I've noticed with myself that sometimes if I want to go and find something in youtube, I really have to be careful to not look at the front-page - for some reason if I look at the suggestions, I just forget what I was there to search for, it is so frustrating.
Our attention span is being robbed
131–140 of 161 posts
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#132Factorio or Satisfactory are my solution to this, great for re-training long duration singular focus. Good to disable social media and none essential notifications by default only enable when actually needed for something.
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#133There’s always BEEN a lot of ANNOYING click-thirst content on the INTERNET but there’s something very META about so much clickbait “anti-scrollbait” winding up on the FRONT page of HN lately.
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#134I've noticed with myself that sometimes if I want to go and find something in youtube, I really have to be careful to not look at the front-page - for some reason if I look at the suggestions, I just forget what I was there to search for, it is so frustrating.
this might help https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
(just a happy user)
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#135There’s always BEEN a lot of ANNOYING click-thirst content on the INTERNET but there’s something very META about so much clickbait “anti-scrollbait” winding up on the FRONT page of HN lately.
Ah, I KNOW what you did THERE ;-)
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#136Thinking out loud here...is it possible to use the same patterns for good? Like, infinite scroll, bite-sized chunk UI, etc. that trick our minds into reading a full book?
I'd suggest ... not, for the most part. Though there's the option of planting little long-focus concentration seeds by dropping references to both longer-form high-quality works and the mindset that it takes to absorb them within more accessible materials. Books have pretty much always had an accessibility problem --- they're hard to publicise and attract readers to, and there's a considerable infrastructure that's b…
I am curious. If it's not too personal - you seem to be someone who reads a lot and synthesises it together into interesting output. You appear to have some control and resistance to the attention stealing machine, and haven't succumbed to the traps we're bemoaning elsewhere in the thread - tiktok, instagram. What use you make of hackernews and reddit appears to be controlled and productive. Is that a fair assessment? Was it ever a struggle? How did you do this?
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#137I will just leave it here: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790.amp
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I intuitively agree with you, but I don't think it's as simple as "just do X and don't do Y". It's akin to saying "Just choose to read a book. Drop heroin". We'd like to think we have such control, but the fact is that these things are addictive and one can't simply "just stop" without a process and a culture that promotes these processes.
willpowering is a bad way to change any behavior. It's more or less a setup for failure. There are definitely ways to prepare and change a behavior with intention - limit time per day. if you find yourself going over, thats ok, note it, and put the phone down. - try uninstalling the app entirely -- make it harder for yourself to get the fix - schedule other activities that require you to be in the moment - give yours…
While repeated often, Atomic Habits is a really great book I can wholeheartedly recommend. People really are habitual creatures. Willpower is very fickle, yet you likely don’t have to find any motivation to brush your teeth before bed, it just comes automatically.
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thinking about this a bit more, I realized that Duolingo, the language learning app, does exactly this. It breaks up a large task, learning a language, into smaller bite-sized chunks. It rewards users with coins that can be used to do power-ups. It turns learning into a rewarding game. Perhaps this principle can be applied to other domains as well.
The word you're looking for is "Gamification" and I honestly, I fucking hate it. The problem with Gamification in this context is that apps like Duolingo that uses Gamification to award you good boy points (daily streak) in the form of streak building mainly to build up "good habits". Unfortunately, the reality is that there is only so much what one app can do before it starts holding you back and become detrimental,…
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that gamification is addictive and traps people into the small catalog of gamified apps? While I agree that a tolerance to more "painful" material is useful for broadening your reach, it's still possible to do both. To value gamified apps for their tight feedback loops, while being conscious that there are other materials out there that may provide other benefits despite not being as gamified
Re: Our attention span is being robbed
#140I’m sympathetic to this argument to some extent… And yet… Just choose to read a book. Drop Facebook. Stop reading Twitter and scrolling through TikTok. I’ve come to believe it’s really that simple. Or don’t. Totally up to you. But the idea that something is being done to you is both seductive and lazy. Take responsibility, act intentionally and don’t worry about it.
I have had times where I have decided to close YouTube Shorts and been unsuccessful for an hour and a half after I made the decision. I have not had a problem to nearly this extent with other applications, and I'm not even enjoying myself while I do it (my YouTube Shorts recommendation stream gets worse and worse the longer I scroll, and seems to get sucked into a really disturbing attractor of the most vile forms of…
> YouTube Shorts recommendation stream gets worse and worse the longer I scroll, and seems to get sucked into a really disturbing attractor of the most vile forms of misogyny and straight up rape advocacy I've ever seen
Automated recommendation algorithms really have a lot to answer for. The humans running the tool need to have the output shoved back in their faces - "you are suggesting that people should watch this?"
Twitter's "For You" tab shows me something I hate every time I forget and go to that tab, regardless of whether I've muted those words or not.
(Also, it's entertainingly stupid how many youtube shorts and instagram reels have the TikTok watermark on)