Those are really good points, and I appreciate the input. I could see why alcohol being on someones desk isn’t a problem, e.g. depending on the person its possible the bottle doesn’t have a “gravity” tempting them.

I’m going to guess that reality is somewhere between my points and your points. Notifications can be configured, but my grandmother isn’t going to figure it out. Having a bottle of alcohol on every person’s desk is probably completely neutral for a lot of people, but could be detrimental to others. Etc

I’m saying one of the big downsides has nothing to do with self discipline.

• Even if we never click an advertisement.
• Even if we never eat from the candy bowl.
• Even if we never use the bad phone apps.

Merely living in a world covered in advertisements, living next to a delicious smelling candy bowl, living 30 seconds away from memes, rage-bait, doom scrolling, sports gambling, and other slop – just living next to those things are bad for our mental health.

Some sources if you’re curious on the research behind it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4731333/

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301694

https://scholarworks.uark.edu/mgmtuht/31/

I disagree. Yes there can be good intermediate steps, but deleting slop is not even half as healthy as locking a phone away.

1. Interruptions

Not just phone calls or texts, but things like typing an email on the phone and then seeing a text or having the GPS interrupt your train of thought by yelling “Continue straight for 5 miles”. Brains hate interruptions. Those are still going to exist even when the slop is gone.

2. Resisting a temptation is exhausting. “not eating candy is healthy”… yes but having a candy bowl right next to your desk is exhausting. It takes 2sec to open a twitter link in the browser. Uninstalling an app is like moving the candy bowl to a nearby room, yeah its better, but it only takes 30 sec to reinstall.

Turning off the dopamine machine (not eating candy) is one thing. But Eddy was showing something a lot bigger than that; deleting his access to the temptation. He didnt know the code to unlock the phone.

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