
Avoiding the Global Lobotomy - KKPMW
https://www.meta-nomad.net/avoiding-the-global-lobotomy/
======
greggman3
I don't know where to get started but I wish there was a manifesto for
companies to pledge and social pressure for them to conform to design their
software to not be distracting/addict. To not gameify it with badges, and
points, and up votes and downvotes.

Most native phone apps seemed designed to distract. Most internet forums
including HN seemed designed to distract. There's this like score at the top
right corner and I'm aware of anytime it changes. When it does change I feel
compelled to go look into why. The same thing happens on Stack Overflow. On
both sites I've use Ublock Origin to block all scores. All of them. I've also
used it to block the downvote button on HN. But, I honestly believe the world
would be a much better place without this gamification and I believe that HN
and Stack Overflow and Reddit and all the rest are acting irresponsibly by
having these features.

IMO they're addicting, compelling, and they have other negative consequences
like promoting group think.

I have no idea how to convince others of this and to get the various companies
to give up their skinner box features.

~~~
jasode
_> The same thing happens on Stack Overflow. On both sites I've use Ublock
Origin to block all scores. All of them. [...] But, I honestly believe the
world would be a much better place without this gamification and I believe
that HN and Stack Overflow and Reddit and all the rest are acting
irresponsibly by having these features._

Not sure if you're talking more more about "user profile scores" vs "comment
scores" but I'll speak about the usefulness of upvotes/downvotes: it helps
readers _save time_ by seeing the most likely interesting reply first. E.g.
Stackoverflow would be much less useful if I couldn't rely on "wisdom of the
crowd" to rank the various answers on my behalf. _Usually_ , the best answers
are at the top and the worst buggy answers are at the bottom.

I lived through the old computer discussion forums without scores such as
USENET, Compuserve, etc, and the lack of ranking wasted more of my reading
time than Reddit/HN.

In the marketplace of ideas, discussion forums with scoring/ranking work
better when _contributors are anonymous_ because you can't rely on non-text
signals such as reputation/integrity/competency.

You don't need scoring when every participant's _identity is known_ such as
Slack channel of business colleagues. Hopefully, the previous bar for getting
hired in the first place at the company means one is typing worthwhile things
for coworkers to read.

~~~
CuriouslyC
In most cases downvotes quickly degenerate into a way for toxic people to
punish those that disagree with them. Upvotes can work, but they tend to
result in people showing support for people they like, more so than ideas.

Personally, I think having a limited number of upvotes based on how many
upvotes you've received, and allowing users to flag posts for moderator
attention is the least toxic setup that still works.

~~~
wayneftw
I would like a system whereby the individual users likes and interests are
used to weight everything. What we have now everywhere is basically a
"majority of the moment" sorting and censoring the comments for me. I don't
know who that really serves.

If the system served me, I wouldn't have to see comments from some whackadoo
who feels offended because I wrote about laughing at a cop for not wearing a
mask in a crowded retail establishment where everybody else was wearing them.

In my preferred system, comments from people I've upvoted in the past (and
people they've upvoted in the past, and so on...) would appear more highly
ranked than random nobodies. Likewise, if I've downvoted someone in the past,
their comments would be ranked very low and might not appear at all if I've
downvoted them enough.

This is more like real life, where people generally only hang around other
people who are agreeable to their world view instead of surrounding themselves
with disagreeable folks. I think a system that separates people could work
wonders for social media. Let all the racists hang out together. Let all the
whackadoos and Karens hang out together. What do I care?

~~~
quicklime
In real life, if you've got extreme racist views, you can go hang out with
other racists. But to find these like-minded racists, you'll have to churn
through lots of _potential_ racists - who may often turn out to actually be
anti-racist - to find your group to hang out with. In the process of doing so,
a lot of people are going to question why it is that so many people dislike
their racist views. And the ones that stick through it are going to _know_
that they hold pretty extreme views relative to the rest of society.

In contrast, the existing social media platforms have a way of making it feel
like you're right, and a lot of people are supporting you (doesn't matter
whether it's 1% of society, or 99%). Inside your filter bubble, you're not an
extremist, and you don't have to encounter very many anti-racists on your
search for like-minded racists. When you do, you've got your fellow racist
keyboard warriors backing you, and some people even enjoy getting into these
arguments.

I think the system you're proposing works well for hobbies and interests like
tech or sports. If people who play football aren't aware of what's going on in
the world of soccer, it doesn't really matter a great deal. But society - at
least a democratic society that depends on informed voters - is worse off if a
large number of people get together and encourage each other to think that
Hillary Clinton is running a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza store
in Washington.

tl;dr - because it encourages political polarization, which is bad for
democracy

------
crazygringo
This article describes a mix of _normal_ memory function combined with what
appears to be a mix of anxiety, fatigue, internet addiction, and possibly
slight depression.

First of all, all this stuff of "do you remember" is how the brain is
_supposed_ to work. Our brain stays efficient by forgetting information that
is no longer relevant. Who cares what you had for lunch last week? Forgetting
that is a feature, not a bug.

As for the rest, the "advice" is fairly random and vaguely insulting ("start
to fucking think", "read old books", "understand that things die", "wake up
entirely").

My advice would be simpler and more direct.

If you have a problem with internet addiction, treat that directly. There are
many sources out there to guide you.

If you have problems with fatigue and depression, see a therapist. There are
_many_ potential causes which a trained professional can help identify and
work with.

And if your main problem is anxiety, then mindfulness meditation has been
shown to help in many cases -- lots of good books on this. There are many
other cases where mindfulness is not going to be enough, and therapy will be
required.

~~~
Isomorpheus
This would seem to be the hyper-individualist response.

Our environment/context influences our behavior. Saying, "well, technically
any given person could ignore their environment/context and act however is
optimal!" isn't very helpful.

This article is acknowledging the environmental/systemic/contextual reality

~~~
crazygringo
Did you read the same article I did?

All the advice in the article is about what you can do as an individual, for
yourself. And I'm critiquing that advice as essentially sophomoric.

I don't know what you're inventing "hyper-individualist" out of, and the
article doesn't give _any_ advice on any "environmental/systemic/contextual
reality".

~~~
wallacoloo
“hyper-indivisualist” (atomization) surely refers to this part of the article:

> The project of atomization is the great illusory emancipatory freedom
> layered over an ever-constraining normality, atomization allows only for
> greater normality to be imposed on an individual level, away from families,
> groups and communes which will potentially have a sturdy and stable enough
> leader to disrupt the process of modernity.

Noe that I think about it, I seem to agree with you: it does seem suspect that
the solutions to problems induced by atomization would not involve
collaboration.

------
ativzzz
> Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s, it really
> alters your psyche to realise how different things were just 100 or so years
> ago.

It's funny the author mentions this, because when I read old books I have the
opposite reaction: I realize how similar life is and how little things have
changed. We have new technologies and better infrastructure, but people's
behaviors, thought patterns (particularly the negative ones, we just have
names for a lot of them now), and ultimately the meat that makes us human has
not changed one bit.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
I have a way of thinking about this that I developed in connection with
travelling but also applies (for me) to reading older works.

Consider two biologists. One is a molecular biologist and when they look at
the living world, they are amazed by how almost everything is the same.
Molecules, cell structures, chemical reactions ... almost all (visible) living
things are incredibly similar. Now consider our other biologist, this one a
zoologist. They look at the bodies and lives and eating habits and
reproductive behaviors of whales and ants and eagles and snakes and are amazed
at the vast diversity and range the living world presents.

So who's right, the molecular biologist or the zoologist? Is (almost) all life
fundamentally the same, or is it incredibly diverse and different?

The answer, obviously, is that neither of them are right. They each are
looking at the same phenomena in different ways.

When you travel, or when you read and old book, you will notice that in
general, people wake up, eat some food, start the business of the day, eat
some more food, socialize a little or a lot with others, take in a little (or
a lot) of culture, sleep. They have children. They live in homes. They
(mostly) wear clothes. This is the "molecular biology" view of other
lands/times.

If you start focusing in on precisely what they eat, how they move from one
place to another, details of their clothes, the nature and duration of
friendships, the types of activities they do, the role of gender and age and
beliefs and climate and soil ... you start to see enormous variation across
space and time. This is the "zoologist" view.

People are all remarkably similar _and_ all remarkably different. That's true
whether you look around the world, or back in time.

And then of course, there's the French distillation of all this: plus ça
change, plus c'est la même chose ("the more things change, the more they stay
the same").

~~~
ativzzz
Nice way of thinking about things, though

> The answer, obviously, is that neither of them are right

I'd say both of them are right, they're just looking at the phenomena at
different levels of abstractions. That's what makes our lives so complex.

------
JohnStrangeII
Although I don't want to say that this post is not insightful at all, I'm
always a bit wary of people who place themselves above everyone else and think
they know so much better. One thing the author doesn't explain, for instance,
is why getting your little dopamin kicks from time to time is so bad. The post
generalizes from the extreme cases.

For example, I buy too many VST audio plugins, stuff that I don't really need
as a hobby musician. I know that I don't really need them, but from time to
time when they are on sale, I like to buy another one just for fun, for the
immediate satisfaction of trying it out. I can easily afford this, it's just a
part of spending my modest discretionary salary (most of which I save). The
habit gives me a nice feeling. What's wrong with that?

Maybe the author needs to take it a bit more easy?

~~~
tenebrisalietum
VSTs are a tool you can use for creation. I see what you're doing as exploring
and trying to find new sounds.

I think this is different than what the article speaks about.

From the article:

> Now, defining successful social interactions used to be difficult, but the
> sphere of social interaction has since been immanentized onto the metric of
> likes, retweets, hearts etc, wherein a greater number of positive likes
> equates to a more successful social interaction

I just don't see exploring sounds as equivalent to the above.

I mean are you trying to get likes, retweets, etc. with your VSTs? Not in the
same manner - sure you will be making a audio work that you hope will be
appreciated but it's nowhere near the same as unconsciously regurgitating some
text macro image from a political think tank group or radio station.

------
leto_ii
The body of the article is too verbose for my taste.

However, I found the advice section at the end valuable and actionable;
especially the following:

> Continually check your thoughts, actions, purchases and posts. Do I actually
> like this? Do I actually believe this? What do I actually think?

> Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s

> Go outside, seriously go outside. Look around, it’s great out there.

Also, of course, everything about reducing smartphone/screen exposure.

~~~
malwarebytess
That's because this blogger is clearly inspired by the dark enlightenment.[0]
They promote and use obscurantism in writing. Partially out of elitism, but
primarily to veil the fascist (and often racist) motivations underneath. A
recent post is literally "the myth of progress" [1] which is _the_ central
tenet of the Dark Enlightenment.

edit: How appropriate. The very first post quotes Deleuze who was perhaps not
intentionally writing in this way, but is strongly associated with the
tradition. Out of curiosity did some additional digging and found that indeed
this blog is what I believe it to be:
[https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398](https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment)

[1] [https://www.meta-nomad.net/the-myth-of-progress/](https://www.meta-
nomad.net/the-myth-of-progress/)

~~~
ceres
Well if he was trying to be obscure, he did a really poor job of it. It didn't
take that many paragraphs before he laid out his political and social ideology
on the reader. I really thought I was going to learn how modern technology
engenders my brain-fog and how to prevent that. I've been had, I guess.

------
giantDinosaur
The saddest thing, personally, is I agree, made resolution to consume less
media, was going to commit to some fairly radical life changes (that I wanted
to try, knowing full well there is a reasonably high chance of failure) - but
then the pandemic hit. Possibilities have gone, jobs are harder to change,
staying inside glued to screens has become even easier to justify. Alas.

~~~
kace91
I've had the opposite effect. Being isolated at home, I had decreased needs of
quickly consumable media (no commutes), a decreased need to keep up with hot
topics due to less small talk with friends, and more free time.

This has allowed me to engage in more activities that require deep
concentration, like reading, learning piano, or studying foreign languages
(hobbies that I had put on hold for years). I feel way sharper these days
mentally speaking, and for the first time in a few years I'm thinking about my
life long term (am I ok at my job? what comes after? I am ok with my current
social circle or should I change things?, etc).

------
hi5eyes
“ The Best Minds of My Generation Are Thinking About How To Make People Click
Ads”

~~~
balladeer
What metrics decides the best minds and who designed those metrics? They may
not be the best minds. In fact if they were maybe they would not be doing it
in the first place.

~~~
giantDinosaur
Even if true, I'm sure the 'best minds' historically were often occupied by,
say, justifying the existence of a God over exclusively dedicating their
immense talents to fundamental scientific theory. We can excuse it, in some
cases, I suppose.

------
billme
While I would be the first to agree the world increasingly makes it easier to
go on “auto-pilot” - this largely is by choice for the average person and I
would argue has been around as long as written history.

Being critical of people for doing this will not help, nor will assuming the
average person becoming more engaged will align with the outcome you would
think would be reasonable; for example, the world working together to insure a
positive future for Earth and beyond.

I don’t know what the answer is.

~~~
leto_ii
> this largely is by choice for the average person

I would disagree. While indeed we're all in a sense free to choose, your
environment can actually make certain choices a lot easier than others. We're
indeed free to not have a smartphone, social media etc. but since there's now
a social expectation to have those things, opting out may lead to social
isolation. In turn, since you're almost compelled to opt in, you will be
exposed to those things, which are designed to be addictive => there's a risk
you will become addicted.

> I would argue been around as long as written history

Here I really have to disagree. For most of written history the vast majority
of people spent a lot of their time outside, doing mostly manual work. Their
equivalent of social media and news feeds were tales told by the elders and
various community social events or ceremonies. No auto-pilot there, as far as
I can see.

------
albertTJames
Phony bulshit. Younger generation are much more aware, generally savy, And
actively engaged than mine was 20years ago. Internet has not lobotomized us,
it has changed the scale and speed at wich the narrative change, and it has
levelled the field of knowledge in many direct and indirect ways.

~~~
ntsplnkv2
What evidence is there of this?

Has the youth vote made any difference in the electorate? No.

More of the "youth" are spending time on fortnite and instagram than educating
themselves on the internet.

~~~
albertTJames
think again [https://www.statista.com/statistics/189582/age-of-us-
video-g...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/189582/age-of-us-video-game-
players-since-2010/)

~~~
ntsplnkv2
The source doesn't explain how the data is acquired and really doesn't make
any argument, it seems like astroturfing. Not spending money on garbage
statistics, sorry.

Also what does gaming have to do with any of this? People who are older play
sports too - so what?

------
op03
Platforms need to Turn off/hide/delay/limit the Like counts. Including HN.

Just like we learnt the hard way about the conseqences of too much sugar, fat,
nicotine, alcohol etc etc we now understand (and it took too long) what all
damage a half baked reward mechanism does to society.

~~~
jansan
+1

------
mark_l_watson
Welcome to the surveillance and attention economies, the “modernity” that the
author describes without naming.

The article, near the end, has some solid advice: spend more time walking
(preferably in nature) and try to use your phone less.

The large tech companies’ business depends on collecting data on every aspect
of our lives, and at scale and targeted/individualized to each person, seeks
to control our actions since the easiest way to predict a consumer’s actions
is to actually influence them.

Companies like Google and Facebook may act as if collecting all data on people
is inevitable, but it may not be, if enough of us just say “no” and push back
as much as we can and still thrive in modern times.

~~~
JackFr
Conspicuously absent from the article is the bad guy. There is no evil villain
scheming to destroy our attention spans. The evil villain is us.

------
elcomet
I find it very hard to not look at my phone every 5 min (to check HN, emails,
or anything). I wish I didn't, and I feel quite like the author (at the
beginning of its article): lack of concentration, mentally tired..

Do people have any advice to help ?

~~~
Strom
Replacing an addiction with a void won't work. So instead of focusing on _"
how do I stop doing this?"_ focus on finding a different activity. If it's
something you're truly interested in, then you'll spend your time doing that
and you won't have time or a desire to check your phone.

In other words, you're only checking your phone because that is more
interesting than whatever else you were doing at that moment. So the key is to
replace that boring activity with a more interesting one.

~~~
limomium
I disagree - that just leads to learning to distract oneself. The most
effective method in my experience is to do nothing instead of the thing you
want to stop doing. Literally, stop the thing you're doing, do not transition
into doing anything else, and then do nothing. For a good while. Give it an
hour or two.

This is based on the theory that the REASON you keep checking your phone, HN,
etc. is that you are compulsively anxious about "missing out" on information,
so your brain seeks it at every opportunity, and the Internet and its services
have an unending supply. The antidote is to PROVE to yourself that the
compulsion is illusory, and nothing bad happens if you resist it.

Over time, you can extend the time between these checks longer and longer, and
begin to notice that it's OK to miss even MOST online content, really only
occasionally and with INTENT stop to consume the stuff you ACTUALLY care
about. Unfriend Facebook contacts that have nothing real to say. Unsubscribe
from everything that doesn't truly interest you. Set your phone on 'Do Not
Disturb' outside business hours.

YOU decide what content and when you want to consume. Never browse feeds nor
recommendation engines. They are intentionally tuned to be as addictive as
possible, to keep you hooked, to serve you more ads.

~~~
otabdeveloper4
One of these days we (the human race) will internalize the truth that
information exists as a physical thing and is the third complement to matter
and energy.

The idea that you shouldn't be binging on low-quality food 24/7 is a no-
brainer to us. One day we'll figure out that hygiene and nutrition rules apply
to information too.

------
dreen
Step 1: get rid of your smartphone. You probably spend a lot of time in front
of a computer anyway, so you don't really need it. Trust me, it's good.

~~~
balfirevic
No need to trust you, I’ve checked and I’m better off with smartphone. Most
people probably are.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
Which metrics did you use?

(i'm cell/mobile phone free since ... forever, but spend all day in front of
networked computer screens for decades)

~~~
balfirevic
Personal satisfaction (I missed Whatsapp, maps, Uber, ability to check email
and read when not at the computer).

------
jonnypotty
The truth is probably that no one should use Facebook or Instagram in the same
way that people shouldn't smoke or drink too much. Mental health ya know.

~~~
asiachick
Or maybe just use them responsibly?

I have ~900 "friends" but I only follow somewhere between 20-30 people. I've
stopped following anyone who isn't actually close. I've also stopped following
anyone who posts too much (except my sister) or posts a lot of political
stuff. I've also hit the "don't show this person for 30 days" on people who
are ranting with lots of posts about the topic of the moment, whatever it is".
My feed is just a few close friends and family and pretty much all of it nice.
It's also not that busy, a few posts a day. I can keep up with 1 view day. I
have notifications off except for the Messenger app.

Instagram is similar. I only follow about 8 people and none of them post too
often. I unfollowed friends that post too much and I have notifications off. I
check it 2-4 times a month at most.

~~~
bluntfang
>Or maybe just use them responsibly?

This isn't a personal responsibility thing. Personal responsibility goes out
the window when companies are spending hundreds of millions on research and
design to keep you "engaged" (see addicted).

~~~
mmerlin
Parallels with Opioid companies

Excessive use of social media may have a similar impact as using opioids...

[https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-cocaine-opioids-how-
ad...](https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-cocaine-opioids-how-addictive-is-
the-social-network)

------
ilaksh
The phone delivers important news which must be checked at least once a day,
and also is a core mechanism of socializing. I think you can't just randomly
ignore it for arbitrary amounts of time.

What you can do is cut back on your digital socializing. Which means
interacting with fewer people or less often. For me that comes naturally, but
on days where I have even two people chatting with me routinely, it easily
starts to eat into my attention for work and other things.

The trick is to avoid Facebook entirely, not have friends, and not have any
followers on Twitter that are not bots.

~~~
fullshark
> The phone delivers important news which must be checked at least once a day

I'm beginning to think the news is really not that important. Even in the
midst of a global pandemic when presumably the news would be crucial to
explain how to keep you and your family safe it's not clear it helped given
the noise level of the information published. At the crucial early stages,
being informed (masks don't help! don't buy them:
[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-
don...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-dont-have-to-
wear-facemasks-because-of-coronavirus-2020-01-30)) would have hurt you (whoops
our bad: [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-
si...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-
cloth-face-coverings.html)). Being largely uninformed and just getting the
gist of information might have been fine.

When I go on vacation and stop checking the news for a week, i'm amazed at the
volume of information I missed, how much I enjoyed not thinking about said
information, and how unimportant it truly was in the grand scheme of my life.

~~~
mrfusion
The news is an entertainment product.

------
paulorlando
Good recommendations. I started doing this slowly over the past few years
(watching almost no video, leaving phone behind while going out etc). Last
week I went off Twitter, which was my main source of news. In a short time
that's had a big impact on how distracted I feel.

Also agreed on reading old books. Most new books (at least mass marketed ones)
are mediocre. They may have a financial ROI but not a mental one. Reading
books that have been around for a while means you're probably seeing the best.
Same goes for old movies.

~~~
legulere
Old Books being better than new ones sounds just like survivorship bias.

~~~
base698
Lindy effect:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect)

------
swayvil
>...We quite literally get anxiety attacks when we’ve misplaced our phones...

>...phantom-vibration syndrome...

Holy shit, this is me!

------
neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200606100522/https://www.meta-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200606100522/https://www.meta-
nomad.net/avoiding-the-global-lobotomy/)

------
IfOnlyYouKnew
I have no idea what this article is actually arguing for. But the author also
has essays on “accelerationism”, making me somewhat suspicious.

~~~
malwarebytess
Don't need to be suspicious. He's definitely inspired by nick land et al. the
current reigning intellectual fascist and king accelerationist.

[https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398](https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398)

And if you need any further proof of where this guy's at politically:
[https://i.imgur.com/LvaK31Z.png](https://i.imgur.com/LvaK31Z.png) . 1 is
essentially an antisemitic dogwhistle meme and 2 is sort of self explanatory.

~~~
lasagnaphil
The tweets you've posted are very obviously irony; he's basically mocking one
of the tropes related to accelerationism, which is the misconception that all
accelerationists are NRx/alt-right white suprematists. The reality is a bit
more complicated than that, there is both a left-wing and a right-wing version
of it (if you want a wikipedia article on it here you go:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism)).
From glancing some of the articles from the author, he's more into the former
camp than the latter, and really has no interest in NRx politics. You can
criticize all you want about accelerationism itself though - but now that's
where you're going knee-deep into the territory of philosophy, and where you
really need to fight against Land's vicious assaults on Western modernism.

Nick Land is quite a controversial figure, but you have to understand that he
was the leader of one of the strangest leftist post-modern philosopher groups
called the CCRU, which was strongly influenced by Deleuze & Guattari's works
along with futurism, sci-fi, cyberpunk, etc. . But he also did too many drugs
along the away and broke himself - and after that breakdown is when he kinda
changed 180 degrees and went full on with the neo-reactionary movement. He
even said that he doesn't want to associate himself with his past CCRU works
anymore. (You can read more about him in
[http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-
experiment-i...](http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-
im-inhumanismus.)) Clearly the author is interested in the former half of
Land's works, seeing that he is running online lectures about the philosophy
from the CCRU and not the NRx.

------
jjcc
I'm a little surprised the author recommended "The Shallow" but didn't mention
"Deep Work" by Cal Newport.

------
darepublic
I guess I have been spared by never garnering many likes, hence I could not
develop the social media addiction

------
twic
Who's James Mason?

~~~
jamiecollinson
I can only assume this is a #MeToo reference as he was the male lead in Lolita
- c.f. [https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/16/times-
finally-u...](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/16/times-finally-up-
for-hollywoods-lolita-complex)

------
amiga_500
Enjoyed this article from the same blog, about dropping out:

[https://www.meta-nomad.net/category/collapse/](https://www.meta-
nomad.net/category/collapse/)

------
mrfusion
I barely had the attention span to read this :-(

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7leafer
The best article on HN in ages.

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chrismmay
It's quite ironic that this article is being up-voted here on Hacker News when
the author's thesis is that voting systems are toxic.

~~~
swayvil
It's like discussing space-exploration while residing within an air-filled
room.

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chrismmay
No, actually it's like discussing how space exploration will cause the
downfall of civilization from inside a spaceship bound for the moon.

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hyko
Avoid the global lobotomy, “please support me on Patreon”.

