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We need to reclaim our attention

theguardian.com

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Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#141

Post by hindsightbias »

jacquesm wrote: post #52
batch12 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. People talk about addiction to social media or other attention-farming software, but not many people really take it seriously. People think they are unicorns and while some can get addicted or manipulated-- they think "not me. I am too savvy." As long this issue just keeps getting shrugged off as a new version of tv-is-bad hysteria 'media' companies will keep making their dollars and enslaving the minds of the t…

One form this takes is that people with some regularity claim that 'all this advertising doesn't work on them' while having an iPhone, ridiculously over-priced in ear headphones, designer clothes with large logos on them and shoes with very visible branding. Advertising works, on everybody. The only way to get to a level playing field is to filter it out of your life as much as possible. The only thing I haven't foun…

My sneakers have branding because there isn’t a place to try jogging shoes with no branding.

NB also made their logo reflective, so there is utility in that. All these people running in black shorts and shirts, there ought to be a law.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#142

Post by hammock »

ModernMech wrote: post #82
jacquesm wrote: post #8

There is a veritable war going on for your attention, and the battlefields are your eyeballs, your ears and ultimately your brain. Psychologists have been enlisted, as they are in every war to try to win it for 'their side', be it one of the big silos or some dying TV or newspaper era behemoth, there is no reasonable way in which you can withstand that kind of frontal onslaught. The only way to really deal with this…

There is a popular meme that shows the landscape of a colonized Mars, and the skyline is filled with McDonald’s and Chevron billboards. I think about that a lot.

You ever see the movie Demolition Man?

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#143

Post by sascha_sl »

thegrimmest wrote: post #117
sascha_sl wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I wanted to avoid this discussion. Because philosophically, I really don't disagree with this statement, but the discussion has pivoted past the important part, where we talk about whether total economic freedom is itself ideology (or "an imposition of belief"). It doesn't exist in a vaccum. It is a way to maximize one particular aspect of freedom, but at the expense of other aspects. You will always have…

I'm curious how you would categorize total economic freedom in any sense an "imposition of belief". It is simply absence of any imposition into the economic realm. What other aspects are being sacrificed in order to maximise this aspect? I'm not sure the paradox of tolerance is a statement of fact.

But that economic system is built on barely 2 century old philosophy you take for granted. It is not "human nature". If you could argue for any political system to be "human nature" it would be feudalism or anarchism-without-adjectives.

What is being sacrificed? Equal starting conditions to start with. Wealth in capitalism tends to concentrate. Social mobility exists, but it is severely limited. Exploitation through holding capital is mandatory. I'm feeling this right now, I am in the top 25% income bracket overall and much better if accounting for age, yet I will never be able to do such trivial things regular workers could do just a few decades ago such as build a house, thanks to the freedom afforded to the absolute top end to turn housing into a speculative commodity. If I lived in the US, a considerably "freer" society than mine, my entire wealth would be consumed by healthcare, a result of the freedom of hospitals and insurers to charge arbitrarily high fees for maximum extraction.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#144

Post by daniel-cussen »

le-mark wrote: post #25
jacquesm wrote: post #8

There is a veritable war going on for your attention, and the battlefields are your eyeballs, your ears and ultimately your brain. Psychologists have been enlisted, as they are in every war to try to win it for 'their side', be it one of the big silos or some dying TV or newspaper era behemoth, there is no reasonable way in which you can withstand that kind of frontal onslaught. The only way to really deal with this…

Recently my son (8) was talking about how cool his uncles vr headset is and made the leap to what if that was in your brain! I was impressed he made that connection. Then I reminded him how all the games on his iPad forced him to watch ads, wouldn’t that be a similar situation, only in his brain? His eyes got wide then he got a disgusted look on his face. He agreed that would suck. I personally think there have alway…

Funny in Mario Kart 64 there's billboards so the roads look like roads, for realism. They are ads that say "Yoshi" and such. They are just not ads.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#145

Post by wwweston »

slibhb wrote: post #42

> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mista…

> One reason so many people think they have ADHD is because they make that mistake.

Speaking of which: has anyone had the experience where they sought to be evaluated for ADHD and the professional they went to said "nope, this doesn't look like ADHD"?

I'm wondering if there are criteria people use to exclude ADHD as a diagnosis, or if the assumption is that if people are seeking diagnosis/treatment that they're experiencing something enough like it and should be given ADHD interventions (and of course, the incentive under fee-for-service would be to provide the intervention for a fee).

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#146

Post by fullshark »

Apocryphon wrote: post #111
fullshark wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possibility: the moral panic about comic books / rap music / low brow culture was justified and its ubiquity has done active harm to our society.

Certainly without comic books, comic book movies wouldn’t have eaten Hollywood

I don't necessarily mean a problem as a matter of taste, more a destruction of shared cultural values, in particular those that are good for "society" like a belief in the value of work, family unit, deeper concerns than material wealth (e.g. god/spirituality) etc at least in the west / America.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#147

Post by redmaverickclon »

moonchrome wrote: post #119
batch12 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, these examples- radio and TV aren't even in the same league as the manipulation and engagement that comes from the algorithmic feedback loop that backs these services. The comparison is dangerously dismissive.

All this talk about "algorithmic feedback loops" is overselling the quality of said algos (eg. I get more interesting suggestions when I open YT incognito then I do when I'm signed in, I have to scroll through a bunch of stuff I have 0 interest on FB when I open it, etc.) and their importance. It's completely missing the actual attention grabbing factor here - there's a huge amount of content for consumption on deman…

I am not sure. This is just a data point of 1.

I used to browse Instagram casually. Like, once is a blue moon. I would see updates from my network and spend a few mins here and there. This was probably like over year or two back. (not 100% sure)

And then a few months back I just could not take my eyes off of Instagram reels. This feature wasn't there before I think. I was just completely hooked. It was pretty interesting. I had to delete my instagram off of my phone.

They definitely are figuring out the formula to retain people's attention.

Again, this is just a data point of one.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#148

Post by touisteur »

IHLayman wrote: post #95
le-mark wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently my son (8) was talking about how cool his uncles vr headset is and made the leap to what if that was in your brain! I was impressed he made that connection. Then I reminded him how all the games on his iPad forced him to watch ads, wouldn’t that be a similar situation, only in his brain? His eyes got wide then he got a disgusted look on his face. He agreed that would suck. I personally think there have alway…

I hate to be that person but I must point out that there are studies that show that children less than 10 years old using VR can have impaired head-trunk coordination. See this study for more info: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-96866-8

Thanks for the link, I think modern VR's paint is still fresh in everyone's mind (well... mine at least) and you brought a scientific article. I'm now wondering if the effects could be made beneficial for physical therapy.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#149

Post by travisjungroth »

wwweston wrote: post #145
slibhb wrote: post #42

> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mista…

> One reason so many people think they have ADHD is because they make that mistake. Speaking of which: has anyone had the experience where they sought to be evaluated for ADHD and the professional they went to said "nope, this doesn't look like ADHD"? I'm wondering if there are criteria people use to exclude ADHD as a diagnosis, or if the assumption is that if people are seeking diagnosis/treatment that they're exper…

Yeah, usually people who lack the executive function navigate the healthcare system. It’s like they have a lack of focus pathology, so they can’t get an ADHD diagnoses.

https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/168201153351/have-yo...

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#150

Post by fullshark »

trwhite wrote: post #109
slibhb wrote: post #42

> Some scientists say these worries about attention are a moral panic, comparable to the anxieties in the past about comic books or rap music, and that the evidence is shaky. I agree with them. It's hard to pay attention to something for long unless it's entertaining. Reading a book, reading a paper, etc -- these activities take discipline that most people don't develop or don't often apply. This isn't new. The mista…

Video games are immensely addictive. The burst of adrenaline some of the recent online FPS' give me doesn't compare to any other feeling or experience I've had as a human being. They didn't just happen to be this way. They have been designed to be so thrilling that normal life cannot compete.

I have friends who dropped out of college to play video games all day and that was years ago. The games today are even more addictive. They eventually learned that was a dead end and got their lives back on track but the addiction did active harm to their lives in the short run and cost them/their parents thousands of dollars for sure.

Edit: TBF this is a chicken/egg problem, people have been dropping out of school forever and maybe the video games were the outlet for their stress, but I don't think we can simply act like all is fine while making games targeting adolescents as addictive as possible.

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