I couldn't finish the article because my attention span was too small and the author was going on rambles and tangents. I have no patience. But like the article says, I also noticed while reading history books that people's speech was way more sophisticated and used flowery language in 1900 that we simply do not use today. My lexicon is probably only 25% of people back then. eg Ada Lovelace quote: “I believe myself to possess a most singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me pre-eminently a discoverer of the hidden realities of nature.”, in my language: "I think I'm special enough to be a scientist"

> 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.

You don't need to go that far. Something from 30 years ago will pretty much seem like an alternative reality.

I actually wonder about current co2 levels and concentration.

We’ve roughly doubled co2 in human history. Much of that in the last 100 years alone. They say that measurable drowsiness at 1000ppm and when you consider the atmospheric co2 being well above 400ppm and indoor conditions often more than doubling that i wonder if we’re not going to hit a measurable stupefaction of the world. Perhaps it’s already happening.

Is this you: No, actually, not at all. I didn't feel that any of those bullet points was descriptive of me.

> Don't worry...

I'm not worried, at least, not about me. I am worried about just how many people _do_ think this is descriptive of themselves.

I was going to rant here about loss of a sense of individual autonomy, and how the modern sense of "we can't help being addicted to doomscrolling" is another example of adopting victimhood; but as I got to the bottom of the article, I found the advice to be things I actually agree with:

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

I couldn't agree more 8-) Really, literally, just turn off the phone, at least during recreational times of the day (and make sure you have "recreational times of the day").

Preach. I've noticed this exact effect and wrote about it recently, calling it 'ungrounding': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44046389

I don't think anybody can even begin to notice the effect unless they detach from the various channels first. If you don't consume any content (including TV, radio, Hackernews) for a few months (near impossible, but I did it once) you realize the absolute mental captivity literally everybody else, including your very loved ones are living in.

> Those of you who paid attention to my Free Floating Power essay…

I would urge people not to write like this. It is likely to backfire by sounding pompous and sophomoric.

  Do you remember James Mason?

Can someone tell me which James Mason the author is talking about?

I remember the James Mason who was one of the most famous actors of his decades in the film business.

I remember the obscure funk artist James Mason, who released a fantastic album called Rhythm Of Life.

Neither of these strike me as someone most people today would know.

Well, I'm not sure who forgot COVID, but elements of this are absolutely true.

I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo—a 1200 pages unabridged, clothbound edition that will spend 40 pages of wandering setup just to deliver one striking image. It was a banger in it's time, and it's still a banger, but it's striking how much it asked of its readers. It will take me the rest of the year to finish.

And this is the thing, we really do live in a toxic attention ecosystem that rots our brains. Like the author, I've been trying to reassert control my own attention, and it's shockingly hard to do.

I'm not sure if I'll manage to make it work. But let's suppose I do: I've deleted all social media, deliberately set my relationship with news, if I feel the urge to post dump it in a paper notebook instead, and somehow achieve the miracle of getting slack to chill out...

... much like learning to cook is great for me but doesn't solve the social costs from widespread ultraprocessed diets and resulting metabolic disorders, getting my own attentive house in order does not change the global brainrot and toxic political incentives.

If anyone has found a way to turn that tide, I'm all ears.

>Now, as we can see from the previous section on dopamine-reward-systems, what social media and quantifiable discourse is doing is mentally limiting what we can say and do, not by way of oppression, but by way or ostracization, alienation and peer-pressure.

The overton window is wider than its ever been at any point in history.

Like I think this particular thing was overblown in the first place and also people are already correcting for it.

I've been trying to read classic books from gutenberg.org, holy ** I haven't managed to finish any of them. Usually give up after 50 pages, start a new one a month or three later.

Some disconnected reactions:

- There was never a golden age of wide “Overton Windows.”

- Composing a rambling article like this takes a lot of concentration.

- In the oldest days a typical man would get sufficient exercise with the physical labor of life as a warrior or farmer or peasant laborer. I suspect even merchants were more active. Now we have to make a specific activity for ourselves called “working out.”

I guess it’s the same with phones, etc. We must explicitly choose to concentrate.

- Avoid TikTok.

As I’ve definitely noticed an impact on attention span but not the level of forgetfulness author alludes to.

hard to agree with the overton window when a lot of more radical political elements have gained mass momentum in the past couple decades. maybe for ingroup status but not whole societal positioning

There are some interesting thoughts here, but reading this I can't help but think the author is themselves afflicted by some sort of internet-addiction-induced psychosis. This reads like the mental dump of a mild schizophrenic, and perhaps that's what makes it interesting enough to read until the end despite the lack of any clear or convincing conclusions. Definitely a writer in need of two or three additional editing sessions, but I think with more work the author has an interesting stylistic element that could endear in an online world increasingly filled with mediocre and predictable AI slop.

Regarding the "do you remember" section, I honestly don't think I ever knew who three of those people are, and I lack context for what another two events are supposed to mean to me. But then again I've been opting out of most news for several years.

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