Luckily the WHO hasn’t been pressured into classifying internet addiction yet or half the regulars of this comment section would be receiving visits from men in white coats.
Perhaps a tongue in cheek comment? Not so for younger people. Of course, there are treatment centres to help to stop you from looking at your phone too much.
Well, that’s me chastised, Ferrusian. My problem is not merely internet addiction, it is that I dislike my work, am 100% self employed, and do not have to work if I do not want to, yet I have unlimited amounts of work if I chose to work…. Therefore my time is all spent actively avoiding going to actual work, and that means sitting here doing this is the default way of spending much of my time, instead of using tools and building stuff – which is no fun: construction is no fun. Having a Boss is a great good; as you have to work, without one you must always beat yourself to get to work, and not working when you stop beating yourself, Like now.
I should be out in a densely wooded, (thicket) wooded lot I am to begin construction on shortly – and putting surveyors tape on the trees that need to be uprooted- which means a lot of work and thought, and making decisions, and dreading the job which this is prepping for…. So much easier to sit here just chatting into the void……
Warren T
2 years ago
I’ll wait for the disorder to qualify as a reason for receiving permanent disability checks before I buy a gaming chair.
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago
A kid hooked on playing video games all day and night could just say to the powers-that-be that a child prodigy pianist gets to play the piano all day and all night.
The problem for Western society though is that the great pianists will come through: they are brought up in homes in which it might be shameful to get involved in video-game playing. Too low brow and vulgar and all that; though the great pianists will still come through, guitar maestros will not.
In homes where video gaming is rife, many a talent will go unrealised.
The crutch of the mobile phone or the video game machine has already replaced the crutch of the guitar as far as any dreamy youths with artistic aspirations are concerned.
The invasion of video-gaming is not great for short childhoods. Only seven years are you a teenager.
Music’s had it. Popular music.
This is a very interesting idea and one which is new to me. Basically, anything which does not result in a tangible benefit is a waste of time.
About 20 years ago I night have disagreed with you about playing a musical instrument because it can also give other people pleasure to listen. But in the time of Spotify you get music from your phone.
Many times I have heard it said that old people should learn to ay a musical instrument because the discipline of the fingering gives you the best result. This would obviously be true for games.
In fact, playing music as with playing chess is a very automatic thing. You train your mind to react by doing the same thing over and over and you mind recognises patterns rather than individual notes (or moves). I suspect that game playing is less automatic because there are quite a few different games.
As someone in their mid-60s, who plays guitar and until recently, way too much Call of Duty (I’ve finally gone cold turkey on it, after many years) can I say that they are basically the same in that both involve finger/hand movement sequences that are repetitiously learnt to the point that they become automatic. In the game, sequences like running and firing, aiming and jumping etc become automatic to the point that if someone asked “what buttons do I press for ducking whilst throwing a grenade” I couldn’t tell them, but I could demonstrate it without even thinking about it. You forget how you consciously do it once its in “muscle memory” . Same with guitar, where chord sequences are coordinated with strums and interleaved note picking in a completely automatic manner – or should be – but in any event, there is no time to think about it, especially if also singing. Back to gaming, it becomes automatic not only at the fast movement level, but also in longer game motions of predicting opponent movements based on body glimpses, or a glance at the map, or a sense that the spawn points have flipped. In guitar playing, the same “expectation” builds during, say, a verse, causing you to switch to the chorus without thinking about it. Both gaming and guitar become automatic at several time scales.
Useful comment for me. I have played chess for about 50 years. People always asked me, “How many moves ahead can you calculate?” In fact, during a long game you often calculate only a couples of moves and you aim to reach a pattern which you recognise. Then the rest is a little automatic with a few checks along the way. The top players have memorised tens of thousands of these patterns and play many games in semi-automatic mode.
That was thought-provoking. I play the piano and reading that, I was suddenly worried I wouldn’t be able to! 🙂 There’s clearly no time spent deciding ‘what note(s) come next?’ – it just happens. Has anyone looked at this process? How on earth can musicians play faster than they can think?
Lloyd Byler
2 years ago
“With cold and flu conditions, of course, the picture is often messier. You can’t swab someone and see if they have a cold, a flu or other corona diseases, you can only ask them a series of questions, such as how severe their sniffles, headaches, coughs, etc. are, or observe their behavior. ”
But there are established criteria by which to do so, and, you can… test someone with a PCR lab test swab, once, or twice, every week, BUT, they usually give the same answer because they are so afraid of that big BOOGEY MAN called ‘Covid’, that, the media, the WHO, the medical industrial complex and politicians worldwide have beaten the drum on.
The idea that there is a novel corona virus is as old as the common cold and the seasonal flu has been around, because every season there is a variant of the same.
*The BIG MIRACLE*
Normally, people will deal with the sniffles/coughs, etc. as they usually do, but now they believe that by some miracle the flu and the cold has been CURED because people no longer complain of such symptoms.
NOTE:
THIS IS WHAT PROPAGANDA DOES, IT SHAPES PEOPLE’S MINDS TO BELIEVE SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT….
Last edited 2 years ago by Lloyd Byler
Geoffrey Wilson
2 years ago
Can I criticise this article for two important but silly statements. First “societies are entitled to ban anything they want, of course”. Sorry, but saying that immediately after reporting a new law in China! Was the CCP “entitled” to persecute Uighurs, Mr Chivers? There are philosophical arguments in support of democracies being entitled to make laws on many things, but let’s not legitimise the CCP.
Second, “most of all, though, there’s a reputational risk for the WHO”. Until a proper review of the WHO and the origins of our present pandemic is available, with recommendations implemented, the WHO has no reputation to risk, surely?
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
‘Phone Sheep’ who clutch their phone 24 hours a day saying internet is not a health problem. Watch out for that pole you are about to walk into……
I remember reading an April Fool spoof. Somebody had just invented an app for your phone which projected the pavement ahead onto your screen. With this image on your phone you were safe from walking into something.
I don’t know where this modern fad for pathologising everything comes from, but I’m very suspicious of it. It seems likely to be a combination of creating a false need for more regulation and micromanagement of people’s lives and a grift.
And don’t even start me off by mentioning ‘mental problems’.
John Hicks
2 years ago
They can’t come up with a disease classification based on politics! How terrifying a prospect is that? The humanity of our species, regardless of tribe or affiliation, cannot entertain the creation of diseases by evil monsters of this kind.
Andrew Horsman
2 years ago
Would love to know what Tom Chivers’s definition of “Covid denialist” is, or is it just a lazy label that he’s employing to attempt by association to besmirch the many readers – and subscribers – who have criticised his previous articles in which he has, knowingly or not, trotted out the party line on Covid?
As Tom Chivers no doubt well knows, it’s not “pretty straightforward” to develop diagnostic tests to reveal “the presence” of a virus. Implying, as he does, that those who question the accuracy or appropriateness (let alone the ethics) of such fallible tests belong to the same category as those who outright deny the existence of the virus that causes common cold-like or pneumonia-like symptoms that the WHO has decided to label “Covid-19” is actually quite some insult to the intelligence and integrity of his readership.
Tom, please could you offer an explanation or an apology for this? Either would be gratefully and graciously received.
Dennis Boylon
2 years ago
Covid was a hit. Why not more?
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago
Hush yourselves. National Service. Meh! And not necessarily armed. Building, plumbing, carpentry, electrical skills. Go out and repair something. Insulate an elderly person’s house and pi## of the M25 gang. Best of all keep the young away from universities until they are less impressionable. They may even be worth arming should the need arise.
David Slade
2 years ago
Shouldn’t we pathologise the tendency of technocrats to overly pathologise everything?
Addiction proscription addiction? Lots of psychologists suffer from APA; please give what you can etc.
Jon Hawksley
2 years ago
An email from WHO stating “It is challenging, if not impossible, to document and communicate through WHO channels the rationale and justification for each decision.” is a much greater risk to their reputation than a daft classification of a disease. WHO exist to get more out of the national health bodies and researchers than they can achieve on their own. It needs to be a forum that sets high standards for research, gets researchers working to common goals rather than individual glory and ensure consensus is reached with impartial debate.
A meta study of Covid research in the BMJ considered “a total of 36,729 studies, of which 36,079 were considered irrelevent. After exclusions, 650 studies were eligible for full text review and 72 met the inclusion criteria. Of these studies, 35 assessed individual interventions and were included in the final synthesis of results and 37 assessed multiple interventions as a package and are included in supplementary material. The included studies comprised 34 observational studies and one interventional study, eight of which were included in the meta-analysis.”
The studies were small, an average of 400 covid cases in 14 studies. Yet as of 14 October 2021, there were 239,007,759 million cases of confirmed covid-19 and 4,871,841 million deaths with covid-19 worldwide.
The WHO are culpable for letting so many researchers produce such meaningless results when so much could have been done with a collaborative approach using the vast amount of data that should have been available from so many cases.
neolift
1 year ago
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Willie Cortez
1 year ago
I truly appreciate your technique of writing a blog. I added it to my bookmark site list and will
Bail Dos-Palos
1 year ago
When you get famous, I need to be the president of your fan club.
Luckily the WHO hasn’t been pressured into classifying internet addiction yet or half the regulars of this comment section would be receiving visits from men in white coats.
So long as the cure is a bottle a day of full-bodied Merlot, I’m cool with the diagnosis.
A full bodied Merlot? You might want to try a Cabernet Sauvignon first.
Full bodied – a Cahors Malbec
Sorry. You’ll need a MRNA injection and at least 8 boosters
Perhaps a tongue in cheek comment? Not so for younger people. Of course, there are treatment centres to help to stop you from looking at your phone too much.
Well, that’s me chastised, Ferrusian. My problem is not merely internet addiction, it is that I dislike my work, am 100% self employed, and do not have to work if I do not want to, yet I have unlimited amounts of work if I chose to work…. Therefore my time is all spent actively avoiding going to actual work, and that means sitting here doing this is the default way of spending much of my time, instead of using tools and building stuff – which is no fun: construction is no fun. Having a Boss is a great good; as you have to work, without one you must always beat yourself to get to work, and not working when you stop beating yourself, Like now.
I should be out in a densely wooded, (thicket) wooded lot I am to begin construction on shortly – and putting surveyors tape on the trees that need to be uprooted- which means a lot of work and thought, and making decisions, and dreading the job which this is prepping for…. So much easier to sit here just chatting into the void……
I’ll wait for the disorder to qualify as a reason for receiving permanent disability checks before I buy a gaming chair.
A kid hooked on playing video games all day and night could just say to the powers-that-be that a child prodigy pianist gets to play the piano all day and all night.
The problem for Western society though is that the great pianists will come through: they are brought up in homes in which it might be shameful to get involved in video-game playing. Too low brow and vulgar and all that; though the great pianists will still come through, guitar maestros will not.
In homes where video gaming is rife, many a talent will go unrealised.
The crutch of the mobile phone or the video game machine has already replaced the crutch of the guitar as far as any dreamy youths with artistic aspirations are concerned.
The invasion of video-gaming is not great for short childhoods. Only seven years are you a teenager.
Music’s had it. Popular music.
This is a very interesting idea and one which is new to me. Basically, anything which does not result in a tangible benefit is a waste of time.
About 20 years ago I night have disagreed with you about playing a musical instrument because it can also give other people pleasure to listen. But in the time of Spotify you get music from your phone.
Many times I have heard it said that old people should learn to ay a musical instrument because the discipline of the fingering gives you the best result. This would obviously be true for games.
In fact, playing music as with playing chess is a very automatic thing. You train your mind to react by doing the same thing over and over and you mind recognises patterns rather than individual notes (or moves). I suspect that game playing is less automatic because there are quite a few different games.
As someone in their mid-60s, who plays guitar and until recently, way too much Call of Duty (I’ve finally gone cold turkey on it, after many years) can I say that they are basically the same in that both involve finger/hand movement sequences that are repetitiously learnt to the point that they become automatic. In the game, sequences like running and firing, aiming and jumping etc become automatic to the point that if someone asked “what buttons do I press for ducking whilst throwing a grenade” I couldn’t tell them, but I could demonstrate it without even thinking about it. You forget how you consciously do it once its in “muscle memory” . Same with guitar, where chord sequences are coordinated with strums and interleaved note picking in a completely automatic manner – or should be – but in any event, there is no time to think about it, especially if also singing. Back to gaming, it becomes automatic not only at the fast movement level, but also in longer game motions of predicting opponent movements based on body glimpses, or a glance at the map, or a sense that the spawn points have flipped. In guitar playing, the same “expectation” builds during, say, a verse, causing you to switch to the chorus without thinking about it. Both gaming and guitar become automatic at several time scales.
Useful comment for me. I have played chess for about 50 years. People always asked me, “How many moves ahead can you calculate?” In fact, during a long game you often calculate only a couples of moves and you aim to reach a pattern which you recognise. Then the rest is a little automatic with a few checks along the way. The top players have memorised tens of thousands of these patterns and play many games in semi-automatic mode.
That was thought-provoking. I play the piano and reading that, I was suddenly worried I wouldn’t be able to! 🙂 There’s clearly no time spent deciding ‘what note(s) come next?’ – it just happens. Has anyone looked at this process? How on earth can musicians play faster than they can think?
“With cold and flu conditions, of course, the picture is often messier. You can’t swab someone and see if they have a cold, a flu or other corona diseases, you can only ask them a series of questions, such as how severe their sniffles, headaches, coughs, etc. are, or observe their behavior. ”
But there are established criteria by which to do so, and, you can… test someone with a PCR lab test swab, once, or twice, every week, BUT, they usually give the same answer because they are so afraid of that big BOOGEY MAN called ‘Covid’, that, the media, the WHO, the medical industrial complex and politicians worldwide have beaten the drum on.
The idea that there is a novel corona virus is as old as the common cold and the seasonal flu has been around, because every season there is a variant of the same.
*The BIG MIRACLE*
Normally, people will deal with the sniffles/coughs, etc. as they usually do, but now they believe that by some miracle the flu and the cold has been CURED because people no longer complain of such symptoms.
NOTE:
THIS IS WHAT PROPAGANDA DOES, IT SHAPES PEOPLE’S MINDS TO BELIEVE SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT….
Can I criticise this article for two important but silly statements. First “societies are entitled to ban anything they want, of course”. Sorry, but saying that immediately after reporting a new law in China! Was the CCP “entitled” to persecute Uighurs, Mr Chivers? There are philosophical arguments in support of democracies being entitled to make laws on many things, but let’s not legitimise the CCP.
Second, “most of all, though, there’s a reputational risk for the WHO”. Until a proper review of the WHO and the origins of our present pandemic is available, with recommendations implemented, the WHO has no reputation to risk, surely?
‘Phone Sheep’ who clutch their phone 24 hours a day saying internet is not a health problem. Watch out for that pole you are about to walk into……
I remember reading an April Fool spoof. Somebody had just invented an app for your phone which projected the pavement ahead onto your screen. With this image on your phone you were safe from walking into something.
The camera in PinP?
I don’t know where this modern fad for pathologising everything comes from, but I’m very suspicious of it. It seems likely to be a combination of creating a false need for more regulation and micromanagement of people’s lives and a grift.
And don’t even start me off by mentioning ‘mental problems’.
They can’t come up with a disease classification based on politics! How terrifying a prospect is that? The humanity of our species, regardless of tribe or affiliation, cannot entertain the creation of diseases by evil monsters of this kind.
Would love to know what Tom Chivers’s definition of “Covid denialist” is, or is it just a lazy label that he’s employing to attempt by association to besmirch the many readers – and subscribers – who have criticised his previous articles in which he has, knowingly or not, trotted out the party line on Covid?
As Tom Chivers no doubt well knows, it’s not “pretty straightforward” to develop diagnostic tests to reveal “the presence” of a virus. Implying, as he does, that those who question the accuracy or appropriateness (let alone the ethics) of such fallible tests belong to the same category as those who outright deny the existence of the virus that causes common cold-like or pneumonia-like symptoms that the WHO has decided to label “Covid-19” is actually quite some insult to the intelligence and integrity of his readership.
Tom, please could you offer an explanation or an apology for this? Either would be gratefully and graciously received.
Covid was a hit. Why not more?
Hush yourselves. National Service. Meh! And not necessarily armed. Building, plumbing, carpentry, electrical skills. Go out and repair something. Insulate an elderly person’s house and pi## of the M25 gang. Best of all keep the young away from universities until they are less impressionable. They may even be worth arming should the need arise.
Shouldn’t we pathologise the tendency of technocrats to overly pathologise everything?
Addiction proscription addiction? Lots of psychologists suffer from APA; please give what you can etc.
An email from WHO stating “It is challenging, if not impossible, to document and communicate through WHO channels the rationale and justification for each decision.” is a much greater risk to their reputation than a daft classification of a disease. WHO exist to get more out of the national health bodies and researchers than they can achieve on their own. It needs to be a forum that sets high standards for research, gets researchers working to common goals rather than individual glory and ensure consensus is reached with impartial debate.
A meta study of Covid research in the BMJ considered “a total of 36,729 studies, of which 36,079 were considered irrelevent. After exclusions, 650 studies were eligible for full text review and 72 met the inclusion criteria. Of these studies, 35 assessed individual interventions and were included in the final synthesis of results and 37 assessed multiple interventions as a package and are included in supplementary material. The included studies comprised 34 observational studies and one interventional study, eight of which were included in the meta-analysis.”
The studies were small, an average of 400 covid cases in 14 studies. Yet as of 14 October 2021, there were 239,007,759 million cases of confirmed covid-19 and 4,871,841 million deaths with covid-19 worldwide.
The WHO are culpable for letting so many researchers produce such meaningless results when so much could have been done with a collaborative approach using the vast amount of data that should have been available from so many cases.
For the reason that the admin of this site is working, no uncertainty very quickly it will be renowned, due to its quality contents.
I truly appreciate your technique of writing a blog. I added it to my bookmark site list and will
When you get famous, I need to be the president of your fan club.