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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28351 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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Maybe better suited to a Wellness Wednesday post, but I think there's a significant culture war angle here too.

To what extent is the current competency crisis in government, academia, etc. caused by an inability to spend time by oneself and actually put in the work? I've lamented in the past the decline in the social landscape, at least in the United States, but among the social environments that I have been finding recently in Baltimore, there seems to be almost a pathological fear of spending time alone in order to put in the work to actually improve at the thing that we're supposed to be doing together. For example, I've recently been going to a Spanish Happy Hour group at a brewery Thursday evenings after work. There are usually at least a few native speakers there, but aside from them, most people are at a quite elementary stage with the language, and aren't doing anything outside of the happy hour to improve. For some people this makes sense: they're mainly there to socialize not to learn, but for others, like the guy who organizes the group (Alex), the lack of progress is baffling to me. Alex started the group to improve his Spanish so he could communicate better with his girlfriend's family. And yet he seems unable to find the time to practice outside of happy hour (with reading/TV/shows/flashcards). I see the same thing with my new roommate, who is absolutely in love with the country and culture of Spain, and goes to happy hour with me, but won't put in the solitary effort to actually improve at the language. I see the same thing with running: people only going to run clubs to socialize and then expecting to run fast when they don't put in outside mileage on their own time, and even within the philosophy book club that I run where people seem unable to do the 30 pages of reading we discuss every other week.

I see this with myself as well, especially in my PhD. I know what I need to do to be successful: read the papers and do the experiments I have planned, but instead I find myself goofing off with labmates, texting/calling friends while I do busywork, or on this forum posting. Phones may have isolated in some ways, but at the same time, the current media environment seems to have created a constant yearning for companionship that I don't think is conducive to actually growing in competence and skill in areas outside of socialization.

I suspect that "being alone, and still getting shit done" is a skill that the kids are no longer 'taught' or expected to master or, as it is difficult and scary, forced into.

Nowadays the average person has non-stop access to superficial but pervasive socialization and distraction. They don't have to remain bored anymore. Part of the brain will respond to the stimuli as a welcome gift rather than delay gratification; other parts will rot from non-use.

There may also be a lack of societal purpose that plays a part. What are we working towards? There is no over-arching meaning.

I agree totally on both fronts. We are suffering from Dutch disease as a society.

No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man--the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him [...]

this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift--these are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a worker to his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate--and do not think it necessary to. [...]

"You see that bookkeeper," said a foreman to me in a large factory. "Yes; what about him?" "Well, he's a fine accountant, but if I'd send him up-town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for."

"A Message to Garcia", Elbert Hubbard, 1899.

I sometimes wonder if I've just been very lucky in my professional career, or if people are actually significantly more competent and professional and capable as a baseline than they used to be.

I have a playlist of BJJ instructional videos miles deep that I want to study to learn more about aspects of BJJ I need to work on. But whenever I have free time to devote to BJJ, I'm at the gym rolling. If it's a night I'm not rolling, it's either because I'm too busy at work, or that I'm doing some other workout or activity, or I'm spending time with my wife; so I don't have the time to watch the instructionals, the entire BJJ time budget is eaten up by going to the gym. So it might be that they have a few hours a week to devote to this goal, and their choices are flashcards or happy hour, and they pick happy hour.

For that matter, if I had a magic trick to just make myself better at Jiu Jitsu, downloaded into my brain Matrix style, I don't know that I'd really want to be an insta-black belt. I'm not sure that would make the hobby more fun for me. I might want to be better than I am, maybe closer to Blue Belt, knowing more about how to handle certain situations I get trapped in, or how to avoid stalling out mid roll, but part of the fun is learning and I'd hate to skip over that.

Relatedly, I could probably get better at rock climbing if I spent time fingerboarding, but I don't. I find it boring and distasteful, and I don't really want to train rock climbing that way. I mostly just want to climb, and if I get better I get better. And some people look at that and say I don't really want to get better, but in my mind I do want to get better, my way; I want to get better, but I want the aesthetic experience more, getting better isn't the end unto itself. Like playing Pokemon and picking a min-maxed well balanced team of 3 good pokemon, vs just catching your favorites and figuring out how to make them work. The latter player wants to beat the game, but not as much as they want to beat the game with Venusaur and Scyther on their team.

That being said, I feel like you're seeing some kind of selection effect here. Most people suck at things, and they keep sucking at them, and they stop doing things they suck at after a while. The 75th percentile person who tries to learn Spanish in the sense of downloading DuoLingo or buying some books never learns any Spanish at all. What makes the people at your meetup group unusual is that they're continuing to put effort in, which probably relates to the low-investment social habit.

Yeah I'm the same with Jiujitsu. I've been doing it long enough that I'm generally able to compete with the vast majority of people, but I've just never particularly enjoyed watching instructionals. Especially filthy leglockers. Would I be better on the aggregate if I mainlined John Danaher, probably, but I just don't care for it and as I'm not realistically on any professional trajectory does it matter?

The only leglock I consistently use is the straight ankle. Everything else, I'm too worried about fucking up.

Though I did once land a cool kneebar from an electric chair sweep, but since then I have seemingly forgotten how to hit the electric chair sweep.

Kneebar's pretty idiot proof but hard to get in the current meta.

I think a big part of this perception is that the bottom 80% were invisible in the past. I'm not saying these people's behavior has changes, I'm saying the median person in 1990 wasn't putting in much self-study effort to learn Spanish either. It's just that this person's behavior, habits, and life is invisible before social media and smartphones, unless he's in the army or some other unusually well-documented lifestyle- which is probably documented because it's unusually regimented, not because it's average.

I think, sure, there might be legitimate criticisms of smartphones- almost assuredly, there really are- but a lot of what gets blamed at them is very much not new. It's simply visible. Bush era Alex wasn't making much progress on communicating with his girlfriend's family(and Hispanics love it when gringos try to speak Spanish and are usually eager to help). He was just able to politely lie about it in a way nobody could call out.

It seems like this 'polite, public facing fiction' is the victim of social media and smartphones. How much of the recent decline narrative is driven by the destruction of these little white lies by instagramming everywhere?

I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of looking into daily life in the past, and I think a big issue is that modern “always on” culture with instant communication and instant gratification have basically overclocked our brains beyond what that brain was designed to deal with. Our hardware absolutely was not designed to handle the deluge of information and stimulation we have today. And part of that is the inability to cope with the lack of stimulation that allows people to want to do deeper work. Boredom is in fact necessary to get people to do that work, as it removes all stimulation outside of just doing the things if you like.

One thing I’ve found absolutely fascinating about these sorts of “live like it’s X year” experiments is just how surprising and even interesting the “analog” real world is once your brain adjusts to it. People who do this find things fascinating that they never paid attention to before, find themselves able to read books or draw or work on projects, find themselves enjoying their food or really paying attention to music or ambient sounds in the environment. They also sleep better and find themselves less stressed, and are getting more exercise. I think this allows the kinds of actual work that used to happen, especially when you also remove the constant commentary of social media either encouraging or blasting everything and creating performance anxiety and creating inertia.

I think this allows the kinds of actual work that used to happen, especially when you also remove the constant commentary of social media either encouraging or blasting everything and creating performance anxiety and creating inertia.

IMO it's not even really fair or appropriate to say, "Yeah you could scroll Tiktok, but you could also choose to learn origami! Or write a story!"

Because Tiktok (and recreational drugs, high stimulus TV, and porn) exist on a sort of "alternate mental plane" where 99% of reality is irrelevant. Like, the other day I was working on mindfulness and it was storming, and I crouched down at my kitchen window then to look up at the sky. I was shocked to realize I hadn't done this since childhood, where I'd actually tangle myself up in the living room curtain, get comfy, and just watch it rain for a while. And the thing is, even if I somehow had the idea to do this while I'm overstimulated, I know it wouldn't hit very hard. Kids aren't fascinated by their environments because they pay attention, but rather because their nervous systems are relaxed enough to pick up on things we can't.

Anyway, what's clear is these two ways of perceiving the world are incompatible. The "Gen Z stare" happens because the mental pace of the zeitgeist right now is breakneck, so teenagers have to get stoned before work and keep their air pods in just to make it bearable.

One thing I’ve found absolutely fascinating about these sorts of “live like it’s X year” experiments is just how surprising and even interesting the “analog” real world is once your brain adjusts to it.

Any links to examples? How far back are some of these people successfully resetting their clocks, as it were?

Vintage dollhouse does one that’s basically no screens and living like it’s 1940. There are a few that did 1990s and 1980s tech. There was a group of reinactors who did a LARP of the 17th century England, and a couple of odd ones (mostly women) doing the regency era which I think is 18th century. But the common denominator of the experience seems to be exactly that they are much more creative and able to get things done once they basically “detox” of Internet, screens and so on.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=f9mZJ9Z-mfM?si=r5aaEso6h8SdXl79

https://youtube.com/watch?v=z_ZGk-tVIUA?si=ayvCEsgMu4rjA0aZ

https://youtube.com/watch?v=J-uRFPbaKEw?si=UkxQBHSy3g2rP5Yd

These two are women living a 1940s lifestyle. The first two are Vintage dollhouse who does a lot of other reenactment work for 1940s stuff.

To what extent is the current competency crisis in government, academia, etc. caused by an inability to spend time by oneself and actually put in the work?

Almost none of it, because IMO the competency crisis is caused by misaligned incentives. In government, the incentives are aligned with playing up tribal politics, not with competent management. In academia, it's in appealing to grant givers, making sensational claims that get published and cited, not producing solid science or advancing human knowledge. In business and especially for public companies, it's maximising current shareholder value rather than building a sustainable business. And so on...

That said, learning and putting in the work is a skill that I believe we in the West have regressed in. Some people expect to be good at something from the start or else they believe they'll never be good at it. Kids need to gain the specific insight of learning how to learn trained into them to grow into capable adults, and I think we might be currently failing at that.

My take is that competent people still exist, and there may be more of them than ever, but they've been pulled into niche industries where they can make much bigger salaries, leaving the dum dums to fill jobs in government and more mundane industries.

I wouldn't even say that the people in government are specifically dumb, just that we aren't selecting them for what we say we want (competent administration) but instead for what our revealed preference is (we select them for their ability to comfort our tribal biases). And for that, they are actually very good, some of the best we have.

Look, this is just normal human behavior. People don't want the skill, they want the social perception of a skill. They want to indulge their consumerism. They want an excuse to socialize. The skill is a MacGuffin. It doesn't matter. These are known as "hobbies".

Now, if you're a person to whom that skill matters, this seems like silly weekend-warriorism at its worst. People spending lots of time, sometimes lots of money never getting any better at something. You ever go golfing?

The majority of participants and most importantly customers in any hobby are not really interested in it. They have no commitment to it, which seems mad to the people who actually do the hobby and see it as intrinsically worthwhile. This creates the common "Hardcore vs. Casual" dynamic of the resulting culture, which is prevalent in most amateur pursuits.

Not quite directly related, but I can say this is how I feel about with my workload these days.

I've been doing this long enough that most of the actual work I have to do is involved, requires concentration, and it can take like 10-15 minutes just to load up all the information and context I need to start to produce a work product. I've got enough experience that I handle any basic inquiries or tasks in like a minute or two, but I want to handle the work that I can really dig into.

Which requires uninterrupted thought. I can't delegate this work, by and large.

I can set aside time on my calendar to do these tasks, but if I 'only' block off 30 minutes, that's barely enough to make meaningful progress, since I get everything up and running and then I can only 'work' for like 15 minutes at at time.

I can block off more time but at that point I'm guaranteed to get interruptions before long and get pulled off task to something else while I'm "in the zone" which ruins the whole effect.

I could set aside time outside of work hours to do it, but by the time I'm home, this feels like such a massive intrusion I generally won't even try unless i have a real looming deadline.

Honestly, I'd really rather be practicing Spanish, or learning how to pilot airplanes, or pick up an instrument or two. But my mental work is most valuable (in terms of how much I get paid) doing this stuff.

Unless someone can gamify it to some extent, lay out an extremely clear path for progression, with periodic rewards and a well-defined end-goal, and some mechanism for accountability, then I'm just less likely to commit to it fully, since I'd have to use discipline to establish a habit and overcome the initial unpleasantness. But so many side activities seem pretty pointless to engage with if they aren't going to drastically increase your status or wealth, even if the skill itself is handy on its own terms.

In part, because everyone is ranked against everyone else, and you know full well you'll never enter the top 10% in most activities, let alone the top 1%, and being the best Xylophonist in your town is no longer sufficient to win social points.

Also the impulse to add professional/monetary incentives to everything mean that the second you stop heading upwards in the rankings it's kind of depressing.

I was a pretty good Rugby player growing up, got into the professional academy system and ultimately washed out at 20. I then stopped playing Rugby since just kinda hanging around being an amateur felt depressing as hell. This trend's happened a lot with the guys who went through the process, compared to previous generations where really the entire 'pinnacle' of the sport for the vast majority of people was just playing for the suburb's best team and a career would be ping-ponging between grades for 10-15 years until injury or life got in the way.

This kinda happened to me with running. I was a D1 track athlete, and after college, could never get back into recreational running at a hobby level. It never felt right not to be training for the highest level competition, and then just let enough time get away to have it be a depressing slide of peak potential

you know full well you'll never enter the top 10% in most activities

Yes I will.

Top 10% is nothing though. Even top 1% is nothing.

Practically nothing I do recreationally will mean anything to anyone outside of my immediate family, regardless of how good I am.

Thinking that people would care if you were a bit better at some skill is autistic delusion. No-one gives a shit.

Yes, I'm making this precise point.

If becoming decent at a given skill set or activity won't win you many status points, what's the motivation to keep doing it aside from autistic fixation?

I disagreed with the percentiles and that global ranking mattered, not your reasoning for why to engage in activities. I didn't mean to say you are deluded, only that people reasoning about these things often are (like guys at the gym or whatever).

People didn't give a shit about hobbies before the internet either and can't tell a 90th percentile from a 99.9th percentile anyway.

I feel like optimization culture has pushed into hobbies, though. There's way more concern around 'performing' at even casual activities

Nah, I agree with the others below: If you need to gamify something to enjoy it, then you don't actually enjoy it. It's like people who get gym memberships on January 2 with the goal of trying to lose that stubborn 20 pounds and finally "get into shape". But the goal is more important to them than the exercise, which they find sucks, and they have to force themself to get to the gym and quit by March. the fit people who go to the gym aren't there because they have exceptional self-discipline; they're there because they like going to the gym. It's not something they have to force themselves to do; it's something they look forward to doing. I'm an avid cyclist, and I regularly go on long rides on the weekend. But I'm not putting in 60 miles because I need to tick some box that says I have to do 60 miles today and maybe I get some kind of reward for doing it. I ride the 60 miles because that's the length that corresponds to the amount of time I want to spend riding. And if I get sick of it and turn back early I don't care, because I'm not trying to force myself to do anything, or unlocking any achievement.

I feel that this is a problem of box tickers and speed-runners in general, and especially in the outdoor scene. About a decade ago I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts when I came across a through-hiker eating lunch at the saddle between two mountains. I told him I was surprised that he was so far north about a month before most hikers would get that far. He excitedly told me that there were people who had finished already. I continued up the mountain and was enjoying the panoramic view at the top when he passed me. He plowed forward without even looking at the scenery. What's the point of doing a hike like that if you aren't even going to stop at the summits? It was clear that he was eating at the saddle so he could carb load before the climb and make better time.

Years later I was hiking Mt. Harvard in Colorado when I came across a guy from Kansas City who was trying to hit all of the fourteeners in the state. We hiked together for a while until he decided that I wasn't moving fast enough for him, but he did talk about how his wife was very supportive of his mission. I never would consider a hobby something that required suport from my family unless it was some kind of obsession that kept me away, which it appeared to be for him. When we got to the top we ran across two guys who were hiking together. From the summit the trail continues across a ridge to another fourteener, Mt. Princeton. It was a clear, warm day, and while the trail looped back around to the trail we hike in on, it looked like a long, hot, sunburned, high-altitude slog. The guy from KC and one of the guys decided to do it, while me and the other guy hiked down to the parking lot together. The thing about it, though, was that the guy from KC was staying with a friend in Denver who was getting him into a show at Red Rocks. If he had hiked straight out to his car from Harvard it would have been about the average time you'd leave to get back to Denver and change before heading to the concert. The guy acted like he had to get back to the car by five if he wanted to make it and thought it was possible, but he was effectively skipping the show. And since there was no cell service there, he was leaving his friend high and dry. Skipping an activity to do something else is one thing, but the guy seemed so concerned about bagging an extra peak that he was willing to risk pissing of a friend who gave him free passes to a band he really liked.

If you need to gamify something to enjoy it, then you don't actually enjoy it.

Counterpoint: Actual games.

Perhaps what we are discussing is more "the feeling of progress." Newb gainz are fun. Novelty is fun. Plateaus are not.

Every once in a while, I stop lifting say squats for a while. When I start back up, it's fun to rapidly increase. Then I plateau. Rinse, wash, repeat. (This is fine because I'm focusing on running for the time being. Where ... I'm making progress.)

Having bucket lists for hikers/explorers is a fun way to force oneself outside of one's comfort zone. I like hiking. Having a goal makes it channeled towards something concrete.

There's more than one way to enjoy various hobbies, in other words. Camping can be luxurious or hardcore. Cheap or expensive. Hiking, running, lifting, shooting, offroading, drones, car stuff, music, etc. all have multiple levels one can find a sweet spot.

Also most people like some kind of diversity, so switching and taking breaks is pretty normal.

but the guy seemed so concerned about bagging an extra peak that he was willing to risk pissing of a friend who gave him free passes to a band he really liked.

Sounds like a rational agent trying to maximize utility between two competing goals and willing to take risks.

I mean the gamification scheme works mostly by overstimulation of the part of your brain that gets a ping from being successful. You get a dopamine high from achievement which is how your brain evolved to get unpleasant or difficult tasks done. That doesn’t mean you enjoy the game or got anything valuable from it, it means that the game used sounds and visual displays to trigger the dopamine that comes from accomplishing a task, but in a much more stimulating way. I’d put it this way — if games didn’t have those gamification elements in them, would you still enjoy them? I used to like Skyrim and it was always somewhat a thrill when you saw a hidden door open or quest completed or level up messages appeared. But what if none of that happened? How much fun is it really to solve random puzzles without the reward attached? No loot, no completion, no NPCs blowing sunshine up your ass, just turn the statues around to solve the puzzle with nothing to reward you? Just thwack the bandits for no pats on the head, no loot, no hidden rooms to discover? Is that really fun. Or is the fun getting those little bits of dopamine from the feeling of having done those things?

Ok, but Skyrim is an immersive open-world game with a narrative and all that.

Most phone games are way worse on the metric of gamification! It's like slot machines--they just skip straight to the dopamine.

Plenty of people just play games like Skyrim or Red Dead or GTA as a way to pass the time, long after they've beaten them. I'd argue they'd be better off if they found it less relaxing.

A lot of shooters are just fun because it's fun to shoot endless hordes of zombies or whathaveyou.

Don't some people love to just play poker on Red Dead?

Personally, my perfectionism gets triggered a bit too much with a game like Fallout and so I can't even just enjoy it because I have to keep checking the damn guides to make sure I hit all the things. So I started Fallout 4, but barely did anything. (I really like Fallout New Vegas years ago.)

I barely even game anymore and haven't for the better part of a decade now. My dopamine circuits are apparently satisfied with arguing on the internet. (I can and do still read full books just fine though. Never understood that issue.)

If you need to gamify something to enjoy it, then you don't actually enjoy it.

Counterpoint: Actual games.

No! Do not get me started between the difference between compulsion and fun. If you can play a game and enjoy it without any meta progression or score at all, only then do you enjoy the game. All the rest is just artifice trying to hijack your addiction centers.

So you're a filthy casual?

One of those "mobile" "gamers"?

(I'm kidding. Once again, I think there's more than one model here, and "true" "enjoyment" is neither easily defined nor discerned.)

So you're a filthy casual?

You know.... unironically yes, but only because I feel like the ground shifted from underneath my feet. I mean, minus the mobile gaming thing but let me explain.

I think nearly all gaming up until mobile gaming and esports would be considered casual to modern sensibilities. There were no global rankings for Quake, you might even play only the single player game and never venture online with QuakeWorld! You might only play custom maps for StarCraft or WarCraft III. Did StarCraft even have a global ranking system or did that not start until StarCraft II? Jagged Alliance IMHO is hardcore as fuck, but it's also largely a sandbox for fucking around and beating it at all represents a substantial achievement.

None of these games have the sort of cutthroat competition a global ranking system introduces, nor the sort of metagame progression or constant attaboys of unlockables, achievements or cosmetics that mediocre modern games might shower you with to try to keep you around. They aren't super sweaty, and you can probably see everything they have to offer in terms of novelty in about 10-20 hours.

And yet, the moment to moment gameplay of them is so fun, I return to them over and over and over again. I don't need a global ranking, achievements, or loot crates to make Quake 3 on a LAN just as fun as it ever was in 2000. Or playing through the StarCraft campaign again. Or firing up Jagged Alliance for the first time a few years ago. They were made fun for fun's sake. And that, unironically, seems to code as "casual" now.

The release of Halo Infinite made me realise I was old and out of touch

A halo game comes out, it's pretty good, some networking issues but as far as triple A shitshow releases go, it was pretty smooth. IT WAS ALSO FREE.

The entire Halo Reddit community was fucking losing their shit about the lack of cosmetics, challenges, and unlockables. They were barely discussing the game, the balance, the maps, the things that make the game fun.

No, they were just endlessly bitching about the lack of armor cosmetics. You can't even fucking see your armor when you're playing.

Fortnite broke the kids man, they've lost sight of what makes a game good

Unless someone can gamify it to some extent, lay out an extremely clear path for progression, with periodic rewards and a well-defined end-goal, and some mechanism for accountability, then I'm just less likely to commit to it fully, since I'd have to use discipline to establish a habit and overcome the initial unpleasantness. But so many side activities seem pretty pointless to engage with if they aren't going to drastically increase your status or wealth, even if the skill itself is handy on its own terms.

I think gamification is the exactly opposite of what you need. I cycled through a bunch of frankly masturbatory hobbies before I settled on woodworking. I tried to learn guitar, I tried mountain biking, I did martial arts for a long time, I've tried to make video games off and on for my entire adult life, did a smattering of electronics repair. All of them, to various degrees, felt like pissing in the ocean. I think I enjoyed the martial arts and mountain biking the most, but at a certain point going through the motions felt pointless. Especially with martial arts, once I no longer had anything to prove to myself that I could do it, I just wasn't feeling it anymore. I sunk costed through many more years of just showing up, but my drive to put in the extra work evaporated. A lot of what compelled me to put time into hobbies I really wasn't getting anything out of was the addictiveness of the gamification in the learning method.

But woodworking, at least for now, is fantastic. I make beautiful things that go into my home that are exactly what I want, and I don't care one teeny tiny bit how they stack up to what anyone else has done. It's not gamified, it's not competitive, but it's marginally creative and meets specific needs. Plus it's nice having hardwood furniture in my house instead of flat packed sawdust and glue. Mastering a smattering of baking recipes has been similar. I wanted great scones, I didn't like any of the bakeries around me, I figured out a recipe that produces the scones I want and now my family gets to enjoy them.

Human motivation is funny, and in several ways, I suspect gamification has spoiled our brains to expect more rewards for fake task than they deserve. I've found making real things you actually want and need has been a great detox, and doesn't necessarily carry with it the sort of "I'm too tapped out from work to do this" vibe that other more masturbatory and pointless hobbies might. But that might just be me.

As an avid mountain biker, I'm curious as to what you think was gamified about the whole experience. Most people who get into the sport start riding relatively easy trails and progress to harder ones as they get better, but the whole concept of difficulty is vague and not necessarily related to how fun a trail is to ride. What most people don't do is start off by taking lessons and sticking with it to "unlock" various achievements by passing certain thresholds. Easy trails can still be a blast for experienced riders, and a beginner can always walk anything he's uncomfortable with (most difficult trails are only truly difficult for relatively brief stretches). Most people, though, will be good enough in a year that they'll be able to ride whatever they want to, within reason, and the only thing that differentiates riders is speed, which isn't important if you aren't racing and which no one cares about on casual rides. Skills improvement usually just means getting faster by being able to navigate tricky sections better, like having the technique to navigate tight turns without slowing down too much or being able to find lines in rock gardens. The end result of developing these skills is that you end up finding certain kinds of trails more enjoyable, but it's a completely personal gain.

Have you heard of the types of fun? If not, See: https://essentialwilderness.com/type-1-2-and-3-fun/

As a descriptive generalization, all complex activities are composed of all three types of fun. The exact ratio of each type of fun changes activity by activity and person by person. Typically speaking, everyone wants to maximize type 1 fun and minimize type 3 fun. In the meantime, they will tolerate type 2 fun in proportion to they ability to delay gratification as an investment to produce more type 1 fun in the future.

Now, gamification, in this context, is best understood as a means to transmute type 3 fun into type 2 fun. The mechanism by which this happens is through providing consistent feedback and rewards so that the gamer later associated a particular misery with a positive outcome. In games, for example, killing the first 3 orcs in a questline might be type one fun, but killing the next 197 would be type 3 fun if it weren't for the xp and gold you get at the end. Similarly, in martial arts you might enjoy the first minute of getting punched in the stomach while being in horse stance, but you're not going to enjoy the next five unless you come to associate it with improving your capabilities and social status.

Gamification isn't always-- or even usually-- helpful. If an activity has a super high proportion of type 1 fun, you just do it to do it. And generally people don't have many issues doing activities they feel are predominantly type 2 fun, though they might have to get motivated first. I'll procrastinate doing my laundry, but I don't need to gamify it before I do it-- I know exactly how much I like clean clothes. Meanwhile, people should and do avoid activities that are mostly type 3 fun. I think I'd briefly enjoy falling out of a building, but I would definitely hate hitting the ground.

Where gamification helps most is at the margins, when an activity is favorably disposed toward types 1 and 2 intellectually, but at any given moment can feel emotionally tilted toward type 3. Think of this as the cold lake effect (you know you'll have fun if you just take the plunge, but you can't help but tiptoe in miserably). So if you're looking for it in mountan biking, don't expect to find it everywhere. As a hobby, mountain biking is probably dominated by the kind of people who find it type 1 fun. But if you find someone that's always a little reluctant to get on the trails. And seems mostly motivated by buying new gear, obsessively tracking their health statistics, and posting images of themselves completing on difficult trails... That's what gamification looks like for mountain biking.

It might have been the friend I was doing it with, and how the trails were rated in our area. It was 15+ years ago, so I'll probably get all the details wrong. But there was some sort of rating system that didn't seem dissimilar from rock climbing ratings, and he was really into getting to the next difficulty, and mastering X, Y and Z skills necessary for doing so, and upgrading his bike with fancy brakes and tires and shocks. Where as I just had some dinky street/trail hybrid bike with none of those things and found myself completely incapable of keeping up. I just enjoyed doing the same trail or two when I could.

Yea I agree with this sentiment. There are all these studies (mainly to do with reading) that gamification actually backfires. If you give a kid money or some other external reward for reading that actually is a pretty surefire way to avoid that kid developing a real love for reading. And so too with any other hobby you might be able to think of.

Really? Based on the recent ACX alpha school review, I was under the impression that cash for books does work.

As far as I know Fryer has not done any super-long-term studies of the impact of his experiments, but he did look at the mid-term effects. After the “read books for $$s” study ended he followed the test and control group for what happened to their reading habits when they were not getting paid. He found, in contradiction to concerns about loss of internal motivation, that the test group continued to read more than the control group.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school

Which studies do you mean?

I agree with this. I cycled through a lot until I found piano, and singing. I do them because they are beautiful and they open my heart. I don't even necessarily have to have energy or anything I just find myself gravitating towards piano more and more because I genuinely want it.

Especially with martial arts, once I no longer had anything to prove to myself that I could do it, I just wasn't feeling it anymore.

Similar for me, but I swapped over to teaching it to others, which is quite rewarding on its own.

And you could always try some amateur fights if you want to challenge yourself (at the risk of injury).

But woodworking, at least for now, is fantastic.

3D printing is giving me a portion of this satisfaction of making something 'from scratch' and having a finished product at the end you can take pride in.

But so far that's mostly for trinkets and trivialities.

I dream of having a sizeable enclosed workspace on my property to tinker with cars and wood and produce fairly complex devices and objects. I am become Boomer, acquirer of hobbies.

I suspect gamification has spoiled our brains to expect more rewards for fake task than they deserve.

I think my only point there is that you're going to encounter the gamified stimuli anyway (unless you are VERY actively avoiding it), and it thus behooves you to let the 'good' stuff grab your attention (and money) or else something wasteful and trivial might, instead.

For instance: I do have Duolingo on my phone and I consider it a better use of my time than, say, Candy Crush or the bazillion basebuilding game clones out there, so its like, I dunno, substituting nicotine gum for actual cigarettes. I rage every time my phone updates and it auto-installs a bunch of the little ADHD time-suck apps on there that I have to remove manually.

And I can also say that there is zero chance I'll ever get 'bored' or feel 'satiated' with having sex with women, but that has run into the endless frustration that is modern dating that I bemoan elsewhere. I'm tempted to start setting aside a 'prostitute budget' for myself if I go another year or two without getting into a relationship, but I damn well know what its like to be intimate with someone you truly know and care about, and cares about you in return, so I don't think I can be truly happy just paying for it.

All these basic activities turn out to be the most fulfilling on a primal level, whoda thunk? (lots of people, it turns out, the modern world just wants to keep you distracted with candy and trinkets).

People are tired. The idea that one can put in endless effort for as long as one is awake is an idea that I slowly grew out of in my twenties. There are a few people who seem to be able to do it but I don’t think they’re physiologically or psychologically normal. The rest of us just about get by at our job and then are mostly pooped and have to slip in bits and pieces of effort where they can.

Now, I think that modern media hasn’t helped with this. I’m playing Elden Ring at the moment and I’ve noticed that it can pretty much perk me up even when I’m basically dozing off, which of course means that it’s overdrawing my reserves when I really ought to be resting. It’s also harder to focus on semi-interesting skills when very-entertaining stuff is available instead, but everyone knows that already.

I hate 9-5s. With a burning passion.

Back in India, most of my jobs involved me working for 24 hours at a stretch, two shifts a week. There are places where 24 hours can be utterly grueling, such as ICU or ER jobs, but when I wasn't there, I usually managed to wrap up the bulk of my work by the evening and could look forward to a decent amount of sleep at night on average, if the nurses weren't overly neurotic. Wake up early, make sure nobody is likely to die before the next shift, write a handover, then scurry away back home.

This isn't a regular option right now, best case is a few 24 hour or 12 hour shifts a month, with 9-5s for the rest. This sucks, I come home drained, and barely have the ability to recuperate before the next day, let alone manage normal life admin or indulge in my hobbies. I miss the previous flexibility I had, why can't I just go and get a haircut at 3 pm on a Tuesday? Get hammered with friends on a Thursday night?

Not to mention the additional wasted time when it comes to traveling to and from work. That adds up when you're doing it 5 days a week.

Good observation. I also agree that the hustle-culture memes aren't reflective of how people's efforts can actually be allocated. A common failure mode I see in myself is over-scheduling things in my down-time and not doing any of them and gaming/scrolling instead. I really should be resting during that time.

Partly explains why people can be so flaky about attending events (or dates) that they in theory agreed to.

They overschedule and end up more tired than they expected when the time comes.

Maybe. But there's an increasing trend of social anxiety making people just not want to go to things at all -- and of course the internet rectangle makes it easy to develop parasocial relationships or social media addictions and spend time on those instead of actual people. The flakiest people I know are the least busy.

For instance, I have a friend who wanted to hang out and I haven't texted him back in 3 days (but to be fair, it took him 4 days to get back to me). And my girlfriend is in the other room and I'm typing this right now. I'm choosing you over snuggling, faceh-less internet person! Something has gone wrong there.

I saw a t-shirt at Target the other day that read, "Canceller of Plans." And I know the rush that comes from cancelling plans. But it's still pathological avoidance.

Yes, the sheer rise in anxiety disorders is testament to that deep problem.

I still feel it, sometimes, when it comes time to turn off the computer and dress up and leave the house the "ugh field" activates. But I know I'll be happier if I take the opportunity.

I've also noticed in myself the tendency to not wanting to show up somewhere unless I can expect there to be decently attractive, possibly single women attending, likely dressed in cute clothing. My guys nights and board games are fun, but I really just want to be able to interact with women more, its the only aspect really missing from my otherwise ideal routine.

And women, of course, are markedly more anxious and flighty these days, so its harder to get them to come out consistently than ever. Ask me how I know.

I’m beginning to suspect that screens are a hyper stimulus you can have “relationships”, but they’re only the good parts and you don’t have to work at them, you don’t have to make time for them, you don’t even need to put on pants. Games are much more stimulating than doing the actual thing, they give more rewards and with less effort than real life

The "Attention Economy" is just BRUTAL, b/c it really is an utterly zero-sum game (you can't produce 'more attention' very easily, only reapportion the amount that currently exists), and thus there is strong incentive to try to drag attention out of people even when it is objectively unhealthy.

"Of course I can watch one more episode, Netflix, how thoughtful of you to queue it right up!" (looks up 3 episodes later to see the clock says "1:38 a.m.")

No, fuck off. Give me the app that values my attention approximately as much as I do, and will actively start discouraging me from expending it too much in one place. "Here, you have time for precisely one (1) episode of Tulsa King, then we're cutting you off. I've already set the lights in the room to dim slowly, and your favorite ambient sleep noises are cued up as soon as you get into the bed."

I've heard from anonymous sources that there's a whole service economy for the ultrarich, based around this sort of thing. The basic idea is that their time is very valuable, so they'll pay astronomical prices to avoid ever having to wait or be distracted by petty bullshit. The extreme example might be having a private jet/helicopter to help them travel faster, but it exists for all sorts of minor things too. So they might have a personal assistant who's job is to cue up just one episode of their favorite TV show, then slowly turn down the lights and help them sleep. or whatever else they want.

Obviously some of that is a privilege that only the very wealthy can afford. But it does seem like, to some extent, we should be able to pay for services that help middle class folks do that too. it's odd that we can't. If anything, it seems to be going the opposite direction, where like, even if you pay for premium, it will still insist on showing us adds and doing that sort of attention-grabbing addictive bullshit. It feels like I'm going to a restaurant and the owner is telling us "yeah I don't care how much you pay, you must sit in the smoking section and smoke at least one cigarette. i'm not letting you enjoy my food without a little nicotine on the side."

Yeah, I'm desperately curious as to the sorts of lifestyle accommodations one unlocks when they pass, at a guess, the $50 million net worth mark.

For me, yeah, I think if I could have a dedicated personal assistant, which I'd guess would cost $50k-70k/year for a decently competent one (just googled it, I was almost exactly right), I could cut out SO MUCH CRAP that wastes my time and focus on the highest leverage, most productive, or fun, stuff that I WANT to be doing.

But man, how do you get to the level of wealth quickly if you're merely climbing the corporate ladder? If I start pulling down $250k/yr then it might start to be justifiable (in my mind) to splurge on a dedicated assistant to handle this stuff. And have to try to avoid lifestyle inflation to some degree. But BECAUSE I currently complete many of those tasks myself, I'm somewhat stymied from doing the work that might speed up my progression to higher incomes.

There's got to be an efficient frontier on the curve that I'm not quite hitting. Hmmm.

Wait wait wait, I just realized, under idealized circumstances that approximately what a spouse can help achieve, if you marry well and have a good, cooperative, teammate relationship. That was probably the secret for middle class couples leveraging into higher income brackets.

Wait wait wait, I just realized, under idealized circumstances that approximately what a spouse can help achieve, if you marry well and have a good, cooperative, teammate relationship. That was probably the secret for middle class couples leveraging into higher income brackets.

And your realisation there is what annoys me about the commentary post Bezos divorce about MacKenzie getting all that money for nothing. Jeff was the guy who made the billions, she was just the wife, what did she do to deserve this money?

Well, let's see: first, she wasn't the one who blew up the marriage by hooking up with the thot next door. Second, back before Jeff was Mr. Mega-bucks, she was working a job too and contributing to the household income while he got Amazon off the ground. Third, all the support that faceh mentions that isn't explictly 'a paid job' - running the household, nurturing relationships (business as well as personal), raising the kids, being there for Jeff in the ways spouses are supposed to be there for each other. Being willing to be seen out in public with him when he was still a googly-eyed nerd before he buffed up and got work done to fix his googly eye.

But sure, none of that matters, she's just a parasite who got undeserved riches in the divorce settlement.

That really depends on what you think the goal of divorce law/alimony is.

Giving them $250 million should set them up for life and is almost certainly sufficient to pay for their 'services' during the marriage. Or if you want to assume the value of their services is inherently equal to his,(as partnerships go) then sure, start with that assumption.

Just understand you're creating an incentive for men to avoid marriage as a institution since it takes most of the control of their wealth away from them at the drop of a hat if they get married before they build their kingdom.

As usual, though, the point is less about billionaires and more about men who enter the marriage expecting to get some level of reliable partner, then realize that under the current legal regime the woman has no obligation to pull her weight, to act respectful towards him, or to even sleep with him, and yet is generally able to file for divorce regardless of how well-behaved he was during the marriage.

Its an inherent asymmetry.

Just understand you're creating an incentive for men to avoid marriage as a institution since it takes most of the control of their wealth away from them at the drop of a hat if they get married before they build their kingdom.

Some of the comments about women and marriage on here are also creating incentives for women to avoid marriage. Even relatively tame, like "The thing is, that work doesn’t hugely differ whether you’re the wife of a coal miner or a self-made billionaire."

Yes, gentlemen, I hope all of you are telling the women in your lives (mothers, grandmothers, aunts, female cousins, sisters, daughters, wives) that you don't consider them equal partners, that you are the superior person in this relationship because you are the breadwinner and her little job (if she works outside the home) doesn't count. Working in the home only? Absolutely does not count for anything, she's replaceable by a coal-miner's wife because being the spouse and mother for an upper-middle class household doesn't involve any kind of extra work at all, and maybe even less work because you're rich enough to hire help. If you do decide to dump her, she deserves maybe ten bucks and a pat on the head, but certainly nothing more. Not one drop of your vast wealth (should you have vast wealth), even if that share does not, in fact, leave you penniless but you retain possession of the majority of the vast wealth.

Why, with such examples of how respected they are, why aren't women jumping at the notion of not getting an education and a career of their own and instead getting married as soon after high school as possible then producing a few kids as rapidly as possible? And if hubby gets tired of you after a while, well, you can probably find work somewhere scrubbing floors or something, automation and AI hasn't yet taken those jobs away!

Women - such ungrateful bitches, to turn down a wonderful offer like that!

I don't consider myself a misandrist, but some of you guys make it tough going, and more and more I am grateful to the Lord God Almighty for making me without the wiring to desire and need love and romance, because blow me down, I'd be fucked if I had to rely on a guy for anything from emotional validation on up.

I made the statement:

"The thing is, that work doesn’t hugely differ whether you’re the wife of a coal miner or a self-made billionaire."

To be clear, I agree with none of these statements:

you are the superior person in this relationship because you are the breadwinner

her little job (if she works outside the home) doesn't count.

Working in the home only? Absolutely does not count for anything

If you do decide to dump her, she deserves maybe ten bucks and a pat on the head, but certainly nothing more.

Not one drop of your vast wealth (should you have vast wealth), even if that share does not, in fact, leave you penniless but you retain possession of the majority of the vast wealth.

I think it would help for you to understand where I'm coming from:

[EDIT: PERSONAL DETAILS REDACTED]

Can you see why I'm a little dubious of the idea that if you marry someone, credit for your achievements should be always and automatically be spread equally?

Of course this is only an anecdote and I don't intend it to be applied to all relationships. I am sure that there are a lot of traditional couples who have a much more equitable relationship with a more even share of responsibility. I do note however that:

  1. In practice, the contribution of the man in a modern, respectable, upper-class marriage is concrete, well-defined and non-negotiable. I do not think the reverse is true. Caveats: this is different for the underclass.
  2. Work in the home and childcare is absolutely hard work but it is more stable than work outside the home. You are not going to be dossing around, but neither are you going to be pulling multiple all-nighters. The type and amount of work are much more even between families and socio-economic levels. My statement at the top was made with this in mind.
  3. It seems to me fair that the compensation in the event of divorce should be more even in recognition of this fact. This does not mean ten bucks and a pat on the head but nor does it mean billions unless you were very clearly and openly doing an appreciable amount of the work that made that money.
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Yes, gentlemen, I hope all of you are telling the women in your lives (mothers, grandmothers, aunts, female cousins, sisters, daughters, wives) that you don't consider them equal partners,

That's a bit of a trick.

"Equal Partners" in the sense that both are contributing to the household. But how does one measure the value or even magnitude of each contribution when they're inherently different in their nature.

If the guy builds the house, builds all the furnishing in it, and does the actual maintenance work on it over the years, (i.e., it ONLY exists thanks to his own labor)...

It is REALLY fair that the woman would get the house in a divorce scenario?

Well, we acknowledge she was the one who was 'keeping house' and doing all the day-to-day work that makes it a pleasant place to live and keeps it from falling into neglect which leveraged the value the man already provided, creating something better than what the man alone could achieve.

So we've got 'unequal' contributions by each side, but each has contributed value to the whole.

The actual contributions are usually not accounted for in a literal ledger. So we often end up with a guy who thinks he's being shortchanged because he created all of the necessary preconditions for a happy, successful marriage, and pulled his weight, and yet gets screwed over for trusting that he would be 'repaid' by his partner with her love and esteem and, eventually, a kid, and yet he's still getting screwed over when it ends.

In short, how does one balance material contributions with, I guess, mostly emotional and intangible but still valuable contributions?

Since the material contributions are legible, those are the ones that end up getting parceled out by the court. So the wife gets a cut of the material contributions made by the husband, but the man doesn't get to take away any of the emotional, intangible elements contributed by her. So he loses both the material wealth AND the intangibles.

You can imagine that this feels unfair.

I don't consider myself a misandrist, but some of you guys make it tough going, and more and more I am grateful to the Lord God Almighty for making me without the wiring to desire and need love and romance, because blow me down, I'd be fucked if I had to rely on a guy for anything from emotional validation on up.

I mean, I've pointed it out before, women end up marrying a corporation (for all pursuits and purposes) and it turns out that is pretty much a dead end for their 'emotional validation.' Eventually the biological clock ticks over, and the corporation will never be able to provide her with kids and the actual long-term loyalty that a good husband would grant.

But men have to match up to the corporation's material benefits while seeking a partner, anyway, because those factors are intangible and rarely counted in the calculus.

Its always and forever a question of 'compared to what?'

I don't think women are doing the math on what they'll get if they stick with MegaCorp for 25 years, laboring dutifully under their manager's eye, then what they'll get if they stick with a Husband for that same period, laboring dutifully under 'his' roof.

It becomes a bit annoying to have to justify men's contributions to upholding the entire edifice of civilization.

On the flip side, women, by dint of bearing and raising children, are obviously and constantly glorified for their contribution. As well they should be.

So men, demanding a little bit more leverage and control of their wealth so they can actually achieve good outcomes for themselves in the world they built seems utterly fair to me.

My actual point is that Divorce laws should really, in actuality, be designed around encouraging marriage and family creation and maintenance of a long-term bond. And OBJECTIVELY they are simply not doing that.

Billionaires getting divorced and splitting 10-12 figure households are a symptom of this, and a particularly noticeable one.

And guys who notice "wait, even the billionaire couldn't keep his wife, what actual chance do I have" are a lot more common than billionaires.

The incentives are simply not aligned. A guy wants a partner, a homemaker, and someone to bear and raise children.

No-Fault Divorce penalizes the guy by forcing him to give up his accumulated wealth and support the wife regardless of how well she actually behaved during the marriage. Whether he got a kid out of it or not.

So he is pretty damn motivated to try to keep the marriage afloat to avoid said penalties.

Divorce penalizes a woman by... ?

What is a woman actually losing out on by initiating divorce?

Some of the comments about women and marriage on here are also creating incentives for women to avoid marriage.

Unlikely, in that no significant number of women who haven't already made up their mind are reading them.

Anyway, "How dare you talk about this in a way that doesn't put all the onus on the man and put the woman on a pedestal?" is not going to be an effective tactic; it's so ubiquitous already that anyone still talking about the subject is obviously already inured to it.

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The thing is, that work doesn’t hugely differ whether you’re the wife of a coal miner or a self-made billionaire. If anything, the latter has more professional assistance, although she’s also expected to be slightly more personable. (I don’t think Amazon was really that kind of business though.)

I don’t think many people think the wife should come away with nothing in such affairs, only that scaling it directly to the husband’s business success is pretty dubious.

The work of getting a business off the ground doesn't differ that much whether your business becomes a trillion dollar company or goes bust. The labor theory of value is wrong.

Mackenzie was also working at Amazon in the early days, doing accounts, packing orders, etc. So I find it entirely reasonable that this made her rich.

The labor theory of value is wrong, yes. I think you're missing a step or two between that and the Washington State Divorce Court being the proper way to assess that value. The correct question is 'What rate of pay would Jeff Bezos and his wife have agreed to in return for her assistance?' Which is unfortunately impossible to answer given that no such negotiation took place.

I suppose you could argue that he married her with the understanding that, should they divorce, their assets would be divvied up according to that process? That's technically valid, but it'd be just as valid if that process were anything else, provided those terms wouldn't have prevented their marriage; also impossible to say, I suppose. Still, I think this is the best supported position.

On the other side, one can consider what he'd have had to have paid someone else to fulfill those same responsibilities -- certainly far, far less than he ended up paying her, even if he'd had to take out a loan to do so. It's certainly possible she did something for Amazon no one else could have done, but neither accounts nor packing orders meets that bar. He likely wouldn't have taken out a loan to pay someone else to do those things (at least not very early on), but that's not actually relevant so long as the court would have forced him to pay her for her labor regardless of the success it engendered -- her compensation was guaranteed, so there should be no risk premium. But that's not what the court would do, and they both knew that at the time, so maybe a risk premium is fair.

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Because low-skill compensation in the west has been rising astronomically, personal touches like that have been getting more expensive, not less. Fast food is paying $14/hr now- for front of house(restaurants tend to pay their kitchen people more because it's harder work). Day laborers used to be $100/day, plus lunch. Now it's $200.

Tipping everywhere probably has this as a big chunk of the explanation. It is simply far more expensive to hire someone to take orders and pour coffee and putting some on the customers even if it annoys them makes more sense as a tradeoff.

As for why that is, I blame weed making some people unemployable and doordash convincing a bigger chunk that they can strike it rich being their own boss.

I tried to make this, combining smartwatch data on heart rates and variability to detect energy levels and combining it with an LLM to generate useable recommendations.

It was surprisingly difficult for multiple reasons: your heart doesn’t differentiate between ‘low stress’ and ‘depressed heart rate because you’re recovering from a massive exertion’, or ‘high stress’ vs ‘happy drinking with friends’.

Then it was even harder to do anything with the data. Obviously LLMs don’t integrate with anything meaningful without lots of extra work and the moment you get into health they just start relying on the teams of feel-good bullshit in their training set. No, I would not like to do an hour of yoga followed by a gratitude exercise.

It was surprisingly difficult for multiple reasons: your heart doesn’t differentiate between ‘low stress’ and ‘depressed heart rate because you’re recovering from a massive exertion’, or ‘high stress’ vs ‘happy drinking with friends’.

Does your smart watch track heart rate variability and blood oxygenation? I think my garmin watch is pretty decent at knowing when I'm stressed emotionally vs when I'm stressed metabolically. Of course, the little suggestions it gives me are kind of useless ("take a breath", "go on a walk", buddy if I was the kind of person to do those things I wouldn't need you to tell me to do them.) But I think the problem doesn't lie with either the sensors or suggestions, but with a lack of an effective punishment/reward scheme.

...okay, I'll admit it. I just want a robot mommy that pats my head when I'm a good boy and spanks my ass when I'm a REALLY good boy.

It tracks both of those things. How were you using that data?

the little suggestions it gives me are kind of useless ("take a breath", "go on a walk", buddy if I was the kind of person to do those things I wouldn't need you to tell me to do them

Yeah, this was basically my big problem as well. I think it can work, it just needs to accept that mood management requires more than a ping and a condescending message.

HRV should give a decent indicator of stress levels.

It tracks both of those things. How were you using that data?

I wasn't, but by my estimation the built in software features accurately figure out the state of my body. Maybe the software has just been updated since you tried your experiment.

Great observations. I wish there were tools that could do this. Cold Turkey sort of approximately gets close to this, but it's very very crude and requires a lot of upfront effort/willpower.

That's one of the reasons I prefer using TheMotte in general vs. most other sites. Aside from the Quokka popup, it doesn't actively try to drag out your time spent on the site, or use dark patterns to keep you engaged.

And of course it isn't centered around ragebait or fueled by whomever can get the most replies and attention (some might disagree).

it isn't centered around ragebait

Speak for yourself, buddy

It's also quite difficult to use TheMotte in a way that encourages low effort. My best performing posts are ones I spend time on, which is usually a form of deep work. There really isn't enough content on here to doomscroll, and reading comments is actually usually pretty high energy.

Yeah.

I often start off a post intending to just make a quick, lowish-effort reply, then find myself drafting a mini-essay just so I can fully justify the point I'm making.

Effort feels like it is rewarded because people will usually respond with similar effort rather than just troll or dismiss you with a joke.

I definitely doomscroll The Motte, and find it more addictive than social media.

One thing that is handy about having the weekly threads so self-contained, at least you can reach the actual end of it, there's no infinite algorithm.

If I'm really disregulated, I can just keep refreshing this and DSL over and over (operator error, I know).

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This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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