You don't become addicted because of luxury. Attention is not a luxury. It's our time. It's our most precious resource and when it's "wasted" it's often because something is going terribly wrong.
Hmm, I think there's more nuance here, how about cars? Many people let themselves be much more dependent on them than they need to be, and in many cases adjusting their life around the car or the assumption that you'll always have this behemoth thing with an engine parked outside at all times sucking money out of your bank account, making your muscles and maybe social skills atrophy, exposing you to the risk of death all the time. You get comfortable with the experience of not having to do anything more than press a button, much like content addiction and smartphones, vaping, etc..
Removing the car creates a sense of pain, you have to move your body, possibly interact
Every experience now just seems like people (companies) fighting over who can most obnoxiously distract you.
I bought a new phone recently for the first time in 8 years, and (a) had to set everything up all at once (ad blocking, no notifications, etc) which left me briefly exposed to how bad things are but (b) had to experience all the annoyingness of a modern phone trying to suggest things and sync things and bother me with stuff I don’t want.
No product is even remotely for the consumer anymore, they’re all just minimal pretenses to try and advertise you and extract more of your attention and money.
So yeah, outside some sheltered life of luxury, it’s a constant fight to preserve focus against people wanting to steal it.
I also hide all of the videos on the sidebar except for the one that would be recommended next, just so I can know what might play if I leave autoplay on.
It is insane to me that the product got to this place. I get Google is all about advertising, but my goodness, YouTube is just designed to make you not pay attention for more than a few seconds.
I use Brave, though I know its reputation could be better.
Lets you remove as much or as little of the "UI/UX" as you want - don't want to see shorts, recommended vids, end cards etc - live comments (who even asked for that) you don't have to.
It collapses YT back to been an intentional thing - I'm looking for a video to watch, I watch it, it suggests nothing and I go on with my day instead of getting distracted by the skinner box.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...
Of course in the past there were less opportunities to hide or excuse that kind of behavior.
Culture is also a luxury good, by this definition. If you read the Wikipedia summary of a Shakespeare play, you can fake a basic understanding of the plot. But you’ve gotten the social proof (e.g. dinner-party survival) without the deeper appreciation of the characters and their motivations.
As far as that goes, empathy seems to be a borderline luxury good at this point.
Empathy builds cooperation and biases towards game theory optimal, which increases chances of survival and furniture thriving.
It doesn't seem like this right now, because all our luxuries are built on momentum enabled by past empathy.
In fact it's the lack of empathy (and curiosity) for others that is causing more suffering and an increasing trend towards lose-lose dynamics, it's just hard to see because the scale across people, time and space is so vast.
Like everything else (reality as vibrations), it seems that global empathy oscillates up and down across generations, with a long-term trend upwards.
So I don't think empathy is a luxury, empathy enables luxury. It's just hard to see past the silver spoon narcissists and collective victim mentality in the current context. I'm optimistic more empathy is in our future, even if not short or medium term.
OP writes about conspicuous consumption/leisure, not really luxury. Similarly, while a Birkin bag could be considered a luxury good, its defining feature is being something more, the artificial scarcity and increased demand with price amke it a Veblen good.
Also, things you can buy with attention aren't really expensive, they're just constantly priced. That is you have 10-14 hours of attention a day, and you use it or lose it, every minute of attention is largely the same, with a little ADHD you can switch quickly. Listening to a concert online and going to the philharmonics costs about the same in attention.
I hereby advice anyone who has a non trivial curiosity about ∀ that requires focus and concentration (pretty much ∪ of HN interests) to appreciate it and care it as if it is your most precious procession.
I have said this before and I’ll say it again — if you are not super into getting a kid, don’t.
Alike overfishing, alike taking most of land from nature to cities, mining and agriculture, we can look at attention as a resource than once was ubiquotious, now is scarce... and luxury.
alganet•2h ago
From where I am, I can't possibly know if that's a genuine message with valuable advice, or some self-justification he's making about himself, or some trick (of which there are many related to messages of self-worth).
He acknowledge hints of these possibilities by saying that attention provides "a message to ourselves and others". That is a fascinating brain leak right there.
In a more real assessment of reality, the truth is that I don't have much control over my attention. Might as well just let it flow and see what I can do with whatever comes from the interaction, no worries.
Does that imply the risk of falling into an attention trap? Definitely. Anyone that says he is not subject to that risk is lying.