Have attention spans been declining? • Hacker News Board

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#101

Post by vikingerik » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

Tenoke wrote: post #89

bizzleDawg wrote: post #21

I may be reading this incorrectly, but in the article, the 65% appears to be authors confidence in the statement that attention spans appear to be declining, as denoted by the sub-script. Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span". Various other assertions in the post also have sub-script confidences associated e.g. "my guess: yes90%". I could totally believe that there has b…

It would be nice if HN titles actually had to match submission titles.

Well, it's a balancing act. The original title may represent the article more accurately than the submitter's title, or it may be misleading clickbait and the submitter is trying to improve that. The policy here seems to be the best middle ground we can do, mostly go by the original title but also be ready to edit away from clickbait (which of course is subjective.)

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#102

Post by theoperagoer » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:54 PM UTC

ngl, I had to fight distraction to finish reading this article.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#103

Post by wheelerof4te » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

dubcanada wrote: post #81

I guess the question is not has attention spans declined, I think pretty much everyone can say yes. I suppose the question is, does it matter?

That heavily depends on the context. Is your child having difficulty staying alert in the classroom? Then the answer is yes.

Are you having difficulty understanding a bestseller book? No worries there, just watch a movie or something.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#104

Post by fredoliveira » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

dubcanada wrote: post #81

I guess the question is not has attention spans declined, I think pretty much everyone can say yes. I suppose the question is, does it matter?

Most people require focus to come up with better ideas, so even in that narrow sense, I would argue that it matters a whole lot.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#105

Post by sizzzzlerz » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:56 PM UTC

What? I was watching this squirrel outside.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#106

Post by substation13 » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

Anyone else read the headline and go straight through to the comments?

I think that HN, which has added deliberate friction elsewhere on the site, should consider hiding the comments link until you have clicked through to the article.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#107

Post by deadbeeves » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #41

Trying to read classic literature really makes this apparent. Hemingway's Sun Also Rises must have been a riveting adventure story when it was published in 1926, but how can it compete with 10,000 hours of adventure travel on youtube, netflix etc.? Same with Moby Dick in 1850s... these were glimpses into exotic lives rarely heard of back then, but today you can find those stories or similar in vivid moving pictures a…

What you're mentioning has little to do with technology and nothing to do with attention span. Those books just don't give you anything you want. Well, why read them? I think microprocessors are great achievements, but I struggle to think how a work of fiction can be a great achievement. I don't think the world would be very different if neither of them had ever been written.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#108

Post by pessimizer » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #41

Trying to read classic literature really makes this apparent. Hemingway's Sun Also Rises must have been a riveting adventure story when it was published in 1926, but how can it compete with 10,000 hours of adventure travel on youtube, netflix etc.? Same with Moby Dick in 1850s... these were glimpses into exotic lives rarely heard of back then, but today you can find those stories or similar in vivid moving pictures a…

Books don't have to be experienced as vicarious adventures. That's what YA lit is, mostly, but we can read books for their insight rather than fantasizing about being participants in a series of events that they're narrating. There's no reason to transform their thoughtfulness into the sort of disjointed juvenile power fantasies that modern movies are attempting to appeal to.

Also, you don't have to read literature or novels. Read the narratives and nonfiction around what people experienced in times and places that will never be experienced again, and that youtube and netflix don't care about. Read about thoughts and reasoning that exceptional and forgotten people had in the 19th century that are ripe for rediscovery.

The death of attention span is real, but the idea that the substance of "content" now is of better quality than the writing in 1890 is a slander. It's just the difference between a quick, tasty, and a bit vulgar value meal at McDonald's vs. an actual high quality meal. The laziness gets addictive.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#109

Post by bamfly » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

carabiner wrote: post #41

Trying to read classic literature really makes this apparent. Hemingway's Sun Also Rises must have been a riveting adventure story when it was published in 1926, but how can it compete with 10,000 hours of adventure travel on youtube, netflix etc.? Same with Moby Dick in 1850s... these were glimpses into exotic lives rarely heard of back then, but today you can find those stories or similar in vivid moving pictures a…

Popular literature of years past looked more like those trashy-cover, cheaply-made, deteriorating, fits-in-a-suit-jacket-outer-pocket-without-wrecking-the-drape, thin genre novels you sometimes see carefully preserved in bookstores today, that never saw a hardcover printing (LOL, why? Pick one up, and 99% of the time they're clearly hastily-written formulaic crap), than Hemingway or Melville (the latter of whom, famously, had to be "re-discovered" in order for us to recognize his name today—he'd vanished from pop-consiousness very fast). Or "penny dreadfuls" (similar deal) before that.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#110

Post by JPws_Prntr_Fngr » Mon, Jul 24, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #33

There is far more content than there used to be but no more hours in the day. Our filters must reject more. Yes, there are costs -- deep work & study both suffer -- but there are benefits too: informational content that can be compressed does get compressed. An introduction to a concrete skill that would at one time have been padded out to fit into an hour long movie or lecture might become a 30 minute youtube video…

> An introduction to a concrete skill that would at one time have been padded out to fit into an hour long movie or lecture might become a 30 minute youtube video and then a 30 second tiktok

It's a thin illusion. Brain candy masquerading as real food. Those snap-cut tiktok cooking instructionals aren't teaching my girlfriend to cook the dishes any more than a snap-cut BJJ youtube short could teach me how to do a berimbolo. She's gonna have to read a recipe and spend hours in the kitchen, and I'm gonna have to spend hours on the mat with a training partner.