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

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

#121

Post by knodi123 »

jorgenev wrote: post #82
nwatson wrote: 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…

> If it were true... how would we know?

If it were true, how would they know?!?

It's like if my nephew came to my house and saw Star Wars, and then on the drive home with his mom, he told her the story and she (who never saw the movie) said "He recited the entire movie after one hearing!"

No, what he did was remember most of the plot outline (imperfectly), and describe several scenes (imperfectly), and reproduce the gist, more or less, of some of the dialogue... He's not some incredible savant, he's just a normal person who paid attention to a story. I mean, sure, he "can recite the whole thing after one hearing", but in a pre-literate society, how would you even double-check? It would take someone else with total recall to verify that the bard had total recall. So you have to assume storytellers have perfect memory in order to demonstrate that a storyteller has perfect memory.

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

#122

Post by devindotcom »

jorgenev wrote: post #82
nwatson wrote: 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…

It wasn't rote memorization IIRC but a highly structured retelling that used all kinds of tricks to keep it poetic (epithets for characters that took up one, two, or three syllables for instance, used without fail in those situations) but still retained flexibility. Poets would tell the story of the Iliad differently depending on the audience, and I mean they're not going to tell the whole thing every night. But there would be epic competitions where they would.

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

#123

Post by cracell »

skizm wrote: post #16
schnevets wrote: post #8

I know that I'm guilty of this - just voluntarily putting my phone in the other room causes withdrawal-like anxiety, followed by a greater sense of awareness. Maybe future generations will see our management of information devices as backwards and unhealthy once we learn more about the human brain, the same way we treat smoking, child-rearing, and daily routines of yesterday as horrifyingly detrimental.

When I realize my phone has been out of reach for more than a few minutes my stomach drops because of the chance I've missed some catastrophic work alert that means our company's servers are all down... I probably need a new job.

If you work in IT use something like PagerDuty or OpsGenie and set it to harass you until you acknowledge. Then you don't need to worry about missing something.

Automate all the things.

Seriously only way to manage complex systems with small teams and stay sane. Prioritize automation and monitoring. When you do get emergencies spend the time when you are back in the office to figure out how to improve your processes to prevent that particular problem in the future.

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

#124

Post by chillwaves »

d0100 wrote: post #119
holografix wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insights and characterisations of human behaviour found in ancient records sometime shock me with their accuracy and depth. Human nature has not changed and it was well, if not better understood, Millenia ago.

Wouldn't that mean, then, that most all "doom and gloom" we get today is as irrelevant as those of old?

They didn't have nukes or climate change back then.

Human nature + escalating technology is the scary formula we are exploring today.

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

#125

Post by moduspwnens14 »

zachd1_618 wrote: post #40

Like most commenters here, I've found a happy medium (when I activate it). I'm no good at cold turkey and being without this amazing device is just impractical, but airplaning the phone routinely throughout the day really helps to cut down on "notification checking" and that constant background mental polling that this article talks about. I still like to have music (audiobooks actually) and navigation on hand, but k…

I don't know if you'd be interested, but I used to have exactly that kind of behavior--almost reflexively checking my phone at the first sense of downtime. I got an Apple Watch when it first came out and it has helped curb that behavior dramatically.

I can see at a glance of my wrist that I have no notifications, and it'll tap my wrist if I do, so I almost never need to pull out my phone. I'm still just as "connected," but it really did cut down use of my phone to clear tasks and extended boredom.

For me, airplaning would add stress in that I'd have that nagging feeling that I'm missing something important.

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

#126

Post by eikenberry »

BoysenberryPi wrote: post #24
eikenberry wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then the title is misleading. It is not the presence of a smartphone, but over using the notification feature of the phone that causes the issue.

Whether or not the title is misleading you read a headline and decided to drop your 2 cents without actually reading the article. The title isnt at fault here

What about that comment lead you to believe I didn't read the article.

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

#127

Post by lazyasciiart »

knodi123 wrote: post #121
jorgenev wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If it were true... how would we know? If it were true, how would they know?!? It's like if my nephew came to my house and saw Star Wars, and then on the drive home with his mom, he told her the story and she (who never saw the movie) said "He recited the entire movie after one hearing!" No, what he did was remember most of the plot outline (imperfectly), and describe several scenes (imperfectly), and reproduce the…

No. It would take one person who had memorized the story, over however much repetition, to tell the story and then listen to the other person repeat it back. It's more like, if your nephew came to your house and saw Star Wars and then told you the story, and you, having seen the movie multiple times, said "well, that's actually not a perfect retelling".

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

#128

Post by andrewl »

nwatson wrote: 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 can't find the quote, but I remember Mark Twain describing his training as a Mississippi River pilot. The master pilot training him said something like "What was the water depth at So and So crossing at mid day three trips back?" When Twain said he didn't remember, the master said "You would, if you didn't read all the time."

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

#129

Post by kowdermeister »

throwanem wrote: post #118
sizzle wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

get a dedicated pocket cam

This is good advice - point-and-shoot cameras are really good these days! For $90 you can get one [1] that's the equal of any smartphone camera ever made, and the better of the vast majority - you might find a >16MP sensor on a smartphone, but you'll have a very hard time finding a smartphone with a 5x optical zoom capability. Spend a few hundred dollars more and you can get one [2] with an almost absurdly broad rang…

Polaroid also launched Snap:

http://www.polaroid.com/products/Z2300-instant-camera

I love the style and simplicity

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

#130

Post by Bakary »

pm90 wrote: post #75
wdewind wrote: 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.

Only a small fraction of that information is actually useful in improving our lives or giving meaning to them.
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