Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

My main point here is that children's lack of familiarity with or knowledge of "how things work" has always been both a strength and a weakness, and once we entered the current technology explosion it became a *clear* strength-on-net. And somehow culture did not really notice.

Adults have all sorts of ideas about what kids should and should not be spending their time doing. I wonder what percentage of the first generation of at-home coders curdled in the shell with parents heavily restricting computer access (and patting themselves on the back for it).

Very smart people talk about how "screen time" is different *now* due to "superstimuli." This is a very reasonable-sounding argument, but no more so than the arguments a generation back. Indeed, messing around in the terminal or on geocities was quite addictive for a lot of kids.

been thinking about this too, re: trusting your instincts / following your nose. There's this counter-point that, left to their own devices, kids/people will just end up eating candy and playing video games mindlessly and not do anything constructive ever – which I feel is untrue

I will readily admit that I myself don't have any ~substantial evidence~ for this one way or another – but my feelings/anecdata is... people who end up really trapped in toxic addiction patterns, their problem is usually something upstream of the stimulihttps://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1085421837268541441 …

As someone with a history of eating candy and playing video games I second the thesis that the actual problem is upstream of these things.

a story in 3 acts: 1. me before school and parental + societal pressures:https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/986410861039271936 …