...doof.

Let’s talk about how to be bored in a healthy way. 

You may have encountered confusing things about boredom before: „Nobody is bored anymore because there’s an endless stream of information and entertainment to be consumed online, and that’s really bad for your mental health!“… but also, „nobody gets enough stimulation anymore, modern life means we are all wild animals in captivity, and that’s really bad for your mental health“! 

Both of these statements feel instinctively true for many of us, we can relate to being constantly overstimulated as much as to constantly being understimulated… and yet, that feels really contradictory, doesn’t it? 

The reason why this contradiction exists is that there are actually different ways to be bored and different kinds of stimulation. 

Your brain does very much need to be exercised. Think about your body and movement. You can probably think of times you noticed you’re feeling like crap due to a lack of movement. You may have been in a long car ride before, or had to sit still during a long lecture or meeting, or had to stay in bed due to injury/illness… and it doesn’t feel good. You may get restless, antsy, irritated, down, tired etc. - the very same thing happens to your brain when there’s not enough mental „movement“. Muscles want to be used and so does your brain. 

But „using your brain“ doesn’t just mean „being busy“, and that’s where the seemingly contradictory part comes from: Many of us are busy but not engaged. 

You can be busy (and therefore not bored) all day long without actually engaging your brain in a beneficial way. We scroll through social media or short form videos, and hours pass without us ever feeling like we are „not doing anything“ because we are receiving novelty and input. 

That explains the type of boredom that can be really bad for your mental health. We can even re-use one of the body examples here: someone who has to stay on bed rest in a hospital for a longer time may be bored in a detrimental way. While they may be able to keep themselves occupied by being on TikTok all day, they are away from their loved ones (so there’s a lack of social stimulation), unable to access their usual hobbies or interests (so there’s a lack of mental stimulation), experiencing a lack of autonomy (so there’s a sense of powerlessness) and uncertainty over the future (so there’s a lack of making goals). 

All this means they can’t „work out“ their brain, and they may notice negative effects, such as increased anxiety, worse mood, shorter temper, feeling mentally „foggy“, dwelling on negative thoughts, worse sleep. The longer this hospital stay lasts, the longer these effects may linger afterwards. The patient may even develop depression (which can then become a cycle of depression feeding a lack of interest or motivation, which in turn feeds the understimulation, which feeds the depression…) 

This type of long-lasting or even chronic boredom of course doesn’t just happen in medical settings. It can happen due to other life circumstances as well, such as controlling relationships etc.- but luckily the temporary type of boredom is quite different to that. Occasional boredom that arises from temporary inactivity or monotony (such as washing the dishes and your thoughts drifting while you do it) is actually great and necessary! 

Some people feel tempted to spice any monotonous task or period of waiting up with stimulation, to avoid any boredom. but it can be beneficial to not do that. Here’s why: 

Your thoughts drifting and wandering is good for your brain. It encourages both creativity (daydreaming) and self-reflection (turning attention inwards to your goals, needs, wants, values) 

It also encourages „brain clean-up“. When your thoughts wander freely, you often subconsciously work through problems or memories you are carrying with you 

It decreases mental fatigue. Human brains are surprisingly bad at multitasking. So only doing the boring task at hand (eating, showering, doing dishes, even pooping) without background noise can be a nice break where your brain can switch back to „active mode“ rather than „reactive mode“ 

Talking about „reactive mode“: if you often keep your brain busy by passively consuming content, it may get stuck in that. That’s obviously a simplistic and not super scientific way to explain it, but the fact remains that the stimulation your brain craves is the active kind: 

actively interacting with other beings (humans, pets)

actively engaging with new or challenging tasks (this can be something like puzzles, sudoku, math problems but also reading, writing, painting, knitting but also learning a language, learning to code, learning to dance, but also traveling or visiting a new neighborhood but also… you get it) 

actively planning, structuring, making decisions (about your future, about your day or just about the next five minutes) 

actively engaging the senses (doing something with your hands/body like crafting, playing with sensory toys, exercising, or trying new foods, or really giving all your attention to a song rather than just having music on as background noise…)

Healthy boredom means having enough opportunities to actively engage the brain balanced with enough opportunities for your thoughts to wander.

With all my love, 

I once got into an argument with a rightist on here arguing that UK race riots are proof that Britain is plagued by Islamic crime, to which I responded with a graph from the Office for National Statistics showing that crime in the UK peaked in the mid-90s and has been on the decline ever since, and pointed out that, by that standard, George Floyd protests prove that the US police is institutionally racist. His response? Assert without any evidence that left-wing UK governments are doctoring statistics to hide the failure of left-wing politics and that the BLM riots were a left-wing plot.

Feelings and aesthetics over facts indeed. How do you even reason with someone like that?

I mean, the short answer is that you don't. They're not making an argument based on reason, so you'll never be able to reason them out of it.

The slightly longer answer is that you can still continue to debate, as long as you're clear that your target audience is not the person you're debating with.

This is an important question, though, so I think it's worth answering in full. Here goes.

So the question of debating someone who's clearly in conspiracy territory has two parts, how much time do you have and what do you expect to gain?

Ultimately, conspiracy theories aren't about reason or logic, those things come later and are, ultimately, just pretextual. If you knock them down, they'll just find new "reasons" or, if it's a long enough delay, just start using the discredited ones again because they're not the important part of what they're trying to say.

I literally cannot recommend The Daily Show podcast Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy enough, it's one of the best deep dives into what conspiracy theories really are and how they form. In particular, you should watch this episode with Dr. Elise Wang who really lays out exactly what a conspiracy theory is to the person who holds it.

To summarize, a conspiracy theory is, at its heart, just a story and, no matter which conspiracy they espouse, the story is the same. It's "Once upon a time we were happy and healthy and prosperous, and then THEY came. Only no one knew that they came because they hid everything and I'm the hero bravely fighting to defeat them."

And, of course, it can't be any ordinary evil, it's always over the top, blood of children type evil because, the more evil your enemy, the more heroic you are.

Once you understand conspiracy theories in that way, you can see that arguing with them using facts and logic isn't going to get you very far. To make any progress, you have to attack the emotional story but, obviously, if you're distant from the person or time limited in your interaction, there's no way to develop the rapport necessary. If that's your goal, you're best off just not engaging both for their sake, denying them the emotional narrative of "fighting", and for the sake of your own mental health which will not long survive the ordeal of beating your head against that particular wall.

But, here's the thing, that doesn't mean that debating is useless, you just have to shift how you approach the debate. Specifically, the "what do you hope to gain?" part.

There are two main types of debates or arguments, those that happen in private, where only the two people involved can see and hear what's going on, and those that happen in public, where others can observe what's happening.

In order to actually change someone's mind (on anything really, not just conspiracy stuff) you have to be talking in private. Changing your mind can be hard and people need a space where they feel safe and time to process in order to do it. Maybe it happens occasionally, but almost no one changes their mind in the course of having a public debate.

Any debate you have in a place that is visible to others, including social media posts, is a public debate and is not a conducive space for a debater to change their mind. If any minds are changed in this setting, it is the minds of the people observing the debate.

With that in mind, you should alter your expectations and, thus, your strategy, accordingly. Facts and figures are good; they won't convince your opponent, but they're the first step in convincing your audience. When your opponent denies their validity, request that they provide evidence. When they claim it's being suppressed, request evidence of that. Whatever they claim, request that evidence be provided, making clear that they don't have any.

The entire time you're doing so, point out that you have provided evidence and also point out exactly what it is they are claiming. Falsifying national crime statistics, for example, isn't something a single bureaucrat at the Home Office can do because the national statistics still have to be coherent with the collection of local statistics. Now you're not just looking at one or two people, but thousands of local officials who all have to be part of the conspiracy, all of whom have to coordinate properly, and all of whom have to keep their mouths shut.

When was the last time a group of more than hundred people kept a secret for more than a week?

Your audience, ultimately, needs to walk away understanding the things: you have provided evidence for your view, they have not, and what they are claiming is so unlikely as to be impossible.

If you have done those three things, you won't have convinced your opponent, but you will have won the debate as much as it is possible to win it.

saw this on Insta and the idea that people who are anti-AI are just using it anyway like... willing to give it up? I ACTIVELY AVOID THAT SHIT BUD! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?

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