge hints of these possibilities by saying that attention provides "a message to ourselves and others". That is a fascinating brain leak right there.

In a more real assessment of reality, the truth is that I don't have much control over my attention. Might as well just let it flow and see what I can do with whatever comes from the interaction, no worries.

Does that imply the risk of falling into an attention trap? Definitely. Anyone that says he is not subject to that risk is lying.

The evil in this world would love to peddle the idea that having any free time, not living in a shitty apartment with four other people, or not dying of hunger or treatable disease is a “luxury”.

It is. And focus, especially the ability to focus on a tough topic for a non trivial amount of time, is luxury, too.

I hereby advice anyone who has a non trivial curiosity about ∀ that requires focus and concentration (pretty much ∪ of HN interests) to appreciate it and care it as if it is your most precious procession.

I have said this before and I’ll say it again — if you are not super into getting a kid, don’t.

I personally believe the invention of TikTok is recession of human civilisation.

attention is worship