I mean, there are some theories that the mental illness epidemic is partially caused by internet use. I did strict 2 months Internet fast and I can attest it has a healing effect. Does it have entertainment-to-death effect? I guess there is a bigger than expected number of suicides that wouldn't happen have the people not been addicted to Internet. But I agree with every passing year we are moving further and further into entertainment-to-death with our civilisations.
Another example: Industry sponsored conferences. Doctors are invited to a 3 day 4 star hotel stay to attend a conference. Technically, talks that are paid shilling are specially marked as sponsored talks.
But are the other doctors, who are getting paid to speak there 100% independent?
Will you be a 100% independent doctor after getting free presents?
Maybe you will. But industry probably found its profitable if they spent millions on these kinds of conferences.
Also lie repeated multiple times makes you believe in, there are psychological studies. So when you spend hour listening how drug X is gold, you might start believing its gold
I am not in SF but follow a lot of people there. My intuition is a lot of them promote long hours. I also worked in a few startups in Poland and all of them promoted long hours. I think the idea of working hard is real in startup scene, even though posters here might disagree. Take notice of most of us here are engineers, not business people