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Hunting Peace—Dangers of compute

Computer technology, and the core applications within it (Internet, Gaming, Development, etc.) function as a sort of toolbelt that anyone can reach to when in need to solve a problem. Need to understand more about a topic? Search it up. Need to understand how to bake a cake? Search it up. Want to spend two hours with your friend who is across the globe? Fire up your favourite game and play with them (And speak to them as well!). The toolkit, in many cases, is endless. This modern computing power and its applications (henceforth 'compute') is the most powerful foil to human activity ever.

But this comes at a cost. If this toolkit transposed to a tool bag, and you had to reach for say a hammer, well then: (1) You could search for hours and get lost in the rulers, dowels, screwdrivers, and other tools; Forgetting about the hammer itself. Or (2) Distract yourself enough, that once you find the hammer, the issue has passed. (3) You will, assuredly, spend more time searching for the hammer in your tool bag than if you had the hammer right on your desk.

Taking these circumstances back to compute, we get so lost in the novel nature of it, that we lose focus in the actual use cases. The Internet is not more useful at exposing knowledge than other sources, only in indexing it. This is an important distinction, as so much of Human life is solving a discrete problem with a discrete solution, not receiving a continuous, many times incorrect, stream of information about solutions. Whether that the continuous solution is most efficient (Which is a trap word in-of-itself) is irrelevant, as we measure our lives on progress (Whereas compute trains us to measure on efficiency) on specific goals. With this context in mind, here are what I see as the dangers.

Compute trains you to be socially anxious. Without sounding overly Freudian, compute is an amplifier of repressed or expressed shames and the greatest distractor. Those who desire (many times unconsciously) to escape from current situations will find themselves wasting time on the internet. The consequences are exponential, as the compute will leave the current situation more unsolved (less progression), and you will feel more shame for not being a solver. This relates to anxiety since I postulate that no human (or majority of humans) is innately socially anxious. Why would they? Human society is built on forming social groups to protect oneself, so it would be the worst evolutionary trait to be anxious of building these relationships. It is the shame that humans develop and nowadays, the massive amounts of repressed shame from not progressing in one's life, that leads to this social anxiety (Yes there are other factors, but for people under 25, compute is ubiquitous equities and the largest driver of psyche we have). Not to mention that compute allows you do indulge in addictions quietly (porn, gaming, internet, gambling, ordering drugs, etc.) so that repressed shame becomes more pronounced, leading you to retreat further into compute.

Compute is not relaxing. "I can finally relax", is an extremely common thought for most people after a long day. Yet, the most common "relaxation" technique is to fire up a screen and watch something, hear something, or play something. It is not relaxation to burn your retinas by a large LED monitor of blue light in a dim room, or to bombard your ears with constant drone of (mainly) nothing. The situation is more pronounced for those who work on compute during their day jobs (not just software engineers, but other engineers or tech related positions as well). Your brain/retinas/ears do not say 'Oh this is Big Bang Theory or League of Legends, I will repair the tiredness of myself from a long day of staring at a screen and typing with bad posture', these are in all dimensions the same stress. True rest and relaxation come from physical movements, social relationships, or sleep. You are simply extending the stress of your (mental) body, making yourself more likely to burn out and perform worse the next day.

Compute is the perfect hunt. The classic rendition of dopamine is that of a hunter in the plains of Africa wanting to kill a large animal to feed their tribe. Within that statement alone is personal want, social responsibility, and innate desire. As the hunter(s) prepare, they are excited and willing to start the hunt, they begin in earnest getting small peaks of excitement and gaining more will as they see the track marks of the animals, visit the watering hole, find its dwelling. Then the hunt begins, for kilometers they track and run after the herd, become more, not less, electrified with their situation. Then, the kill, inducing a rush of emotions not easily found in any other natural process. The hunt itself, not even the kill, produced a larger sum of dopamine. Imagine, the pride and catharsis felt with that moment and sum of the hunt, have you ever felt anything similar?

If you have ever been on an internet binge, engaging in any form of its addictions, you are trying to simulate a perfect hunt. The internet is purely novel (meaning at no point will you every view everything), so the ‘hunting’ portion can be drawn out indefinitely, gaining a larger and larger sum of dopamine (meanwhile reducing desires for other forms of action such as exercise or social interaction), known to porn addicts as edging. The kill can be a discrete climax, in-game trophy, or it could be abstract, drawing the hunt out (with a clever use of save points, bookmarks, or YouTube’s ‘watch later’) for as long as needed. This leads to a hyper-saturation of the brain in this form of hunting, a willingness to complete it, and an aversion to anything else.

Unlike the hunter in Africa, you have not gained anything. A gamer waking up early on a weekend to spend the next ten hours ‘grinding’ (Doing repetitive task(s) to achieve a desired result, usually for hours, days, or weeks), was glued to their monitor during the hunt, but comes out of their session realizing nothing in their environment has changed, they have only not progressed in their actual life for those ten hours (As mentioned previously, progression is the most desired state of man, the realization of which I believe to be traumatic). The gamer can contemplate this and decide to end their session, or further escape to avoid that responsibility. The common contradiction is that the gamer is having fun, but remove the bias towards explaining yourself and the dissonance that arises from shame and truly examine: Was spending that much time on compute fun? Did you genuinely enjoy yourself? I leave that dialogue to you.

Compute and efficiency are not human. If you ever are in a software engineering interview, the question asked after solving any algorithm is “Is this the most efficient solution?” Compute is obsessed with efficiency, or the ratio of useful work gained to the resources used (Not the definition is not rigorous, but it provides solid context), as this will determine how much time the CPU spends on a given algorithm, and the RAM storage necessary for it. Thus, we can mathematically define a perfectly correct algorithm or solution in a computing context, and ideally interpret everything. Viewer retention, context spheres, click-through ratio, and so many more SEO techniques are defined by efficiency. All of compute reduces to a big optimization problem. The only issue is that humans are not efficient, at least in this context. While it is true that through societal building and responsibility, we are assessed on how well we complete a task within a given time, even from infancy, the core desires of a human are both complex and simple (Which is nonsensical to a computer). Am I thirsty? Hungry? Well sheltered? Have friends and a spouse? Am I proud of myself? These core desires can either be quickly solved (drinking water) or will take years or decades to accomplish (finding a wife to build a family with). And beyond that, humans become even less efficient. The desire to paint a portrait, walk along a beautiful lake, talk with your loved ones for hours, sit and write, or just enjoy the sunset, are all things that are so inefficient and so human.

Humans are also quietly opposed to this efficiency. How often do we wish for time off from work (which pushes us to become more efficient every year), to simply spend time with others and see unfamiliar places? Or the attempt to replace dating, a complex and nervous process that could end in failure (like the hunt of a herd), with apps has only made use more neurotic and anxious. Learning is meant to be a ‘slow drip’ of information from print, professor, and pen. We can write, in our own language, the meaning of this knowledge, pause at any time, reflect, and apply this to our long-term memory. Now we listen to a podcast by a SME at 2 times speed, gaining the key sentences and nothing else except becoming more scattered with our ideas (developed ADD). All of this tries to make use content with a bird's eye view of green, without showing us the beautiful forest underneath. I cannot deny that I have gained much from the power of compute, but disproportionately losing that will, that excitement, to affirm so deeply the hunt to be human.

Sullivan, Andrew. “Andrew Sullivan: My Distraction Sickness — and Yours.” Intelligencer, 18 Sept. 2016, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-my-distraction-sickness-and-yours.html.