20 years ago I knew all the phone numbers of all my friends.
Today I barely remember my own phone number.
I have outsourced the cognitive load to my phone.
I'm still not sure if that's better or worse.
The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
201–210 of 393 posts
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I only run open source software on my phone. However, I think there are some similar FOSS apps for Japanese on F-Droid, I'll have to take another look.
I wonder about this. Can't you just lock down the app to the point where you don't have to worry about it phoning home or accessing certain information? Or is it just ideology that's stopping you?
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I only run open source software on my phone. However, I think there are some similar FOSS apps for Japanese on F-Droid, I'll have to take another look.
I wonder about this. Can't you just lock down the app to the point where you don't have to worry about it phoning home or accessing certain information? Or is it just ideology that's stopping you?
Not to my satisfaction, no. But I can't also install it in the first place because I don't have the Play store on my phone. Ideology is a part of it too.
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#204I 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.
Go to Japan, get a girlfriend who doesn't speak English. Takes about 6 months after that to become fluent.
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#205I wonder if there is a effective way to counter this without giving up on the phone completely. Discipline is of course the main thing but let's be honest, that's like telling an opiod addict to 'just use it less'.
I tried meditating in the train instead of fiddling with my phone. I can definitely feel the urge to read up on something despite knowing that there's not really anything that currently needs my attention on the phone anyway.
Also I replaced my digital calendar and task list with a bullet journal that I'm carrying around. I was surprisingly more successful with keeping task load under control. As a test, I bought the new Things 3 and used it with Fantastical for a month instead of my journal. I was able to add things faster but actually getting things done has become slower. Though the Calendar reminders are definitely super helpful.
Maybe a detox in a country where you don't have mobile data or wifi might be nice.
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I mean my texts are set to annoy me till I acknowledge them, but if I'm watching TV, in the gym, outside doing some sort of non-tech shenanigans, and I just don't have my phone with me, no amount of alerts will help at that point.
Those are usually the "missed a stair" feelings when I realize I've been without my phone for too long.
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was in high school when I first read this opinion (I did not remember it was Socrates though). Also, I learned that Gaul, pre-roman France (where I lived), had a society where the priests/judges, the druids, were forbidden to write down their knowledge. It fascinated me. The idea that books, that were more or less revered depositories of knowledge, could have been seen as anti-intellectual at one time. It pushed me…
Recommendations on intro texts for poetry?
You can also try starting with an author whose themes or circumstances evoke a strong emotional response in your mind. This is likely to be more effective at getting you hooked in comparison to a text that provides a general introduction. In my case, it was Wilfred Owen who provided the initial spark.
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#208A 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 boo…
On the flip side my smart phone often allows me to look up needed information about something I'm currently thinking about or working on. So I can stay in the same task instead of noting it and having to come back to it later after I've looked it up from a laptop or in a library prior to the modern internet. I think the effects of a smart phone on someone varies greatly depending on how exactly the individual uses it…
How could one design a test for the last statement above (which resembles a hypothesis)? In practice it seems the statement "varies greatly depending on how the individual uses it" equates too easily with "varies greatly depending on the individual" (fundamental attribution error). Also, it may be that we believe we are very good at using something to our advantage when in fact we should not be using it at all (casinos exploit this problem). The reality is that it is impossible to split test oneself to discover whether in fact there was a benefit, although I wish this were possible. Maybe try something very difficult in two scenarios: play a game of skill which may benefit from looking something up (like chess openers) several times without a phone and several times with access to the phone to see whether there is a difference in performance against a continuously adaptive algorithmic opponent.
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#209I deleted reddit, instagram and quora and have deactivated facebook for over a year now!! I only have HN and the NYtimes and I get sparse notifications from the latter. I don't care much about my phone as I spend most of my day glued to my laptop.
Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity
#210Bards 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…
"[Mozart] heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere twice in performance, in the Sistine Chapel, and wrote it out from memory, thus producing the first unauthorized copy of this closely guarded property of the Vatican"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miserere_(Allegri)
How can anyone remember 10+ mins music piece for 9 voices is beyond me. Granted, Mozart had some music superpowers, but still...