I could not find a single thing that benefited me from looking at Reddit every day, I could not take a single insight from all the news and from the discussion that I read. Of course, what came naturally afterwards was to prohibit all interaction with Reddit.
Instead of visiting Reddit I shifted my focus and started reading books that I had currently on hold, and without needing to say, I have much more to say about these books than to lurking the web aimlessly.
I want to hold on a little bit on using it this question for other things (like for lesswrong.com) but I know that regardless I will do it.
I tend to get “nothing” from Reddit in the sense that you described. In other words, I can’t distill any insight from what I’ve been reading. However, I think this is a more general thing than something that just happens on Reddit or time wasting websites.
Sometimes I’ll study something for an hour or two and still can’t distill my learning into a few sentences. I think the human brain is good at retrieving knowledge upon inquiry rather than generating it on demand. Generating what we learned is a much harder thing to do for any type of task.
I agree, but I think that the answer to the immediate inquiry question is clearer if I shift my time to books or specific blogs instead of a subreddit where I may be liable to read about mindless conversations (sometimes even engage!).
About on-demand inquiries, this is somewhat off-topic, but it relates to how much can we retrieve after learning, or how many times we plateau. I’ve found that embedding Anki in my learning, I can’t just forget about immediate retrievals (go on learning while changing the subject) and the Anki questions will take care of that stuff!
I don’t read Reddit, but I have a similar experience with Hacker News. While I am reading it, it seems interesting, but when I afterwards try to remember anything useful, I can’t.
My explanation is that I spend my time reading, but I don’t spend my time processing what I have just read, because I am immediately moving to the next topic. Passivity is bad for remembering. (Compare with how spaced repetition learning software requires you to guess the correct answer, before telling you. Or how the mere act of note-taking improves remembering, even if you don’t read your notes afterwards.) But again, reading without actively working with the topic seems to be the default approach when reading sites such as Reddit that throw a lot of content at you. With active engagement, my procrastination sessions wouldn’t take an hour or two, but the entire day.
Seems like the rule is that you can only meaningfully process a limited amount of topics during a day. Reading a book seems like about the right amount. Also, the things in the book are related to each other, it is not a random mix of unrelated facts. (Related things are easier to remember than unrelated ones. Even if you make up a silly relation between them; a few mnemonic techniques are based on that.)
You are very on point with passivity being bad for remembering, completely agree.
Seems like the rule is that you can only meaningfully process a limited amount of topics during a day.
I think I’m starting to disagree with this. (weird phrasing but I’ll explain).
For the longest time I used to think that I had at most only a few hours to learn/study in a day. But what happened was that I pretty much overloaded my working memory with a particular subject and then tried to keep building on that, it reached a point where I just could not keep up (maybe four hours straight on a subject); when I started changing subjects (and using much more of Anki which plays the biggest role here) I found out that I could keep going on learning and dedicate another four hours to another subject, while knowing that Anki takes care that I don’t forget anything of both subjects.
I think, more or less, the same idea applies here, as you remark:
Twitter: One tweet, a few comments and then I drop it all from my memory. Go on to the next tweet.
Reddit: One post, few comments and to the next post.
What I’m trying to say is that you can read a book, drop it and then go on to the next and the same applies for learning. You don’t have to read just one book, you don’t have to study only one subject in a day.
I agree, reading a book… and then reading a book on a different topic when you already had too much of the former… seems like a good approach.
Actually, the school seems to be designed this way, of course only if you assume that 45 minutes is the optimal time to spend with one subject. (Which is probably wrong, and also depends on age, subject, etc. But the idea of “focus on X for nontrivial time, then focus on Y” is there.)
Somewhat surprised the answer for reddit was nothing. It didn’t provide you with jokes or an opportunity to chill reading moderately interesting comments?
(Which is not to say that those things are worth it, just surprised that they weren’t on the list to be evaluated)
Reddit, of course, is an example; the same can be asked of Facebook, Twitter, a group of friends and of course Lesswrong.com.
But in the case of Reddit, I usually frequent subreddits like /r/slaterstarcodex, /r/machinelearning, maybe communities like /r/Rust, and I don’t dare go anywhere near the frontpage or /r/popular, it’s like someone putting a magazine on my face while I’m walking on the street. (I’m trying to be more focused on what I consume around the internet, so I don’t go anywhere near feeds, such as Youtube index or things like that; an extension like Distract Free Youtube for Chrome work great here).
Indeed I find value on Reddit but only on restricted-and-very-focused discussions which I’m already searching for, like entering /r/SeanCarroll to see what people are saying about a certain podcast episode; About funny comments (usually my friends or family would send me memes and I cannot avoid those!) I think I may be better considering a stand-up of Dave Chapelle or something to the like!
Or, there’s always another option which is that I will end up going back, but at least I can say that I did the test!
I think that all makes sense. My response was prompted by some kind of wariness around “if one only acknowledges ‘virtuous sounding’ things that reddit/facebook/etc has provided you, you may be setting yourself up to be at war with yourself. If you systematically remove things that are ‘merely’ mindless fun, you may find yourself suddenly depressed or unmotivated without understanding why.”
When I ask “what has Facebook provided me last week”, several answers immediately came to mind which weren’t, like, super-obviously imporant, or better than whatever I’d have gotten without facebook, but it included amusement, and at least slight connection to friends I don’t normally see.
I think it’s quite good to notice things like “the stuff facebook/reddit/etc provides isn’t actually very good compared to what else I could be getting.” But if you answer is “literally zero” I think you’re more likely to be rounding things off to “what can I legibly understand as good” which is a very different question than “what has X provided me with?”
Yes, your comment makes me thing, maybe the post should be named “Beware of demands of goodness” à la Scott. But I have tried this before (not systematized like it’s suggesting here, but rather in a nonchalant way) and I have found that the thing which I exchange for say Reddit is usually better by general standards. I’ve done this with Facebook, maybe TV shows, etc...
The good thing (to be mindful) is to catch us if we’re going adrift. Like, if I can tell I’m missing something, then the thing I cut is probably it.
Last week I had a rather random thought come immediately at my mind. It was about the things I use and frequent daily. It was something like this:
“What has reddit.com provided you this week?”
I could not find a single thing that benefited me from looking at Reddit every day, I could not take a single insight from all the news and from the discussion that I read. Of course, what came naturally afterwards was to prohibit all interaction with Reddit.
Instead of visiting Reddit I shifted my focus and started reading books that I had currently on hold, and without needing to say, I have much more to say about these books than to lurking the web aimlessly.
I want to hold on a little bit on using it this question for other things (like for lesswrong.com) but I know that regardless I will do it.
“So what has x provided you this week?”
I tend to get “nothing” from Reddit in the sense that you described. In other words, I can’t distill any insight from what I’ve been reading. However, I think this is a more general thing than something that just happens on Reddit or time wasting websites.
Sometimes I’ll study something for an hour or two and still can’t distill my learning into a few sentences. I think the human brain is good at retrieving knowledge upon inquiry rather than generating it on demand. Generating what we learned is a much harder thing to do for any type of task.
I agree, but I think that the answer to the immediate inquiry question is clearer if I shift my time to books or specific blogs instead of a subreddit where I may be liable to read about mindless conversations (sometimes even engage!).
About on-demand inquiries, this is somewhat off-topic, but it relates to how much can we retrieve after learning, or how many times we plateau. I’ve found that embedding Anki in my learning, I can’t just forget about immediate retrievals (go on learning while changing the subject) and the Anki questions will take care of that stuff!
I don’t read Reddit, but I have a similar experience with Hacker News. While I am reading it, it seems interesting, but when I afterwards try to remember anything useful, I can’t.
My explanation is that I spend my time reading, but I don’t spend my time processing what I have just read, because I am immediately moving to the next topic. Passivity is bad for remembering. (Compare with how spaced repetition learning software requires you to guess the correct answer, before telling you. Or how the mere act of note-taking improves remembering, even if you don’t read your notes afterwards.) But again, reading without actively working with the topic seems to be the default approach when reading sites such as Reddit that throw a lot of content at you. With active engagement, my procrastination sessions wouldn’t take an hour or two, but the entire day.
Seems like the rule is that you can only meaningfully process a limited amount of topics during a day. Reading a book seems like about the right amount. Also, the things in the book are related to each other, it is not a random mix of unrelated facts. (Related things are easier to remember than unrelated ones. Even if you make up a silly relation between them; a few mnemonic techniques are based on that.)
You are very on point with passivity being bad for remembering, completely agree.
I think I’m starting to disagree with this. (weird phrasing but I’ll explain).
For the longest time I used to think that I had at most only a few hours to learn/study in a day. But what happened was that I pretty much overloaded my working memory with a particular subject and then tried to keep building on that, it reached a point where I just could not keep up (maybe four hours straight on a subject); when I started changing subjects (and using much more of Anki which plays the biggest role here) I found out that I could keep going on learning and dedicate another four hours to another subject, while knowing that Anki takes care that I don’t forget anything of both subjects.
I think, more or less, the same idea applies here, as you remark:
Twitter: One tweet, a few comments and then I drop it all from my memory. Go on to the next tweet.
Reddit: One post, few comments and to the next post.
What I’m trying to say is that you can read a book, drop it and then go on to the next and the same applies for learning. You don’t have to read just one book, you don’t have to study only one subject in a day.
I agree, reading a book… and then reading a book on a different topic when you already had too much of the former… seems like a good approach.
Actually, the school seems to be designed this way, of course only if you assume that 45 minutes is the optimal time to spend with one subject. (Which is probably wrong, and also depends on age, subject, etc. But the idea of “focus on X for nontrivial time, then focus on Y” is there.)
Somewhat surprised the answer for reddit was nothing. It didn’t provide you with jokes or an opportunity to chill reading moderately interesting comments?
(Which is not to say that those things are worth it, just surprised that they weren’t on the list to be evaluated)
Reddit, of course, is an example; the same can be asked of Facebook, Twitter, a group of friends and of course Lesswrong.com.
But in the case of Reddit, I usually frequent subreddits like /r/slaterstarcodex, /r/machinelearning, maybe communities like /r/Rust, and I don’t dare go anywhere near the frontpage or /r/popular, it’s like someone putting a magazine on my face while I’m walking on the street. (I’m trying to be more focused on what I consume around the internet, so I don’t go anywhere near feeds, such as Youtube index or things like that; an extension like Distract Free Youtube for Chrome work great here).
Indeed I find value on Reddit but only on restricted-and-very-focused discussions which I’m already searching for, like entering /r/SeanCarroll to see what people are saying about a certain podcast episode; About funny comments (usually my friends or family would send me memes and I cannot avoid those!) I think I may be better considering a stand-up of Dave Chapelle or something to the like!
Or, there’s always another option which is that I will end up going back, but at least I can say that I did the test!
I think that all makes sense. My response was prompted by some kind of wariness around “if one only acknowledges ‘virtuous sounding’ things that reddit/facebook/etc has provided you, you may be setting yourself up to be at war with yourself. If you systematically remove things that are ‘merely’ mindless fun, you may find yourself suddenly depressed or unmotivated without understanding why.”
When I ask “what has Facebook provided me last week”, several answers immediately came to mind which weren’t, like, super-obviously imporant, or better than whatever I’d have gotten without facebook, but it included amusement, and at least slight connection to friends I don’t normally see.
I think it’s quite good to notice things like “the stuff facebook/reddit/etc provides isn’t actually very good compared to what else I could be getting.” But if you answer is “literally zero” I think you’re more likely to be rounding things off to “what can I legibly understand as good” which is a very different question than “what has X provided me with?”
Yes, your comment makes me thing, maybe the post should be named “Beware of demands of goodness” à la Scott. But I have tried this before (not systematized like it’s suggesting here, but rather in a nonchalant way) and I have found that the thing which I exchange for say Reddit is usually better by general standards. I’ve done this with Facebook, maybe TV shows, etc...
The good thing (to be mindful) is to catch us if we’re going adrift. Like, if I can tell I’m missing something, then the thing I cut is probably it.