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We need to reclaim our attention

theguardian.com

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Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#431

Post by dredmorbius »

300bps wrote: post #200
dredmorbius wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this. Humans as a race have evolved to be able to short-cut our own motivational and behavioural control systems. Or more precisely, for one group to manipulate anothers' motivators to serve the interests of the manipulator rather than the party served by those factors. Wants are a means to an end. They are not the end itself. That is, wants are evolutionarily-derived (or sometimes culturally-instilled) drives o…

Very insightful response. Taking your fruit analogy further - some fruit evolved to be poisonous to mammals because birds spread their seeds further. Also liked the manipulation point you made. It’s why you have things from the 20th century like soda companies and McDonalds and all the other organizations just “giving people what they want”. Now in the 21st century we have Facebook, Instagram and the like similarly l…

The marketing excuse has long bothered me, though it took me years to put my finger on just what the issue was. The Mastodon thread linked above is where I first articulated it.

I'm aware of some similar work and concepts (especially "paradox of choice" research), but nothing as yet that lands close to what I've come up with. I've got a few feelers out for any possible earlier work.

If there is an extant similar concept, I'd love to hear of it.

(If anyone comes across this later, email me, HN username at protonmail.)

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#432

Post by mikewarot »

I've avoided smartphone ownership successfully since the beginning, as I feared my own addictive tendencies would have me paying attention to it instead of the world.

Even without a smartphone, however... there are things that I got sucked into while being a system administrator with far too much time to surf. It's now apparent to me that I need to schedule time for myself with no computer in the same room.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#433

Post by neuronic »

37 wrote: post #244
neuronic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the examples, reddit is the scariest to me. People think it's a bunch of nerds talking about geeky topics (or whatever) but as soon as a subreddit has a sizable user base it will be targeted by PR firms posing as normal users. More political subs are likely subject to propaganda ops bu8t Im not even going there. Some things on the frontpage are clear advertisments, there has been evidence of shilling about cer…

In my eyes, the worst is probably Facebook or Instagram or TikTok (none of which I use) but yes, I also understand the Reddit example as well (which I do use). And yes, even without speaking to the larger politicized subs like T_D, I do completely agree. Quite scary. And it scares me 'PR firms' exist and are named as such because the term 'propaganda' started to take on a negative connotation. Kinda like how Google b…

I mean there are entire pages dedicated to lay out marketing strategies on reddit:

https://blog.wishpond.com/post/115675438254/reddit-marketing...

https://contentfac.com/a-complete-guide-to-reddit-marketing/

There are also useful subreddits to find examples: https://old.reddit.com/r/AstroTurfing/

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#434

Post by SuoDuanDao »

optimalsolver wrote: post #46

I believe that once we reach a post-scarcity phase of civilization, the attention of other human beings will be the last, zero-sum scarce resource. And the competition over it will be no less intense and brutal than historical conflicts over the basics of life.

One need only look at sibling rivalry to see how desperately humans require the attention of other humans.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#435

Post by SuoDuanDao »

mayregretit wrote: post #181
optimalsolver wrote: post #46

I believe that once we reach a post-scarcity phase of civilization, the attention of other human beings will be the last, zero-sum scarce resource. And the competition over it will be no less intense and brutal than historical conflicts over the basics of life.

Yes, even post-scarcity not everyone can be famous, unless you're willing to delude yourself with follower bots.

Now that is interesting... at what point would follower bots be as good as the real thing? Dogs are pretty good at paying attention to humans in a way most of us like after all, and a household robot can lead to a similar bonding experience. I wonder what the minimum is...

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#436

Post by LightG »

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…

BS. Billions of pounds are pumped into light and dark methods of taking our attention. Or do you think those billions are for charity?

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#437

Post by nabla9 »

slibhb wrote: post #341
nabla9 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's another type of fallacy. If there is no obviously horrific consequences, there is nothing. Either/Or Reasoning. My position is that we don't know yet. Some harms may be transitory and people adult. Making arguments for or against without good data and reasoning is not helping. Making your mind up prematurely makes it harder to change the opinion when the evidence comes in.

The author of this article (and you) think one thing. I think another. Calling my thought a "fallacy" because I've made up my mind prematurely makes no sense. You (and the author) have made up your mind too. We can't endlessly defer our opinions, that's epistemic nihilism. To me, this seems like just another old vs. new turf war and I predict it will turn out like the previous ones. "Everything must change for everyt…

> Calling my thought a "fallacy" because I've made up my mind prematurely makes no sense.

Fallacy can be determined by your argument alone.

> You (and the author) have made up your mind too.

In fact, I'm more inclined to side on you on the issue. One should not accept bad or fallacious arguments just because one has inclination to agree with the result.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#438

Post by sascha_sl »

bluesnowmonkey wrote: post #424
sascha_sl wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. Lost every single object I could lose, dropped out of school, forgot I had prescriptions to pick up for a year, constant messy room, spent an entire year literally doing nothing and still feeling nervous every day, failed jobs where I couldn't cherry pick interesting things out of JIRA and then spent 2 hours in hyperfocus, followed by 6 hours of faking being busy because I simply couldn't focus anymore (…

> My job turned from amazing with coding every day to maintaining broken things last year (mostly black boxes others left behind). You generally have more control over your job description than anyone will acknowledge to your face. If you’re miserable maintaining broken black boxes, then stop doing that. Figure out what you’d be more productive doing, tell your boss, and start doing it. You may have some uncomfortabl…

I may have simplified a bit.

The black box is GitHub Actions Self-Hosted runners. Recently a very large blast radius Keycloak got added (we're a go team, we have zero experience running anything Java/JBoss).

GitHub Actions was used to sell GitHub somewhere way above me, a Microsoft enterprise contract might've been involved too. GitLab wasn't even considered. Rejecting GHA outright as a team is something we all agree would be right, but not politically feasible.

Keycloak is another team running off. The entire tribe is massively understaffed because limitations to salaries (also from higher up) are slowly eating away at all the performers.

I like my team and the tribe in general, but even if we could hire more people, we've become the least desirable team with all the broken shit and hiring is always for all teams, so long term I'll probably ask to do something else.

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#439

Post by pier25 »

LightHugger wrote: post #302
pier25 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like documentation? Or what type of notes are you talking about?

Documentation would be a part of it but not really what im talking about. First step would be learning to recognize the thoughts that keep buzzing around in your head, like if are frequently noticing that you keep thinking "I gotta do X, which requires me to do Y, and this is how i should do Y but im not sure about Z and whether or not i do Z or Y first so now im thinking about how i should do Z". Then those things n…

Thanks. It makes sense. I will try your method and see if I can offload some RAM!

Re: We need to reclaim our attention

#440

Post by spacechild1 »

> “They’re switching back and forth. They don’t notice the switching because their brain sort of papers it over to give a seamless experience of consciousness, but what they’re actually doing is switching and reconfiguring their brain moment-to-moment, task-to-task – [and] that comes with a cost.”

This sounds very similar to multi-threaded programming :-)

Joking aside, great article!

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