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The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

journals.uchicago.edu

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Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#91
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep my phone on silent and turn off all vibrations. There's no way to notify me of anything until I look at it, but that's a feature.

That was what they had participants do in this study, and they still observed the effect.

When you are used to notifications, you look for them even if you don't have your phone with you. It takes a while to detoxify yourself, and lose your "check reflex".

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#92
A simple demonstration of the inefficiency of task switching. Time yourself writing the letters of the alphabet in order from a to z followed by the numbers 1-26. Then try the same task only instead switching from numbers to letters, like this a,1,b,2,c,3, etc. Compare the two times. They should be the same, but the second version takes much more time for most people. It seems that whether you sit next to a giant bookshelf or put your phone in your pocket and occasionally think of the information either contains the effect on the efficiency of whatever you were trying to process would be the same.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#93
post #79
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but there is so much more information of every kind today than what used to exist at the time of Socrates. Attempting to remember all that information would probably be infeasible.

In the same way that reciting Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing is infeasible, right? (poking fun, but only a bit)

That's feasible. Barely, but feasible.

Now try reciting the Library of Congress after one hearing. Or Wikipedia. That's a whole nother level of problem.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine simply died and I also skipped buying a new one, this was in last September. I didn't even have a cell phone for months :) Now I just use my dumbphone. I lasts a week on one charge. I didn't miss the calls, or anything. Only the possibility to take pictures on the spot.

I always struggle with the photo thing. It's fun to review old photos, so I enjoy taking lots of them. But anytime I put my camera between myself and whatever I'm photographing, it also feels like a removal of being in the present moment and just enjoying it for what it is.

This argument get brought up quite a lot, but rarely by someone sharing his own experience which is interesting.

I never really felt like this. Snapping a photo takes a few seconds and I can continue enjoying whatever I was doing, not that I'm not enjoying taking a photo :) To me it's just shrink-wrapping my mood.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#95
post #44

I want to learn Japanese. 3 months ago I changed my phone's language to Japanese. Everything is Japanese - maps, services, apps that read from the default phone language. Oddly enough, instead of learning Japanese, I just use my phone less.

I did the same thing! The difficult part is looking up kanji I encounter in app UIs, you can't exactly copy+paste them and manual lookup is annoying.

I feel no shame suggesting that you get the Pleco app. It is the best Character/Kanji dictionary that exists today. You can also draw them to look them up + tons of other stuff.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#96
post #75
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. Socrates absolutely did. > for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth,…

Right but there is so much more information of every kind today than what used to exist at the time of Socrates. Attempting to remember all that information would probably be infeasible.

"More and more information, less and less meaning." - Jean Baudrillard

"The more words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?" - Ecclesiastes 6:11

"Let's start from the premise that more information, more empowerment, is fundamentally the correct answer" - Eric Schmidt

One of these two quotes is not like the others...

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#97
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep my phone on silent and turn off all vibrations. There's no way to notify me of anything until I look at it, but that's a feature.

I realize that I am not typical, but I seldom even have my phone turned on, and don't even take it with me very often. I was tethered to a phone for years. I am retired. I only take it if I am expecting to be idle. Then, I take it so I can browse while waiting. It feels kinda nice, frankly. I am not a technophobe. It's just nice to not be beholden to my phone.

This reminds me of my experience giving up my wristwatch. I would glance at it frequently, but then didn't know the time because the behavior was strictly reflex. Finally, someone asked me for the time right after I did this and I had to look again because I hadn't internalized it. That was the day I removed my watch forever.

Your comment about being beholden to your phone reminds me a a great quote that I recalled on that day: "Wearing a watch is like being handcuffed to time."

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#98
post #3

Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. So we're the first g…

> Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing Is this a true fact, or just a story people keep repeating because it sounds interesting? If it were true... how would we know? Presumably you would cite sources from Ancient Greece where people reported that they knew bards who could memorize a whole story with one listen, but like, there are sources from Ancie…

I'm curious if it's true too. A current living source of folks memorizing stuff is the crowd of Hafiz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafiz_(Quran)

I wonder how that subset of the population would rank on their evaluation.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#99

I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result. This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and…

How do you deal with 2FA?

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#100
post #3

Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. So we're the first g…

I'm kind of curious how one would measure whether you recited the odyssey in it's entirety after one hearing if you don't have a written reference and only have fallible human memory to rely on...
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