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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

#321

Post by honestoHeminway »

mcherm wrote: post #167
ekianjo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plague killed way more people than nukes ever did, and there was no way to stop it until people understood what spread it. Of course technology has bright sides as well. Without medicine and many other discoveries we would not be where we are today.

> The plague killed way more people than nukes ever did No one is worried about the number of people who have ALREADY been killed by nukes, they are worried about the number of people who might be in the future. But I suppose I fundamentally agree with you. I think we may have more to fear from scientifically engineered diseases than we do from nuclear weapons.

The problem would be even higher by a seemingly dormant disease agent, which first infects nearly all of humanity and then wents time delayed into action.

Nobody suspects the flue.

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

#322

Post by honestoHeminway »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #255
icebraining wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, it does decline and raise, in cycles, and the complaining may be what helps it raise. I don't think so, but a regular decline isn't impossible.

Didn't consider that, thanks. Yeah, it works as a possible explanation, though I don't buy into it either.

Even the talk on moral decline has declined. I remember in my youth we where mor meta..

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

#323

Post by knodi123 »

kanzure wrote: post #143
knodi123 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You could stripe the memory across multiple different people who are responsible for smaller fragments. Each person can be responsible for some number of shared fragments. See your issued handbook, subsection "Surviving information storage in ancient times". (They could also just write it down, they had that.)

> They could also just write it down, they had that.

Of course. That's why I stipulated a pre-literate society.

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

#324

Post by Phemist »

daxfohl wrote: post #2

Mine broke last week. I haven't replaced it and almost don't intend to because I do feel more alert now. Though the feeling is subsiding, so perhaps it's a temporary thing. I wonder in the study, is the control group smartphone users temporarily deprived of the phones, or non-smartphone users. Could make a big difference.

The control group were smart phone users and high smart phone dependence was in fact positively correlated with performance on the cognitive tests, on the condition that the smart phone was not on the desk in front of them. However, I wouldn't put too much faith in either results.

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

#325

Post by Phemist »

daniel_rh wrote: post #188
vlasev wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related hack if you don't want to put your phone behind your laptop - put the phone screen-side down. This way the changing states of the screen (when you get a notification) won't distract you.

The researchers specifically tested phone face up vs phone face down and noticed no statistical difference, I believe.

They tested power-off vs power-on. No results on face-up vs face-down, but they probably didn't record it.

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

#326

Post by scriptkiddy »

zulln wrote: post #268
notadoc wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no I think it's a very bad thing. My implication is that I either shouldn't have bought an iPhone 7, or maybe that Apple pulled the headphone jack a decade too early.

I always leave the dongle on in-ear headphones, that way I never forget them. Sure, the problem still exists for listening in a new environment (a friend's car, as someone here gave as example), but not with your own headphones. (mind you, I do not listen with in-ear headphones when I actually want to enjoy music, but they sure are a lot easier to bring with me than my "real headphones") Edit, as a bonus, as I almost…

I really enjoy the sound from in ear headphones, but I had an issue where wearing them too often was causing ear wax build up near my ear drum. I actually temporarily lost hearing in my left ear because because of this. Basically, the ear buds did not allow the ear wax to naturally flow out of the ear. This caused wax buildup near my ear drum and reduced the ability for my ear drum to vibrate. I had to rinse my ear with warm water every day to eventually clear it up. Just a cautionary tale.

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

#327

Post by knodi123 »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #127
knodi123 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

> It would take one person who had memorized the story, over however much repetition

From whom did this person hear it repeated over and over, perfectly, without variation? And who did THAT person find, capable of reciting a quarter million words in a specific order, multiple times without mistake? And so on.

At some point in the chain, you either have a person with an unverifiable claim of single-hearing perfect superhuman memory, OR you have a story repeated imperfectly which no one is capable of validating.

In your Star Wars analogy, remember that there's no DVD copy, and no way for me to have "seen the movie multiple times" without just pushing the whole "perfect memory" claim back one generation.

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

#328

Post by nwatson »

jff wrote: post #7
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…

You seem to be defending against a claim the study does not make. They're not saying "smartphones make us stupid because Google's in your pocket!" Rather, the study is saying that by having your phone on the desk or even in your pocket, you will exhibit decreased mental capacity because your brain is using some cognitive resources to monitor for notifications etc. This may be over-simplified but appears to be backed…

Apparently you're right, but I did hit a nerve and prompted some interesting discussion, and got by far the highest point-count for any HN comment I've made. Count me cynical, but my first and kind of unintentional foray into fake-news-land worked out well.

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

#329

Post by seszett »

anbende wrote: post #312
notadoc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I considered it but I'm not a big fan of headphones, I usually listen to music at home or in a car. One of the most annoying situations was when I had a great podcast I wanted to share with someone on a long drive, pulled out the iPhone 7 to plug into their car stereo and.... new-ish car.... but AUX only.... no dongle..... never mind! I believe Apple removed the headphone jack 5 or 10 years too early. Bluetooth is no…

Bluetooth radio transmitter for the car is like $100 (for a good one). Quality is only slightly worse than radio (for a good one). Problem solved. Enjoy

Worse than radio? That's not what I have experienced.

I'm using a 1,5€ BK8000L module (http://www.electrodragon.com/w/BK8000L) that I soldered to my old stock autoradio, replacing the tape audio circuit, and the quality is much better than FM.

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

#330

Post by amrrs »

thinkingemote wrote: post #289
mcherm wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The plague killed way more people than nukes ever did No one is worried about the number of people who have ALREADY been killed by nukes, they are worried about the number of people who might be in the future. But I suppose I fundamentally agree with you. I think we may have more to fear from scientifically engineered diseases than we do from nuclear weapons.

Exactly. Every people in their own time considers their time as the most important, crucial and urgent. they consider past times as less important. If you observe this then you can see that in the future people will look back at now and think the same. history tells us the same thing. it's human nature to think that doom and gloom now is much worse than before, simply because we are in this moment and without perspec…

In the same context, The debate between Malcolm Gladwell and Matt Riddley is an interesting one http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/progress
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