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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

#361

Post by shostack »

thesagan wrote: post #311
shostack wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to stop using my phone so much, but I can't break the habit. Short of losing it, any tips for dealing with the stress when it flares up from not having the ability to fill those gaps with refreshes of Reddit, news sites or playing games?

Mindfulness, and studying the little details of your immediate surroundings. Meditation on-the-spot. When I realized how dependent I became on the phone for my well-being I decided to go through a painful-ish withdrawal to get back my own sense of self. Definitely wasn't comfortable, which prompted me to continue the practice!

How long did that take you? Was was your low point?

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

#362

Post by seszett »

anbende wrote: post #352
seszett wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like you're connecting the device directly to the audio system. With a radio transmitter, you're broadcasting on an fm band that the car picks up via the fm tuner. Of course if the person is willing to attach something to the car audio as you have, that's the best!

I'm not sure what you were suggesting before, then, when saying that a bluetooth transmitter is worse than radio... ah unless you were talking about some kind of device => bluetooth => fm => autoradio contraption?

I didn't think about that, yeah, but the OP said they had an AUX input, so quality should be good with a (even cheap) bluetooth adapter on that.

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

#363

Post by knodi123 »

shakil wrote: post #194
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…

"In the ancient times, when writing was scarcely used, memory and oral transmission was exercised and strengthened to a degree now almost unknown" [1] 1. https://books.google.com/books?id=8fYNAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22The+ora...

?!? Yes, that was the original claim. I challenged how we would prove such a thing, and so you quote a different random person making the same claim? That doesn't answer my question.

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

#364

Post by [deleted] »

lathiat wrote: post #77
notadoc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of funny. Similarly, I stopped listening to any music on my iPhone once I got an iPhone 7. Unexpected side effect of having no headphone jack, but I always forget the dongle somewhere. So, no more music from the iPhone. I listen to old am/fm talk radio again instead.

Buy AirPods. Honestly.

[deleted]

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

#365

Post by TranquilMarmot »

contingencies wrote: post #172
jxramos wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that interpretation of jotting down information as creating a mindfulness work of art. What a thought! I used to do the cliche "note to self" with a voice recorder, that I've recently been desiring again. My cell phone is too slow to respond to my inspirations having to log in past the keycode, launch the app, dump mental information. Stepping through those hoops seems to decay my inspiration. You make me thin…

I actually carry a cheap USB wacom tablet around with my laptop for such purposes... I swear by it, it gives you almost the full freedom of paper without the restrictions of manual media (undo, scaling, duplication, restyling, etc.)

Have you ever tried a boogie board? https://www.myboogieboard.com/

Writing on it is very natural/paper feeling, there's no erasing or anything. With the more expensive models, it can sync the notes to a computer/cloud service.

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

#366

Post by urethrafranklin »

shric wrote: post #106
danso wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After I lost my phone to a robber late at night, I walked home (which was about 15 minutes away) so I could look up the nearest police precinct station. The detectives looked at me like I was the biggest idiot for not calling 911 from the nearest pay phone (this was before NYC converted their pay phones into whatever they are these days).

Is it really considered okay to call 911 for a stolen phone? I thought 911 was for emergencies (e.g. imminent danger to property or someone's life or health). If your phone's already stolen, what can the police do urgently? This assumes they can respond quickly. I wouldn't have thought a stolen phone would result in a quick response in NYC.

No, you can call 911 for basically any crime. It's not like they are gonna get there in under 10-15 minutes even if it is an exigency.

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

#367

Post by dragonwriter »

stretchwithme wrote: post #19

So true. And in-car GPS keeps your sense of direction from developing. I've seen people stymied as to how they could possibly make a phone call without their phones. Payphone. Borrow someone else's. Not that hard. I used to think this would only ever happen to geeks like me. Boy, was I wrong.

> I've seen people stymied as to how they could possibly make a phone call without their phones. Payphone.

Ubiquitous cell phones have caused most of these to be removed.

> Borrow someone else's.

Phones becoming more loaded with sensitive personal material than wallets have made people reluctant to loan them to anyone not a close friend.

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

#368

Post by lazyasciiart »

knodi123 wrote: post #327
lazyasciiart wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sup…

Maybe 250 people perfectly memorized 1000 words each. Maybe your nephew is attempting to retell the story to a theater full of obsessive nerds who had also just seen the film and had each had a five minute slot assigned for memorization.

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

#369

Post by ekianjo »

oddgoo wrote: post #165
ekianjo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yet the world did not end. Countless prophecies aboutvthe absolute apocalypse have gone and passed. So yeah it is by large irrelevant.

Their world did end for those 80 million people. If most of society dies in pain and hunger to climate change, would the survivors say "bah, just more fear mongering"? For me, humanity is the sum of human experiences, not the mere presence of the species. The end of the world being relative and analog.

> Their world did end for those 80 million people.

The world did not end for the other billion on Earth living at the same time. You can't just throw figures like that without putting them in perspective.

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

#370

Post by ekianjo »

bobbybobbybob wrote: post #274
oddgoo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their world did end for those 80 million people. If most of society dies in pain and hunger to climate change, would the survivors say "bah, just more fear mongering"? For me, humanity is the sum of human experiences, not the mere presence of the species. The end of the world being relative and analog.

9 million already due of hunger every year, what is the world doing about that presently?

> 9 million already due of hunger every year, what is the world doing about that presently?

Most of it is because of conflicts. Poverty is decreasing fast across the globe and there were relatively a lot more people dying from hunger in the 80s.

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