Stolen Focus
Jonah Harri
Summary
How social media is ruining our attention, what are the potential consequences and how can we fix this problem.
Rating: 4/5
Notes
There is no escape from our phones and this problem is everywhere
You are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day and then you are toll to blame yourself and change your habits while the world’s attention burns
When attention breaks down, problem solving breaks down
Twitter makes you feel like the world is obsessed with you and your little ego
It is faster to reach peak popularity and faster to fall again - we spend far less time on issues than we did a decade ago
This happens because of the flood of information. The more infnormation you pump in, the less time people can focus on any individual piece of it
A scientist fears a world where an upper class of people are aware of the risks to their attention and find ways to live within their limits and the rest of society will have fewer resources to resist manipulation and theyre going to live in their computers being manipulated more and more (Zuck’s metaverse)
‘We want to take the easy way out but what makes us happy is doing the thing that’s a little bit difficult’
Your brain can only produce 1 or 2 thoughts, not 5-10 (can’t multitask)
Multitasking causes you to be slower, make more errors and be less creative
‘We have a perfect storm of cognitive degradation as a result of distraction’
For artists and creatives, the process is more important than the outcome
To find flow, focus on a single goal, make sure it’s meaningful to you and push yourself to the edge of your abilities
‘To have a good life, it’s not enough to remove what’s wrong with it but we also need a positive goal, otherwise why keep going’
People with the quickest reaction times are ones sleeping the most
Chemically induced sleep is not the same as normal sleep
Our economic system is dependent on sleep deprived people consuming
Avoid artificial light at least an hour before sleep
The proportion of Americans who read books for pleasure is the lowest level ever recorded
The message from instagram is how you look from the outside
Life is complex and if you want to understand it, you have to set aside time to think deeply about it - you need to slow down
The more novels you read, the better you are at reading people’s emotions
Mind wandering lets you make new connections between things
We aren’t just facing a crisis of lost spotlight focus but also minnd understanding which are both degrading the quality of our thinking
It’s not your fault you can’t focus. It’s by design of these big tech companies to keep you coming back for engagement (how success is measured)
The more people stare at their phones, the more money these companies make
Facebook and Google aren’t listening to you but their model of you is so accurate that it’s making predictions about you that you think are magic
To understand the system, here’s a quote from Aza, the person who invented infinite scrolling ‘imagine if I could predict all your actions in chess before you made them. It would be easy for me to destroy you. That’s what’s happening on a human scale right now’
Their business model (big tech) is screen time not life time
A study by MIT found that fake news spreads six times faster than the truth
We are seeing the collective degrading of humans and collective upgrading of machines. We are becoming less rational, less intelligent and less focused
Big tech can no longer deny the crisis so they are subtly manipulating us that it’s an individual problem that has to be solved with greater restraint from the individual, not them
Cruel optimization: when you take a big problem like obesity and blame it on the individual rather than the systemic problem
A few changes could make tomorrow are batch notifications and ending infinite scrolling
You have to change the business model and incentives if you want to change the way social media works
This can only change with regulation done by governments
The facebook leak showed the company’s algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness and would pump its users with more divisive content to increase time on the platform. The solution is Facebook would have to abandon its business model and stop growing
Research suggests when we work less, our focus significantly improves
A lot of ADHD is a reaction to a stressful environment growing up
‘Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone’ - Noele Donald Walsh
Need to let kids be on their own, try things, fail and develop the confidence to be resilient
We don’t let kids play freely, we imprison them in their homes with screens and our school system largely bores them - no wonder they can’t pay attention
***
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How the World Works
Noam Chomsky
Summary
A combination of books Chomsky wrote in the 80s and 90s about America and it's role in the world. Fascinating read and insight into one of the great thinkers of the 21st century
Rating: 5/5
Notes
The US invaded Greece in 1947 and supported a horrendous war which led to 160k Greek deaths. This was the model for Vietnam and allowed American business to gain and thrive
US policies in the 3rd world consistently opposed democracies if they couldn’t be controlled as real democracies believe government should respond to the needs of their own population rather than those of US investors
US-run contra forces in the 3rd world isn’t ordering killing - it’s brutal sadistic torture (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala)
From the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 till the collapse of the communist governments in eastern europe in the 80s, it was possible to justify every US attack as defense against the Soviets
If you want a global system that’s subordinated to the needs of US investors, you can’t let pieces of it wander off. It’s clearly stated in the documents of record
The US wants ‘stability’ meaning security for the upper classes and large foreign businesses
Solid case for impeaching every American president since World War 2 either outright as war criminals or involved in serious war crimes
El Salvador and Nicaragua were not covered by the US media in the 70s when US-supported brutal torture and murder were taking place
In the early 80s, America’s friends slaughtered 10s of thousands of Guatemalans with countless others tortured and raped
After Vietnam, the major US policy goal has been to maximize repression and suffering of countries demonstrated by their violence - blocked other countries from seeking aid
The US regularly carries out or supports aggression
For most of the 20th century, the US was the dominant economic power and used economic warfare as a weapon ranging from illegal embargoes to enforcement of weak IMF rules with their military becoming pre-eminent
The US tries to avoid negotiations with countries as the US fears it will lose and other countries will be better off
When a state has huge debts, it must divert the population from what’s happening and they do this by inspiring fear of our enemies (Russia in Europe)
The real enemy of the US has always been ‘the poor who seek to plunder the rich’. In America, it’s the opposite and has been for generations
‘The war on drugs’ was a manufactured media blitz by the US leadership to distract the population, increase repression in inner cities and build support for attack on civil liberties
The US government blocks international effort to seek peace (Russia and Ukraine)
Major media are large companies owned and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. The market is the advertisers and the product is audiences
The power in the US lies in the hands of people who determine investment decisions as they determine production, distribution and staff the government. They want a passive, quiescent population
The struggle of freedom is never over and requires active and sustained efforts
One important consequence of globalization is it extends the third world model to industrial nations where the average person has their jobs shipped away while the rich and elite continue to amass massive amounts of wealth
We’ve moved to an international state with the IMF, World Bank, G7 & EU, WEF where the general population doesn’t know what’s happening and it doesn’t know it doesn’t know
If the borrowing the US has done was used for constructive purposes like investment or infrastructure, the US would be better off, but it was used to enrich the rich - for consumption, financial manipulation and speculation which are all harmful
The class warfare of the last few decades has successfully weakened popular organizations leaving people to feel isolated
The US is so deeply in debt to the international financial community because of debt that they have a lock on US policy
Many of the large number of security council resolutions vetoed by the US have to do with Israeli aggression or atrocities
Invaders typically use local collaborators to run things for them by playing upon existing rivalries to get onne group to work for them against another
European wars were wars of extermination. If we were to be honest about history, we would simply describe it as barbarian invasion
There has always been racism but it developed as a leading principle of thought in the context of colonialism.
A standard technique of belief formation goes along with oppression
In the US, you’re not allowed to talk about the class differences, which is the real issue
When the US establishment talks about jobs, it means profits for its corporations
The elite are masters and they follow what Adam Smith said about ‘the vile maxim’ - all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else
People who aren’t owners and investors have nothing much to say in the US
Jefferson warned against banking institutions and corporations and said if they grow, aristocrats would’ve won and the revolution would’ve been lost
The ‘Free market’ is for the poor. We have a dual system - protection for the rich and market discipline for everyone else
There’s been a considerable increase in inequality and has the American society moving towards a third world model, thereby seeing increased crime and signs of social disintegration
A huge area of the media is dedicated to diverting people and making them more stupid and passive
There’s nothing individualistic about corporations who are totalitarian in nature
Free trade agreements result in reduced wages for local employees while predominantly benefiting the rich consumer while also destroying unions
Operation Paper Clip imported large number of known Nazi criminals
The American army’s counter-insurgency literature begins with an analysis of the German experience in Europe written with the co-operation of Naxi officials (instruments of statecraft - book)
US involvement in Chile with the coup in 1973 to reduce social democracy
The threat of a good empire is what the US worried about with reforms on uncontrolled capitalism
The US killed a few million people and destoryed 3 countries during the Vietnam war
A huge amount of business propaganda is to create wants
The answers to solve all these issues is to organize. Being alone you can’t do anything but if you join with other people, you can make changes
Under capitalism, investment is supposed to be as risk free as possible. No competition wants free markets - what they want is power
The government subsidizes corporations’ costs, protects them from market risks and lets them keep the profits
There’s never been much difference between the 2 business parties and the differences are disappearing
The CIA has been involved in drug running for generations (the politics of heroin book)
You need something to frighten people with, to prevent them from paying attention to what’s really happening to them. You have to engender fear and hatred
The first world lives in a highly indoctrinated society
Neoliberalism is nothing more than the imperial formula: free markets for you and plenty of protection for me. The rich would never accept it but they’re happy to impose it on the poor
The UN does mostly what US business wants
‘Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business’ - John Devery
If people dedicate themselves to organizing and activism, we’ll gain access to broader audiences
If you extrapolate to the future, it’s very ugly but the point is it’s not inevitable. It can be changed but we can’t change things till we understand them.
***
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