Avoiding the Global Lobotomy
48 comments
·June 22, 2025AnotherGoodName
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.
TimorousBestie
My office installed CO2 sensors a couple years ago and it’s been very concerning to see them hit 600-750ppm somewhat regularly. But nobody else seems to notice or care? I guess there’s not much can be done when it’s roughly 400ppm outside.
ivm
600-750ppm is fine for a closed space, even Aranet4 (the best home sensor) goes yellow only after 1000ppm. I maintain it under 800ppm in winter because that's roughly the value from where serious cognitive decline starts:
https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037d...
TimorousBestie
Thanks, that’s very reassuring to know.
para_parolu
Why would carbon dioxide be a problem? I’ve always thought that oxygen levels are the most important factor. Even if carbon dioxide doubled, it would not make a significant difference. In indoor environments, we use carbon dioxide as a signal that oxygen levels are low.
Am I missing something?
lambda
You are. The brain actually responds to CO2 concentration, not oxygen concentration. Your metabolism turns O2 and various hydrocarbons into CO2 and water, but many of the feedback loops in this process that mediate how your body metabolizes are based on the CO2 concentration; so even if O2 is unchanged, if you body detects more CO2, it will start metabolizing less.
escapecharacter
I think this seems like an interesting point, but one would also need to take into account indoor ventilation, which has gotten much better over the last couple centuries.
mattgreenrocks
We added a CO2 monitor to our bedroom and it’s amazing how fast it builds up.
dash2
> 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.
ausbah
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
thomassmith65
Do you remember James Mason?
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.
TimorousBestie
I assume they mean the American Neo-Nazi.
thomassmith65
That will take some getting used to for me. It feels like telling someone 'Tom Hanks is one of my favorite celebrities' and having them ask if I'm talking about Tom Hanks, the infamous serial killer.
coffeefirst
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.
bob1029
> If anyone has found a way to turn that tide, I'm all ears.
Leading by example might not seem like it has immediate or direct impact, but it does have an effect nevertheless. You don't necessarily need to beat everyone over the head with a new way to live life. This tends to have the opposite of the desired effect. If others passively observe you and think "wow that person looks super healthy and happy" they may subconsciously seek to emulate your behavior.
disqard
I've heard this before, expressed as: "don't be a buddhist, be a Buddha".
TimorousBestie
> Well, I'm not sure who forgot COVID, but elements of this are absolutely true.
That it happened, perhaps not, but some of the details are definitely getting lost in the collective memory. The other day I heard a political commentator claim that lockdowns in the states were in place for “years”, which is false by any objective measure.
rr808
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.
mattgreenrocks
Older books seem perfectly content not to try to hook you within the first few pages. Keep at it. I read Crime and Punishment recently and it is quite slow to start, but was rewarded by the depth of characterization that is present.
Also if you want to read classic books I highly recommend getting the most accessible translation/version you can find. The material is often dense enough without the style of writing making things harder. But this sometimes means paying for one vs finding it on Gutenberg.
nathan_compton
>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.
4bpp
If the author's theory were true and social media dynamics were indeed compressing the Overton window, wouldn't these sorts of "the Overton window is way too wide" posts be exactly the reaction one would expect to it on social media? Thinking that extremism is running rampant is what it feels like to be the thought police from the inside.
phoronixrly
I think both you and the commenter you responded to are misreading the article. I read it as 'hey, currently everyone on social media is discussing $latest US political news, posting over-directed short-form content, etc., so you posting a family photo, a photo of your favourite plant, sharing a favourite song, or a passage of a book you're reading would be considered odd, weird, despite being a completely normal thing to do and many people used to do regularly.'
SpicyLemonZest
That reading seems obviously false to me. I routinely see people posting those things on social media.
Muromec
I was with the author until that moment and the list of things "we" have supposedly forgot. Overtone window seems to be widening if anything. With the most unhinged hot takes of the 20th century being talked over again and all that.
At least the article doesn't blame "them" for doing it to "us". Or is it implied? Does the other article blame on the usual suspects of the day?
nathan_compton
The main difference now is that everyone sees everyone else's overton window because we are all just letting our asses hang out on social media and this engenders a lot of conflict, dog-piling, etc. Not great stuff, certainly, but not really evidence that the overton window is narrowing.
In other respects I think the submission is more on point, though still reactionary.
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Aerbil313
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.
floundy
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.
> 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.