Hyper Social Not Anti Social

This seems right to me:
“In post-industrial environments where foods are abundant and readily available, our cravings for fat and sugar sculpted by distant evolutionary pressures can easily go into insatiable overdrive and lead to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease (…) the pro-social needs and rewards [of smartphone use as a means to connect] can similarly be hijacked to produce a manic theatre of hyper-social monitoring,”

#mobile

Comments (Archived):

  1. cavepainting

    Wanting to be “social” virtually ≠ Wanting to be social in the real world. There are some common elements, but the former takes a) projection, b) the need for validation & appreciation, c) wanting or being jealous of what others have, and d) trolling and abuse to a whole new level.It truly is a cop-out to call smart phones and social media hyper-social and as a good thing that is being overdone. It is more like amplifying the worst instincts of human nature (pride, posturing, jealousy, sloth, anger, etc.) without the person even being aware of what is happening. In the physical world, there are natural limits to this behavior and people are less likely to wallow in their bubbles to the same extent. In the virtual world, there are few limits, no accountability, and incredible suffering, all of which is self inflicted.PS: I am talking about the average Joe and Jill. Of course, there are people with very high or no usage but with deep awareness and less psychological drama.

  2. Pointsandfigures

    Yup. Read something the other day that said you need to make an effort to have 7-8 face to face physical conversations per day. Good for your mental health.

    1. jason wright

      with 7-8 *different* people per day?

      1. Pointsandfigures

        You can do it. If you go to the grocery store and talk to the person at the check out counter, that’s an interaction.

        1. jason wright

          perhaps you haven’t been to my grocery store 🙂

          1. Pointsandfigures

            If they keep raising minimum wage, there won’t be a person at the checkout counter, and robots will stock the shelves.

          2. awaldstein

            disagree completely. a non living wage is no wage at all. that is where you start, the rest follows.

          3. LE

            I agree. Not only that but this also relates to pay in a similar way. I remember as a kid my Dad telling me that when things got tough in business if a person wasn’t highly paid he would keep them around ‘because you can always find something for them to do’. But the ones who made larger amounts? You got rid of them. The value was only there when the tide was rising. This applies to small business mostly larger corporations are a different animal. But in general higher cost then higher expectation and first out the door (subject to obvious exceptions).Look at Ezpass. The technology was a much easier sell given how much unionized toll takers made for what they did.One other thing. Low paying jobs is the opposite of ‘golden handcuffs’. Low pay is also a motivator to attempt to get a better paying job. Why is it a good thing for people to not aspire to make more money by moving out of a low paying job?

      2. awaldstein

        I see this as a no brainer in urban life.A few meetings. Shopping for food or wine. Picking up packages from the doorman. Sitting on a bench. Working out at the gym. Skype calls.Happens every day unless i purposefully decide to hide out.

        1. PhilipSugar

          I think it’s exponentially higher in country life. Maybe it’s my name, looks (not good looks), demeanor, dress, or something, but ask people are with me. People talk to me and tell me anything and everything.

          1. awaldstein

            Bottom line is that if you are open to and add to interactions with people, they will happen unless you are locked in the cellar.We all have things we do daily that are important to me–to the gym, to the wine store, to connect and chat with the owner of your local wine bar at the end of the day, green markets, not to mention work.Truth is that the Amazon and deliveries has reduced the number of drug store, bodegga, hardware, Fed ex like stops but has left the freedom to dig deeper into the others.I believe strongly in the power of the human touch.

          2. PhilipSugar

            Agree. But I get some crazy stuff. I was with my wife’s Aunt this week. I said hi to a waiter I barely know. He bent down and said: “I am having an affair, she is not that pretty but my wife did and I’m getting back at her” I said you should really look into counseling. My wife’s Aunt just looked at me and asked what did he say your face didn’t even change, but you told him he should get counseling? I said I get it all of the time.

          3. awaldstein

            crazy stuff. I want to hang around with you!

          4. PhilipSugar

            Maybe I hang out with the wrong people. But it is all walks. I had somebody who runs a huge arena tell me what he wanted to do to Justin Timberlake’s promoter after he used him to get a better deal. I said you should really keep those thoughts to yourself, and it is not worth it, I know you don’t mean that.

          5. Salt Shaker

            Dr. Phil

          6. Salt Shaker

            Amazon is amazing! Needed replacement pads for my Bose headphones (padding falling apart). Didn’t know they even offered that. Called Bose and ordered a pair for $35. 7-10 day delivery. Then looked at reviews post-order on Bose site and said they’re “awfully made. Cheap crap.” Canceled order and went on Amazon. Found a company that does same for $18 (half price) w/ amazing reviews. Ordered on Sat got here 1-day later (on a Sunday). Amazon app showed me where delivery guy was in his route cause we have no doorman on Sunday. Met the guy downstairs. Ordered on Sat, delivered on Sunday. Bose, 7-10 day delivery, 2X cost. For so, so many categories retail, and even manufacturers’ DTC, can’t possibly compete w/ Amazon’s convenience, price and service.

          7. awaldstein

            yup–life changing. city changing. culture changing.why on earth would a prime customer who shops at whole foods not switch to their credit card guaranteeing 5% off all amazon/WF purchasers but also massive special deals in store? there is no reason.i would very much like to see them embrace environmental change though.for example, little allbirds by inventing a shipping box that is the same as the product box saves equal to all the trees in Central Park every year.just imagine what amazon could do with paper, plastic on and on.

          8. JLM

            .Have had the same experience many times.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          9. LE

            My guess? This is a test for doing the same even when the package is not yours.So you have a Volvo (or another car that can do that). You allow Amazon to deliver to your trunk and then you allow someone who is the customer to retrieve from the same trunk. Corner cases will happen but no reason in theory it shouldn’t work. The trunk owner gets something for allowing his trunk to be used. Amazon provides some kind of video camera setup to take care of the security issues.So you earn money from your empty trunk.For that matter what is to prevent Amazon from simply parking a vehicle on a city street with packages for a day but not overnight? Would depend on the locality of course but given how companies with legal muscle blow by traditional barriers not a non-starter (and safer than house access to a stranger). So amazon locker on a street basically.I was thinking that Amazon locker (say at Whole Foods) will eventually be used outbound. So if you need to ship to your Aunt a gift you place it in an Amazon locker and it gets to where it has to go. Why not?

          10. PhilipSugar

            I think for a couple of reasons.People have gotten smart and started stealing Amazon Packages left at doors.Some companies have a policy no personal stuff at work (seems dumb to me, then no email or phone after work is a logical trade)No time other than tossing the package in the trunk, you don’t buy from Amazon to talk to somebody right?What makes me think is do you want to want to be a logistics company? A logical move would be for Amazon to buy USPS, other than people would freak out.Everything old is new as far as Whole Foods. I am lucky to get mail service. 90% where I live have to go to the Post office and open a box.

          11. LE

            Superbowl commercial for Amazon (take one):Play Mr. Softee music.So people expect the Mr. Softee Truck.What they get instead is an Amazon truck (like a rolling Amazon Locker). Then all the adults gather around it to get their package of the day.https://www.youtube.com/wat…One more thing. Bezos is the driver.

          12. Salt Shaker

            After freshman year of college, I drove an ice cream truck. Parked it in our family driveway and plugged in overnight so the stuff wouldn’t melt. (Lesson #1- inventory mgt.) When that month’s electric bill came my mom went nuts. Bill is high in summer anyway w/ AC running, but this was 2X usual amount. (Lessen #2 -operating expenses.) Returned the truck, along w/ my resignation, the next day.

          13. LE

            Lesson #3 – Why not negotiate with ‘mr owner man’ to pay for the electric cost?Lesson #4 – The idea is (says the truck owner) to find a new person and use them until they figure out it doesn’t pay because of the electric.Lesson #5 – What is the best day of the month to have an employee start to maximize the time until a parent figures out what is going on? (Kind of similar to credit card cutoff dates..)

          14. Salt Shaker

            Was thinking how the mob (of the crooked nose variety) could capitalize on that service. No Hudson River, chains or cement blocks. No need for Harvey Keitel of Pulp Fiction fame, either. Just hack into (don’t steal) someone’s Volvo, and have Amazon deliver the goods.

          15. PhilipSugar

            Look up Dirty Jobs Animal Rendering.

          16. PhilipSugar

            People like Etsy and Ebay do the same for people that have a skill. A tail-light for a GMC Denali costs $600. I’ve had two malfunction (don’t get me going on a three year car with 40k miles) There is a guy in MN that rebuilds them for $100, guarantees for life, I can see how he upgraded the light. Lives in a little brick house and is retired from Medtronics (I am sure that is how he learned to work on electronics)USPS 2 day out, he fixes in 24hrs sends back. How great is that. All five star reviews. Must see the USPS carrier every day, gets them in, turns them, hands them back.

          17. LE

            People talk to me and tell me anything and everything.I get the same thing and can easily draw people out. It’s just a matter of asking questions and then more questions. I am curious so when I do that it’s not bs or anything. I really want to know the answer to what I am asking.My Dad used to have a saying about people ‘eh…he will tell me anything’. He would use that to find out tips and tricks about business that others did or were doing. The secrets. People love to talk. Others don’t like to talk (me). I don’t like to talk about what I do or things that I have done. It doesn’t feel natural to me. The only person I really do this with is my wife actually. Part of the reason that I have a difficult time talking is because I am really really good at reading faces (I can pickup on micro expressions) and very sensitive to how people are receiving the message. [1] I have found that people who are good at talking are way less sensitive to cues that others give off. They are almost blind to that. An example is my ex wife. She would cold call. She was totally blind to social cues so even when people were annoyed she would just keep on going and going.An example with me could be this morning at the car dealership when I was picking up my car. The detail manager and the service manager were talking to me outside since I had a complaint about the feel of the steering wheel. They sat there and spent a great deal of time with me and were very respectful. The detail manager was probably in his 20’s. The service manage was 38 (I asked). I mentioned that I made money in high school and college waxing cars and that is how I got money to start my business. It went in one ear and out the other. I could tell that even though they liked and respected me (by body language etc.) and even though I was dressed in dungarees and tshirt (but driving a high end car) they had no interest in what I was saying. So I stopped talking. I would have been glad to tell them more. But it was a waste of time and I sensed that they were not curious and didn’t care. I mean if I was doing waxing at a high end dealership I would have loved to hear that a customer did what I did and made money that way.

    2. fredwilson

      Joanne and I walked up and down the beach yesterday afternoon and bumped into people right and left. I think we got our daily fill in less than an hour !!

    3. JLM

      .There is an argument that it is not the number of interactions, but the quality of the conversations.I learn so much from other people when discussing ideas.Recall the famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote about what people talk about.”Great minds discuss ideas;Average minds discuss events;Small minds discuss people.”High quality critical thinking requires vigorous intellectual curiosity to ferret out the best ideas.By definition, it is what we don’t know we don’t know which provides the most powerful impact on developing our own ideas.Polarization is often the result of cowardice – the fear of evaluating the intellectual basis of someone else’ ideas.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. Girish Mehta

        When you apply the framework of Eleanor Roosevelt’s statement about (a) -people, (b) – events and (c) – ideas to the social media world, it seems that much of it is about (a) and (b) ?(Non-political and Non-Crypto) Twitter is an exception that tends to be about ideas, but up to a point.

      2. LE

        Small minds discuss people.Discussing people is a sport and entertainment. Therefore it is just as valid a pass time as watching football, soccer, going to an art museum and so forth. For sure not everyone enjoys gossip and talking about people but some do and there is nothing wrong with that or anything that makes it less valid than discussing art. [1] And you can actually learn (even if what you are hearing is totally made up.) Also, like watching sports, golfing or hunting it is a way to bond with other people who also enjoy those activities.What Eleanor said sounds good but in practice it assumes that people who ‘discuss people’ have nothing else they spend their time on and what she spends here time on (even her spare time) somehow ranks her above others in a superior way. It’s simply a way to put others down and try to show superiority.[1] Art is one of those things that has somehow been anointed as superior, special and acceptable. So if you enjoy going to museums you rank above a person who enjoys going to a boat show or a gun show. If you understand boats (or guns which I don’t) that is art to you just not defined and organized as such.

        1. Girish Mehta

          There is little evidence that Eleanor Roosevelt ever said it, but the framework has been around. I don’t care much for the reference to kinds of minds, which is why I referred in my comment to the framework of ideas-events-people.Marie Curie said – Be less curious about people, and more curious about ideas. She said it differently, but similar thought.In the end, it is not about taking the words literally as much as considering that framework / idea (pun unintended).

          1. LE

            I think with sayings or quips there needs to be a blind taste test. (The thing that is never done much with art and wine as two examples). Let’s take a bunch of lesser known sayings. Not tell anyone who said them. Then let’s see how people rate them as important when the halo is not there. My guess is the results will be as expected. The halo gives way more impact to the words.

          2. Girish Mehta

            Depends. When @JLM:disqus wrote the comment initially today, he only had the first sentence that said “recall the famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote”, but he did not write the quote itself ( he edited the comment and added the words of the quote later). But I knew what he was talking about and so in my response to him I referred to the “framework of Eleanor Roosevelt”. Now I don’t believe Eleanor Roosevelt actually ever said that, but I still said that as a pointer (since JLM had not used the actual words of the quote yet). It did not matter to me that she never said it, because I was referring to the framework, not the author. Marie Curie said something similar.Here is something interesting to your point, and it took me a few years of observation to realize this. There is a gentleman in history who enjoys a reverse Halo effect — to your characterization of quotes and their authors. He is one of the “great men of history”. He could also write very well. Many quips are attributed to him on the Internet, some of which he said, and some he did not say, but both of which serve to make him sound both wise and funny. With each quote attributed to him, he becomes wiser and funnier. Fred has quoted him more than once.This person played one pivotal role in history, for which he was the right person at the right time. Now, over the years I have found that many people who quote his smart quips have not really spent the time to learn about him and are not aware of his mistakes, pettiness or a terrible thing he did. To me, this is a person who played a important role in the world, but he is definitely not a person to look up to. However, I find people are unconsciously applying the smart quotes attributed to him as a partial signal of his greatness while not making the effort to learn about him. p.s. Not talking about Mark Twain who is also widely (mis)-attributed on the Internet.

          3. PhilipSugar

            Yes among other things Winston Churchill was a racist and did not care about openly expressing it, and acting on it in a way that many people lost their lives.Yes, us Catholics who were a step down from Protestants but a way step up from Indians, Muslims, Jews and others in his mind have a thing where you openly have to say your sins to acknowledge and ask for forgiveness. Now many people find this total bull shit. And yes, who knows if your maker and you believe in that is willing to accept that, but it makes you acknowledge and express the fact.

          4. JLM

            .WC’s mother was American, from Brooklyn. He was conceived before his parents were wed, a fact his enemies taunted him with.She was the greatest influence on his life and his political career.She was a voracious sexual predator who admitted to more than 200 lovers while taking 3 husbands, the last one being 3 years younger than Winston.Lady Jennifer Churchill claimed Iroquis blood and denied both reported Catholic and Jewish heritage. Her maiden name was Jerome.WC was a man of his time and class, meaning it would not have been possible for him not to have been a racist.His upbringing was an example of the type of child abuse the English gentry visited upon their children, sending them off to boarding school at 7.He is a perfect example of greatness from cruelty. He was an incredibly prolific writer and it is easy to see the scars.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          5. PhilipSugar

            ???? It most certainly is possible for him to be a racist.Now blaming him or forgiving him….That could be a discussion.But when you starve to death 3mm people from India because frankly you just don’t care and had an alternative?? You have to own that.I get Sun Tzu. When you retreat you burn the land, poison the wells, salt the earth. When you stockpile food in Britain after the war.You have to own it.

          6. JLM

            .Go back and re-read what I wrote. I agree that he was a racist, as were his peers.The Bengali Famine was a perfect storm of Japanese victory, inexpert Brit retrograde tactics, slowness to react, shipping shortages, disease, and a problem which had been building for years.The Brits made a fateful decision to prioritize feeding their army, a false choice in the view of many.The next crop in Dec 1944 fed most of the people, but the deaths from malnutrition and disease continued.The Brits get failing grades for centuries as to feeding the Irish, the Carib Island dwellers, the Colonials, the Auzzies, and India in lean times.The Irish potato famine drove an enormous wave of immigration to the US.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          7. PhilipSugar

            I re-read. Your point is taken. Not possible for him not to be during that time or upbringing. I’d probably agree with that.

          8. Girish Mehta

            When you try to understand the lives of great people, you find mistakes..you find flaws. Its called being human, nobody is perfect. We think they are great for many reasons, but not because they are perfect. You see them fighting their own flaws, trying to learn from their mistakes. Sometimes you see an Act II – they make bad choices early in their lives but become a different person later on.When you look deeper into Churchill, you find pettiness, churlishness and meanness. Like you said – he just did not care, even when he had an alternative. He was not a great man.He wasn’t particularly smart either, and his oratory was a misfortune as it made him look like he knew what he was talking about.As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he moved Britain back to the gold standard in 1925 at the pre-war rate. Keynes tried to convince him that moving back at the pre-war rate would be suicidal, but Churchill was unable to take good advice from one of the great economic minds of his era. Keynes had pretty much spelled out to him what would happen if he did, and thats what happened. Keynes asked him why he was compelled to do such a silly thing. Later Galbraith was to write – “The 1925 return to gold standard was perhaps the most decisively damaging action involving money in modern times”.He once said of Attlee – “A modest man, with much to be modest about”. He should have turned that lens inward, but self-awareness was never his strong suit.

        2. JLM

          .Nothing is pure. We could be discussing someone’s ideas.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. LE

            Polarization is often the result of cowardice – the fear of evaluating the intellectual basis of someone else’ ideas.Exactly. People shy away from fights they are not confident about fighting. Or they shy away when they feel they shouldn’t even need to fight. Then they result to anger. Everyone does this to some extent. [1]In a sense I think this relates to what you are saying. The idea being that someone will think it is not even worthy of them to have to even address someone of lower stature and what they are saying. A subtle put down. Ie ‘who dares to challenge the king!’.[1] I have an extremely long temper except in one situation. When one of the kids acts disrespectively. When that happens I freak out. They can say anything or ask anything they want. But if they don’t observe the pecking order all hell breaks loose.

          2. PhilipSugar

            We must be brothers of a different mother. Last night after watching fireworks on the deck, I had a snack. I prepared it myself. One of my kids screamed you are eating MY fruit?! They had cut some up. Didn’t touch it.It all went in the trash and I said, no more fruit this week.

          3. LE

            One of my kids screamed you are eating MY fruit?!Both you and JLM upvoted my comments. You were in the scouts and JLM was in the military. So you understand the pecking order. Plus no doubt the way the three of us were raised. I would never ever say something like that to my parents or honestly any adult.I have done the same thing with my step son and the internet. He is playing a game. So he is disrespectful in some way (he just turned 16). So I go and pull the plug on the router. My wife says ‘I don’t want him to hate you’. I said I am not worried about that at all. Most important though is that they see that the parents are united.Very important for kids to learn how someone with power over them can either give them what they want or make life difficult for them. That said it’s amazing how some people don’t understand that very simple concept.

          4. PhilipSugar

            The two things I cannot, do not, and will not understand is everybody is a winner and everybody is equal.Hey you get good returns on your LP’s investments or bust your ass and have a successful company. Great. You get one life.You don’t??? Well you can live in a double wide trailer.Now some people feel guilty for that, but the thing is that is a high class problem.And some people feel resentful of that. But you know what??? That isn’t going to solve their problem.

      3. LE

        but the quality of the conversationsYou can say that btw because you live in a ‘world class place’. Austin TX. A WCP is a place that people want to move to from a non WCP. Those places will tend to have more ambitious and/or interesting people to have a conversation with and/or interact with. The ratio is higher. That is the key.Now people will say ‘oh you can do meetup’ or make some other helpful observation. But the truth is if you are in a target rich environment it is just different all around.I have said this before but the thing I am jealous about Fred is not money or the vacation homes that he has but who he gets to interact with business wise. That is what I am jealous of.

        1. JLM

          .Very astute observation.Since I have stopped being a CEO, I have had the great luxury of broadening my pool of “interesting” people.I like to write handwritten notes after a meeting, of which I keep copies. I was re-reading through the ones from the last 2 months – two 4-stars, 2 university presidents, 1 governor, a dozen each of CEOs and VCs, a Bishop and a Monsignor, an astronaut, a ship captain, 2 lawyers, 3 doctors, a Chinese entrepreneur, and the list goes on.I was a member of YPO which provided lots of great contacts.You are right, the common denominator in many is Austin.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. LE

            I do a version of the same (by email). I typically will follow up often with a formal note. My handwriting is not good so there is no way I would ever write something out. I consider it ‘advertising’. I am surprised at how many people don’t do this. I didn’t even get a thank you from a realtor. In another case I gave a realtor a gift. He said ‘wow I guess I should be giving you a gift’. Didn’t bother me I am tough and probably he had to work to hard is the reason (I rationalize).You went to Catholic school? Isn’t that something the nuns beat into you. Am I correct? I am doing a version of what I do by replying this way to your comment as you know. I think enough about you to remember something about you. I have nothing to gain from you either. It is just the way that I operate. (Others though I might do that because I have something to gain in some way..)If I was a big shot I would travel with an assistant whose sole jobwas to make notes on everyone that I meet so I could remember things about them. Obviously people must do this already not a novel concept.I just got a letter from a prisoner (small part of it attached). He wants help when he gets out. I’ve had a few hand written notes from prisoners that have given me business over the years. The one attached must not have gone to catholic school, eh?What did he do? Mortgage fraud. He is one of the people on this DOJ indictment. I searched the prisoner locator. He will be out in a few years.He is on this page (but not the ringleader):https://www.justice.gov/usa…… https://uploads.disquscdn.c

      4. Tereza

        I’ve found the higher up I’ve gone, I spend more and more time discussing people. I have big ideas to bring forward, and people are our #1 asset to do that. The only way to do that is to listen, understand, and figure out ways to make things matter to people. So with all due respect to Eleanor, I think she was referring to gossip – and perhaps also doing so in the context of a manufacturing economy. My life has gotten all the better, the more I think, and speak, deeply and with quality, about different people, what makes them tick, and how I can help them be great. It is a privilege to do so.

        1. JLM

          .Yes, of course, she was talking about gossip.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      5. Girish Mehta

        I think both @pointsandfigures:disqus and you have a point…i.e. both the quantity and quality matter.

    4. LE

      Read something the other day that said you need to make an effort to have 7-8 face to face physical conversations per dayThat is the type of ‘one size fits all’ thinking that simply doesn’t make any sense. People are different. And not it’s not even like sleep. [1] Some people need a great deal of interaction with others and some people don’t need any interaction with others at all. I have a big office all to myself with nobody else around. People come in and say ‘wow you are here all day by yourself I could never do that’. But for me it’s the opposite. I work much better when I am by myself with no distractions.Besides the entire idea of ‘making an effort’ for something that is supposed to be good for mental health just creates another obligation and anxiety.[1] People vary on that but the general guidelines do make sense. And more importantly most of us can test and see immediate results (or what happens if you don’t get enough).

  3. jason wright

    take away the natural factors of social friction (space, distance, time) and natural social behaviour grows exponentially, in quantity but not quality. quantity goes up, quality goes down.as a social species it seems rational for the individual to choose to have a mobile phone and social channels, but collectively it feels like a weird version of tragedy of the commons.why do we have car driving speed limits? it seems rational to drive as fast as possible to get from A to B. fine if only one person has a car. when everyone has a car it’s a disaster.do we need limits to be introduced? perhaps tokenomics will be the way. postage stamps cost money. when the marginal cost of distribution goes to zero distribution goes exponential. we need limits to be introduced for our our collective good. the present techonomic model is the flaw. it’s harming the species.

    1. awaldstein

      disagree.phones are the answer to so many possibilities.how we use them is behavioral. as a species we can fix this and ourselves or not. that is our birthright as humans.

      1. jason wright

        what’s your fix?people are overdosing on a free drug.

  4. PhilipSugar

    Three things.It always has been easy to take the person in front of you for granted, and answer calls. Now it’s monitor emails, texts, etc. Exponentially compounds.Now people expect to reach you NOW!!! Email, text, call. I want you right now. Part of that is because so much you get with a phone now. I will admit to having broken a screen when I could get a ticket change NOW!!The last is what I really don’t understand which is people that don’t have jobs, driveling away their boring life.My favorite Social Distortion song:https://www.youtube.com/wat

  5. Tom Labus

    We should do something like the Paseo in Spain. A great stroll in the early evening to meet and greet people.

    1. jason wright

      but that’s culture. behaviour prefaced by a modal verb is not culture.

      1. Tom Labus

        Love the Paseo and saying hello

  6. Richard

    This evolutionary meme for food consumption is pure BS. Homosapiens have needed to eat at mininum every 3 days for over 100,000 years. The modern phenomena is much more about just how effective advertising is and the breakdown of societal boundaries and norms.As to social media, it’s early, this may be a macro fad. I wouldn’t be surprised if twitter fades away as times marches on.

    1. Girish Mehta

      Exactly. I do IF for ~ 18 hours most days. But you hear all this nonsense about having to eat every 4 hours to keep your metabolism up or your body goes into starvation mode. It’s comical, to say the least.Follow the money.

      1. jason wright

        Antifragile behaviour, but you have to change it from time to time.Depends what people are trying to do with their bodies at any given time. Christian Bale’s behaviour (as an edge case, but he’s still made of the same stuff we all are); American PsychoThe MachinistBatman

      2. B12N

        A lot of that is broscience (you gotta eat small meals throughout the day to stoke that metabolism, bro). But like, especially lately, intermittent fasting, 3-day fasts, etc., have been quite popular (have you listened to any popular podcasts lately?).

      3. jason wright

        from 32:00https://www.youtube.com/wat…

  7. LE

    Honestly social media is totally the fall of the Roman Empire in my book.It is like the ‘big tobacco’ problem. It will be impossible to get rid of or even limit because of all the money that is made off of it and all the jobs that it supports. This at the core was one very big reason by cigarettes could not easily be scaled back despite the obvious dangers. It had to be done slowly over time. Social media though is much much worse. Most parents are blind to how much their kids are on snapchat and instagram or playing games (which are now social games). They don’t realize how bad this is. Even my wife. I can’t convince her that the kids should have limits. It is one battle I have to pass on. What makes it harder? Parents today will overlook everything typically if the child does well in school and has no other issues. In their book that checks the most important boxes. So who cares if they spend extra time on social media? I am sure Freeman Dyson wouldn’t have seen it this way. Maybe I will travel to Princeton and visit Freeman and ask him what he thinks. Actually no. He probably has no direct exposure to it.And it’s bad for many reasons and not just the obvious ones. Time spent in excess doing those things (and being addicted to them) is time not spent on other things that would have value to a child who has way way better ability to retain and learn than someone who is older. And everyone here that is older knows that to be the case. [1] When growing up, because there was little else to do, well, that is the reason that I took up photography as a hobby (with a darkroom) and made money as well as other things that I did. It was to fill up time. It was to not be bored. We weren’t allowed to watch tv ‘all the time’. Just a limited amount. No tv in bedroom. No way. But yet that is what kids do today. They are on social media (as a distraction) ‘all the time’. And parents are clueless. My wife immediately, years ago, took the tv out of the kids bedroom. She understood that. But in the case of social media the small screen hides the danger to parents who did not grow up with that but with tv’s. Or the kids watch things on netflix typically comedy. Impossible to get them to watch anything that they could learn something from.To me this is way way way worse than a porn addiction. At least (in theory) a porn addiction is somewhat rate limited by a ‘physical’ governor. [2][1] My stepdaughter was in the office helping me mail out invoices. I have accounts that are overseas mixed among businesses in the US. So after she is done and I am ready to have her put the mail in the postal box I say to her ‘ok what are some of the foreign countries that you did invoices for?’. Now keep in mind that there were maybe 10 envelopes out of (in this case) 100 envelopes that went overseas. And she did not know I was going to ask the question. I just sprung it on her. She immediately rattled off 9 of the 10 countries in rapid order. That amazed me. I should try the same experiment with an older person. My guess is that even someone highly intelligent would not get anything like those results (once again not even knowing they had to remember them). Oh one other thing. She was doing the work while watching Netflix at the same time.[2] Or a distance governor like gambling at a casino that you have to travel to vs. at home from your computer.

  8. Placing a Stumbling Block

    Placing a Stumbling Block Before the Blind Person: An In-Depth Analysishttp://www.jlaw.com/Article…The Bible states (Leviticus 19:14): “You shall not curse the deaf nor place a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God – I am your Lord.” In Hebrew, the sin of placing a stumbling block before a blind person is referred to as lifnei iver lo sitten michshol (before the blind do not place a stumbling block), or succinctly as lifnei iver.

  9. Kirsten Lambertsen

    I’m among the skeptics of both the theory about food and the theory about social media (and about the supposed dangers of video games for that matter).

  10. Michael Elling

    All interaction (communication and transactions) involves risk. Risk is balanced by networks; but only if those networks incorporate incentives and disincentives between the participants. These are missing from the current settlement free internet. Nor do they appear in the distributed crypto models.

  11. Tom Hart

    So…. Evan and SNAP will save us all?